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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.

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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 

I. INTRODUCTION

In the late spring of 400 b.c.e.,Footnote 2 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.Footnote 3 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,Footnote 4 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).Footnote 5 Xenophon illustrated the extent of the problem by describing to the men two incidents in detail.

The first of these, described at 5.7.13–19, began with an unauthorized plundering raid by some of the Cyreans on a Colchian village near Cerasus which was friendly to the Cerasuntians and to the army.Footnote 6 The raid had ended in disaster: the villagers repelled the attack and killed several of the mercenaries. To make matters worse, when the Colchians sent three elders as envoys to Cerasus (not knowing that most of the soldiers had already departed from the city) to ask the army why it had attacked their village, some of the Cyreans who had survived the raid, and who had happened to have stayed back at Cerasus after the rest of the army had left the city, stoned to death the Colchian envoys to prevent news of the raid on the village reaching the other soldiers.

The second incident Xenophon narrated to the mercenaries in order to demonstrate their increasing indiscipline was a riot in which a crowd of men from the army had attacked some agoranomoi on account of their (allegedly) outrageous treatment of the soldiers. In the ensuing disorder, some Cerasuntian ambassadors, as well as some of the soldiers, had come to fear for their lives and fled from the army (5.7.21–9). It is this riot and, more especially, the agoranomoi whose actions ignited the riot that I focus on in this article. It is now common in discussions of and references to this incident to take the agoranomoi involved in the riot to have been Cerasuntian and to have been supervising a market established by the city of Cerasus just outside or near that city.Footnote 7 Furthermore, on the same understanding that the agoranomoi involved in the riot were Cerasuntian and supervising a market established by the city of Cerasus, J.K. Anderson took Xenophon's description of this disorder as evidence that classical Greek soldiers were regularly the victims of officially sanctioned exploitation in the markets provided to them by poleis:

When a market was provided by a friendly city instead of by travelling merchants, regulations were likely to be made by magistrates for the benefit of the sellers rather than by the general to protect the soldiers, as when the Ten Thousand reached Cerasus on the Black Sea. Here the officialsFootnote 8 narrowly escaped stoning at the hands of the soldiers, who thought themselves cheated, and the generals were unable to intervene.Footnote 9

My aim in this article is to demonstrate that these readings of 5.7.21–9 are incorrect, and that a detailed analysis of Xenophon's speech to the assembled mercenaries at Cotyora shows, rather, that the disturbance caused by the alleged wrongdoing of the agoranomoi took place just outside the city of Cotyora, and not Cerasus; that the agoranomoi attacked in the riot were not Cerasuntians, but were, in fact, Cyreans; that the agoranomoi were overseeing a market within the Cyreans’ camp, and not a market provided by a city; and therefore that the inference made by Anderson and others from 5.7.21–9 concerning the usual workings of markets provided by classical Greek cities to passing armies is invalid. Instead, this passage provides important (and previously unnoticed) information for the institutional infrastructure of the markets that accompanied classical Greek military forces on their campaigns. I will begin by showing that the riot involving the agoranomoi took place outside Cotyora, and not Cerasus.

II. THE LOCATION OF THE RIOT

At the start of Xenophon's description of the attack on the agoranomoi, he told the assembled mercenaries that, just before the riot, some Cerasuntians had come to the generals of the Ten Thousand to tell them of the whole Colchian ‘affair’: ἐπεὶ δὲ τοῦτο ἐγένετο, ἔρχονται πρὸς ἡμᾶς οἱ Κερασούντιοι καὶ λέγουσι τὸ πρᾶγμα.Footnote 10 After the generals had heard what had happened, and while they and the Cerasuntians were deliberating on how the bodies of the Cyrean dead from the attack on the Colchian village might be buried, the generals and the Cerasuntians saw a crowd of men rushing towards them, shouting παῖε, παῖε, βάλλε, βάλλε, some carrying stones in their hands, and others picking up stones (5.7.20–1). The shouts of παῖε, παῖε, βάλλε, βάλλε and the rush of men in the direction of the generals and the Cerasuntian envoys marked the beginning of the agoranomoi riot, as Xenophon found out a little later from questioning some of the men involved in the disturbance (5.7.23). Seeing the rush of men shouting and carrying stones, the Cerasuntians, as Xenophon told the men, ὡς ἂν καὶ ἑορακότες τὸ παρ’ αὐτοῖς πρᾶγμα, δείσαντες ἀποχωροῦσι πρὸς τὰ πλοῖα (‘were naturally terrified, as they too would have witnessed the affair in their own city, and hurried back toward their ships’) (5.7.22).Footnote 11 Xenophon thus differentiated here between the location of the Cerasuntian envoys at the beginning of the agoranomoi riot and their location at the time of the murder of the Colchian heralds, when they were παρ’ αὐτοῖς—in ‘their own place’, ‘their own city’. The inference from this statement must be that the Cerasuntian ambassadors were no longer in their own city—that they were, in fact, somewhere other than Cerasus at the time of the riot.

This inference is confirmed by the fact that the Cerasuntian envoys had had to sail to meet with the generals of the Ten Thousand—as is evidenced by the fact that the Cerasuntians had rushed back to their ships on seeing the soldiers rushing towards them. If the Ten Thousand had been encamped just outside Cerasus at the time of the agoranomoi riot, there would have been no need for the Cerasuntian envoys to sail to the generals of the army to inform them of the Colchian ‘affair’; but the Cerasuntians did have to sail to the generals, and thus the Ten Thousand could not have been encamped near the city of Cerasus when the riot broke out.

As to where the Cerasuntian ambassadors had had to sail to, and where, subsequently, the riot did take place, the answer to these questions lies in Xenophon's description of the events leading up to the stoning to death of the Colchian ambassadors at Cerasus, and in the narrative surrounding his speech as a whole. At 5.7.17–18, Xenophon informed the men that the Cerasuntians had told the generals that, after the failed plundering raid on the Colchian village,

… ἀφικνοῦνται τῶν ἐκ τοῦ χωρίου τρεῖς ἄνδρες τῶν γεραιτέρων πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν τὸ ἡμέτερον χρῄζοντες ἐλθεῖν. (18) ἐπεὶ δ’ ἡμᾶς οὐ κατέλαβον, πρὸς τοὺς Κερασουντίους ἔλεγον ὅτι θαυμάζοιεν τί ἡμῖν δόξειεν ἐλθεῖν ἐπ’ αὐτούς. ἐπεὶ μέντοι σφεῖς λέγειν, ἔφασαν, ὅτι οὐκ ἀπὸ κοινοῦ γένοιτο τὸ πρᾶγμα, ἥδεσθαί τε αὐτοὺς καὶ μέλλειν ἐνθάδε πλεῖν, ὡς ἡμῖν λέξειαν τὰ γενόμενα, καὶ τοὺς νεκροὺς κελεύειν θάπτειν λαβόντας τοὺς τούτου δεομένους.

… there arrived at Cerasus three of the inhabitants of the stronghold, all elderly men, desiring to come before our general assembly. (18) But since they did not find us, they addressed themselves to the Cerasuntians, saying that they wondered why we had seen fit to make an attack on them. When, however, the Cerasuntians replied, so their statement ran, that it was not by public authority that the affair took place, the envoys were pleased, and were intending to sail here in order to tell us what happened, and to bid those concerned to retrieve and bury the corpses.

The crucial point in this passage is when Xenophon states that the Colchian ambassadors were planning to sail ‘here’ (ἐνθάδε). By ‘here’ Xenophon meant the place where he and the assembled army were when he was addressing them. The narrative preceding and following Xenophon's speech to the army demonstrates clearly and unambiguously that this was just outside the city of Cotyora. At 5.5.4 (that is, before his speech to the assembled army), Xenophon reports the arrival of the army at Cotyora (where they stayed for forty-five days: 5.5.5), and his narrative of the period between the arrival of the army at Cotyora and his speech to the men regarding the Colchian affair and the agoranomoi riot makes it clear that the army as a body remained at Cotyora during this timeFootnote 12 (although groups of men did leave the camp occasionally to forage for food [5.5.6]). After the speech, too, the army was still encamped outside Cotyora (6.1.1). Xenophon's speech, then, was given at Cotyora; therefore, by the time of the murder of the Colchian envoys, which took place just after those envoys’ decision to sail to the army to tell it of the attack on their village (5.7.19), the Ten Thousand were already at Cotyora.Footnote 13

Establishing this fact is crucial for ascertaining the location of the riot. Since the mercenaries did not move camp in the time between their arrival at Cotyora and Xenophon's speech to them concerning the growing indiscipline in the army, when the Cerasuntian representatives sailed to speak to the generals about the murder of the Colchian envoys, the mercenaries were still at Cotyora. And since it was just after the Cerasuntian envoys had come to speak with the generals at Cotyora that the disorder involving the agoranomoi occurred, the agoranomoi riot therefore took place outside the city of Cotyora, and not Cerasus, as Anderson and other scholars have assumed.Footnote 14 Since, then, the agoranomoi riot occurred just outside Cotyora, it therefore took place outside Cerasuntian territory and Cerasuntian jurisdiction. Given these facts, there is no reason to think that the market the agoranomoi were supervising at the time of the riot was established by the city of Cerasus—and therefore no reason to think that the agoranomoi involved in the riot were Cerasuntian.

III. THE AGORANOMOI: NOT CERASUNTIANS

In fact, a close reading of Xenophon's entire description of the riot and its aftermath, brief as it is, demonstrates conclusively that the agoranomoi involved in the disturbances with the army were not Cerasuntian. As already mentioned, while the generals of the Ten Thousand were in deliberations with the Cerasuntian representatives, they had heard a great uproar, with shouts of παῖε, παῖε, βάλλε, βάλλε, and seen a large number of men running towards them with stones, and others picking up stones (5.7.21). The Cerasuntian envoys were terrified, and even some of the generals were frightened (5.7.22). But when Xenophon went up to the men and asked what the trouble was about, he found out eventually that the shouts and stones were not directed against the generals and the Cerasuntians, but against the agoranomoi, who were supposedly treating the army outrageously (5.7.23). Then, as Xenophon told the mercenaries (5.7.24–5):

ἐν τούτῳ τις ὁρᾷ τὸν ἀγορανόμον घήλαρχον πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν ἀποχωροῦντα, καὶ ἀνέκραγεν· οἱ δὲ ὡς ἤκουσαν, ὥσπερ ἢ συὸς ἀγρίου ἢ ἐλάφου φανέντος ἵενται ἐπ’ αὐτόν. (25) οἱ δ’ αὖ Κερασούντιοι ὡς εἶδον ὁρμῶντας καθ’ αὑτούς, σαφῶς νομίσαντες ἐπὶ σφᾶς ἵεσθαι, φεύγουσι δρόμῳ καὶ ἐμπίπτουσιν εἰς τὴν θάλατταν.

At this moment someone saw the agoranomos, Zelarchus, retreating toward the sea, and set up a shout; and when the rest heard it, they rushed upon him as though a wild boar or a stag had been sighted. (25) And the Cerasuntians, in turn, seeing this rush in their neighbourhood and believing it was certainly directed against themselves, took to running in their flight and threw themselves into the sea.

I want to focus here on Xenophon's use of the adverb αὖ at the start of 5.7.25. With his use of αὖ here—an adverb that marks a return to a previously mentioned subject (it should be translated here as ‘again’, ‘once more’ or ‘in turn’)Footnote 15 —Xenophon indicated that he was changing subject, turning away from the just-described experiences of Zelarchus (and the other agoranomoi) and back to the flight of the Cerasuntians, which he had left off describing at 5.7.22. With his use of the adverb αὖ at 5.7.25, in other words, Xenophon was distinguishing the experiences of Zelarchus and the other agoranomoi, on the one hand, from those of the Cerasuntian envoys, on the other; he clearly believed the two to have been separate matters.

In fact, at no point in Xenophon's description of the disturbance are the Cerasuntian ambassadors ever presented as playing an integral (or any) role in the riot or in the events leading up to the riot. Thus, at 5.7.20–2, the Cerasuntians were in discussions with the generals outside the camp of the mercenaries when the riot started somewhere else, and when they hurried back to their ships on seeing the angry rush of soldiers armed with stones, it was for no other reason than they had seen in their own city the stoning of the Colchian envoys by some of the Cyreans (and not because of any interaction with the army at Cotyora). Similarly, at 5.7.25, having seen the crowd of men who were in pursuit of Zelarchus move in their direction, the Cerasuntian envoys threw themselves into the sea. But they had no reason to fear for their safety since, as ascertained by Xenophon (5.7.23), it was the agoranomoi (and not the Cerasuntian envoys) who were the target of the soldiers’ anger, and thus there was no reason for the Cerasuntians to flee. Xenophon therefore had to include, in his description of the Cerasuntians’ actions, the reason for their flight to the sea, since its motivation was unexplained on his account of events; they fled σαφῶς νομίσαντες ἐπὶ σφᾶς ἵεσθαι, ‘believing [that the rush of men] was certainly directed against themselves’; their unfortunate experiences were a result, that is, of their misunderstanding of the true cause of the disorder in the army (the alleged mistreatment of the soldiers by the agoranomoi) and not a result of anything they had done to the soldiers. Xenophon, then, included the Cerasuntian envoys’ sufferings as an appendage to his description of the riot and its aftermath because their reaction to the riot (their panicked escape to the sea) helped him to bring out for the soldiers just how violent and uncontrolled their actions in the dispute with the agoranomoi had been. The very fact that the Cerasuntian representatives had had no part in the dispute, but had still feared for their lives, allowed Xenophon, in his final remarks describing the riot, to emphasize the soldiers’ indiscipline to them: καὶ τούτους τί δοκεῖτε; ἠδίκουν μὲν οὐδέν, ἔδεισαν δὲ μὴ λύττα τις ὥσπερ κυσὶν ἡμῖν ἐμπεμπτώκοι (‘now what think you about these Cerasuntians? They had done no wrong, but they were afraid that a kind of madness, such as attacks dogs, had seized upon us’) (5.7.26). In other words, Xenophon included the experiences of the Cerasuntians in his description of the agoranomoi riot and its aftermath precisely because they had had no part in the riot.

Xenophon, therefore, in his full description of the riot and its aftermath, presented the Cerasuntian envoys who were deliberating with the generals outside the army's camp at Cotyora as in no way involved in the dispute leading to the riot, or in the riot itself—and therefore clearly distinguished the experiences of the Cerasuntian ambassadors from those of the attacked agoranomoi. Since the Cerasuntian ambassadors were the only Cerasuntians present at the army's camp at the time of the riot,Footnote 16 the agoranomoi involved in the riot at Cotyora therefore were not from the city of Cerasus.

IV. THE AGORANOMOI: CYREANS

Having demonstrated the extent of lawlessness in the army to the soldiers by describing the incidents with the Colchians and the agoranomoi, Xenophon next signalled explicitly to the soldiers that he was changing tack from description to analysis, that he was now going to draw out for them the potential dangers arising for the army if the sort of indiscipline he had just described continued: εἰ οὖν ταῦτα τοιαῦτα ἔσται, θεάσασθε οἵα ἡ κατάστασις ἡμῖν ἔσται τῆς στρατιᾶς (‘now if these things are to go on in this way, observe what the situation of your army will be’) (5.7.26). These potential dangers would be of two different kinds (5.7.27–8):

ὑμεῖς μὲν οἱ πάντες οὐκ ἔσεσθε κύριοι οὔτε ἀνελέσθαι πόλεμον ᾧ ἂν βούλησθε οὔτε καταλῦσαι, ἰδίᾳ δὲ ὁ βουλόμενος ἄξει στράτευμα ἐφ’ ὅ τι ἂν ἐθέλῃ. κἄν τινες πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἴωσι πρέσβεις ἢ εἰρήνης δεόμενοι ἢ ἄλλου τινός, κατακανόντες τούτους οἱ βουλόμενοι ποιήσουσιν ὑμᾶς τῶν λόγων μὴ ἀκοῦσαι τῶν πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἰόντων. (28) ἔπειτα δὲ οὓς μὲν ἂν ὑμεῖς ἅπαντες ἕλησθε ἄρχοντας, ἐν οὐδεμιᾷ χώρᾳ ἔσονται, ὅστις δ’ ἂν ἑαυτὸν ἕληται στρατηγὸν καὶ ἐθέλῃ λέγειν βάλλε, βάλλε, οὗτος ἔσται ἱκανὸς καὶ ἄρχοντα κατακανεῖν καὶ ἰδιώτην ὃν ἂν ὑμῶν ἐθέλῃ ἄκριτον, ἢν ὦσιν οἱ πεισόμενοι αὐτῷ, ὥσπερ καὶ νῦν ἐγένετο.

You, the general body, will not have it in your power either to undertake war upon whom you please or to bring war to an end, but any individual who wishes will be leading an army to gain any end he may desire. And if people come to you as ambassadors, either desiring peace or anything else, any who choose will kill them and prevent you from hearing the words of those who come to confer with you. (28) Furthermore, the men whom you as a body may choose for <commanders> will be of no account, but whoever may choose himself general and will raise the cry ‘pelt, pelt!’, that man will have the power to slay either <commander> or private, any one of you he pleases, without a trial, provided—as indeed it came about in the present case—there are people who will obey him.Footnote 17

5.7.27, with its references to the dangers of individual war-making (and especially the danger of individuals undertaking military actions without the approval of the army as a whole), as well as to the murder of ambassadors with the aim of preventing them addressing the army, clearly refers to and is derived from Xenophon's account of the unauthorized raid on the Colchian village and the subsequent murder at Cerasus of the elders from the village. The potential consequences of the continuation of the behaviour seen in the Colchian incidents are for what one might call the army's external relations—if the soldiers continue to engage in this type of behaviour, the army as a whole will not be able to choose whom it makes wars upon, or to deal with ambassadors appropriately.

At 5.7.28, on the other hand, when Xenophon warned the soldiers that, if they continued to behave as they had done in the recent past, the men whom they as a body had chosen as ἄρχοντες of the army would be of no account, but that any soldier would be able to elect himself general, raise the shout βάλλε, βάλλε, and kill either ἄρχων or private without a trial, his use of the words βάλλε, βάλλε here was clearly meant to recall the shouts of παῖε, παῖε, βάλλε, βάλλε, which the generals and the Cerasuntian envoys had heard while they were deliberating outside the army's camp. These shouts of παῖε, παῖε, βάλλε, βάλλε, along with the soldiers’ picking up and throwing of stones, marked the beginning of the agoranomoi riot.Footnote 18 5.7.28, then, clearly refers to and is derived from Xenophon's account of the agoranomoi riot.Footnote 19

The potential consequences outlined at 5.7.28 of the continuation of the type of conduct that had marked the agoranomoi riot were, however (in contrast to Xenophon's analysis of the potential negative consequences of the continuance of the behaviour that had characterized the Colchian incidents), solely for internal relations within the army. If the sort of indiscipline seen in the agoranomoi riot were allowed to continue, Xenophon argued, there would be anarchy in the army: the ἄρχοντες chosen by the men would have no standing, and any man of the army could kill any other man of the army (‘any one of you’, ὃν ἂν ὑμῶν), whether ἄρχων or private, without a trial. The fact that Xenophon presented the potential consequences of the continuation of the behaviour seen in the agoranomoi riot solely as an internal matter for the army allows us to draw an important inference concerning the identity of the agoranomoi involved in the riot: we should look within the army for the identity of these men.

That we should understand the agoranomoi involved in the disorder with the soldiers to have been part of the army is confirmed by the next section of the speech (5.7.29). Here Xenophon told the men that he was moving on from drawing out the potential consequences of their lawlessness to describing the actual harm already caused to the mercenaries by their uncontrolled violence: οἷα δὲ ὑμῖν καὶ διαπεπράχασιν οἱ αὐθαίρετοι οὗτοι στρατηγοὶ σκέψασθε (‘consider the sort of things these self-chosen generals have actually accomplished for you’). Xenophon first raised the issue of the attack on Zelarchus the agoranomos:

घήλαρχος μὲν ὁ ἀγορανόμος εἰ μὲν ἀδικεῖ ὑμᾶς, οἴχεται άποπλέων οὐ δοὺς ὑμῖν δίκην· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἀδικεῖ, φεύγει ἐκ τοῦ στρατεύματος δείσας μὴ ἀδίκως ἄκριτος ἀποθάνῃ.

Take Zelarchus, the agoranomos: supposing he has done you wrong, he has sailed off without paying you the penalty; supposing he is not guilty, he has fled from the army out of fear that he might be slain unjustly and without a trial.

Here the attack on Zelarchus, and thus the agoranomoi riot, is discussed again as a matter internal to the army and not involving another community: Xenophon told the assembled men that Zelarchus might have wronged ‘you’ (ὑμᾶς), and that Zelarchus might have sailed off without paying ‘you’ the penalty (οὐ δοὺς ὑμῖν δίκην) for his actions as agoranomos. Just as the potential consequences of the riot were internal affairs for the army, so, too, were its actual consequences.

But the critical term at 5.7.29 that confirms that Zelarchus the agoranomos—and thus the other agoranomoi involved in the riot—were members of the army comes at the end of Xenophon's supposition that Zelarchus fled from the army because of the fear that he might be slain unjustly and ἄκριτος. To return to 5.7.28, in presenting there the potential consequences drawn from his analysis of the behaviour seen in the agoranomoi riot, Xenophon had raised the possibility that, if the army's lawlessness were to continue, the ἄρχοντες whom the army had chosen would have no authority if any man could elect himself general, raise the shout βάλλε, βάλλε, and slay either ἄρχων or ἰδιώτης without a trial (ἄκριτον). The use of the word ἄκριτον at 5.7.28 and Zelarchus’ fear at 5.7.29 that he would be slain ἄκριτος show that at 5.7.28 Xenophon was drawing the particular detail of the potential killing of an ἄρχων in the army without a trial from Zelarchus’ actual fear that he might have been killed without a trial.Footnote 20 Xenophon was doing, then, what he said he would do at the start of 5.7.29: using the experiences of Zelarchus the agoranomos as a concrete example of the ills that the men's mistreatment of the ἄρχοντες chosen by the army could bring about. In doing so, Xenophon was equating the potential killing of an ἄρχων in the army with the agoranomos’ actual fear that he might be killed. The agoranomoi in the riot, therefore, were ἄρχοντες in the army.Footnote 21 They were Cyreans.Footnote 22

The contrast between Xenophon's description of the actual consequences of the agoranomoi riot and those of the Colchian incidents provides further confirmation that the agoranomoi involved in the disorder with the army were, in fact, themselves members of the army.Footnote 23 Xenophon presents the actual consequences of the murder of the Colchian heralds as consisting of a breach in relations with the polis of Cerasus (and the Colchian villagers): after the stoning of the heralds, the remnants of the Ten Thousand, alone of all the Greeks, could not enter Cerasus without a strong force, and it was not possible for the mercenaries themselves to approach the Colchian village in order to bury the bodies of those Cyreans who had died while attacking the village. The actual consequences of the Colchian affair were therefore again, in contrast to the agoranomoi riot, external; and crucially, it was the murder of the Colchian ambassadors that Xenophon saw as the incident destroying relations with the Cerasuntians, and not the Zelarchus episode. If Zelarchus and the other agoranomoi had been magistrates of Cerasus, their mistreatment by the army would certainly have been included by Xenophon in his analysis of the factors leading to the breakdown in relations with the Cerasuntians. That it was not confirms that the agoranomoi involved in the riot were not Cerasuntian.

The agoranomoi mentioned at 5.7.21–9 were Cyreans, then.Footnote 24 Xenophon's description of the agoranomoi riot at Cotyora therefore does not provide evidence for Cerasuntian magistrates colluding with traders to exploit the Ten Thousand in a market provided by the city of Cerasus; rather, it gives us our only mention of army-appointed agoranomoi supervising a market in the classical Greek world.Footnote 25

V. THE MARKET SUPERVISED BY THE AGORANOMOI

If the Cerasuntians did not provide the market supervised by the Cyrean agoranomoi, who did provide it? It can be stated with certainty that the citizens of Cotyora did not. Although the agoranomoi riot did take place just outside Cotyora, there is no mention of the Cotyorites either in Xenophon's description of the riot, or in his analysis of the potential and actual consequences of the riot: there is no mention, that is, of any Cotyorite involvement in or reaction to the riot, or of any problems in the army's relations with the Cotyorites ensuing from the disorder in the market. (There is, in fact, no mention of the Cotyorites at any point in Xenophon's address to the mercenaries.) Since we should expect that Xenophon would have included in his speech a consideration of the consequences of the riot for the army's relationship with the Cotyorites if these had provided the agora in which the soldiers rioted, the fact that he did not means that his description and analysis of the agoranomoi incident most suit a time when the mercenaries had no friendly relations with the Cotyorites (that could be endangered by the soldiers’ indiscipline in a market provided by the Cotyorites). In other words, Xenophon's description and analysis of the riot imply that it took place during the period (of unknown duration) at the beginning of the mercenaries’ stay at Cotyora, when the Cotyorites were hostile to the Cyreans and did not provide them with a market or allow them to quarter their sick within the city (5.5.4–24, and esp. 5.5.6, 5.5.19–20).Footnote 26

The answer to the question of who did, in fact, provide the market overseen by the Cyrean agoranomoi lies in a passage towards the end of Xenophon's speech. After Xenophon had outlined to the army the potential and actual consequences of their conduct in the Colchian and agoranomoi disorders, he closed his speech with a series of questions asking the soldiers how they would be able to maintain order in their internal and external relations on the rest of the march home if they were to continue to behave in the ways he had described earlier (5.7.32–3). Xenophon used these questions to warn the soldiers that, if the indiscipline manifested in the murder of the Colchian heralds and the attack on the agoranomoi continued, the army would not be able to sacrifice to the gods properly, or fight with its enemies; no friendly city would receive it, and no one would bring a market to it (5.7.32–3). The last question Xenophon asked of the men—ἀγορὰν δὲ τίς ἄξει θαρρῶν, ἢν περὶ τὰ μέγιστα τοιαῦτα ἐξαμαρτάνοντες φαινώμεθα; (5.7.33)—is translated in the Loeb as: ‘who will dare to supply us a market if in matters of the greatest import we show ourselves guilty of such offences?’. But this is to translate the verb ἄξει incorrectly: ἄξει here is being used with its literal standard meaning of ‘to lead or carry, bring’.Footnote 27 The verb is describing a physical action:Footnote 28 Xenophon was warning the mercenaries that, literally, nobody would bring along or carry (goods for sale in) a market to the army if they continued committing great crimes; if Xenophon had wanted to say that nobody (that is, no polis or other state entity) would want ‘to supply’ a market to the mercenaries, he would have used, as elsewhere in the Anabasis, the verb παρέχειν.Footnote 29 Xenophon was referring in this question, then, to people bringing goods to the camp of the army in order to trade with the soldiers;Footnote 30 that is, he was referring to traders accompanying the army to trade goods with the soldiers in a market set up for this purpose within the army's camp.Footnote 31

Xenophon's question warning the mercenaries that nobody would carry (goods for sale in) a market to them if they continued committing crimes of the greatest seriousness formed a distinct series with three other questions that described practices that had been and were important to the army's survival, but that would not continue if the mercenaries did not change their undisciplined ways.Footnote 32 We should therefore understand that an agora accompanying the army had been a regular feature of its march along the southern Black Sea coast to Cotyora for some time before Xenophon's speechFootnote 33 (and that Xenophon hoped that it would continue to be so).Footnote 34 That a travelling market had accompanied the army along the initial part of its journey along the Black Sea coast can also be inferred from a later passage describing the soldiers’ experiences at Calpe Harbour. The soldiers had no provisions there (6.4.11) and the sacrifices undertaken with a view to departure from the camp for a foraging expedition to obtain food were proving unfavourable, despite repeated attempts (6.4.11–16). As Xenophon narrates (6.4.16): … χαλεπῶς εἶχον οἱ στρατιῶται· καὶ γὰρ τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ἐπέλιπεν ἃ ἔχοντες ἦλθον, καὶ ἀγορὰ οὐδεμία πω παρῆν (‘… the soldiers were angry, for the provisions they brought with them had given out and there was not yet any market at hand’). The latter consideration implies that there was, at some earlier points of the march along the coast, a market accompanying the army, which the soldiers were able to use when their other sources of supplies had given out.Footnote 35

There was, then, a market made up of traders following the army on its overland march to Cotyora: since neither the Cotyorites (nor the Cerasuntians) provided the market outside Cotyora, the market overseen there by the agoranomoi appointed by the Ten Thousand must have been this temporary travelling market referred to at 5.7.33 and 6.4.16. Therefore, 5.7.21–9 presents us with our only attested instance of army-appointed agoranomoi supervising the exchanges between traders and soldiers in the temporary agorai that accompanied classical Greek armies on campaign.

VI. CONCLUSION: XEN. AN. 5.7.21–9 AND THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK OF CLASSICAL GREEK ARMY MARKETS

Why did the soldiers attack the agoranomoi who were supervising their exchanges with the traders who had followed the army? What was the allegedly outrageous treatment suffered by the men at the hands of their own agoranomoi? Given the brevity of Xenophon's account of the disorder, it is impossible to answer these questions with certainty. It is only possible to state that the soldiers’ anger must have been related to the execution by the agoranomoi of some action or actions related to their duties,Footnote 36 which consisted of the maintenance of order and ensuring the honesty of sellers and buyers in the agora.Footnote 37 The dispute, then, could have centred around attempts by the agoranomoi to prevent soldiers violently appropriating property from traders, or to defend traders against charges of misrepresentation (or to take their side in charges of deceit against the soldiers). Since the agoranomoi were only recently appointed (or elected) by the time of the riot,Footnote 38 soldiers may have attempted to take advantage of the newness of the institutional arrangement to challenge the authority of the agoranomoi and engage in illegal actions, especially as there were as yet no courts in the army at the time of the riot.Footnote 39 The agoranomoi were, however, similarly unconstrained by the threat of legal recourse at this time, and one or several of their number may have exploited the large measure of personal discretion they enjoyed in exercising their dutiesFootnote 40 to abuse or otherwise treat unfairly the soldiers in the market.

If Xenophon's account of the agoranomoi riot does not provide enough detail to reconstruct with certainty the reasons for the riot, it does provide (inadvertently) one important detail that makes it possible to infer a crucial fact about the legal framework of the travelling markets that accompanied classical Greek military forces. At 5.7.2, in presenting his reason (the men's anger at the report that he was planning to lead them back to the Phasis river) for calling an assembly of the mercenaries, Xenophon stated that … καὶ μάλα φοβεροὶ ἦσαν μἠ ποιήσειαν οἷα καὶ τοὺς τῶν Κόλχων κήρυκας ἐποίησαν καὶ τοὺς ἀγορανόμους (‘it was greatly to be feared that they would do the sorts of things they had done to the heralds of the Colchians and the agoranomoi’). Here, and throughout his speech,Footnote 41 although Xenophon had made no previous reference to the agoranomoi, and did not include any remarks in his narrative or speech to explain their presence, he still used the definite article when referring to them (τοὺς ἀγορανόμους), as if both his audiences (of mercenaries and readers) were already aware of their presence.Footnote 42 The fact that Xenophon referred in this way to the agoranomoi in the army's camp, without feeling any need to explain to his reader who these men were, and could assume that, in so doing, there would be no confusion for his reading audience,Footnote 43 demonstrates that such officials must have been a usual and assumed feature of the travelling markets that accompanied classical Greek campaigns, something that he and his readers could take for granted as always present in the camps of classical Greek armies.

It was precisely because agoranomoi could be taken for granted in this way that they were assumed, just as other commonplace details connected to military provisioning, by Xenophon elsewhere in the Anabasis (and his other works) and by other writers of contemporary military narratives (and their audiences) as part of the usual background to events and were therefore not usually mentioned in these narratives.Footnote 44 If the office of agoranomos is only attested for the Ten Thousand, and no other Greek military force, then, this is not because agoranomoi were not overseeing the markets in the camps of other Greek military forces; rather, agoranomoi are only, and exceptionally, mentioned at 5.7.21–9 because the extraordinary events of the agoranomoi riot, together with the murder of the Colchian envoys, gave Xenophon the opportunity to expound at length on the importance of discipline in a community, and the related subject of commander and commanded, subjects that are crucial to the Anabasis and other works of Xenophon.Footnote 45

There is no reason therefore to think that the appointment of agoranomoi by the Ten Thousand to oversee their market exchanges with traders was an unusual measure.Footnote 46 The appointment of agoranomoi was not unique to the Ten Thousand; what was unique was that Xenophon mentioned the agoranomoi at Cotyora, because the description of the exceptional circumstances of the riot they were involved in allowed him to discuss some of his favoured subjects. Xen. An. 5.7.21–9, then, does not give us evidence that poleis normally exploited soldiers in the markets they provided to them. Instead, this passage presents us with evidence that classical Greek military forces were concerned to appoint officials to oversee the market transactions that took place between soldiers and the traders following them, in order to limit (not always successfully) opportunities for violence and cheating in the travelling markets that accompanied them on their campaigns.

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.