Summer [IV 52–88]

Right at the start of the following summer there was a partial eclipse of the sun at the time of the new moon, and early in the same month the earth quaked. The exiles from Mytilene and other parts of Lesbos, most of them setting out from the mainland, gathered together a mercenary force they had hired from the Peloponnese or had recruited on the spot. They captured Rhoeteum, but then gave it back again without having done any harm on receipt of two thousand Phocaean staters. After this they made an expedition against Antandrus and took the city with inside help. It was in fact their intention to liberate the other so-called ‘Actaean cities’ (which the Athenians now held though they were once occupied by Mytilenaeans) and above all to liberate Antandrus. They thought that after strengthening Antandrus, where there was every facility for building ships (with timber locally available and Mount Ida nearby) and other kinds of equipment too, they could from that base more easily inflict damage on Lesbos (which was nearby) and also subdue the Aeolic townships on the mainland. These were the plans they were preparing.