Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/230

 HISTORY OF GREECE. to comply with the petition of their Asiatic countrymen; and ta send over to Asia Thimbron at the head of a considerable force : two thousand Neodamodes (or Helots who had been enfranchised) and four thousand Peloponnesians heavy-armed, accompanied by three hundred Athenian horsemen, out of the number of those who liad been adherents of the Thirty, four years before; an aid granted by Athens at the special request of Thimbron. Arriving in Asia during the whiter of 400-399 B. c., Thimbron was reinforced in the spring of 399 B. c. by the Cyreian army, who were brought across from Thrace as described in my last chapter, and taken into Lacedaemonian pay. With this large force he became more than a match for the satraps, even on the plains where they could em- ploy their numerous cavalry. The petty Grecian princes of Per- gamus and Teuthrania, holding that territory by ancient grants from Xerxes to their ancestors, joined their troops to his, con- tributing much to enrich Xenophon at the moment of his depart- ure from the Cyreinns. Yet Thimbron achieved nothing worthy of so large an army. He not only miscarried in the siege of La- rissa, but was even unable to maintain order among his own soldiers, who pillaged indiscriminately both friends and foes. 1 Such loud complaints were transmitted to Sparta of his irregu- larities and inefficiency, that the ephors first sent him order to march into Karia, where Tissaphernes resided, and next, before that order was executed, despatched Derkyllidas to supersede him; seemingly in the winter 399-398 B. c. Thimbron on returning to Sparta was fined and banished. 2 It is highly probable that the Cyreian soldiers, though excellent in the field, yet having been disappointed of reward for the pro- digious toils which they had gone through in their long march, and having been kept on short allowance in Thrace, as well as cheated by Seuthes, were greedy, unscrupulous, and hard to be restrained, hi the matter of pillage ; especially as Xenophon, their most influential general, had now left them. Their conduct ? greatly improved under Derkyllidas. And though such improve- ment was doubtless owing partly to the superiority of the latter over Thimbron, yet it seems also partly ascribable to the fact that 1 Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 5-8 ; Xen. Anab. vii, 8, 8-K.
 * Xen. Hellen. iii. 1, S ; Diodor. xiv, 38.