Book 4
2.32
Now the Medes and Hyrcanians, as they pursued,How the victors behaved committed such acts as men might be expected to commit in the hour of victory. But Cyrus ordered the horsemen who had been left with him to ride around the camp and to kill any that they saw coming out under arms; while to those who remained inside he issued a proclamation that as many of the enemy’s soldiers as were cavalrymen or targeteers or bowmen should bring out their weapons tied in bundles and deliver them up, but should leave their horses at their tents. Whoever failed to do so should soon lose his head. Now Cyrus’s men stood in line around them, sabre in hand.
2.33
Accordingly, those who had the weapons carried them to one place, where he directed, and threw them down, and men whom he had appointed for the purpose burned them.
2.34
Now Cyrus recollected that they had come with neither food nor drink, and without these it was not possible to prosecute a campaign or to do anything else. And as he was considering how toCyrus organizes his commissariat procure the best possible supplies with the greatest possible dispatch, it occurred to him that all those who take the field must have some one to take care of the tent and to have food prepared for the soldiers when they came in.
2.35
So he concluded that of all people these were the ones most likely to have been caught in the camp, because they would have been busy packing up. Accordingly, he issued a proclamation for all the commissaries to come to him; but if a commissary officer should be lacking anywhere, the oldest man from that tent should come. And to any one who should dare to disobey he threatened direst punishment. But when they saw their masters obeying, they also obeyed at once. And when they had come, he first ordered those of them to sit down who had more than two months’ supply of provisions in their tents.
2.36
And when he had noted them, he gave the same order to those who had one month’s supply. Hereupon nearly all sat down.
