The Spartan Response to Xenophon

Xenophon: "You hold me in your power then, and not as a captive that you have taken in flight or as a runaway slave. And if you do what you are proposing, stone me" The Spartan responded by saying Xenophon was too great a friend of the soldiers to be unjustly angry with him. 'I imagine they also think none the better view for behaving in this manner toward me,' he said.