Anabasis

When the Odrysian heard this, he said: As for me, Medosades, I sink beneath the earth for shame at this which I hear. If I had understood the matter before, I should not even have accompanied you; and now I am going back. For Medocus, the king, would never commend me if I should drive forth his benefactors.

With these words he mounted his horse and rode away, and with him went the horsemen also, except four or five. But Medosades, still distressed by the plundering of the country, urged Xenophon to summon the two Lacedaemonians.

And Xenophon, taking with him the best men he had, went to Charminus and Polynicus and said that Medosades was summoning them in order to give them the same warning as he had already given him,—to depart from the country.

I should think, therefore, he continued, that you might recover for the army the pay that is due if you should say that the army has requested you to aid them in exacting their pay from Seuthes whether he will or no, and that the troops say that they would follow you eagerly in case they should obtain it; also, that their words seem to you just, and that you promised them not to depart until the soldiers should obtain their rights.

When they had heard him, the Laconians replied that they would make such statements, adding others as forceful as they could make them; and straightway they set forth, taking with them all the important men of the army. Upon their arrival Charminus said: If you have anything to say to us, Medosades, say it; if not, we have something to say to you.

And Medosades replied, very submissively: I say, and Seuthes also says the same, that we ask that those who have become friends of ours should not suffer harm at your hands; for whatever harm you may do to them, you are then and there doing to us; for they are ours.

As for ourselves, then, said the Laconians, we shall depart whenever the men who obtained these possessions for you, have received their pay; failing that, we intend here and now to lend them our assistance and to punish the men who, in violation of their oaths, have done them wrong. And if you belong to that number, it is with you that we shall begin in obtaining their rights.

Then Xenophon said: Would you be willing, Medosades, to leave the question to these people (for you were saying that they are your friends) in whose country we are, to vote, one way or the other, whether it is proper for you or ourselves to depart from their country?

Medosades said No to that; but he urged, as his preference, that the two Laconians should go to Seuthes themselves about the pay, and said that he thought they might persuade Seuthes; or if they would not consent to go, he asked them to send Xenophon along with himself, and promised to support him. And he begged them not to burn the villages.

Thereupon they sent Xenophon, and with him the men who seemed to be fittest. When he had come, he said to Seuthes:

I am here, Seuthes, not to present any demand, but to show you, if I can, that you were wrong in getting angry with me because in the name of the soldiers I zealously demanded from you what you had promised them; for I believed that it was no less to your advantage to pay them than it was to theirs to get their pay.

For, in the first place, I know that next to the gods it was these men who set you in a conspicuous position, since they made you king over a large territory and many people; hence it is not possible for you to escape notice, whether you perform an honourable deed or a base one.

Now it seemed to me an important thing that a man in such a place should not be thought to have dismissed benefactors without gratitude, an important thing also to be well spoken of by six thousand men,[*](cp. the enumeration of the Ten Thousand in Xen. Anab. 5.3.3, and see especially Xen. Anab. 7.2.3-4 and 6.) but most important of all that you should by no means set yourself down as untrustworthy in whatever you say.

For I see that the words of untrustworthy men wander here and there without result, without power, and without honour; but if men are seen to practise truth, their words, if they desire anything, have power to accomplish no less than force in the hands of other men; and if they wish to bring one to reason, I perceive that their threats can do this no less than present chastisement applied by others; and if such men make a promise to any one, they accomplish no less than others do by an immediate gift.

Recall for yourself what amount you paid to us in advance in order to obtain us as allies. You know that it was nothing; but because you were trusted to carry out truthfully whatever you said, you induced that great body of men to take the field with you and to gain for you a realm worth not merely thirty talents, the sum which these men think they ought now to recover, but many times as much.

First of all, then, this trust, the very thing which gained your kingdom for you, is being sold for this sum.

Come, now, recall how great a thing you then deemed it to achieve the conquests which you now have achieved. For my part, I am sure you would have prayed that the deeds now done might be accomplished for you rather than that many times that amount of money might fall to your lot.

Now I count it greater hurt and shame not to hold these possessions firmly now than not to have gained them then, by so much as it is a harder fate to become poor after being rich than not to become rich at all, and by so much as it is more painful to be found a subject after being a king than not to become king at all.

You understand, then, that those who have now become your subjects were not persuaded to live under your rule out of affection for you, but by stress of necessity, and that unless some fear should restrain them, they would endeavour to become free again.

In which of these two cases, therefore do you think they would feel greater fear and be more moderate in their relations with you: if they should see the soldiers cherishing such feelings toward you that they would stay with you now if you so bade them and would quickly come back to you again if you needed them, and should see also that others, hearing many good things about you from these troops, would quickly present themselves to take service with you whenever you wished it—or if they should form the unkind opinion that no other soldiers would come to you, in consequence of a distrust resulting from what has now happened, and that these whom you have are more friendly to them than to you?