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.

The same winter the Chians pulled down their new wall at the command of the Athenians, who suspected them of meditating an insurrection, after first however obtaining pledges from the Athenians, and security as far as this was possible for their continuing to treat them as before. Thus the winter ended, and with it ended the seventh year of this war of which Thucydides is the historian.

In the first days of the next summer there was an eclipse of the sun at the time of new moon, and in the early part of the same month an earthquake.