Before he took the field again, a year having now elapsed from the commencement of his expedition, Lysander and his colleagues were superseded by a new body of councillors, and returned home. Agesilaus then gave public notice, that he meant to take the shortest road into the richest part of the enemy’s country. The notice was designed not more for the preparation of his own troops, than for Tissaphernes, who concluded that if this had been the intention of Agesilaus, he would not have disclosed it, and that now Caria was certainly his real mark. He therefore repeated the dispositions of the preceding summer. But while he waited for the enemy with his cavalry in the vale of the Mæander, Agesilaus directed his march towards the plains of Sardis, the richest of Western Asia. During three days he traversed them without seeing an enemy; but on the fourth the Persian cavalry, which Tissaphernes seems to have sent forward as soon as he heard of the movements of Agesilaus, suddenly came up, and cut off many of the followers of the camp, as they were ranging over the country in quest of plunder. Tissaphernes had already arrived at Sardis; and his countrymen, many of whom had probably suffered considerable loss from the invasion, bitterly censured him for leaving them unprotected, and even it seems charged him with treachery. The complaints were carried up to the court, where he had one implacable and powerful enemy in the fiendish Parysatis, who thirsted to revenge herself on him for his enmity to her favourite son. She had already found that Artaxerxes was weak enough to sacrifice his most faithful servants to her resentment, even when he knew that it was inflamed by the very services which they had rendered to himself; and according to the most probable account, it was in compliance with her request that he now ordered Tissaphernes to be put to death. The execution of the sentence was committed to Tithraustes, who was appointed to succeed Tissaphernes in his satrapy, and was instructed to open a negotiation with Agesilaus. Accordingly, after executing the first part of his commission, which he did in the Turkish style by the hands of an underling, who surprised Tissaphernes in his bath, Tithraustes sent envoys to treat with the Spartan king. He affected to consider Tissaphernes as the author of the quarrel between his master and the Greeks, and, as if the end of their expedition was now answered by their enemy’s death, proposed that Agesilaus should return home. As to the Asiatic Greeks, Artaxerxes was willing to acknowledge their independence, on condition that they would pay their ancient tribute. Agesilaus replied, that he had no authority to conclude peace without the sanction of the government at home: but he would transmit the Persian overtures to Sparta. In the meanwhile Tithraustes was very anxious that hostilities should be suspended in his province, and, pleading his own merits in the execution of Tissaphernes, begged Agesilaus, while he