are kept out of the plains only by such periodic chastisement as Cyrus
allowed his army to inflict in Pisidia and Lycaonia. Cilicia is being
administered and defended by its own prince, who bears the same name or
title as his predecessor in the days of Sennacherib, but is feudally
accountable to the Great King. His land is so far his private property
that Cyrus, though would-be lord of all the empire, encourages the
pillage of the rich provincial capital. The fleet of Cyrus lands men and
stores unmolested in north Syria, while the inner country up to the
Euphrates and down its valley as far as Babylonia is at peace. The Great
King is able to assemble above half a million men from the east and
south to meet his foe, besides the levy of Media, a province which now
seems to include most of the ancient Assyria. These hundreds of
thousands constitute a host untrained, undisciplined, unstable, unused
to service, little like the ordered battalions of an essentially
military power such as the Assyrian had been.

From the story of the Retreat certain further inferences may be drawn.
First, Babylonia was a part of the empire not very well affected to the
Great King; or else the Greeks would have been neither allowed by the
local militia to enter it so easily nor encouraged by the Persians to
leave it. Second, the ancient Assyria was a peaceful province not
coerced by a standing Persian force or garrisons of any strength. Third,
southern Kurdistan was not held by or for the Great King and it paid
tribute only to occasional pressure. Fourth, the rest of Kurdistan and
Armenia as far north as the upper arm of the Euphrates was held,
precariously, by the Persians; and lastly, north of the Euphrates valley
up to the Black Sea all was practical independence. We do not know
anything precise about the far eastern provinces or the south Syrian in
this year, 400. Artaxerxes, the Great King, came from Susa to meet his
rebellious brother, but to Babylon he returned to put to death the