Anabasis

But when Aristarchus came with his triremes and prevented our sailing across, at that moment—and surely it was exactly the proper step—I gathered you together so that we might consider what we should better do.

So you with your own ears heard Aristarchus direct you to march to the Chersonese and you heard Seuthes urge you to take the field with him, and then every man of you spoke in favour of going with Seuthes and every man of you voted to do so. What wrong, therefore, did I do in that matter, when I led you to the place where you had all decided to go?

I come now to the time when Seuthes began to play false with you in the matter of your pay: if I am his supporter in that, it would be just for you to blame me and hate me; but if the truth is that I, who before that was the most friendly to him of us all, am now most of all at variance with him, how can it be just in this case that, when I sided with you rather than with Seuthes, I should be blamed by you about the things in which I am at variance with him?

But it is possible, you might say, that I really have received from Seuthes the money that belongs to you, and am only tricking you.[*](i.e. by pretending to side with you against Seuthes.) Then this at least is clear: if Seuthes was in fact paying anything to me, he surely was not paying it with the understanding that he was both to lose whatever he gave me and at the same time was to pay other sums to you, but rather, I presume, if he was giving me anything, he was giving it with this understanding, that by giving a smaller sum to me he was to escape paying over the larger to you.