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[5] While these occurrences were passing, Artaxerxes, reflecting from how important a war, and to how inconsiderable an enterprise, he had sent the best of his generals, blamed himself for what he had done, and sent a messenger to the troops at Ace (not supposing that Datames had yet set out), to tell him not to quit the army. But before this messenger arrived at the place to which he was sent, he met upon the road the party that were leading Aspis.
Though Datames, by this celebrity, gained great favor from the king, he incurred no less dislike on the part of the courtiers, because they saw that he alone was more valued than all of them; and on this account they all conspired to ruin him. Pandates, the keeper of the king's treasury, a friend to Datames, sent him an account of this state of things in writing, in which he told him that "he would be in great peril if any ill-success should fall out while he commanded in Egypt, for such was the practice of kings, that they attributed adverse occurrences to other men, but prosperous ones to their own good fortune; and hence it happened that they were easily inclined to the ruin of those under whose conduct affairs were said to have been ill-managed; and that he would be in so much the greater danger as he had those for his bitterest enemies to whom the king chiefly gave ear. Datames, having read this letter, after he had arrived at the army at Ace, resolved, as he was aware that what was written was true, to leave the king's service. He did nothing, however, that was unworthy of his honor; for he appointed Mandrocles of Magnesia to command the army, while he himself went off with his adherents into Cappadocia, and took possession of Paphlagonia, that bordered it, concealing what his feelings were towards the king. He then privately made a league with Ariobarzanes, raised a force, and assigned the fortified towns to be defended by his own troops.
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