Anabasis

On the following day, after Seuthes had burned up the villages completely and left not a single house, in order that he might inspire the rest of his enemies also with fear of the sort of fate they would suffer if they did not yield him obedience, he went back again.

Then he dispatched Heracleides to Perinthus to sell the booty, so that he might get money to pay the soldiers with; while he himself and the Greeks encamped on the plain of the Thynians, the inhabitants abandoning their homes and fleeing to the mountains.

There was deep snow on the plain, and it was so cold that the water which they carried in for dinner and the wine in the jars would freeze, and many of the Greeks had their noses and ears frost-bitten.

Then it became clear why the Thracians wear fox-skin caps on their heads and over their ears, and tunics not merely about their chests, but also round their thighs, and why, when on horseback, they wear long cloaks reaching to their feet instead of mantles.

And now Seuthes allowed some of his captives to go off to the mountains with word that if the Thynians did not come down to the plain to live and did not yield him obedience, he would burn up their villages also and their corn, and they would perish with hunger. Thereupon the women, children, and older men did come down, but the younger men bivouacked in the villages under the mountain.

And Seuthes, upon learning of this, ordered Xenophon to take the youngest of the hoplites and follow him. So they arose during the night, and at daybreak reached the villages. Now most of the villagers made their escape, for the mountain was close at hand; but all that he did capture, Seuthes shot down unsparingly.

There was a certain Episthenes of Olynthus who was a lover of boys, and upon seeing a handsome boy, just in the bloom of youth and carrying a light shield, on the point of being put to death, he ran up to Xenophon and besought him to come to the rescue of a handsome lad.

So Xenophon went to Seuthes and begged him not to kill the boy, telling him of Episthenes’ turn of mind, how he had once assembled a battalion with an eye to nothing else save the question whether a man was handsome, and that with this battalion he proved himself a brave man.