IMPOTENCE OF THE PERSIANS. 75 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 favor- able positions for keeping the Greeks out of the cultivated territory of Babylonia, neglected in like manner, and a convention con- cluded, 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 considerable distance from the heart of the Persian empire, and then to open his schemes of trea- sonable hostility, which the imprudence of Klearchus enabled him to do, on the banks of the Great Zab, with chances of success such as he could hardly have contemplated. We have here a fresh example of the wonderful impotence of the Persians. We should have expected that, after having committed so flagrant an act of perfidy, Tissaphernes would at least have tried to turn it to account; that he would have poured, with all his forces and all his vigor, on the Grecian camp, at the moment when it was unprepared, disor- ganized, and without commanders. Instead of which, when the generals (with those who accompanied them to the Persian camp) had been seized or slain, no attack whatever was made except by small detachments of Persian cavalry upon individual Greek strag- glers in the plain. One of the companions of the generals, an Arcadian named Nikarchus, ran wounded into the Grecian camp, where the soldiers were looking from afar at the horsemen scour- ing the plain without knowing what they were about, exclaiming that the Persians were massacring all the Greeks, officers as well as soldiers. Immediately the Greek soldiers hastened to put them- selves in defence, expecting a general attack to be made upon their camp ; but no more Persians came near than a body of about three hundred horse, under Ariaeus and Mithridates (the confidential companions of the deceased Cyrus), accompanied by the brother of Tissaphernes. These men, approaching the Greek lines as friends, called for the Greek officers to come forth, as they had a message to deliver from the king. Accordingly, Kleanor and Sophaenetus, with an adequate guard, came to the front, accompanied by Xeno- phon, who was anxious to hear news about Proxenus. Ariseus
