78.
About the same time of this summer, Brasidas, marching towards the cities upon Thrace with seventeen hundred men of arms, when he came to Heracleia in Trachinia, sent a messenger before him to his friends at Pharsalus, requiring them to be guides unto him and to his army.
And when there were come unto him Panaerus and Dorus and Hippolochidas and Torylaus and Strophacus, who was the public host of the Chalcideans, all which met him at Melitia, a town of Achaia, he marched on.
[2]
There were other of the Thessalians also that convoyed him;
and from Larissa he was convoyed by Niconidas, a friend of Perdiccas.
For it had been hard to pass Thessaly without a guide howsoever, but especially with an army.
And to pass through a neighbour territory without leave is a thing that all Grecians alike are jealous of.
Besides, that the people of Thessaly had ever borne good affection to the Athenians.
[3]
Insomuch, as if by custom the government of that country had not been lordly rather than a commonwealth, he could never have gone on.
For also now as he marched forward, there met him at the river Enipeus others, of a contrary mind to the former, that forbade him and told him that he did unjustly to go on without the common consent of all.
[4]
But those that convoyed him answered that they would not bring him through against their wills, but that coming to them on a sudden, they conducted him as friends.
And Brasidas himself said he came thither a friend both to the country and to them;
and that he bore arms, not against them, but against the Athenians their enemies;
and that he never knew of any enmity between the Thessalians and Lacedaemonians whereby they might not use one another's ground;
[5]
and that even now he would not go on without their consent;
for neither could he, but [only] entreated them not to stop him.
When they heard this, they went their ways.
And he, by the advice of his guides, before any greater number should unite to hinder him, marched on with all possible speed, staying nowhere by the way.
And the same day he set forth from Melitia he reached Pharsalus and encamped by the river Apidanus;
[6]
from thence he went to Phacium;
from thence into Peraebia.
The Peraebians, though subject to the Thessalians, set him at Dion in the dominion of Perdiccas, a little city of the Macedonians situate at the foot of Olympus on the side towards Thessaly.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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