History of the Peloponnesian War

In the meantime, they that were in authority at Samos, and especially Thrasybulus, who after the form of government changed was still of the mind to have Alcibiades recalled, at length in an assembly persuaded the soldiers to the same. And when they had decreed for Alcibiades both his return and his security, he went to Tissaphernes and fetched Alcibiades to Samos, accounting it their only means of safety to win Tissaphernes from the Peloponnesians to themselves.

An assembly being called, Alcibiades complained of and lamented the calamity of his own exile, and speaking much of the business of the state gave them no small hopes of the future time, hyperbolically magnifying his own power with Tissaphernes to the end that both they which held the oligarchy at home might the more fear him, and so the conspiracies dissolve, and also those at Samos the more honour him and take better heart unto themselves; and withal, that the enemy might object the same to the utmost to Tissaphernes and fall from their present hopes.

Alcibiades therefore, with the greatest boast that could be, affirmed that Tissaphernes had undertaken to him that as long as he had anything left, if he might but trust the Athenians they should never want for maintenance; no, though he should be constrained to make money of his own bed; and that he would fetch the Phoenician fleet, now at Aspendus, not to the Peloponnesians but to the Athenians; and that then only he would rely upon the Athenians when Alcibiades called home should undertake for them.

Hearing this and much more, they chose him presently for general together with those that were before, and committed unto them the whole government of their affairs. And now there was not a man that would have sold his present hopes, both of subsisting themselves and being revenged of The Four Hundred, for any good in the world, and were ready even then, upon those words of his, contemning the enemy there present, to set sail for Peiraeus.

But he, though many pressed it, by all means forbade their going against Peiraeus, being to leave their enemies so near; but since they had chosen him general, he was, he said, to go to Tissaphernes first and to dispatch such business with him as concerned the war.

And as soon as the assembly brake up, he took his journey accordingly, to the end that he might seem to communicate everything with him, and for that he desired also to be in more honour with him, and to show that he was general and a man capable to do him good or hurt. And it happened to Alcibiades that he awed the Athenians with Tissaphernes and Tissaphernes with the Athenians.

When the Peloponnesians that were at Miletus heard that Alcibiades was gone home, whereas they mistrusted Tissaphernes before, now they much more accused him.

For it fell out that when at the coming of the Athenians with their fleet before Miletus they refused to give them battle, Tissaphernes became thereby a great deal slacker in his payment;

and besides that he was hated by them before this for Alcibiades' sake, the soldiers now, meeting in companies apart, reckoned up one to another the same matters which they had noted before, and some also, men of value and not the common soldier alone, recounted this withal, how they had never had their full stipend; that the allowance was but small, and yet not continually paid; and that unless they either fought or went to some other place where they might have maintenance, their men would abandon the fleet; and that the cause of all this was in Astyochus, who for private lucre gave way to the humour of Tissaphernes.