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Updated: June 1, 2025
Had Kleander accepted the command, the soldiers would have been better treated, while Xenophon himself might either have remained as his adviser, or might have gone home. He would probably have chosen the latter course. The army crosses the Bosphorus to Byzantium; false promises of Anaxibius and their results.
After having followed them from Sardis to Kunaxa as mercenaries to procure the throne for Cyrus then from Kunaxa to Trapezus as men anxious only for escape, and purchasing their safety by marvellous bravery, endurance, and organization we shall now track their proceedings among the Greek colonies on the Euxine and at the Bosphorus of Thrace, succeeded by their struggles against the meanness of the Thracian prince Seuthês, as well as against the treachery and arbitrary harshness of the Lacedæmonian commanders Anaxibius and Aristarchus.
Accordingly, Anaxibius, sending for the generals and the captains across to Byzantium, invited the army to cross, and gave them his assurance that as soon as the soldiers should be in Europe, he would provide pay for them.
This pithy address being received with vehement acclamations, and warmly responded to by all, Cheirisophus offered, if the army chose to empower him, to sail forthwith to Byzantium, where he thought he could obtain from his friend the Lacedæmonian admiral Anaxibius, sufficient vessels for transport. His proposition was gladly accepted; and he departed to execute the project.
The miserable consequences, which would have ensued, had the army persisted in their aggressive impulse first, to the citizens of the town, ultimately to themselves, while Anaxibius, the only guilty person, had the means of escaping by sea, even under the worst circumstances are stated by Xenophon rather under than above the reality.
Unhappily for them, the Lacedæmonian admiral Anaxibius was now at Byzantium, so that their friend Kleander was under his superior command.
But he came with only a single trireme, bringing nothing except a message from Anaxibius, the Lacedæmonian general in the Bosphorus; who complimented the army, and promised that they should be taken into pay as soon as they were out of the Euxine.
They undertook no enterprise of importance without sacrifices to the gods, and if the auguries were unfavorable, they relinquished their most cherished objects. There it remained seven days. But nothing could be done without the consent of the Spartan admiral at Byzantium, Anaxibius, since the Lacedæmonians were the masters of Greece both by sea and land.
Though fresh from all the glory of their retreat, they had been first treacherously entrapped over from Asia, next roughly ejected by Anaxibius; and although it may be said truly that the citizens of Byzantium had no concern either in the one or the other, yet little heed is commonly taken, in military operations, to the distinction between garrison and citizens in an assailed town.
Send to inform Anaxibius, that we have entered the city, not with a view to commit any violence, but in the hope, if possible, of obtaining from him the advantages which he promised us. If we fail, we shall at least prove to him that we quit the city not under his fraudulent manoeuvres, but under our own sense of the duty of obedience."
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