The Ten Thousand found themselves far from home with no food, no employer, and no reliable allies. They offered to make their Persian ally Ariaeus king, but he refused on the grounds that he was not of royal blood and would not find enough support among the Persians to keep the throne. They offered their services to Tissaphernes, a leading satrap of Artaxerxes, but he demanded their complete surrender, which they refused. This presented Tissaphernes with a problem – a large army of heavily-armed troops, which he could not defeat by frontal assault. He supplied them with food and, after a long wait, led them northwards for home. Meanwhile he succeeded in luring away the Persian general Ariaeus and his light troops.