All the captains who heard Xenophon cordially concurred in his suggestion, and desired him to take the lead in executing it. One captain alone,—Apollonides, speaking in the Bœotian dialect,—protested against it as insane; enlarging upon their desperate position, and insisting upon submission to the king, as the only chance of safety. “How (replied Xenophon)? Have you forgotten the courteous treatment which we received from the Persians in Babylonia, when we replied to their demand for the surrender of our arms by showing a bold front? Do not you see the miserable fate which has befallen Klearchus, when he trusted himself unarmed in their hands, in reliance on their oaths? And yet you scout our exhortations to resistance, again advising us to go and plead for indulgence! My friends, such a Greek as this man, disgraces not only his own city, but all Greece besides. Let us banish him from our counsels, cashier him, and make a slave of him to carry baggage.”—“Nay (observed Agasias of Stymphalus), the man has nothing to do with Greece; I myself have seen his ears bored, like a true Lydian.” Apollonides was degraded accordingly.[143] [143] Xen. Anab. iii, 1, 26-30. It would appear from the words of Xenophon, that Apollonides had been one of those who had held faint-hearted language (ὑπομαλακιζόμενοι, ii, 1, 14) in the conversation with Phalinus shortly after the death of Cyrus. Hence Xenophon tells him, that this is the second time of his offering such advice—Ἃ σὺ πάντα εἰδὼς, τοὺς μὲν ἀμύνασθαι κελεύοντας φλυαρεῖν φῂς, ~πείθειν δὲ πάλιν κελεύεις ἰόντας~; This helps to explain the contempt and rigor with which Xenophon here treats him. Nothing indeed could be more deplorable, under the actual circumstances, than for a man “to show his acuteness by summing up the perils around.” See the remarkable speech of Demosthenes at Pylos (Thucyd. iv, 10).