Media almost unpeopled, until they came to some flourishing villages
which formed a portion of the domain of Queen Parysatis; probably these
villages, forming so marked an exception to the desert character of the
remaining march, were situated on the Lesser Zab, which flows into the
Tigris, and which Xenophon must have crossed, though he makes no mention
of it. According to the order of march stipulated between the Greeks and
Tissaphernes, the latter only provided a supply of provisions for the
former to purchase; but on the present halt, he allowed the Greeks to
plunder the villages, which were rich and full of all sorts of
subsistence--yet without carrying off the slaves. The wish of the satrap
to put an insult on Cyrus, as his personal enemy, through Parysatis,
thus proved a sentence of ruin to these unhappy villagers. Five more
days' march, called seventy miles, brought them to the banks of the
river Zabatus, or the Greater Zab, which flows into the Tigris near a
town now called Senn. During the first of these five days, they saw on
the opposite side of the Tigris a large town called Kaenae, from whence
they received supplies of provisions, brought across by the inhabitants
upon rafts supported by inflated skins.[27]

Sec. 4. Treachery of Tissaphernes.

On the banks of the Great Zab they halted three days--days of serious
and tragical moment. Having been under feelings of mistrust, ever since
the convention with Tissaphernes, they had followed throughout the whole
march, with separate guides of their own, in the rear of his army,
always maintaining their encampment apart. During their halt on the Zab,
so many various manifestations occurred to aggravate the mistrust, that
hostilities seemed on the point of breaking out between the two camps.
To obviate this danger Klearchus demanded an interview with
Tissaphernes, represented to him the threatening attitude of affairs,
and insisted on the necessity of coming to a clear understanding. He
impressed upon the satrap that, over and above the solemn oaths which
had been interchanged, the Greeks on their side could have no
conceivable motive to quarrel with him; that they had everything to hope
from his friendship, and everything to fear, even to the loss of all
chance of safe return, from his hostility; that Tissaphernes also could
gain nothing by destroying them, but would find them, if he chose, the
best and most faithful instruments for his own aggrandizement and for