DEPOT AT EKBATANA. — PARMENIO. 181 Buers. But this chance diminished every day, from desertion among his few followers, and angry disgust among many who remained.^ Eight days after Darius had quitted Ekbatana, Alexander entered it. How many days had been occupied in his march from Persepolis, we cannot say : in itself a long march, it had been farther prolonged, partly by the necessity of subduing the intervening mountaineers called Parastakeni,^- partly by rumors exaggerating the Persian force at Ekbatana, and inducing him to advance with precaution and regular array. Possessed of Ekbatana — the last capital stronghold of the Persian kings, and their ordinary residence during the summer months — he halted to rest his troops, and establish a new base of operations for his future proceedings eastward. He made Ekbatana his principal depot ; depositing in the citadel, under the care of Harpalus as treasurer, with a garrison of 6000 or 7000 Macedonians, the ac- cumulated treasures of his past conquests, out of Susa and Per- sepolis ; amounting, we are told, to the enormous sum of 180,- 000 talents = £41,400,000 sterlmg.^ Parmenio was invested with the chief command of this important post, and of the mili- tary force left in Media ; of which territory Oxodates, a Persian who had been imprisoned at Susa by Darius, was named sa- trap.* At Ekbatana Alexander was joined by a fresh force of 6000 Grecian mercenaries,^ who had marched from Kilikia into the interior, pi'obably crossing the Euphrates and Tigris at the same points as Alexander himself had crossed. Hence he was ena- bled the better to dismiss his Thessalian cavalry, with other Greeks who had been serving during his four years of Asiatic war, and who now wished to go home." He distributed among them the sum of 2000 talents in addition to their full pay, and ' Arrian, iii. 19, 2-9 ; iii. 20, 3. * Arrian, iii. 19, 5. ' Arrian, iii. 19, 14; Diodor. xvii. 80. Diodorus had before stated (xvii. 66, 71) the treasure in Susa as being 49,000 talents, and that in Persepolis as 120,000. Arrian announces the treasure in Susa as 50.000 talents — Curtius gives the uncoined gold and silver alone as 50,000 talents ( v. 8 11). The treasure of both places was transported to Ekbatana.
- Arrian, iii. 20, 4. * Curtius, v. 23, 12.
• Arrian, iii. 19, 10: compare v. 27, 7. VOL. XII. 16
