Artabazus son of Pharnaces, who was already a notable man among the Persians and grew to be yet more so through the Plataean business, escorted the king as far as the passage with sixty thousand men of the army that Mardonius had chosen. Xerxes, then, was now in Asia, and when Artabazus came near Pallene in his return (for Mardonius was wintering in Thessaly and Macedonia and making no haste to come to the rest of his army), he thought it right that he should enslave the people of Potidaea, whom he found in revolt. When the king had marched away past the town and the Persian fleet had taken flight from Salamis, Potidaea had openly revolted from the barbarians and so too had the rest of the people of Pallene.