als, as Herodotus observed respecting Lower Egypt. And Klearchus
might say to his Grecian soldiers--what Xenophon was afterwards
preparing to say to them at Kalpe on the Euxine Sea, and what Nikias
also affirmed to the unhappy Athenian army whom he afterwards conducted
away from Syracuse[17]--that wherever they sat down, they were
sufficiently numerous and well-organized to become at once a city. A
body of such troops might effectually assist, and would perhaps
encourage, the Babylonian population to throw off the Persian yoke, and
to relieve themselves from the prodigious tribute[18] which they now
paid to the satrap. For these reasons, the advisers of Artaxerxes
thought it advantageous to convey the Greeks across the Tigris out of
Babylonia, beyond all possibility of returning thither. This was at any
rate the primary object of the convention. And it was the more necessary
to conciliate the goodwill of the Greeks, because there seems to have
been but one bridge over the Tigris; which bridge could only be reached
by inviting them to advance considerably farther into the interior of
Babylonia.

Such was the state of fears and hopes on both sides, at the time when
Tissaphernes left the Greeks, after concluding his convention. For
twenty days did they await his return, without receiving from him any
communication; the Cyreian Persians[19] under Ariaeus being encamped near
them. Such prolonged and unexplained delay became, after a few days, the
source of much uneasiness to the Greeks; the more so, as Ariaeus received
during this interval several visits from his Persian kinsmen, and
friendly messages from the King, promising amnesty[20] for his recent
services under Cyrus. Of these messages the effects were painfully felt,
in manifest coldness of demeanor on the part of his Persian troops
towards the Greeks. Impatient and suspicious, the Greek soldiers
impressed upon Klearchus their fears, that the King had concluded the
recent convention only to arrest their movements, until he should have
assembled a larger army and blocked up more effectually the roads
against their return. To this Klearchus replied--"I am aware of all that
you say. Yet if we now strike our tents,[21] it will be a breach of the
convention, and a declaration of war. No one will furnish us with
provisions: we shall have no guides: Ariaeus will desert us forthwith, so
that we shall have his troops as enemies instead of friends. Whether
there be any other ri