History of the Peloponnesian War

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.