Morale had begun to drop as well. The men had been complaining for some weeks now that they were owed back wages. The prince had allowed no looting on the way, nor plunder to be captured, and since he had paid the troops no stipends since we had left, the men were feeling the pinch every time they passed through a market town and were unable to buy even basic supplies, much less purchase trinkets or gamble. This distressed Cyrus greatly, for he had always been justly proud of having treated his men fairly, and he placed great stock on retaining their loyalty, particularly in view of the size of his army and its isolated position. Just as the grumbling was beginning to be of concern to the officers, we spied a short wagon train approaching in the distance. Cyrus did not seem at all surprised-in fact, he appeared to have been expecting it.
I was sitting on my horse next to Proxenus when it arrived, and we both watched it with interest. The coaches were richly appointed, with well-dressed horses and heavily muscled guards and liverymen garbed in fine silks and gold chains. "The train belongs to Queen Epyaxa of Cilicia," he said. As the woman carefully stepped down before the eyes of the gathering troops, I could see that she was past her youthful prime, though had not yet lost a certain flush of the beauty she had once possessed.
"She's the wife of King Syennesis, one of Cyrus' allies. He is an old man, who was a satrap to the prince's father as well."
"Where is the king?" asked Xenophon, riding up to us. "He didn't send his wife out alone to meet us, did he?"
"Ha! That's a story in itself," Proxenus replied derisively. "This king hasn't left his palace in ten years, out of shame at the way he was handled by the Pisidians when they captured him during one of their petty little wars. Rumor has it that the treatment he received resulted in the loss of his manhood, though I can't say whether this was something physical or a form of madness imposed by the gods as punishment for some act he committed." Proxenus paused and looked around carefully to see if anyone was near. He then broke out in a broad grin. "But if his virility was mislaid somewhere, they say that ever since, the queen has spared no effort looking for it among lucky candidates."
Indeed, I do not know precisely what transpired in Cyrus' tent during the queen's state visit, for it was one of the few times that Proxenus was not invited to be present during an official reception. Even Cyrus' favored concubines were summarily turned out, to the amusement of the Greek officers at seeing the indignant pouts the girls affected during their temporary exile to a neighboring canvas.
I do know, however, that the queen brought Cyrus an enormous sum of money, several chests filled with silver, part of which he used to pay his troops four months' wages on the spot, plus a bonus for their patience. The men shouted their appreciation to the queen, blessing her in the name of the god Priapus and waving their drinking horns in salute to her absent husband. The queen, being too dignified to show offense, merely nodded and smiled at the men demurely as she exited Cyrus' lodgings and ducked back into her own travel tent of hairy, untanned leather.
BOOK FOUR
It is shameless how readily mortals cast blame on the gods.
From us, they say, come all their sorrows, from us their misery,
But they have no one to blame but themselves-
Themselves and their own blind folly.
– HOMER
CHAPTER ONE
GOOD QUEEN EPYAXA accompanied us in march for some weeks, and at Tyriaion, the first major city we encountered after her arrival, the army was called to halt for three days. The queen had become ever bolder in her displays of affection for Cyrus, and had begged him to arrange a review of his army for her. Thinking that it might be a good opportunity to impress the city's inhabitants with his military might, and thereby continue the supply of easily gotten provisions, Cyrus readily agreed.
The men grumbled about the extra work required to polish their shields, wash their linens and their bodies, and dress their hair, but I believe that in general they were pleased at the opportunity to perform for the awestruck population. It was a welcome break from the routine and drudgery. Tyriaion was by no means a grand city-a sprawling collection of low mud hovels with a dusty square in the middle, inhabited by the local governor and a small garrison of troops, and supported by a large population of abject-looking farmers and slaves. The place was pestilential-an open sewage line ran straight through the middle of the dust-choked streets, stinging flies tormented the men, and the stench was suffocating. Proxenus noted, out of earshot of Clearchus and his men, that it bore a close resemblance to Sparta. In fact, the Spartans did look much more at home there than they ever had in the oriental splendor of Sardis, or the grandeur of Athens.
The Greeks were ordered to align themselves in battle array, each according to the custom of his unit and country, and each captain commanding his own men. Thus we marched on the parade ground four deep, with Menon the Thessalian and his thousand heavy infantry and five hundred targeteers holding the right wing, Clearchus and his terrifyingly blank-faced Spartans the left, and the rest of us in the center. The men had polished their bronze helmets to a luster that gleamed in the bright sunlight, set off by their greaves and scarlet capes, and they left their shining shields uncovered. To anyone facing them as they marched toward the sun, the reflection was almost unbearable. Cyrus and the queen first inspected the Persian troops, who marched past in regal splendor on horse and on foot. The royal couple then climbed into a chariot together, and rode slowly past the central line of Greeks, who all stood motionless and at attention, a low cloud of dust settling at our feet and steam rising off the sweaty flanks of the officers' horses. As Cyrus and the queen passed the last of the Hellenic lines and were returning back to the prince's native troops, the prince gave a quiet signal behind his back to the Greeks. There rose from behind our ranks the mournful, five-note fanfare of the call to arms blasted on the salpinx, the Greek battle trumpet whose resonant sound Aristophanes attributes to its being shaped like a gnat's anus. Pikes were presented, the bronze-tipped points filed to a deadly, needlelike sharpness. The front ranks of troops gripped the smooth ashwood staffs in a horizontal thrusting position, while those marching behind snapped theirs into the vertical ready position with Spartan precision, and the Greek force advanced in a single unit toward Cyrus and the native troops at double time, as if readying an attack. Proxenus' infamous Boeotian engines, prepared in advance for an effective demonstration, suddenly began spewing forth flame at the empty air along our troops' flanks. The Persian officers stiffened and glanced quizzically at each other, and their men began shifting nervously in the ranks. The salpinx blasted again, the urgent, raucous call to attack, and ten thousand throats broke into a deafening roar. Shields held high, razor-sharp spears throbbing menacingly before them in rhythm with their steps, the Greeks burst into a mad sprint, surging like a bloody, scarlet wave directly toward the center of Cyrus' astonished native troops.