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From there they arrived at Cotyora, a Greek city and a colony of the Sinopians. Here they spent fifty days, plundering both the neighbouring peoples of Paphlagonia and the other barbarians. And the citizens of Heracleia and Sinope sent them vessels on which both the soldiers and their pack-animals were conveyed across.1 [2] Sinope was a colony founded by the Milesians, and situated as it was in Paphlagonia, it held first place among the cities of those regions; and it was in this city that in our day Mithridates, who went to war with the Romans, had his largest palace. [3] And at that city also arrived Cheirisophus, who had been dispatched without success to get triremes. Nevertheless, the Sinopians entertained them in kindly fashion and sent them on their way by sea to Heracleia, a colony of the Megarians; and the entire fleet came to anchor at the peninsula of Acherusia, where, we are told, Heracles led up Cerberus from Hades. [4] As they proceeded from there on foot through Bithynia they fell among perils, as the natives skirmished with them along their route. So they barely made their way to safety to Chrysopolis in Chalcedonia, eight thousand three hundred surviving of the original ten thousand. [5] From there some of the Greeks got back in safety, without further trouble, to their native lands, and the rest banded together around the Chersonesus and laid waste the adjoining territory of the Thracians.

Such, then, was the outcome of the campaign of Cyrus against Artaxerxes.

1 To Sinope (Xen. Anab. 6.1.14-15).

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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