* * * *
His lange heer was kembd byhynde his bak
As eny ravenes fether it schon for-blak.
* * * *
An hundred lordes hadde he in his route
Armed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.’
Chaucer: Knight’s Tale.
To a man of active mind and determined courage it ever seems an unworthy thing to give way for long to sad musings and melancholy retrospections. Wherever Alkibiades was he must be doing something. If Athens would not let him do all he wished to do for her, he would still do what he could in spite of her.
He had before made friends with many of the Thrakian chiefs, who were always fighting among themselves. He now organized and trained a band of hardy savage warriors, some of whom had served under him in his last campaign against the Spartans; and before the spring came, while the deep snow was still upon the mountains, he was entreated by the Selymbrians to come to help them against the Kaini, who were menacing their territory. He felt bound to the Selymbrians; they had given way to him when he was in their midst, and had acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. They had, indeed, no particular claim upon him, but they were Greeks. An enterprise of this sort had some charms for him in his present humour; it might bring booty and many things of which he and his wild followers stood in need. He crossed the Holy Mountain, where the cold was so intense that the few Greeks in his band suffered severely and envied the Thrakians with their long fur coats and caps of foxes’ skins covering their heads and ears; and he drove the Kaini back to their savage mountain villages and away from the sea-coast, and protected Selymbria and the other Greek towns along the western shores of the Chersonesos.
Thence he was called back to the south. The Apsinthii, a tribe on the left bank of the Hebros, had crossed the river in their boats of wicker-work and skins, and were threatening the Odrysian king and the Grecian colonies in the south. Passing through Apri, he came to Kypaela, on the Hebros, in the territory of the Paeti, where he thought he might find a ford across the river. There was, however, no ford there, nor any bridge, and he had no boats. So he went up the bank of the river northward, and, crossing the Agrianes, a tributary of the Hebros, he reached, by the beginning of April, the main river again, nearly opposite the village where Plotinopolis was afterwards built. While he was engaged in searching for a ford two Thrakian horsemen, in fine costume, rode up, and made signs that they wished a parley with him. Amongst his wild band there were but few who knew much Greek, and the language of the new comers was different to the Thrakian speech to which he was accustomed; but he found at length one who was able, not without some difficulty, to act as an interpreter. The horsemen declared they were sent by Amadokos, king of the Odrysai, who was at his royal village on the other side of the river, a little higher up; they said the king, their master, desired to meet the Athenian general, and begged to invite him to a state banquet that day. They informed him that Amadokos claimed to be of the same race as the Athenians, and would make alliance with him, and give whatever pledges he demanded. They offered to show Alkibiades a ford higher up, where his horses might easily cross, and where he would find the king’s royal barge awaiting him.