Dercyllidas then marched towards Scepsis. The assassin Midias, fearful, at the same time, of the Spartan general, the Persian satrap, and the Scepsian citizens, conceived his best hope to lie in accommodation with the former. He proposed a conference, to which Dercyllidas consented. Acquitting himself then of that miscreant by restoring all his private property, with liberal allowance for all his claims, he seized the wealth of Mania, as now belonging to the satrap, the common enemy; and it was his boast, a grateful boast to the army, that he had enriched the military chest with a twelvemonth’s pay for eight thousand men. [Sidenote: [399-398 B.C.]] 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.