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We must not, for the sake of any one or two men, suffer the whole army to be excluded from Greece. We must obey whatever the Lacedæmonians command, especially as our cities, to which we respectively belong, now obey them. As to what concerns myself, I understand that Dexippus has told Kleander that Agasias would never have taken such a step except by my orders.
Accordingly the latter interfered, drove away those who claimed the sheep as public property, and denounced them as thieves to Kleander; who desired him to bring them before him. Dexippus arrested one of them, a soldier belonging to the company of one of the best friends of Xenophon the Arcadian Agasias.
The situation now became extremely critical; since the soldiers would not easily be brought to surrender their comrades who had a perfectly righteous cause, though they had supported it by undue violence to the vengeance of a traitor like Dexippus. When the army was convened in assembly, several of them went so far as to treat the menace of Kleander with contempt.
An armed ship with fifty oars was borrowed from the Trapezuntines, and committed to the charge of a Lacedæmonian provincial, named Dexippus, for the purpose of detaining the merchant vessels passing by.
I have thanked the friends you desired me to thank, and I have delivered the letters to Dexippus, and have mentioned that you had informed me of their kindness. That our Piso has shewn surprising zeal and kindness to us I can see for myself, but everybody also tells me of it. God grant that I may be allowed, along with you and our children, to enjoy the actual society of such a son-in-law!
But the Lacedæmonian governor was so incensed as well by his own fright as by the calumnies of Dexippus, that he threatened to sail away at once, and proclaim the Cyreian army enemies to Sparta, so that every Hellenic city should be interdicted from giving them reception. It was in vain that the generals, well knowing the formidable consequences of such an interdict, entreated him to relent.
He came attended by the Lacedæmonian Dexippus, who had served in the Cyreian army until their arrival at Trapezus, and who had there been entrusted with an armed vessel for the purpose of detaining transports to convey the troops home but had abused the confidence reposed in him, by running away with the ship to Byzantium.
He would consent only on condition that the soldiers who had begun to throw stones as well as Agasias the interfering officer, should be delivered up to him. This latter demand was especially insisted upon by Dexippus, who hating Xenophon, had already tried to prejudice Anaxibius against him, and believed that Agasias had acted by his order.
This being cordially adopted, Xenophon, at the head of a deputation comprising Drakontius the Spartan as well as the chief officers, addressed an earnest appeal to Kleander, representing that his honor had been satisfied with the unconditional surrender of the two persons required; that the army, deeply concerned for two meritorious comrades, entreated him now to show mercy and spare their lives; that they promised him in return the most explicit obedience, and entreated him to take the command of them, in order that he might have personal cognizance of their exact discipline, and compare their worth with that of Dexippus.
On the day when Kleander arrived, and found the whole army out, some soldiers were just coming back with a lot of sheep which they had seized. By right, the sheep ought to have been handed into the public store. But these soldiers, desirous to appropriate them wrongfully, addressed themselves to Dexippus, and promised him a portion if he would enable them to retain the rest.
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