The Historians' History of the World 04

Having thus, according to Xenophon’s expression, in eight days, taken nine cities, he sent proposals of truce to Pharnabazus. That generous satrap, unassisted from the capital of the empire, and deserted and betrayed by the great neighbouring officer whose more peculiar duty it was to afford him assistance, readily accepted them. Xenophon indeed says, that he was little disturbed with the loss of Æolis; esteeming that province, under Lacedæmonian protection, while he had himself peace with Lacedæmon, rather a useful barrier against other enemies. The meaning of this apparently is to be collected only from what follows. The Bithynians, though as tributary subjects of the empire he had assisted them against the Cyrean army, were always licentious, sometimes perhaps rebellious, and they frequently carried hostile depredation among the more peaceful and settled inhabitants of his satrapy. Among these people Dercyllidas resolved to take his winter quarters, as in a hostile territory, and Pharnabazus expressed no dissatisfaction.

Since he had been in Asia, Dercyllidas had fought no great battle, nor taken any town by assault; but, in an army which, under his predecessor, had been so lawless as to be a terror more to friends than enemies, he had restored exact discipline, and yet was the favourite of that army. With that army then he had awed the two great satraps, each commanding a province equal to a powerful kingdom, and both together acting under the mightiest empire in the world; so that, after having given independency and security to the long line of Ionian and Æolian colonies, he could direct his views another way for the benefit of the Grecian name.

The Thracian Chersonese, once the principality of the renowned Miltiades, lately, in large proportion, the property of another great and singular character, Alcibiades, and by its fertility, its many harbours, and its advantageous situation for trade, always a great object for industrious adventurers from Greece, was however always subject to dreadful incursions from the wild hordes of Thracians, who made it their glory to live by rapine. The Chersonesites, in a petition to Lacedæmon for protection, declared that, unless it were granted, they must abandon the country. Dercyllidas, informed of this, before orders could come to himself from Lacedæmon, or another could be sent with the commission, resolved to execute the service. He sent to Pharnabazus a proposal for prolonging the existing truce, which was immediately accepted; and, having so far provided tranquillity for Asia, he transported his army to the European shore. Immediately he visited the Thracian prince Seuthes, by whom he was very hospitably entertained; and having arranged, apparently to his satisfaction, those matters in which his commonwealth and that prince had a common concern, he marched to the Chersonese. There he employed his army, not in plunder and destruction, but in raising a rampart across the isthmus, to secure the peace of the rich country and industrious people within. Begun in spring, it was completed before autumn, and the army was reconveyed into Asia. Dercyllidas then made a progress through the Asiatic cities, to inspect the state of things, and had the satisfaction to find everywhere peace, prosperity, and general content.

Now the ephors sent orders for war to be carried into Caria; for the army under Dercyllidas to march thither; and for the fleet, then commanded by Pharax, to co-operate with it. The first effect of these ill-concerted measures appears to have been to produce, or at least to hasten, a union between the two satraps, Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus; whose long variance had in no small degree contributed to those great successes which the Greeks, with a force otherwise inadequate to contention with the Persian empire, had been enabled to obtain. Pharnabazus, unsupported by the court of Susa, and basely deserted, or worse than deserted, by Tissaphernes, his immediate superior in command, had acquiesced under the loss of Æolis. But, as soon as the threatened attack of Caria afforded a probability that Tissaphernes would be disposed to change his conduct, Pharnabazus went to him, and declared his readiness to co-operate zealously in measures for driving the Greeks out of Asia. This proposal, to which the jealousy and pusillanimity of Tissaphernes otherwise would scarcely have listened, was made acceptable by the indiscreet violence of the Spartan government. The two satraps went together into Caria, and, having arranged matters for the defence of that country, returned to take the command of an army which threatened Ionia with destruction.

[398-397 B.C.]