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This generous self-sacrifice, which at the moment promised nothing less than a fatal result to Agasias, was accepted by the army: and the generals conducted both him and the soldier whom he had rescued, as prisoners to Kleander.
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.
Indeed the impression that they were preparing, at the instance of Xenophon, to found a new city at Kalpê became so strong that several of the neighboring native villages sent envoys to ask on what terms alliance would be granted to them. At length Kleander came, but with two triremes only. Kleander was the Lacedæmonian governor of Byzantium.
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.
If then Kleander begins by shutting us out from Byzantium, and next enjoins the Lacedæmonian governors in the other cities to do the same, proclaiming us lawless and disobedient to Sparta if, besides, the same representation should be conveyed to the Lacedæmonian admiral of the fleet, Anaxibius we shall be hard pressed either to remain or to sail away; for the Lacedæmonians are at present masters both on land and at sea.
It so happened that at the moment when Kleander arrived, the whole army was out on a marauding excursion.
When they reached Kyzikus, they met the Lacedæmonian Aristarchus; who was coming out as a newly-appointed governor of Byzantium, to supersede Kleander, and who acquainted Anaxibius that Polus was on the point of arriving to supersede him as admiral.
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.
His request was granted, though not without much difficulty; upon which he took leave of the army under the strongest expressions of affection and gratitude on their part and went into Byzantium along with Kleander; while on the next day Koeratadas came to assume the command according to agreement, bringing with him a prophet, and beasts to be offered in sacrifice.
But when sacrifices came to be offered, for beginning the march homeward, the signs were so unpropitious, for three successive days, that Kleander could not bring himself to brave such auguries at the outset of his career.
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