The Historians' History of the World 04

There he spent the winter in preparations for the next campaign, and more particularly applied himself to the raising of a body of cavalry, which he perceived would be indispensable to the success and the safety of his future operations. For this purpose he made a list of the most opulent men in the Greek cities, and compelled each of them, as the condition of his exemption from personal service, to furnish a trooper. In the spring he collected his forces at Ephesus, and put them into an active course of training, rousing their emulation by the prizes which he proposed for the most gallant show, and the highest degree of expertness, in every department of the service. Xenophon, as an old soldier, is delighted with the recollection of the military bustle which prevailed during this season at Ephesus; where the wrestling schools and the hippodrome were constantly enlivened by the exercises of the men, the market was abundantly supplied with horses, and arms of every kind, and all the trades subservient to war were kept in full employment. Among other devices for raising the spirits of his troops, Agesilaus borrowed a hint, it would seem, from one of Cimon’s stratagems, and ordered his Persian prisoners to be exposed to sale naked, that the Greeks might contrast the delicacy of their persons with the robustness of frames hardened by the exercises of the palæstra.

Before he took the field again, a year having now elapsed from the commencement of his expedition, Lysander and his colleagues were superseded by a new body of councillors, and returned home. Agesilaus then gave public notice, that he meant to take the shortest road into the richest part of the enemy’s country. The notice was designed not more for the preparation of his own troops, than for Tissaphernes, who concluded that if this had been the intention of Agesilaus, he would not have disclosed it, and that now Caria was certainly his real mark. He therefore repeated the dispositions of the preceding summer. But while he waited for the enemy with his cavalry in the vale of the Mæander, Agesilaus directed his march towards the plains of Sardis, the richest of Western Asia. During three days he traversed them without seeing an enemy; but on the fourth the Persian cavalry, which Tissaphernes seems to have sent forward as soon as he heard of the movements of Agesilaus, suddenly came up, and cut off many of the followers of the camp, as they were ranging over the country in quest of plunder.

Tissaphernes had already arrived at Sardis; and his countrymen, many of whom had probably suffered considerable loss from the invasion, bitterly censured him for leaving them unprotected, and even it seems charged him with treachery. The complaints were carried up to the court, where he had one implacable and powerful enemy in the fiendish Parysatis, who thirsted to revenge herself on him for his enmity to her favourite son. She had already found that Artaxerxes was weak enough to sacrifice his most faithful servants to her resentment, even when he knew that it was inflamed by the very services which they had rendered to himself; and according to the most probable account, it was in compliance with her request that he now ordered Tissaphernes to be put to death. The execution of the sentence was committed to Tithraustes, who was appointed to succeed Tissaphernes in his satrapy, and was instructed to open a negotiation with Agesilaus. Accordingly, after executing the first part of his commission, which he did in the Turkish style by the hands of an underling, who surprised Tissaphernes in his bath, Tithraustes sent envoys to treat with the Spartan king. He affected to consider Tissaphernes as the author of the quarrel between his master and the Greeks, and, as if the end of their expedition was now answered by their enemy’s death, proposed that Agesilaus should return home. As to the Asiatic Greeks, Artaxerxes was willing to acknowledge their independence, on condition that they would pay their ancient tribute. Agesilaus replied, that he had no authority to conclude peace without the sanction of the government at home: but he would transmit the Persian overtures to Sparta. In the meanwhile Tithraustes was very anxious that hostilities should be suspended in his province, and, pleading his own merits in the execution of Tissaphernes, begged Agesilaus, while he waited for an answer to the terms proposed, to turn his arms against the satrapy of Pharnabazus. To this Agesilaus consented on condition that Tithraustes would defray the expense of the march; and he received thirty talents [£6000 or $30,000] on that score. This was a step beyond former precedents: for even Tissaphernes, though he had not scrupled to conclude a separate truce, had not paid the enemy a subsidy for invading another part of his master’s dominions.

[395 B.C.]