[197] See the anecdote of Cyrus and Lysander in Xenoph. Œconom. iv, 21-23. From the moment that Pharnabazus and the Athenian envoys met Cyrus, their farther progress towards Susa became impossible. Bœotius, and the other Lacedæmonian envoys travelling along with the young prince, made extravagant boasts of having obtained all that they asked for at Susa; and Cyrus himself announced his powers as unlimited in extent over the whole coast, all for the purpose of prosecuting vigorous war in conjunction with the Lacedæmonians. Pharnabazus, on hearing this intelligence, and seeing the Great King’s seal to the words, “I send down Cyrus, as lord of all those who muster at Kastôlus,” not only refused to let the Athenian envoys proceed onward, but was even obliged to obey the orders of the young prince, who insisted that they should either be surrendered to him, or at least detained for some time in the interior, in order that no information might be conveyed to Athens. The satrap resisted the first of these requisitions, having pledged his word for their safety; but he obeyed the second, detaining them in Kappadokia for no less than three years, until Athens was prostrate and on the point of surrender, after which he obtained permission from Cyrus to send them back to the sea-coast.[198] [198] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 4, 3-8. The words here employed respecting the envoys, when returning after their three years’ detention, ὅθεν πρὸς τὸ ἄλλο στρατόπεδον ἀπέπλευσαν, appear to me an inadvertence. The return of the envoys must have been in the spring of 404 B.C., at a time when Athens had no camp: the surrender of the city took place in April 404 B.C. Xenophon incautiously speaks as if that state of things which existed when the envoys departed, still continued at their return. This arrival of Cyrus, overruling the treachery of Tissaphernês as well as the weariness of Pharnabazus, and supplying the enemies of Athens with a double flow of Persian gold at a moment when the stream would otherwise have dried up, was a paramount item in that sum of causes which concurred to determine the result of the war.[199] But important as the event was in itself, it was rendered still more important by the character of the Lacedæmonian admiral Lysander, with whom the young prince first came into contact on reaching Sardis. [199] The words of Thucydidês (ii, 65) imply this as his opinion, Κύρῳ τε ὕστερον βασιλέως παιδὶ προσγενομένῳ, etc.