[204] Diodor. xiii, 65; Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 2, 11. I presume
that this conduct of Kratesippidas is the fact glanced at by
Isokratês de Pace, sect. 128, p. 240, ed. Bekk.
The practice of reconstituting the governments of the Asiatic cities,
thus begun by Kratesippidas, was extended and brought to a system by
Lysander; not indeed for private emolument, which he always despised,
but in views of ambition. Having departed from Peloponnesus with
a squadron, he reinforced it at Rhodes, and then sailed onward to
Kos—an Athenian island, so that he could only have touched there—and
Milêtus. He took up his final station at Ephesus, the nearest point
to Sardis, where Cyrus was expected to arrive; and while awaiting his
coming, augmented his fleet to the number of seventy triremes. As
soon as Cyrus reached Sardis, about April or May 407 B.C., Lysander
went to pay his court to him, along with some Lacedæmonian envoys,
and found himself welcomed with every mark of favor. Preferring
bitter complaints against the double-dealing of Tissaphernês,—whom
they accused of having frustrated the king’s orders, and sacrificed
the interests of the empire, under the seductions of Alkibiadês,—they
intreated Cyrus to adopt a new policy, and execute the stipulations
of the treaty, by lending the most vigorous aid to put down the
common enemy. Cyrus replied, that these were the express orders which
he had received from his father, and that he was prepared to fulfil
them with all his might. He had brought with him, he said, five
hundred talents, which 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.[205]
[205] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 3-4; Diodor. xiii, 70; Plutarch,
Lysander, c. 4. This seems to have been a favorite metaphor,
either used by, or at least ascribed to, the Persian grandees;
we have already had it, a little before, from the mouth of
Tissaphernês.
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