Having the account of Thucydidês before us, we are enabled to say that this is an incorrect conception, as far as concerns the _cause_ of the war,—though the fact in itself may be quite true. [372] Thucyd. iii, 2. This news seems to have become certain about February or March 428 B.C.: but such was then the dispirited condition of the Athenians,—arising from two years’ suffering under the epidemic, and no longer counteracted by the wholesome remonstrances of Periklês,—that they could not at first bring themselves to believe what they were so much afraid to find true. Lesbos, like Chios, was their ally, upon an equal footing, still remaining under those conditions which had been at first common to all the members of the confederacy of Delos. Mitylênê paid no tribute to Athens: it retained its walls, its large naval force, and its extensive landed possessions on the opposite Asiatic continent: its government was oligarchical, administering all internal affairs without the least reference to Athens. Its obligations as an ally were, that, in case of war, it was held bound to furnish armed ships, whether in determinate number or not, we do not know: it would undoubtedly be restrained from making war upon Tenedos, or any other subject-ally of Athens: and its government or its citizens would probably be held liable to answer before the Athenian dikasteries, in case of any complaint of injury from the government or citizens of Tenedos or of any other ally of Athens,—these latter being themselves also accountable before the same tribunals, under like complaints from Mitylênê. That city was thus in practice all but independent, and so extremely powerful that the Athenians in their actual state of depression were fearful of coping with it, and therefore loth to believe the alarming intelligence which reached them. They sent envoys with a friendly message to persuade the Mitylenæans to suspend their proceedings, and it was only when these envoys returned without success that they saw the necessity of stronger measures. Ten Mitylenæan triremes, serving as contingent in the Athenian fleet, were seized, and their crews placed under guard; while Kleïppidês, then on the point of starting, along with two colleagues, to conduct a fleet of forty triremes round Peloponnesus, was directed to alter his destination and to proceed forthwith to Mitylênê.[373] It was expected that he would reach that town about the time of the approaching festival of Apollo Maloeis, celebrated in its neighborhood,—on which occasion the whole Mitylenæan population was in the habit of going forth to the temple: so that the town, while thus deserted, might easily be surprised and seized by the fleet. In case this calculation should be disappointed, Kleïppidês was instructed to require that the Mitylenæans should surrender their ships of war and raze their fortifications, and, in case of refusal, to attack them immediately. [373] Thucyd. iii, 3.