Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/83

 MOTIVES OF THE PERSIANS. 61 go back to the King, make preparations, and return to reconduct the Greeks home ; going himself to his own satrapy. 1 The statements of Ktesias, though known to us only indirectly and not to be received without caution, afford ground for believing that Queen Parysatis decidedly wished success to her son Cyrus in his contest for the throne, that the first report conveyed to hsr of the battle of Kunaxa, announcing the victory of Cyrus, fill&d her with joy, which was exchanged for bitter sorrow when she was informed of his death, that she caused to be slain with horrible tortures all those, who though acting in the Persian army and for the defence of Artaxerxes, had any participation in the death of Cyrus and that she showed favorable dispositions to- wards the Cyreian Greeks. 2 It seems probable, farther, that her influence may have been exerted to procure for them an unim- peded retreat, without anticipating the use afterwards made by Tissaphernes (as will soon appear) of the present convention. And in one point of view, the Persian king had an interest in facilitating their retreat. For the very circumstance which ren- dered retreat difficult, also rendered the Greeks dangerous to him in their actual position. They were in the heart of the Persian empire, within seventy miles of Babylon ; in a country not only teeming with fertility, but also extremely defensible; especially against cavalry, from the multiplicity of canals, as Herodotus ob- served respecting Lower Egypt. 3 And Klearchus might say t<? his Grecian soldiers, what Xenophon was afterwards prepar- ing to say to them at Kalpe on the Euxine Sea, and what Nikias also affirmed to the unhappy Athenian army whom he conducted away from Syracuse 4 that wherever they sat down, they were sufficiently numerous and well-organized to become at once a city. A body of such troops might effectually assist, and would perhaps encourage, the Babylonian population to throw off the Persian yoke, and to exonerate themselves from the prodigious tribute which they now paid to the satrap. For these reasons, 1 Xen. Anab. it, 3, 18-27. Fragment. 18, preserved by the so-called Deiretrius Phalereis : sec alsc Plutarch, Artaxerx. c. 17. 1 Herodot. i, 193; ii, 108; Strabo, xvii p. 788 4 >Ten. Anab. v, 6. 16 ; Thucvl. vii.
 * KtesisE Fersica, Fragm. c. 59, ed. Bahr ; compared with the remarkable