History of the Peloponnesian War

During the winter ensuing Aristides, son of Archippus, one of the commanders of the Athenian ships sent to collect money from the allies, arrested at Eion on the Strymon Artaphernes, a Persian, on his way from the king to Lacedaemon.

He was conducted to Athens, where the Athenians got his dispatches translated from the Assyrian character and read them. With numerous references to other subjects, they in substance told the Lacedaemonians that the king did not know what they wanted, as of the many ambassadors they had sent him no two ever told the same story; however they were prepared to speak plainly they might send him some envoys with this Persian.

The Athenians afterwards sent back Artaphernes in a galley to Ephesus, and ambassadors with him, who heard there of the death of King Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, which took place about that time, and so returned home.