Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Benjamin Jowett, Ed.

120. About the time when the envoys engaged in the negotiations were passing to and fro, Scionè,¹ a town of Pallenè, revolted from the Athenians and joined Brasidas. The Scionaeans, according to their own account, sprang originally from Pellenè in Peloponnesus, but their ancestors returning from Troy were carried by the storm which the Achaean fleet encountered to Scionè, where they took up their abode. [2] Brasidas, when he heard of the revolt, sailed thither by night, sending before him a friendly trireme, while he himself followed at some distance in a small boat, thinking that if he met any vessel, not a trireme, larger than the boat, the trireme would protect him², while if another trireme of equal strength came up, it would fall, not upon the boat, but upon the larger vessel, and in the meantime he would be able to save himself. [3] He succeeded in crossing, and having summoned a meeting of the Scionaeans, he repeated what he had said at Acanthus and Toronè, adding that their conduct was deserving of the highest praise; for at a time when the Athenians were holding Potidaea and the isthmus of Pallenè, and they, being cut off from the mainland, were as defenceless as if they had been islanders, they had taken the side of liberty unbidden. They were not such cowards as to wait until they were compelled to do what was obviously for their own interest; and this was a sufficient proof that they would endure like men any hardships, however great, if only their aspirations could be realized. He should reckon them the truest and most loyal friends of the Lacedaemonians, and pay them the highest honour.