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THE AGORANOMOI AT COTYORA (XEN. AN. 5.7.21–9): CERASUNTIANS OR CYREANS?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

Stephen O'Connor
Stephen O'Connor*
Affiliation:
California State University, Fullerton
*
soconnor@fullerton.edu
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Extract

In the late spring of 400 b.c.e., when the Ten Thousand were encamped outside the city of Cotyora, Xenophon addressed the soldiers gathered in assembly in order to defend himself against accusations that he was planning to lead them on a colonizing expedition to the land of the Phasis river. Having demonstrated that he was not misleading the soldiers (that is, that his true intentions were not to lead them to the Phasis) by proving that he could not hope to deceive them into travelling east, Xenophon then moved on to what he presented as a more serious matter for the assembled mercenaries: the problem of growing indiscipline in the army, and its consequences (both potential and actual). Xenophon illustrated the extent of the problem by describing to the men two incidents in detail.

Type
Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 84 - 99
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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Footnotes

1

All text references will be to Xenophon's Anabasis, unless otherwise indicated.

References

2 See J.W.I. Lee, A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon's Anabasis (Cambridge, 2007), Table 1 for this date.

3 See 5.6.27 and 5.7.1 for these accusations.

4 See 5.7.5–9 with T. Rood, ‘Panhellenism and self-presentation: Xenophon's speeches’, in R. Lane Fox (ed.), The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand (New Haven and London, 2004), 305–29, at 323.

5 See 5.7.12 for the change in direction of the speech. Focussing on the violent wrongdoings of others in the army enabled Xenophon to deflect the charges against him: see Rood (n. 4), 323 for this point.

6 Earlier in the march, at Trapezus, the army had resolved that any man of the army going out on a plundering raid had to inform the army that he was doing so (5.1.8). The leader of the attack on the village, Clearetus, a lochagos in the army, had not informed the army of his planned plundering raid and thus the raid can be described as unauthorized.

7 G.B. Nussbaum, The Ten Thousand: A Study in Social Organization and Action in Xenophon's Anabasis (Leiden, 1967), 172–3; Descat, R., ‘Marché et tribut: l'approvisionnement des Dix-Mille’, in Briant, P. (ed.), Dans les pas des Dix-Mille, Pallas 43 (1995), 99–108 Google Scholar, at 106; O. Lendle, Kommentar zu Xenophons Anabasis: Bücher 1–7 (Darmstadt, 1995), 350, 353–4 (the riot taking place at the next stathmos after Cerasus); Rood (n. 4), at 318–19; and id., ‘Introduction’, in R. Waterfield (trans.), Xenophon: The Expedition of Cyrus (Oxford, 2005), vii-xxxiv, at xxxiii. See also: A. Avram, J. Hind and G. Tsetskhladze, ‘The Black Sea area’, in M.H. Hansen and T.H. Nielsen (edd.), An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford, 2004), 924–73, at 958–9: citing 5.7.18–30 for riotous behaviour at Cerasus, which took place at a market provided by the Cerasuntians (see 958 for the latter point); R. Lane Fox, ‘Sex, gender and the Other in Xenophon's Anabasis’, in R. Lane Fox (ed.), The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand (New Haven and London, 2004), 184–214, at 188: the riot taking place at Cerasus (not specifying the identity of the agoranomoi); Grethlein, J., ‘Xenophon's Anabasis from character to narrator’, JHS 132 (2012), 23–40 Google Scholar, at 29: 5.7.5–33 (and thus the agoranomoi riot) taking place at Cerasus (not specifying the identity of the agoranomoi). The view that the agoranomoi mentioned at 5.7.21–9 were Cerasuntian and supervising a market just outside Cerasus has a long history: see G. Grote, A History of Greece (London, 1869), 7.440–1. Some scholars do not specify the location of the riot or the identity of the agoranomoi, but do state that the agoranomoi were appointed by a polis: K. Tänzer, Das Verpflegungswesen der griechischen Heere bis auf Alexander d. Gr. (Jena, 1912), 47; V. Manfredi (ed.), Senofonte: Anabasi (Milan, 1980), 246 n. 2; A. Baccarin (ed.), Senofonte: Anabasi (Pordenone, 1991), 614 n. 23. Not all scholars have placed the riot at Cerasus: A.C. Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative (Cambridge, 2010), 193: the riot taking place at Trapezus (and the market officials Trapezuntian); and see n. 14 below.

8 Anderson here means officials of the city of Cerasus, as the preceding sentence shows.

9 J.K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970), 52. P.V. Stanley (‘Ancient Greek market regulations and controls’ [Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1976], 121–3) follows Anderson in taking 5.7.21–9 as evidence that the agoranomoi generally permitted the traders of their poleis to profiteer in markets provided to passing military forces. Cf. Perlman, S., ‘The Ten Thousand: a chapter in the military, social and economic history of the fourth century’, RSA 6/7 (1976/77), 241–81Google Scholar, at 264, in a description of the relations between the Cyreans and the Greek city-states of the southern Black Sea coast, citing 5.7.21–9 as evidence for the statement that, ‘when he had to pay extortionate prices for the food provided by the city's merchants, the mercenary of the Ten Thousand did not hesitate to resort to violence in order to get his supplies’.

10 5.7.20: ‘When this [the attack on the village and the murder of the envoys sent by the Colchians to Cerasus] had taken place, the Cerasuntians came to us and told us of the affair.’ ἡμᾶς here refers to the generals of the Ten Thousand, as can be seen from the following clause of Xenophon's speech (5.7.20): καὶ ἡμεῖς οἱ στρατηγοὶ ἀκούσαντες ἠχθόμεθά τε τοῖς γεγενημένοις καὶ ἐβουλευόμεθα σὺν τοῖς Κερασουντίοις ὅπως ἂν ταφείησαν οἱ τῶν Ἑλλήνων νεκροί (‘and we generals, upon hearing the story, were distressed at what had happened, and we proceeded to take counsel with the Cerasuntians as to how the bodies of the Greek dead might be buried’). All translations, unless otherwise indicated, will be from the Loeb edition of the Anabasis (C.L. Brownson, Xenophon: Anabasis, with an English translation [rev. by J. Dillery] [Cambridge, MA and London, 1998]).

11 The ‘affair in their own city’ was the murder of the Colchian ambassadors by the rogue Cyreans.

12 After an initial undeterminable period of time (5.5.7: ἐν τούτῳ) after the army's arrival at Cotyora, ambassadors from Sinope came to the army to discuss the fate of the Cotyorites (who were colonists of Sinope) and the mercenaries’ future plans. From the arrival of the Sinopean ambassadors to the point of Xenophon's speech to the mercenaries, Xenophon's account of events is taken up, firstly, with speeches from Hecatonymus (a Sinopean envoy) and Xenophon that explicitly discuss and take place at Cotyora (see esp. 5.5.25; cf. 5.5.9–10, 5.5.19); secondly, with speeches and plans that have as their explicit concern the acquisition of resources to allow the mercenaries to set sail from Cotyora (see 5.6.1–10 [esp. 10], 5.6.11 and esp. 5.6.19 [cf. 5.6.31]); and thirdly, with a controversy concerning a plan of Xenophon's, abandoned and never followed through, to leave Cotyora to set up a colony comprising the mercenaries somewhere on the Black Sea coast (5.6.15–20; 5.6.36–5.7.2).

13 See also 5.7.17: Xenophon telling the men that the failed plundering raid on the Colchian village took place ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ᾗ ἡμεῖς δεῦρο ἐξωρμῶμεν πεζῇ· τῶν δὲ παραπλεόντων ἔτι τινὲς ἦσαν ἐν Κερασοῦντι, οὔπω ἀνηγμένοι (‘on the day when we were setting forth to come here by land; and some of those who were going by sea along the coast were still at Cerasus, not having as yet set sail’). Again, ‘here’ (δεῦρο), just as ἐνθάδε at 5.7.18, was the place where Xenophon and the assembled army were when he was addressing them, i.e. Cotyora.

14 I note here that M.A. Flower, Xenophon's Anabasis, Or The Expedition of Cyrus (Oxford, 2012), 145 places the riot at Cotyora (without specifying the identity of the agoranomoi). I note also that C.J. Tuplin, in a list of miscellaneous corrections and queries in a review of Lendle (n. 7) (CR 48 [1998], 286–8, at 288), corrects Lendle on the location of the riot: ‘[Lendle] wrongly locates the agoranomoi riot just west of Cerasus rather than at Cotyora’ (Tuplin does not address the identity of the agoranomoi in his review of Lendle). A full discussion establishing the location of the agoranomoi riot has still been necessary here since: firstly, neither Flower (in a passing mention) nor Tuplin (in a brief review) provides any evidence or argument for the statement that the riot took place at Cotyora; and secondly, the view that the riot took place at Cerasus is so embedded in modern scholarship treating 5.7.21–9 (see again nn. 7, 9 above; see esp. n. 7 for several scholars still placing the riot at Cerasus after the appearance of Tuplin's review).

15 See LSJ II.2 s.v.; H.W. Smyth, Greek Grammar (rev. by G.M. Messing) (Cambridge, MA, 1984), § 2802.

16 The fact that Xenophon, throughout his description of the riot (see 5.7.20, 22, 25), could describe the men fleeing toward their ships as ‘the Cerasuntians’ tout court shows that he believed that no other group of Cerasuntians (official or otherwise) was present at Cotyora at the time of the riot. If there had been another (official) group of Cerasuntians (viz. the agoranomoi) present at the time of the riot, Xenophon would have had to have included an explanatory aside in his speech at 5.7.20, 22 and/or 25 in order to clarify for his audience(s) which Cerasuntians were fleeing towards their ships, those who were part of the deputation sent to the army or those supervising the market in which the soldiers were taking part.

17 See n. 21 for the reason for putting the ‘commanders’ and ‘commander’ of the Loeb translation in brackets here.

18 As ascertained by Xenophon at 5.7.23: a soldier who knew why the riot was taking place (not all the rioting soldiers did) told Xenophon that the soldiers’ anger was directed against the agoranomoi. See also 5.7.24: the violence of the riot intensified after one of the agoranomoi (Zelarchus) was sighted by the soldiers.

19 That 5.7.28 is drawn from his description of the recent events at Cotyora is confirmed by the last two clauses of 5.7.28. Xenophon stated at 5.7.28 that any man might elect himself general, raise the cry βάλλε, βάλλε, and have the power to kill any man of the army he pleased—provided, Xenophon says, there were men who would obey a man doing such things, ὥσπερ καὶ νῦν ἐγένετο, ‘as indeed it came about in the present case’.

20 5.7.28 does refer to the killing of ἄρχοντα … καὶ ἰδιώτην, but Zelarchus is referred to on both occasions in Xenophon's speech as ‘Zelarchus the agoranomos’, i.e. as a magistrate/official, and thus we should understand the use of ἄκριτος to describe Zelarchus at 5.7.29 as referring back particularly to ἄρχοντα at 5.7.28. Xenophon might have drawn the potential consequence that private members of the army might also be slain without a trial by self-elected generals from two considerations: first, the fact that some ordinary soldiers drowned as a result of the disorder surrounding the agoranomoi riot (5.7.25); and second, from the general consideration that any man willing to kill an officer obviously would not shrink from doing the same to a private soldier.

21 Thus, in my quotation of the Loeb translation of 5.7.28 above, I put brackets around its translation of ἄρχοντας and ἄρχοντα as ‘commanders’ and ‘commander’, since ἄρχοντας and ἄρχοντα in this passage should be translated as ‘magistrates’/‘officers’ and ‘magistrate’/‘officer’.

22 One reason, perhaps, why scholars have previously thought that the agoranomoi were not members of the army is that the soldier who explained to Xenophon why the riot was taking place said that it was because οἱ ἀγορανόμοι δεινότατα ποιοῦσι τὸ στράτευμα (‘the agoranomoi were treating the army most outrageously’) (5.7.23)—which might sound as if the agoranomoi were external to the army. Xenophon, however, often notes officers in the army as (potentially) acting upon the army both positively (see e.g. 3.1.38: Xenophon telling the surviving officers that they would be doing the army a great service if they appointed replacement generals and lochagoi quickly; 6.1.18: the men deciding that one commander would be able to handle the army better; 7.3.2: the generals and captain disregarding the summons of Aristarchus [the Spartan harmost at Byzantium] and calling the army to assembly) and negatively (6.6.34: Cleander hearing that Xenophon was trying to make the army disloyal to the Spartans; cf. 6.4.11: the army passing a resolution that any man suggesting dividing the army be put to death). The description of the army's treatment by the agoranomoi is, then, just another example in the Anabasis of officers ‘doing something’ to the army.

23 5.7.30: οἱ δὲ καταλεύσαντες τοὺς πρέσβεις διεπράξαντο ὑμῖν μόνοις μὲν τῶν Ἑλλήνων εἰς Κερασοῦντα μὴ ἀσφαλὲς εἶναι ἂν μὴ σὺν ἰσχύι ἀφικνεῖσθαι· τοὺς δὲ νεκροὺς οὓς πρόσθεν αὐτοὶ οἱ κατακανόντες ἐκέλευον θάπτειν, τούτους διεπράξαντο μηδὲ σὺν κηρυκείῳ ἔτι ἀσφαλὲς εἶναι ἀνελέσθαι. τίς γὰρ ἐθελήσει κῆρυξ ἰέναι κήρυκας ἀπεκτονώς; ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς Κερασουντίων θάψαι αὐτοὺς ἐδεήθημεν. (‘Take those who stoned to death the ambassadors: they have accomplished this result, that for you alone of all the Greeks it is not safe to enter Cerasus unless with a strong force; and as for the dead whom previously the very men who killed them proposed burying, the result accomplished is that now it is not safe to pick up their bodies even for one who carries a herald's staff. For who will care to go as herald when he has the blood of heralds upon his hands? So we requested the Cerasuntians to bury them.’)

24 Remarkably enough, although it is currently a common view in all major scholarly traditions that the agoranomoi mentioned at 5.7.21–9 (and 5.7.2) were Cerasuntian, the view that they were, in fact, members of the Ten Thousand was unremarkable and uncontroversial to commentators on these passages in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who simply stated the fact without feeling any need to argue the point. Thus, P. Masqueray, Xenophon, Anabasis (Paris, 20006; 1930/11), 81, on οἱ ἀγορανόμοι at 5.7.23: ‘L'agoranome, chargé de la police des marchés, portait un fouet pour se faire obéir. (Cf. Acharn. 723 sq.) Dans les armées il frappait aussi les soldats et se faisait ainsi détester.’ In the Anglophone world, one has to go back to the nineteenth century to find scholars who saw that the agoranomoi were members of the army, and not Cerasuntians: see A. Pretor (ed.), The Anabasis of Xenophon, Book V, With English Notes (Cambridge, 1895), 108: ‘These officers were appointed to regulate the sale of provisions in the soldiers’ market, and in this capacity would correspond to the commissariat of modern times …’; and C. Anthon (ed.), The Anabasis of Xenophon, with English Notes, Critical and Explanatory, a map arranged according to the latest and best authorities, and a plan of the battle of Cunaxa (New York, 1852), 537: ‘These ἀγορανόμοι belonged to what we would call, in modern parlance, the commissariat. They regulated the buying and selling in the market that was furnished to the soldiery.’ (Pretor and Anthon were incorrect to include the agoranomoi in the commissariat of the Ten Thousand, since no such organization existed in the Ten Thousand or any other Greek army: see H. van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities [London, 2004], 105.) For the view in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German scholarship that the agoranomoi mentioned at 5.7.21–9 and 5.7.2 were Cyreans, see F. Vollbrecht, Xenophons Anabasis (W. Vollbrecht [ed.], Leipzig, 18868), 39, 41; C. Rehdantz and O. Carnuth, Xenophons Anabasis, Bild 2 (W. Nitsche [ed.], Berlin, 19056), 109: ‘Sie bildeten die Markt- und Handelspolizei (wie in griech. Städten, so) im Heere.’ As nn. 7, 9 above demonstrate, the work done by these earlier scholars has been forgotten and the fact that the agoranomoi at Cotyora were Cyreans has fallen out of work on 5.7.21–9 in the last fifty years.

25 See n. 39 for discussion of the circumstances of the soldiers’ election of the agoranomoi.

26 The Cotyorites did eventually provide a market to the mercenaries: see 6.1.1. They presumably began to provide this market after they established friendly relations with the Cyreans (5.5.25).

27 See LSJ s.v. ἄγω, I.

28 Masqueray's translation (n. 24), 83 of the question conveys ἄξει accurately, but mistranslates ἀγοράν: ‘Qui nous apportera des vivres avec confiance, si l'on nous voit commettre ainsi les plus grands crimes?’. ἀγοράν should be translated at 5.7.33 as ‘market’: Xenophon never uses ἀγορά in the singular to mean ‘supplies’ (see G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Origins of the Peloponnesian War [London, 1972], 400).

29 See 2.3.26–7, 4.8.8, 4.8.23, 5.5.6, 5.5.14, 5.5.17, 5.5.18.

30 That Xenophon was not referring in this question to a polis supplying a market to the army is confirmed by his preceding question: πόλις δὲ φιλία τίς ἡμᾶς δέξεται, ἥτις ἂν ὁρᾷ τοσαύτην ἀνομίαν ἐν ἡμῖν (‘And what friendly city will receive us when it sees so great lawlessness amongst us?’) (5.7.33). The reception of a passing military force by a friendly city in the Greek world could always be assumed to include the provision of a market (see e.g. 4.8.23, 5.5.19; and cf. esp. Thuc. 6.44.2). Thus, Xenophon, in telling the soldiers that they would not be received by friendly cities if they persisted in their indiscipline, was also warning them that they would not receive a market from friendly cities in the future. Since this warning was made prior to the question warning the soldiers that no one would bring a market to them, this latter question should be taken as not referring to a market provided by a polis.

31 For traders as a regular presence in the camps of classical Greek armies on the march, see O'Connor, S., ‘Private traders and the food supply of classical Greek armies’, JAH 3 (2015), 173–219 Google Scholar, at 174–6.

32 The other practices being, again, sacrificing to the gods, fighting with enemies and reception by friendly cities. All four of these questions take the form of future more vivid conditional clauses: the practices in question will continue if the soldiers cease behaving lawlessly.

33 The previous question, with its reference to reception by friendly cities, shows that Xenophon is thinking here of the soldiers’ experiences on the Black Sea coast (since the murder of its generals by Tissaphernes [2.5.31–2, 2.6.1], reception by friendly cities had not been a feature of the army's march before its arrival at Trapezus [with the possible exception of Gymnias, 4.7.19]).

34 Most of the traders in the army's camp must have come from Trapezus and Cerasus and accompanied the mercenaries on their overland march from those cities (the whole army less the sick, those men over forty years of age, and the women and children of the mercenaries marched overland from Trapezus to Cotyora: 5.3.1, 5.4.1). Both Trapezus and Cerasus were on friendly terms with the mercenaries throughout their stay and at the point of the mercenaries’ departure from those cities (see e.g. 4.8.23, 5.7.13, 5.7.20). Parts of the overland marches from these cities were through hostile territory (see e.g. 5.4.10, 5.4.14–15, 5.4.20–1, 5.5.1), which would have provided opportunities for traders to purchase plunder from the mercenaries: see e.g. 5.3.3 (sale of plunder), 5.4.16 (hope of plunder), 5.4.27–9 (plundering of stronghold), 5.5.2 (plundering to gain money as a possible goal for the army [though not pursued in this case]) as well as to sell them provisions (in case the soldiers did not gather or seize enough food through foraging and plundering). There is also the chance that some traders may have sailed to Cotyora from Heraclea and Sinope to trade with the army (see 5.6.19, with 5.6.21: it is not clear whether these Heracleot and Sinopean merchants had come to Cotyora specifically to trade with the soldiers, or if they had happened by chance to come to the city to trade with the Cotyorites at the same time as the army was encamped outside the city). See also n. 38.

35 Why did traders accompany the army to Cotyora but not to Calpe (at least initially; see below)? In contrast to the overland marches from Trapezus to Cotyora, the mercenaries’ two-day journeys by ship from Cotyora to Harmene (the harbour of the Sinopeans) (6.1.14–15) and from there to Heraclea (6.2.1) would have provided no opportunities for accompanying traders to deal with the army (and therefore no incentive to follow it). First, the short sea-journeys would not have given the mercenaries any opportunity to plunder goods to sell to any traders following them. In addition, although the army stayed at Harmene (the harbour of the Sinopeans) for five days (6.1.17), since the mercenaries had already established friendly relations with the Sinopeans (5.5.24–5.6.2) before sailing there and had passed a resolution to do no wrong to the Paphlagonians (6.1.14), whose territory surrounded Sinope (6.1.15), it would have been known to traders in advance of the army's departure by ship to Sinope that the army would have no booty to sell during its stay at that city. Second, from Cotyora, the mercenaries were planning to sail to a friendly polis (Sinope) and from there to another friendly polis (Heraclea), where they could meet all (at Sinope: 6.1.15) or most (at Heraclea: 6.2.3) of their provisioning needs from xenia provided by these poleis, and where they could purchase provisions in markets provided to them to supplement the food given to them as xenia (at Heraclea: 6.2.8). Finally, for the journey from Heraclea to Calpe, the fact that the mercenaries left Heraclea on hostile terms (6.2.8) explains the (initial) absence of a market and traders at Calpe Harbour, as does the fact that the majority of the men left Heraclea by ship (6.2.16–19, 6.3.10). (The Heracleots did provide the ships for the army's departure from their city [6.2.17, 6.2.19] but probably did this because of fear rather than friendliness; the Heracleots did try to re-establish friendly relations later with the Cyreans while these delayed at Calpe, when they gave gifts of xenia to the mercenaries [6.5.1].) At a later point in the army's stay at Calpe, merchants and market products did come in from the neighbouring Greek cities (6.6.3, 6.6.37).

36 There is no reason to think that the jurisdiction of the Cyrean agoranomoi differed in any significant way from that of other agoranomoi in the classical period.

37 See e.g. E.E. Cohen, ‘Commercial law’, in D. Cohen and M. Gagarin (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law (Cambridge, 2005), 290–302, at 292–3 and esp. n. 17; L. Migeotte, ‘Les pouvoirs des agoranomes dans les cités grecques’, in M. Gagarin and R.W. Wallace (edd.), Symposion 2001: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Vienna, 2005), 287–305; A. Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in the City-States (trans. S. Rendall) (Princeton, 2016), 239–42, 246–50. See also G. Oliver, ‘The ἀγορανόμοι at Athens’, in L. Capdetrey and C. Hasenohr (edd.), Agoranomes et édiles. Institutions des marches antiques (Paris, 2012), 81–100, at 84: agoranomoi also controlling access to the marketplace.

38 The agora accompanying the army referred to at 5.7.33 had been with the army since the start of its parabasis along the southern Black Sea coast from Trapezus—but no earlier. Xenophon was not referring at 5.7.33 to the Lydian agora accompanying Cyrus’ army on the march to Cunaxa: that agora was in the non-Greek part of Cyrus’ army (1.2.18, 1.3.14, 1.5.6) which separated from and finally left the Greeks in the second month after the battle of Cunaxa (2.4.9, 2.5.28, 2.5.35–42). Although the Persians had provided a market to the Greeks after Cunaxa (2.3.26–7, 2.4.9, 3.2.21), the operation of this market had ceased with Tissaphernes’ treacherous murder of the army's generals at the Greater Zab (3.1.2). Finally, with the exceptions of Gymnias (4.7.19–20) and the Macronians (4.8.6–8, 5.5.18), the territory the army traversed until Trapezus was hostile, a fact that made any trade with locals impossible. Since the agora accompanying the army referred to at 5.7.33 had been with the army only since the march from Trapezus, the agoranomoi will have been elected at this city at the earliest. See next n. for the election of the agoranomoi.

39 See n. 46 below for the establishment of courts within the army. For the recent establishment of the office of agoranomos within the army, see also 5.7.10, where Xenophon states: τί γάρ, ἄρχοντας αἱρουμένων ὑμῶν ἐγώ τινι ἐμποδών εἰμι; παρίημι, ἀρχέτω· μόνον ἀγαθόν τι ποιῶν ὑμᾶς φαινέσθω (‘Well, then, do I stand in any one's way when you are choosing ἄρχοντες? I yield, let him be an ἄρχων; only let it be shown that he renders you good service.’). But neither generals nor lochagoi had been elected within the army since the night of Tissaphernes’ treacherous murder of five of the Greek generals, some five and a half months previously (see 3.1.38, 3.1.46–7 with Roy, J., ‘The mercenaries of Cyrus’, Historia 16 (1967), 287–323 Google Scholar, at 288 [the surviving generals and lochagoi had elected the new generals and lochagoi]). At 5.7.10, then, Xenophon was referring to more recent events, i.e. to the election by the army of ἄρχοντες who were neither generals nor lochagoi: there were thus ἄρχοντες in the army at Cotyora who were neither generals nor lochagoi. As 5.7.28 shows, the agoranomoi attacked just outside Cotyora are to be included among these ἄρχοντες who had been elected (at some point on the army's march along the Black Sea coast: see previous n.).

40 See Bresson (n. 37), 246 for this point.

41 5.7.23: οἱ ἀγορανόμοι δεινότατα ποιοῦσι τὸ στράτευμα. See also 5.7.24: τὸν ἀγορανόμον घήλαρχον; and 5.7.29: घήλαρχος μὲν ὁ ἀγορανόμος.

42 At 5.7.2 Xenophon also refers to the Colchian heralds with the definite article, although he had not previously explained their presence to his audiences. In contrast to his treatment of the agoranomoi, however, he includes in his speech (at 5.7.17–19) a detailed explanation of where the heralds came from as well as their activities. Xenophon's inclusion of this explanation shows that he did not think that his audiences already knew who the Colchian heralds were.

43 At Cotyora, of course, Xenophon would not have needed to explain to his audience of mercenaries who appointed the agoranomoi who these men were—the important fact here is that he also did not have to explain their presence to his reading public in the wider Greek world.

44 See e.g. Tuplin, C.J., ‘Achaemenid arithmetic: numerical problems in Persian history’, Topoi Suppl. 1 (1997), 365–421 Google Scholar, at 373: ancient sources ‘sovereignly disdainful’ of the mundane details of the logistics of classical Greek military forces. Xenophon's narrative of the parabasis of the Cyreans along the southern coast of the Pontus (when the soldiers were moving within a world of friendly Greek poleis or marching between them through hostile non-Greek territory) mentions provisioning only in exceptional circumstances, in accordance with the practices of contemporary Greek military narrative. This is in contrast to the directly preceding part of the march, before the mercenaries reached Trapezus, and after the murder of their generals (3.1.1–4.8.21). On this stage of their march, the men were (exceptionally for a Greek army) moving through strange, hostile and wholly non-Greek territory without a state agent or employer who could guarantee access to provisions. During this time, since the provisioning of the Cyreans was always (exceptionally) precarious and since they could not take it for granted, it was not taken for granted in Xenophon's narrative either; as noted by Nussbaum (n. 7), 148, the narrative of this part of the march is ‘completely dominated by the external physical emergency in which the Army finds itself—the immediate need to procure subsistence and to ward off an active enemy and in general overcome every physical danger and obstacle’.

45 See e.g. Nussbaum (n. 7), 19–22, 172–5; J. Dillery, Xenophon and the History of his Times (London and New York, 1995), 81–3, 156; and esp. Rood (n. 4), 323–5.

46 Cf. in this respect 5.7.34: after Xenophon's speech to the mercenaries at Cotyora on the growing lawlessness within the army, the men decide, in order to prevent disorder breaking out in the army again, that in future the lochagoi would serve as dikasts overseeing trials of men accused of lawlessness. The establishment of courts within the Ten Thousand was extraordinary—there is no other attestation of courts in any other Greek army—but it took place only because, exceptionally, there could be no recourse to polis courts at the end of the army's campaign (see Lys. 14.5, 15.1–4 for Athenian soldiers accused of crimes on campaign being tried in polis courts on their return to Athens with, in the last place, P.J. Rhodes's response to D. Whitehead in E.M. Harris and G. Thür [edd.], Symposion 2007. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte [Vienna, 2008], 37–40). In contrast, polis military forces were accompanied on campaign by traders just as the Ten Thousand were (see e.g. Thuc. 3.6.2; Diod. Sic. 14.79.2; Xen. Hell. 6.4.9), and had to face the issue of how to control and manage exchanges with traders on campaign, just as the Ten Thousand had to.