rds to the foot of the fortress.

XI. After this Antigonus invested the place with a double wall of
circumvallation, left a force sufficient to guard it, and marched
away. Eumenes was now closely besieged. There was plenty of water,
corn, and salt in the fortress, but nothing else to eat or to drink.
Yet he managed to render life cheerful, inviting all the garrison in
turn to his own table, and entertaining his guests with agreeable and
lively conversation. He himself was no sturdy warrior, worn with toil
and hardships, but a figure of the most delicate symmetry, seemingly
in all the freshness of youth, with a gentle and engaging aspect. He
was no orator, but yet was fascinating in conversation, as we may
partly learn from his letters. During this siege, as he perceived that
the men, cooped up in such narrow limits and eating their food without
exercise, would lose health, and also that the horses would lose
condition if they never used their limbs, while it was most important
that, if they were required for a sudden emergency, they should be
able to gallop, he arranged the largest room in the fort, fourteen
cubits in length, as a place of exercise for the men, and ordered them
to walk there, gradually quickening their pace, so as to combine
exercise with amusement. For the horses, he caused their necks to be
hoisted by pulleys fastened in the roof of their stable, until their
fore feet barely touched the ground. In this uneasy position they were
excited by their grooms with blows and shouts until the struggle
produced the effect of a hard ride, as they sprung about and stood
almost erect upon their hind legs till the sweat poured off them, so
that this exercise proved no bad training either for strength or
speed. They were fed with bruised barley, as being more quickly and
easily digested.

XII. After this siege had lasted for some time, Antigonus learned that
Antipater had died in Macedonia, and that Kassander and Polysperchon
were fighting for his inheritance. He now conceived great hopes of
gaining the supreme power for himself, and desired to have Eumenes as
his friend and assistant in effecting this great design. He sent
Hieronymus of Kardia, a friend of Eumenes, to make terms with him.
Hieronymus proffered a written agreement to Eumenes, which Eumenes
amended, and thus appealed to the Macedonians who were besieging him
to decide between the two forms, as to which was the most just.
Antigonus for decency's sake