NEXT day Seuthes burned the villages to the ground, not leaving a single house standing, so as to strike terror into the other tribes and show them what would happen to them if they did not give in. He then marched back again, sending Heraclides to Perinthus to dispose of the booty, so as to raise funds to pay the army. He himself camped with the Greeks on the plain inhabited by the Thynians, who abandoned their homes and fled to the hills.
There was a lot of snow here, and it was so cold that the water which they brought in for their dinner, and the wine in the jars, froze, and a number of Greeks lost noses and ears through frostbite. It was then easy to see why the Thracians wear fox skins round their heads and ears, and why they have tunics that cover their legs and not only the upper part of the body, and why, when they are on horseback, they wear long cloaks reaching down to their feet instead of our short coats.
Seuthes sent some of the prisoners into the hills and told them to say that if the inhabitants did not come down and settle in their houses and submit to him, he would burn up their villages too and destroy their crops, and they would die of hunger. As a result of this the women and children and older men came down into the plain, but the younger men camped in the villages at the foot of the mountains. When Seuthes found this out, he asked Xenophon to take the youngest men among the hoplites and follow him. They started by night and reached the villages at dawn. Most of the inhabitants ran away, as the mountains were near, but all those whom Seuthes captured he put to death by the spear without mercy.
Xenophon had with him an Olynthian called Episthenes, who was very fond of boys. Oh this occasion he saw a good-looking boy, just at the most beautiful age, with a shield in his hand, on the point of being put to death; so he ran up to Xenophon and begged him to do what he could for the beautiful boy. Xenophon went up to Seuthes and asked him not to kill the boy, telling him at the same time what sort of person Episthenes was, and that in the past he had raised a company and fought very gallantly with them, and that the only qualification he had looked for in his company had been physical beauty. Seuthes then said: ‘And would you, Episthenes, be willing to die for the boy?’
Episthenes stretched out his neck and said: ‘Strike the blow if the boy tells you to and if he will feel grateful to me afterwards.’
Seuthes then asked the boy whether he should kill Episthenes instead of him, but the boy said ‘no’ and begged him not to kill either of them. At this Episthenes put his arms round the boy and said: ‘Now, Seuthes, you will have to fight me for him. I shall never give the boy up.’
Seuthes laughed, and did nothing more about it. He decided to camp where they were, so that the people in the mountains should not be able to get food even from their villages. He went down into the plain himself and camped there, while Xenophon with his picked men camped in the village higher up among the mountains, and the rest of the Greeks camped close by among the tribes which were called ‘the mountain Thracians’.
Before many days had gone by the Thracians came down from the mountains and began to negotiate with Seuthes about peace terms and the handing over of hostages. Xenophon at the same time went to Seuthes and told him that they were living in miserable quarters with the enemy on top of them. He said that he would rather camp in a strong position in the open than in a sheltered position where they might be cut off. Seuthes told him to keep his spirits up and showed him the hostages which he had with him; and some of the Thracians from the mountains came down and begged Xenophon himself to give them help in negotiating peace terms. He agreed to do so, and told them to keep their spirits up and guaranteed that, if they submitted to Seuthes, they would come to no harm. But in point of fact their inquiries had only been made so that they could do some spying.
All this took place during the day. In the following night the Thracians came down from the mountain and launched an attack. The master of each house acted as a guide for them, and indeed in the darkness it was difficult without a guide to find where the houses were in the villages, as they were surrounded by high fences to keep in the cattle. When they were at the doors of the houses, some hurled javelins at them and others beat at them with the clubs with which they were armed, so they said, in order to knock off the heads of the spears. Others set fire to the houses, and kept calling out for Xenophon by name, telling him to come outside and be killed, or else he would be burnt alive where he was. Fire was already beginning to show through the roof, and Xenophon’s men were inside the house, with their armour on, holding their shields and swords and helmets in their hands. Then Silanus, a Macistian about eighteen years old, blew the trumpet call, and immediately they and the Greeks from the other houses drew their swords and rushed out. The Thracians ran away, slinging their shields, as their way is, behind their shoulders. Some of them, as they were getting over the fence, were caught suspended there, with their shields entangled in the stakes. Others were killed because they failed to find the ways out. The Greeks chased them outside the village, and a few Thynians turned back in the dark and, throwing their weapons from the cover of darkness into the light, shot at a party of Greeks who were running past a house which was on fire. They wounded the captain Hieronymus, a Euodian, and Theogenes, a Locrian, but no one was killed. Some people, however, had their clothing and equipment burnt.
Seuthes came up to relieve them with seven horsemen at first and bringing the Thracian trumpeter with him. When he saw what was happening, he had the trumpet sounded all the time that he was on his way to their relief, with the result that this also helped to terrify the enemy. He congratulated the Greeks when he reached them, and said that he had expected to find a number of them killed.
After this Xenophon asked Seuthes to give him the hostages and, if he liked, to join him in making an attack on the mountain; if not, to let him go by himself. Next day, then, Seuthes handed over the hostages, who were elderly people and, so they said, the most important persons among the mountaineers, and he and his force marched with Xenophon. By this time Seuthes’s army was three times its original size, as numbers of the Odrysae, hearing of Seuthes’s successes, had come down to join with him.
When the Thyni looked down from the mountain and saw the enormous force of hoplites and peltasts and cavalry, they came down and begged for peace, promising to carry out all Seuthes’s orders, and asking him to accept guarantees from them. Seuthes then summoned Xenophon and told him of their offers. He said that he would not make peace if Xenophon wanted to revenge himself on them for the attack which they had made.
Xenophon replied: ‘As far as I am concerned, I think I am sufficiently revenged already if they are going to exchange their freedom for slavery.’ However, he advised Seuthes in future to take as hostages the people who were most capable of doing him harm, and to let the old men stay at home.
Everyone, then, in this part of Thrace submitted to Seuthes.