Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/85

Rh say that they could lead the army just as well as Xenophon. But it is a remarkable proof of the confidence which Xenophon's conduct had gradually inspired, that Timasion and other generals who had before been jealous of him, now said that nothing would induce them to serve without him.

This testimony of his brother officers must have been particularly gratifying to Xenophon, for the men, who were less discerning, and whose minds were warped by anger at their pay being continually withheld, yielded to all sorts of suspicions against Xenophon, who, they thought, must have been privately enriched by Seuthes. His position in the army was therefore, for the time, particularly uncomfortable, and he seems to have felt it very much. The service of the Greeks with Seuthes continued for two months, during which time they took and plundered villages far and wide, even as far up as Salmydessus, a seaport on the Euxine; and, in short, they brought the whole country into subjection to Seuthes. By the addition of men from the conquered tribes to his army, he had by this time a force twice as numerous as the Greeks, whom he now only wished to get rid of without the necessity of paying them.

A change in Greek politics, at this juncture, afforded the Cyreians an escape from their difficulties. The Lacedæmonians had just declared war against the Persian satraps, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, and had sent their general, Thimbron, into Asia to commence military operations. They then became extremely anxious to avail themselves of the remnant of the ten