40. Diogenes’s army was broken and routed. Andronicus, meanwhile, returned in triumph with Crispinus to the tent which had been prepared for him. Later, one of the knights came up, bringing to the general an enemy captive. It was the Armenian Chatatoures. In the flight, he said, he had fallen from his horse at a ditch and had crept under a bush. One of the pursuers had spotted him and would have made short work of him, but when he saw the Armenian’s tears, he merely stripped him of his clothes and went away, leaving him naked under the bush.
Then a second warrior, seeing him in this sorry plight, rushed up to kill him, but Chatatoures told him that if he would spare him and take him away to a certain general (whom he mentioned by name), he would be most handsomely rewarded. Recognizing who the man was, Andronicus felt doubly victorious. However, clothes and equipment were provided for him, and though he was kept a prisoner, no constraint was put upon him, as befitted a brave leader.
41. Diogenes, of course, could feel no confidence in the small remnants of his army, but he still hoped that assistance would speedily come from his Persian allies.**281 Indeed, he encouraged his men with this assurance and held out prospects of relief in the near future. Yet the very troops on whose loyalty he was relying, the men to whom he had entrusted the keys of his garrison, were the first to betray him.
Being promised on oath
Actually, they made an agreement with our general, and being promised on oath that they themselves would suffer no harm, they threw the gates wide open and admitted our soldiers. Then they led them to the house where Diogenes was living. There he stood, a strange, melancholy spectacle, all his hopes gone, his hands fettered as though he were a slave, surrendering himself unconditionally to his captors. At once he was forced to don the black robe of a monk, and taking off his headdress, he allowed his hair to be cut short, not caring who did it.
So the ceremony of initiation was hurriedly performed, not by the persons who should have carried it out, but by individuals who chanced to be there. Having made him a monk, they then led him out of his fortress and, with the greatest joy imaginable, took him off to Andronicus. Instead of receiving him in a high-handed, arrogant fashion, he actually sympathized with the prisoner. He shook hands and invited him to his own tent. Finally, he asked him to be his guest at table, where a magnificent banquet was prepared.
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