When Heracleides heard these words, he was in great consternation; so he came to Seuthes and said:  “If we are wise we will get away from here out of reach of these fellows.”  So they mounted their horses and were gone in a trice, galloping to their own camp.  Subsequently 42 Seuthes sent Abrozelmes, his private interpreter, to Xenophon, begging him to stay behind with one thousand heavy troops; and engaging duly to deliver to him the places on the seaboard, and the other things which he had promised; and then, as a great secret, he told him, that he had heard from Polynicus that if he once got into the clutches of the Lacedaemonians, Thibron was certain to put him to death.  Similar messages kept coming to Xenophon by letter or otherwise from several quarters, warning him that he was calumniated, and had best be on his guard.  Hearing which, he took two victims and sacrificed to Zeus the King:  “Whether it were better and happier to stay with Seuthes on the terms proposed, or depart with the army?” The answer he received was, “Depart.”

VII

After this, Seuthes removed his camp to some considerable distance; 1 and the Hellenes took up their quarters in some villages, selecting those in which they could best supply their commissariat, on the road to the sea.  Now these particular villages had been given by Seuthes to Medosades.  Accordingly, when the latter saw his property in the villages being expended by the Hellenes, he was not over well pleased; and taking with him an Odrysian, a powerful person amongst those who had come down from the interior, and about thirty mounted troopers, he came and challenged Xenophon to come forth from the Hellenic host.  He, taking some of the officers and others of a character to be relied upon, came forward.  Then Medosades, addressing Xenophon, said:  “You are doing wrong to pillage our villages; we give you fair warning—­I, in behalf of Seuthes, and this man by my side, who comes from Medocus, the king up country—­to begone out of the land.  If you refuse, understand, we have no notion of handing it over to you; but if you injure our country we will retaliate upon you as foes.”

Xenophon, hearing what they had to say, replied:  “Such language addressed to us by you, of all people, is hard to answer.  Yet for the sake of the young man with you, I will attempt to do so, that at least he may learn how different your nature is from ours.  We,” he continued, “before we were your friends, had the free run of this country, moving this way or that, as it took our fancy, pillaging and 5 burning just as we chose; and you yourself, Medosades, whenever you came to us on an embassy, camped with us, without apprehension of any foe.  As a tribe collectively you scarcely approached the country at all, or if you found yourselves in it, you bivouacked with your horses bitted and bridled, as being in the territory of your superiors.