considerable difficulty in overcoming them. An unforeseen act of
treachery obliged the Lydians to hasten their preparations and commence
hostilities before the moment agreed on. Eurybatos, an Ephesian, to whom
the king had entrusted large sums of money for the purpose of raising
mercenaries in the Peloponnesus, fled with his gold into Persia, and
betrayed the secret of the coalition. The Achaemenian sovereign did not
hesitate to forestall the attack, and promptly assumed the offensive.
The transport of an army from Ecbatana to the middle course of the
Halys would have been a long and laborious undertaking, even had it kept
within the territory of the empire; it would have necessitated crossing
the mountain groups of Armenia at their greatest width, and that at a
time when the snow was still lying deep upon the ground and the torrents
were swollen and unfordable. The most direct route, which passed through
Assyria and the part of Mesopotamia south of the Masios, lay for the
most part in the hands of the Chaldæans, but their enfeebled condition
justified Cyrus's choice of it, and he resolved, in the event of their
resistance, to cut his way through sword in hand. He therefore bore
down upon Arbela by the gorges of Rowandîz in the month Nisan, making as
though he were bound for Karduniash; but before the Babylonians had time
to recover from their alarm at this movement, he crossed the river not
far from Nineveh and struck into Mesopotamia. He probably skirted the
slopes of the Masios, overcoming and killing in the month Iyyâr
some petty king, probably the ruler of Armenia,* and debouched into
Cappadocia. This province was almost entirely in the power of the enemy;
Nabonidus had despatched couriers by the shortest route in order to warn
his ally, and if necessary to claim his promised help.

* Ploigl, who was the first to refer a certain passage in
the _Annals of Nabonidus_ to the expedition against Croesus,
restored Is[parda] as the name of the country mentioned, and