Trapezus they gave us a market, and we paid for our provisions at a fair market price.  In return for the honour they did us, and the gifts of hospitality they gave the army, we requited them with honour.  Where the barbarian was friendly to them, we stayed our hands from injury; or under their escort, we did damage to their enemies to the utmost of our power.  Ask them, what sort of people they found us.  They are here, some of them, to answer for themselves.  Their fellow-citizens and the state of Trapezus, for friendship’s sake, have sent them with us to act as our guides.

“But wherever we come, be it foreign or Hellenic soil, and find no market for provisions, we are wont to help ourselves, not out of insolence but from necessity.  There have been tribes like the Carduchians, the Taochians, the Chaldaeans, which, albeit they were not subject to the great king, yet were no less formidable than independent.  These we had to bring over by our arms.  The necessity of getting provisions forced us; since they refused to offer us a market.  Whereas some other folk, like the Macrones, in spite of their being barbarians, we regarded as our friends, simply because they did provide us with the best market in their power, and we took no single 18 thing of theirs by force.  But, to come to these Cotyorites, whom you claim to be your people, if we have taken aught from them, they have themselves to blame, for they did not deal with us as friends, but shut their gates in our faces.  They would neither welcome us within nor furnish us with a market without.  The only justification they alleged was that your governor[2] had authorised this conduct.

[2] Lit. “harmost”.  The term, denoting properly a governor of the
    islands and foreign cities sent out by the Lacedaemonians during
    their supremacy, came, it would seem, to be adopted by other Greek
    communities under somewhat similar circumstances.  Cotyora receives
    a harmost from her mother-city, Sinope.  For the Greek colonies
    here mentioned, see Kiepert’s “Man.  Anct.  Geog.” (Engl. tr., Mr.
    G. A. Macmillan), p. 63.

“As to your assertion,” he continued, turning to Hecatonymus, “that we have got in by force and have taken up quarters, this is what we did.  We requested them to receive our sick and wounded under cover; and when they refused to open their gates, we walked in where the place itself invited us.  All the violence we have committed amounts to this, that our sick folk are quartered under cover, paying for their expenses, and we keep a sentry at the gates, so that our sick and wounded may not lie at the mercy of your governor, but we may have it in our power to remove them whenever we like.  The rest of us, you observe, are camping under the canopy of heaven, in regular rank and file, and we are ready to requite kindness with kindness, but to repel evil vigorously.  And as for your threat,” he said, once again turning to the spokesman, “that