A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. Another Odrysian prince, a son of Maesades, who had reigned over the tribes of the Melanditae, Thyni, and Tranipsae, but had been expelled from his kingdom before his death, on which account Seuthes was brought up at the court of Medocus, or Amadocus, king of the Odrysians (Xen. Anab. 7.2.32). He was, however, admitted to a certain amount of independent power, and we find him in B. C. 405 joining with Amadocus, in promising his support to Alcibiades, to carry on the war against the Lacedaemonians (Diod. 13.105). In B. C. 400, when Xenophon with the remains of the ten thousand Greeks that had accompanied Cyrus, arrived at Chrysopolis; Seuthes applied to him for the assistance of the force under his command to reinstate him in his dominions. His proposals were at first rejected; but he renewed them again when the Greeks had been expelled from Byzantium, and found themselves at Perinthus without the means of crossing into Asia; and they were now induced, principally by Xenophon himself, to accept the offers of the Thracian prince. By the assistance of these new auxiliaries, Seuthes obtained an easy victory over the mountain tribes, and recovered the whole of his father's dominions. But when it came to the question of paying the services of the Greeks, great disputes arose, and Seuthes, at the instigation of Heracleides, endeavoured by every subterfuge to elude his obligations. He was at length, however, compelled to pay the stipulated sum, and the Greeks thereupon crossed into Asia (Xen. Anab. 7.1.5, 2_7). Not long afterwards, B. C. 399, we find him sending an auxiliary force to the Spartan general, Dercyllidas, in Bithynia (Id. Hellen. 3.2.2). At a subsequent period (B. C. 393), he was engaged in hostilities with his former patron Amadocus; but the quarrel between them was terminated by the intervention of Thrasybulus; and Seuthes, at the suggestion of that general, concluded an alliance with Athens. (Ibid. 4.8.26; Diod. 14.94.)