lf for the favor of
Tissaphernes. Imagining that Menon was the unknown calumniator who
prejudiced the satrap against him, he hoped to prevail on the satrap to
disclose his name and dismiss him. Such jealousy seems to have robbed
Klearchus of his customary prudence. We must also allow for another
impression deeply fixed in his mind; that the salvation of the army was
hopeless without the consent of Tissaphernes, and therefore, since the
latter had conducted them thus far in safety, when he might have
destroyed them before, that his designs at the bottom could not be
hostile.

Notwithstanding these two great mistakes--one on the present occasion,
one previously, at the battle of Kunaxa, in keeping the Greeks on the
right contrary to the order of Cyrus--both committed by Klearchus, the
loss of that officer was doubtless a great misfortune to the army;
while, on the contrary, the removal of Menon was a signal
benefit--perhaps a condition of ultimate safety. A man so treacherous
and unprincipled as Xenophon depicts Menon, would probably have ended by
really committing towards the army that treason, for which he falsely
took credit at the Persian court in reference to the seizure of the
generals.

The impression entertained by Klearchus, respecting the hopeless
position of the Greeks in the heart of the Persian territory after the
death of Cyrus was perfectly natural in a military man who could
appreciate all the means of attack and obstruction which the enemy had
it in their power to employ. Nothing is so unaccountable in this
expedition as the manner in which such means were thrown away--the
spectacle of Persian impotence. First, the whole line of upward march,
including the passage of the Euphrates, left undefended; next, the long
trench dug across the frontier of Babylonia, with only a passage of
twenty feet wide left near the Euphrates, abandoned without a guard;
lastly, the line of the Wall of Media and the canals which offered such
favorable positions for keeping the Greeks out of the cultivated
territory of Babylonia, neglected in like manner, and a convention
concluded whereby the Persians engaged to escort the invaders safe to
the Ionian coast, beginning by conducting them through the heart of
Babylonia, amidst canals affording inexpugnable defences if the Greeks
had chosen to take up a position among them. The plan of Tissaphernes,
as far as we can understand it, seems to have been, to draw the Greeks
to some co