History of the Peloponnesian War

Now Hippocrates himself, with a force raised at home, was ready, when the time came, to take the field against the Boeotians; but Demosthenes he sent on before, with the forty ships mentioned, to Naupactus; that after raising in those quarters an army of Acamanians and the other allies, he might sail to Siphae, in expectation of its being betrayed to him: and the day had been fixed between them on which they were simultaneously to carry out these plans.

Accordingly, Demosthenes went to Naupactus, and finding $Aeniadae compelled by all the Acarnanians to join the Athenian confederacy, and having himself raised all the allies on that side, and marched first against Salynthius and the Agraeans, and reduced them to subjection, he proceeded to make his other preparations for going at the proper time to Siphae.

About the same part of the summer, when Brasidas, being on his march with one thousand seven hundred heavy-armed to the Thrace-ward countries, had come to Heraclea in Trachinia; and when, on his sending before him a messenger to his partisans in Pharsalus, and requesting them to conduct himself and his army through the country, there came to Melitia, in Achaia, Panaerus, Dorus, Hippolochidas, Torylaus, and Strophacus, who was proxenus to the Chalcidians; upon that he proceeded on his march, being conducted both by other Thessalians, and especially by Niconidas of Larissa, who was a friend of Perdiccas.

For on other grounds it was not easy to pass through Thessaly without an escort, and with an armed force, especially, to pass through a neighbour's country without having obtained his consent, was regarded with suspicion by all the Greeks alike. Besides, the great mass of the Thessalians had always been on friendly terms with Athens;

so that, had not Thessaly, by the constitution of their country, been under the dominion of a few individuals, rather than in the enjoyment of civil equality, he would never have made his way; since even as it was, another party, of contrary views to those who have been named, met him on his march on the river Enipeus, and tried to stop him, telling him that he did wrong in advancing without the national consent.