into the hands of the officers who in the Spartan army answered to the Roman quæstors, took precautions to exclude his allies from all share in it; and he thus deprived the Spartan arms of an advantage much more important than the value of the spoil. For Spithridates and the Paphlagonians, indignant at this treatment, deserted the camp the next night, and repairing to Sardis entered the service of Ariæus, who had again revolted, and was at war with the king: Agesilaus was more deeply affected by this loss than by any mischance that he met with in the course of his expedition: and he seems to have regretted it still more on private than on public grounds. Not long after, a prospect seemed to be opened to him of gaining a much more valuable ally. A Greek of Cyzicus, who was connected by ties of hospitality with Pharnabazus, and had recently entered into the same relation with Agesilaus, proposed to him to bring about an interview between him and the satrap. The preliminaries were arranged, and a place of meeting appointed in the open air, to which Agesilaus came accompanied by the Thirty, and they seated themselves on the grass to wait for Pharnabazus. He came attended by a train of servants, who, according to the Persian fashion, proceeded to lay down a carpet and cushions for their master. But the intelligent Persian, struck by the contrast of the Spartan simplicity, in a fortune at present so much more prosperous than his own, ordered these instruments of luxury to be removed, and, in his splendid attire, took his seat without ceremony on the green-sward by the side of Agesilaus. [Sidenote: [395-394 B.C.]] After the forms of a friendly greeting had been interchanged, Pharnabazus opened the conference with an expostulation on the hard treatment which he had suffered. He reminded his hearers of the zeal and constancy with which he had espoused the cause of Sparta in the war with Athens. Nevertheless Spartan hostility had now reduced him to such a condition that even in his own territory he did not know how to find a meal, except such as he could collect, like a dog, from the orts and leavings of their rapine; while his fair patrimonial mansions, his pleasant woods and parks, had been all burned, and felled, and spoiled. If, he concluded, it was his ignorance that made him unable to reconcile such conduct with the obligations of justice and gratitude, he desired that the Spartans would enlighten him.