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 sanguine 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 Tissaphernês through his envoys at Sparta, when he first invited the Lacedæmonians across the Ægean, 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 compliance, 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.[206] In this reply Lysander was forced to acquiesce. The envoys were treated with distinction, and feasted at a banquet; after which Cyrus, drinking to the health of Lysander, desired him to declare what favor he could do to gratify him most. “To grant an additional obolus per head for each seaman’s pay,” replied Lysander. Cyrus immediately complied, having personally bound himself by his manner of putting the question. But the answer impressed him both with astonishment and admiration; for he had expected that Lysander would ask some favor or present for himself, judging him not only according to the analogy of most Persians, but also of Astyochus and the officers of the Peloponnesian armament at Milêtus, whose corrupt subservience to Tissaphernês had probably been made known to him. From such corruption, as well as from the mean carelessness of Theramenês, the Spartan, respecting the condition of the seamen,[207] Lysander’s conduct stood out in pointed and honorable contrast. [206] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 5, 5. εἶναι δὲ καὶ τὰς συνθήκας οὕτως ἐχούσας, τριάκοντα μνᾶς ἑκάστῃ νηῒ τοῦ μηνὸς διδόναι, ὁπόσας ἂν βούλοιντο τρέφειν Λακεδαιμόνιοι. 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 Tissaphernês at Sparta; next, the satrap himself, at Milêtus, 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 tenpence sterling, should be allowed for daily pay to every seaman.”