took counsel with the Cerasuntines how the dead bodies of the Hellenes might be buried.  While seated in conclave outside the camp, we suddenly were aware of a great hubbub.  We heard cries:  ’Cut them down!’ ‘Shoot them!’ ‘Stone them!’ and presently we caught sight of a mass of people racing towards us with stones in their hands, and others picking them up.  The Cerasuntines, naturally enough, considering the incident they had lately witnessed, retired in terror to their vessels, and, upon my word, some of us did not feel too comfortable.  All I could do was to go to them and inquire what it all meant.  Some of them had not the slightest notion, although they had stones in their hands, but chancing on some one who was better informed, I was told by him that ’the clerks of the market were treating the army most scandalously.’  Just then some one got sight of the market clerk, Zelarchus, making his way off towards the sea, and lifted up his voice aloud, and the rest responding to the cry as if a 24 wild boar or a stag had been started, they rushed upon him.

“The Cerasuntines, seeing a rush in their direction, thought that, without a doubt, it was directed against themselves, and fled with all speed and threw themselves into the sea, in which proceeding they were imitated by some few of our own men, and all who did not know how to swim were drowned.  But now, what do you think of their case, these men of Cerasus?  They had done no wrong.  They were simply afraid that some madness had seized us, like that to which dogs are liable.

“I say then, if proceedings like this are to be the order of the day, you had better consider what the ultimate condition of the army is like to be.  As a body you will not have it in your power to undertake war against whom you like, or to conclude peace.  But in private any one who chooses will conduct the army on any quest which takes his fancy.  And when ambassadors come to you to demand peace, or whatever it may be, officious people will put them to death and prevent your hearing the proposals which brought them to you.  The next step will be that those whom you as a body may choose as generals will be of no account; but any one who likes to elect himself general, and will adopt the formula ‘Shoot him! shoot him!’ will be competent to cut down whomsoever he pleases untried, be it general or private soldier, if only he have sufficient followers, as was the case just now.  But just consider what these self-appointed generals have achieved for you.  Zelarchus, the clerk of the market, may possibly have done you a wrong; if so, he has sailed off and is gone without paying you any penalty; or he may be guiltless, in which case we have driven him from the army in terror of perishing unjustly without a trial.  While those who stoned the ambassadors have contrived so cleverly that we alone of all Hellenes cannot approach Cerasus safely without a strong force, and the corpses which the very men who slew them themselves invited us to bury, we cannot now pick up with safety even under a flag of truce.  Who indeed would care to carry a flag of truce, or go as a herald with 30 the blood of heralds upon his hands?  All we could do was to implore the Cerasuntines to bury them.