Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/163

 LYSANUER AT SAKDI&. 141 should be at once devoted to the cause : if these were insufficient, he would resort to the private funds which his father had given him; and if more still were needed, he would coin into money the gold and silver throne on which he sat. 1 Lysander and the envoys returned the warmest thanks for these magnificent promises, which were not likely to prove empty words from the lips of a vehement youth like Cyrus. So san- guine were the hopes which they conceived from his character and proclaimed sentiments, that they ventured to ask him to restore the rate of pay to one full Attic drachma per head for the seamen ; which had been the rate promised by Tissaphernes through his envoys at Sparta, when he firgt invited the Lacedae- monians across the ^Egean, and when it was doubtful whether they would come, but actually paid only for the first month, and then reduced to half a drachma, furnished in practice with miserable irregularity. As a motive for granting this increase of pay, Cyrus was assured that it would determine the Athenian seamen to desert so largely, that the war would sooner come to an end, and of course the expenditure also. But he refused compli- ance, saying that the rate of pay had been fixed both by the king's express orders and by the terms of the treaty, so that he could not depart from it. 2 In this reply Lysander was forced to acquiesce. The envoys were treated with distinction, and feasted 1 Xcnoph. Ilcllen. i, 5, 3-4 : Diodor. xiii, 70 ; Plutarch, Lysander, c. 4. This seems to have been a favorite metaphor, cither used by, or at least as- cribed to, the Persian grandees ; we have already had it, a little before, from the mouth of Tissaphernus. novra /2vuf iKuary vtjl TOV [irjvbf didovat, oiroaaf uv poiiAoivro rpfyeiv Aa/ce- This is not strictly correct. The rate of pay is not specified in either of the three conventions, as they stand in Thucyd. viii, 18, 37, 58. It seems to have been, from the beginning, matter of verbal understanding and promise ; first, a drachma per day was promised by the envoys of Tissaphernes at Sparta; next, the satrap himself, at Miletus, cut down this drachma to half a drachma, and promised this lower rate for the future (viii. 29). Mr. Mitford says : " Lysander proposed that an Attic drachma, which was eight oboli, nearly tcnponcc sterling, should be allowed for daily pay to every seaman." Mr. Mitford had in the previous sentence stated three oboli as equal to not quite fnurpence sterling. Of course, therefore, it is plain that he did not
 * Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 5. eivat 6e nai TUJ cvvdrJKaf ovruf i^ovya^, rptu-