Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/441

 ARTAXERXES. 433 last luckily met with one of those poor Caunian camp- followers, who had in a wretched skin about four pints of foul and stinking water, which he took and gave to the king ; and when he had drunk all off, he asked him if he did not dislike the water ; but he declared by all the gods, that he never so much relished either wine, or water out of the lightest or purest stream. "And therefore," said he, " if I fail myself to discover and reward him who gave it to you, I beg of heaven to make him rich and prosperous." Just after this, came back the thirty messengers, with joy and triumph in their looks, bringing him the tidings of his unexpected fortune. And now he was also encour- aged by the number of soldiers that again began to flock in and gather about him ; so that he presently de- scended into the plain with many lights and flambeaus round about him. And when he had come near the dead body, and, according to a certain law of the Persians, the right hand and head had been lopped off from the trunk, he gave orders that the latter should be brought to him, and, grasping the hair of it, which was long and bushy, he showed it to those who were still uncertain and dis- posed to fly. They were amazed at it, and did him hom- age ; so that there were presently seventy thousand of them got about him, and entered the camp again with him. He had led out to the fight, as Ctesias affirms, four hundred thousand men. But Dinon and Xenophon aver that there were many more than forty myriads actually engaged. As to the number of the slain, as the catalogue of them was given up to Artaxerxes, Ctesias says, they were nine thousand, but that they appeared to him no fewer than twenty thousand. Thus far there is some- thing to be said on both sides. But it is a flagrant untruth on the part of Ctesias to say that he was sent along with Phalinus the Zacynthian and some others to VOL. v. 28