Kitap 6
1.14
For winterThe battle against cold and hunger is coming, you know; and even granting that we have shelter for ourselves, still, by Zeus, there will be none for our horses or for our attendants or for the rank and file of the army; and without them we could not carry on the war. The provisions, wherever we have gone, we have consumed; and where we have not gone, the people out of fear of us have conveyed them into their strongholds, so that they have them themselves, and we cannot get them.
1.15
Who then is so valiant and so strong that he can prosecute a war while battling against hunger and cold? If, therefore, we propose to go on with the war as we have been doing, I maintain that we ought of our own free will to disband the army, rather than against our will to be driven out of the country by lack of means. But if we wish to go on with the war, this I say we must do: we must try asFortified posts in the enemy’s country quickly as we may to get possession of as many as possible of their forts and build for ourselves as many as we can. For, if this is done, that side will have more provisions which is able to get and store up more, and those will be in a state of siege who are weaker.
1.16
As we are, we are not at all different from those who sail the seas: they keep on sailing continually, but they leave the waters over which they have sailed no more their own than those over which they have not sailed. But if we get fortresses, these will alienate the country from the enemy while everything will be smooth sailing for us.
1.17
But perhaps some of you may fear that you will possibly have to do garrison duty far from your own country. You need have no hesitation on that score. For since we are far from home in any event, we will take it upon ourselves to do the garrison duty for you in the places nearest to the enemy; but those parts of Assyria which are on your own borders—do you take possession of them and cultivate them.
