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The injured villagers despatched three elders as heralds, to remonstrate with the Grecian authorities; but these heralds, being seen in Kerasus by some of the repulsed plunderers, were slain. A partial tumult then ensued, in which even the magistrates of Kerasus were in great danger, and only escaped the pursuing soldiers by running into the sea.
They passed a vote that the ringleaders of the mutiny at Kerasus should be punished; that if any one was guilty of similar outrages in future, he should be put upon his trial by the generals, before the captains as judges, and if condemned by them, put to death; and that trial should be had before the same persons, for any other wrong committed since the death of Cyrus.
A difficulty is raised on this point because Xenophon says that the Greeks reached Kerasus in three days from Trebizond, and the country is difficult. But it is more probable that there is an error in the "three" days, either an error of Xenophon or of the MSS., than that the site of Phernakia should have got the name of Kerasunt though Kerasus was not there.
The case was similar with the three colonies of Sinôpê, more to the eastward Kotyôra, Kerasus, and Trapezus; except that the mountains which border on the Euxine, gradually approaching nearer and nearer to the shore, left to each of them a more confined strip of cultivable land.
Even after all the losses and extreme sufferings of the retreat the Greeks still numbered, when mustered at Kerasus, 8600 heavy-armed foot-soldiers, with light-armed foot-soldiers, bowmen, and slingers, making a total of above 10,000 military persons. Such a force had never before been seen in the Euxine.
Trapezus, now Trebizond, where the army had recently found repose, was a colony from Sinôpê, as were also Kerasus and Kotyôra farther westward; each of them receiving a governor from the mother-city, and paying to her an annual tribute.
A captain named Klearetus persuaded his company to attempt the plunder of a Kolchian village near Kerasus, which had furnished a friendly market to the Greeks, and which rested secure on the faith of peaceful relations. He intended to make off separately with the booty in one of the vessels: but his attack was repelled, and he himself slain.
Such was the use to which Xenophon applied the tithe voted by the army at Kerasus to the Ephesian Artemis; the other tithe, voted at the same time to Apollo, he dedicated at Delphi in the treasure-chamber of the Athenians, inscribing upon the offering his own name and that of Proxenus.
As he paused after this general remonstrance, the soldiers loudly called upon him to go into particulars; upon which he proceeded to recall, with lucid and impressive simplicity, the outrages which had been committed at and near Kerasus the unauthorized and unprovoked attack made by Klearetus and his company on a neighboring village which was in friendly commerce with the army the murder of the three elders of the village, who had come as heralds to complain to the generals about such wrong the mutinous attack made by disorderly soldiers even upon the magistrates of Kerasus, at the very moment when they were remonstrating with the generals on what had occurred; exposing these magistrates to the utmost peril, and putting the generals themselves to ignominy.
This enormity, though it occurred under the eyes of the generals, immediately before their departure from Kerasus, remained without inquiry or punishment, from the numbers concerned in it. This march cost the Cyreian army not less than ten days, by an inland track departing from the seashore, and through the mountains inhabited by the native tribes Mosynoeki and Chalybes.
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