return to their homes.  This he did either because he was anxious for their safety, or because he did not wish to drag about with him a force which was too small to fight, and too large to move with swiftness and secrecy.  He himself took refuge in the impregnable fortress of Nora, on the borders of Cappadocia and Lycaonia, with five hundred horse and two hundred foot soldiers, and dismissed from thence with kind speeches and embraces, all of his friends who wished to leave the fortress, dismayed by the prospect of the dreary imprisonment which awaited them during a long siege in such a place.  Antigonus when he arrived summoned Eumenes to a conference before beginning the siege, to which he answered, that Antigonus had many friends and officers, while he had none remaining with him, so that unless Antigonus would give him hostages for his safety, he would not trust himself with him.  Upon this Antigonus bade him remember that he was speaking to his superior.  “While I can hold my sword,” retorted Eumenes, “I acknowledge no man as my superior.”  However, after Antigonus had sent his cousin Ptolemaeus into the fortress, as Eumenes had demanded, he came down to meet Antigonus, whom he embraced in a friendly manner, as became men who had once been intimate friends and comrades.  They talked for a long time, and Eumenes astonished all the assembly by his courage and spirit; for he did not ask for his life, and for peace, as they expected, but demanded to be reinstated in his government, and to have all the grants which he had received from Perdikkas restored to him.  The Macedonians meanwhile flocked round him, eager to see what sort of man this Eumenes was, of whom they had heard so much; for since the death of Kraterus no one had been talked of so much as Eumenes in the Macedonian camp.  Antigonus began to fear for his safety; he ordered them to keep at a distance, and at last throwing his arms round the waist of Eumenes conducted him back through a passage formed by his guards to the foot of the fortress.

XI.  After this Antigonus invested the place with a double wall of circumvallation, left a force sufficient to guard it, and marched away.  Eumenes was now closely besieged.  There was plenty of water, corn, and salt in the fortress, but nothing else to eat or to drink.  Yet he managed to render life cheerful, inviting all the garrison in turn to his own table, and entertaining his guests with agreeable and lively conversation.  He himself was no sturdy warrior, worn with toil and hardships, but a figure of the most delicate symmetry, seemingly in all the freshness of youth, with a gentle and engaging aspect.  He was no orator, but yet was fascinating in conversation, as we may partly learn from his letters.  During this siege, as he perceived that the men, cooped up in such narrow limits and eating their food without exercise, would lose health, and also that the horses would lose condition if they never used their limbs, while it was most important that, if they were required