moreover, such action on our part will be a signal to Ariaeus to hold aloof from us, so that not a friend will be left to us; even those who were formerly our friends will now be numbered with our enemies.  What other river, or rivers, we may find we have to cross, I do not know; but this we know, to cross the Euphrates in face of resistance is impossible.  You see, in the event of being driven to an engagement, we have no cavalry to help us, but with the enemy it is the reverse—­not only the most, but the best of his troops are cavalry, so that if we are victorious, we shall kill no one, but if we are defeated, not a man of us can escape.  For my part, I cannot see why the king, who has so many advantages on his side, if 7 he desires to destroy us, should swear oaths and tender solemn pledges merely in order to perjure himself in the sight of heaven, to render his word worthless and his credit discreditable the wide world over.”  These arguments he propounded at length.

Meanwhile Tissaphernes came back, apparently ready to return home; he had his own force with him, and so had Orontas, who was also present, his.  The latter brought, moreover, his bride with him, the king’s daughter, whom he had just wedded.  The journey was now at length fairly commenced.  Tissaphernes led the way, and provided a market.  They advanced, and Ariaeus advanced too, at the head of Cyrus’s Asiatic troops, side by side with Tissaphernes and Orontas, and with these two he also pitched his camp.  The Hellenes, holding them in suspicion, marched separately with the guides, and they encamped on each occasion a parasang apart, or rather less; and both parties kept watch upon each other as if they were enemies, which hardly tended to lull suspicion; and sometimes, whilst foraging for wood and grass and so forth on the same ground, blows were exchanged, which occasioned further embitterments.  Three stages they had accomplished ere they reached the wall of Media, as it is called, and passed within it.  It was built of baked bricks laid upon bitumen.  It was twenty feet broad and a hundred feet high, and the length of it was said to be twenty parasangs.  It lies at no great distance from Babylon.

From this point they marched two stages—­eight parasangs—­and crossed two canals, the first by a regular bridge, the other spanned by a bridge of seven boats.  These canals issued from the Tigris, and from them a whole system of minor trenches was cut, leading over the country, large ones to begin with, and then smaller and smaller, till at last they become the merest runnels, like those in Hellas used for watering millet fields.  They reached the river Tigris.  At this point there was a large and thickly populated city named Sittace, at a 13 distance of fifteen furlongs from the river.  The Hellenes accordingly encamped by the side of that city, near a large and beautiful park, which was thick with all sorts of trees.