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On the next day, the army sailed forward under the command of Cheirisophus, to Herakleia; near which town they were hospitably entertained, and gratified with a present of meal, wine, and bullocks, even greater than they had received at Sinôpê.
The Achæan Lykon proposed that they should extort a contribution of no less than 3000 staters of Kyzikus from the inhabitants of Herakleia: another man immediately outbid this proposition, and proposed that they should require 10,000 staters a full month's pay for the army. It was moved that Cheirisophus and Xenophon should go to the Herakleots as envoys with this demand.
The Arcadian division, departing first, in vessels from Herakleia, landed at Kalpê; an untenanted promontory of the Bithynian or Asiatic Thrace, midway between Herakleia and Byzantium. From thence they marched at once into the interior of Bithynia, with the view of surprising the villages and acquiring plunder.
Fortunately a vessel arrived from Herakleia, bringing to the camp at Kalpê a supply of barley-meal, cattle, and wine; which restored the spirits of the army, enabling them to go forth on the ensuing morning and assume the aggressive against the Bithynians, and the troops of Pharnabazus.
In the request preferred to him by them that he would march as their commander to the Bosphorus, we may recognize a scheme, and a very well-contrived scheme, of Xenophon; who had before desired to leave the army at Herakleia, and who saw plainly that the difficulties of a commander, unless he were a Lacedæmonian of station and influence, would increase with every step of their approach to Greece.
The citizens of Herakleia had reduced into dependence a considerable portion of the neighboring Mariandyni, and held them in a relation resembling that of the natives of Esthonia and Lavonia to the German colonies in the Baltic.
But the soldiers put him down with vehement disapprobation, threatening that they would assuredly punish him if they caught him running off. His intrigue against Xenophon thus recoiled upon himself, for the moment. But shortly afterwards, when the army reached Herakleia, he took his opportunity for clandestine flight, and found his way back to Greece with the 3000 darics.
Three envoys were accordingly sent Ariston, an Athenian, Kallimachus, an Arcadian, and Samolas, an Achæan; the Athenian, probably, as possessing the talent of speaking in the Sinopian senate or assembly. During the absence of the envoys, the army still continued near Kotyôra, with a market provided by the town, and with traders from Sinôpê and Herakleia in the camp.
So tempting a site invited the Milesians, even before the year 600 B.C., to plant a colony there, and enabled Sinôpê to attain much prosperity and power. Farther westward, not more than a long day's journey for a rowing vessel from Byzantium, was situated the Megarian colony of Herakleia, in the territory of the Mariandyni.
To perfidy of dealing was now added a brutal ejectment from Byzantium, without even the commonest manifestations of hospitality; contrasting pointedly with the treatment which the army had recently experienced at Trapezus, Sinôpê, and Herakleia; where they had been welcomed not only by compliments on their past achievements, but also by an ample present of flour, meat, and wine.
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