under Nicostratus, and six thousand AEolians, Ionians, and Dorians from the Greek cities of Asia Minor.  The assistance thus secured was numerically small, amounting to no more than ten thousand men—­not a thirtieth part of his native force; but it formed, together with the Greek mercenaries from Egypt—­who went over to him afterwards—­the force on which he placed his chief reliance, and to which the ultimate success of his expedition was mainly due.

The overwhelming strength of the armament which Ochus had brought with him into Syria alarmed the chiefs of the rebel confederacy.  Tennes, especially, the Sidonian monarch, despaired of a successful resistance, and made up his mind that his only chance of safety lay in his appeasing the anger of Ochus by the betrayal of his confederates and followers.  He opened his designs to Mentor of Rhodes, the commander of the Greek mercenaries furnished by Egypt, and found him quite ready to come into his plans.  The two in conjunction betrayed Sidon into the hands of Persia, by the admission of a detachment within the walls; after which the defence became impracticable.  The Sidonians, having experienced the unrelenting temper and sanguinary spirit of the Persian king, who had transfixed with javelins six hundred of their principal citizens, came to the desperate resolution of setting fire to their houses, and so destroying themselves with their town.  One is glad to learn that the cowardly traitor, Tennes, who had brought about these terrible calamities, did not derive any profit from them, but was executed by the command of Ochus, as soon as Sidon had fallen.

The reduction of Sidon was followed closely by the invasion of Egypt.  Ochus, besides his 330,000 Asiatics, had now a force of 14,000 Greeks, the mercenaries under Mentor having joined him.  Marshalling his army in four divisions, he proceeded to the attack.  The first, second, and third divisions contained, each of them, a contingent of Greeks and a contingent of Asiatics, commanded respectively by a Greek and a Persian leader.  The Greeks of the first division, consisting mainly of Boeotians, were under the orders of Lacrates, a Theban of enormous strength, who regarded himself as a second Hercules, and adopted the traditional costume of that hero, a lion’s skin and a club.  His Persian colleague was Rhosaces, satrap of Ionia and Lydia, who claimed descent from one of “the Seven” that put down the conspiracy of the Magi.  In the second division, where the Argive mercenaries served, the Greek leader was Nicostratus, the Persian Aristazanes, a court usher, and one of the most trusted friends of the king.  Mentor and the eunuch Bagoas, Ochus’s chief minister in his later years, were at the head of the third division, Mentor commanding his own mercenaries, and Bagoas the Greeks whom Ochus had levied in his own dominions, together with a large body of Asiatics.  The king himself was sole commander of the fourth division, as well as commander-in-chief of the entire host.  Nekht-nebf, on his side, was only able to oppose to this vast array an army less than one-third of the size.  He had enrolled as many as sixty thousand of the Egyptian warrior class, and had the services of twenty thousand Greek mercenaries, and of about the same number of Libyan troops.