TREATMENT OF THE GRECIAN ENVOYS. 189 their retreats, — overcame them, when they stood on their de- fence, with great slaughter, — and reduced the remnant of tlie half-destroyed tribes to sue for peace.^ From this march, which had carried him in a westerly diiec- tion, he returned to Hyrkania. At the first halt he was met by the Grecian mercenaries who came to surrender themselves, as well as by various Grecian envoys from Sparta, Chalkedon, and Sinope, who had accompanied Darius in his flight. Alexander put the Lacedaemonians under arrest, but liberated the other en- voys, considering Chalkedon and Sinope to have been subjects of Darius, not members of the Hellenic synod. As to the mer- cenaries, he made a distinction between those who had enlisted in the Persian service before the recognition of Philip as leader of Greece — and those whose enlistment had been of later date. The former he liberated at once ; the latter he required to re- main in his service under the command of Andronikus, on the same pay as they had hitherto received.^ Such was the unto- ward conclusion of Grecian mercenary service with Persia; a system whereby the Persian monarchs, had they known how to employ it with tolerable abUity, might well have maintained their empire even against such an enemy as Alexander.3 After lifteen days of repose and festivity at Zeudracarta, the thief town of Hyrkania, Alexander marched eastward with his united army through Parthia into Aria — the region adjoining the modem Herat with its river now known as Herirood. Sati- barzanes, the satrap of Aria, came to him near the border, to a town named Susia,* submitted, and was allowed to retain his ' Arrian, iii. 24, 4. In reference to the mountain tribes called Mardi. who are mentioned in several different localities — on the parts of Mount Taurus south of the Caspian, in Armenia, on Mount Zagros, and in Persis proper (see Strabo, xi. p. 508-523; Herodot. i. 125), we may note, that the Nomadic tribes, who constitute a considerable fraction of the population of the modern Persian Empire, are at this day found under the same name in spots widely distant : see Jaubert, Voyage en Arm^nie et en Perse, p. 254.
- Arrian, iii. 24, 8 ; Curtius, vi. 5, 9. An Athenian officer named Demo-
krates slow himself in despair, disdaining to surrender. ' Sec a curious passage on this subject, at the end of the Cyrop.ifdia of Xenophon. Arrian, iii. 25, 3-8. Droysen and Dr. Thirlwall identify Susia with th«
