The next day they weighed anchor and set sail from Harmene with a fair 1 breeze, two days’ voyage along the coast. [As they coasted along they came in sight of Jason’s beach[1], where, as the story says, the ship Argo came to moorings; and then the mouths of the rivers, first the Thermodon, then the Iris, then the Halys, and next to it the Parthenius.] Coasting past [the latter], they reached Heraclea[2], a Hellenic city and a colony of the Megarians, situated in the territory of the Mariandynians.  So they came to anchorage off the Acherusian Chersonese, where Heracles[3] is said to have descended to bring up the dog Cerberus, at a point where they still show the marks of his descent, a deep cleft more than two furlongs down.  Here the Heracleots sent the Hellenes, as gifts of hospitality, three thousand measures of barley and two thousand jars of wine, twenty beeves and one hundred sheep.  Through the flat country here flows the Lycus river, as it is called, about two hundred feet in breadth.

[1] I have left this passage in the text, although it involves, at
    first sight, a topographical error on the part of whoever wrote
    it, and Hug and other commentators regard it as spurious.  Jason’s
    beach (the modern Yasoun Bouroun) and the three first-named rivers
    lie between Cotyora and Sinope.  Possibly the author, or one of his
    editors, somewhat loosely inserted a recapitulatory note
    concerning the scenery of this coasting voyage at this point.  “By
    the way, I ought to have told you that as they coasted along,”
    etc.

[2] One of the most powerful of commercial cities, distinguished as
    Pontica (whence, in the middle ages, Penteraklia), now Eregli.  It
    was one of the older Greek settlements, and, like Kalchedon (to
    give that town its proper name), a Megaro-Doric colony.  See
    Kiepert, op. cit. chap. iv. 62.

[3] According to another version of the legend Heracles went down to
    bring up Cerberus, not here, but at Taenarum.

The soldiers held a meeting, and took counsel about the remainder of the journey:  should they make their exit from the Pontus by sea or by land? and Lycon the Achaean got up and said:  “I am astonished, sirs, that the generals do not endeavour to provide us more efficiently with provisions.  These gifts of hospitality will not afford three days’ 4 victuals for the army; nor do I see from what region we are to provide ourselves as we march.  My proposal, therefore, is to demand of the Heracleots at least three thousand cyzicenes.”  Another speaker suggested, “not less than ten thousand.  Let us at once, before we break up this meeting, send ambassadors to the city and ascertain their answer to the demand and take counsel accordingly.”  Thereupon they proceeded to put up as ambassadors, first and foremost Cheirisophus, as he had been chosen general-in-chief; others also named Xenophon.