20.2
But in thus playing the Cretan against a Cretan, as the saying is, he misjudged his opponent. For Pharnabazus, after promising to do all that he desired, openly wrote such a letter as Lysander demanded, but secretly kept another by him ready written. And when it came to putting on the seals, he exchanged the documents, which looked exactly alike, and gave him the letter which had been secretly written.
20.3
Accordingly, when Lysander arrived at Sparta and went, as the custom is, into the senate-house, he gave the ephors the letter of Pharnabazus, convinced that the greatest of the complaints against him was thus removed; for Pharnabazus was in high favour with the Lacedaemonians, because he had been, of all the King’s generals, most ready to help them in the war.
20.4
But when the ephors, after reading the letter, showed it to him, and he understood that Odysseus, then, is not the only man of guile, An iambic trimeter of some unknown poet. for the time being he was mightily confounded and went away. But a few days afterwards, on meeting the magistrates, he said that he was obliged to go up to the temple of AmmonIn an oasis of the great desert of Libya. Cf. Plut. Cim. 18.6 f. and sacrifice to the god the sacrifices which he had vowed before his battles.
