There was however one empire, that of Persia, in which the title of Great carried with it no distinction, for in this country every king was called the Great King, not because it was supposed that his nature was more noble or his actions more splendid than those of other men, but because he was lord of a vast empire, greater than had ever yet been seen upon the face of the earth.

The Persian empire had been founded about a hundred and fifty years before the time of this story, by Cyrus the Great, who, having succeeded by to the double throne of Persia and Media, had conquered many of the surrounding nations. The kings who came after him extended their sway farther and farther, until at last, in the time of Darius I., there were no less than fifty-six countries subject to the Great King of Persia.

The Great King was looked upon as little less than a god. Every one who entered his presence threw himself flat upon the ground, as if in the presence of a divine being. It was supposed that a mere subject must of necessity be struck to the earth with sudden blindness on meeting the dazzling rays of such exalted majesty.

The court of the Great King was on a scale of the utmost splendour. His chief residence was the city of Susa, but in the hot season he preferred the city of Ecbatana, which was higher and cooler, and he also stayed occasionally at Babylon and at Persepolis. At each of these places there was an immense palace, adorned with every conceivable magnificence, and from the discoveries recently made among the ruins of Persepolis we can form some idea of what the palace of the Great King of Persia must have been like.

The palace of Persepolis stood upon a terrace above the rest of the city, and all round it were houses of a simpler kind, used for lodging the soldiers and the civil and military officers who were attached to the King's person, and who ate daily at his expense. There must, in all, have been about fifteen thousand of them, including the ten thousand soldiers of the royal body-guard.

The gate of the-palace was approached by two superb flights of marble stairs, which joined in front of the entrance, and were so wide that ten horsemen could ride abreast up each side. Within the gate was a square building with a front of more than two hundred feet. The entrance-hall was a magnificent room, with a roof supported by a hundred pillars of richly carved stone, and on either side of it were other rooms with beautiful pillars. In all directions lovely colours and ornaments of gold and silver met the eye. The walls were covered with gigantic sculptures, representing the Great Kings Darius I. and Xerxes, who had built the palace, with attendants, both in time of peace, and at war with monsters and wild beasts. Together with the sculptures were inscriptions which can be read even now. This is a translation of the beginning of one of them: I am Darius, the Great King, the King of kings, the King of these many countries. Among the sculptures is one that represents Darius seated on his throne, with a slave standing behind him, holding in his hand a fan with which to keep off the flies. The mouth of the slave is covered with a bandage, for it would have been considered a profanation to allow the air breathed by so august a sovereign to be polluted by the breath of a slave. Another sculpture represents an audience given to an ambassador, who, for the same reason, holds his hand before his mouth in the presence of the King.

When the Great King, gave an audience he sat upon a golden throne with a canopy above him which was held in its place by four slender pillars of gold adorned with precious stones. The whole effect was so dazzling that it would be hard to imagine anything more splendid, even in a fairy tale. On these occasions, and on all feast days, the King appeared in a purple robe, with a magnificent mantle of the same purple colour, richly embroidered. Round his waist was a golden girdle, and from it there hung a golden sabre, glittering with precious stones. On his head was the tiara, a sort of pointed cap worn by the Persians. Only the King might wear his tiara standing upright, all subjects were obliged to press down the point, or arrange the cap in some other way. The colour of the royal tiara was blue and white, and it was encircled with a golden crown. The full value of the gala costume was reckoned at nearly 300,000l.  of our money.

It was only on rare occasions that the King walked, and then only within the precincts of the palace; on these occasions carpets were spread before him, on which no foot but his might tread. When he rode beyond the palace, the right of helping him into his saddle was bestowed as a mark of great distinction upon one of the most highly-favoured lords of the empire. More frequently, however, the King preferred to drive in his chariot, and at these times the road he intended to take was specially cleansed, and strewn with myrtle as if for a festival, and filled with clouds of incense. It was lined, moreover, with armed men on both sides; and guards with whips prevented any approach to the royal chariot. If a distant journey had to be undertaken, no less than twelve hundred camels and a whole multitude of chariots, waggons and other means of transport were required to convey the Great King, his countless attendants, and his endless baggage.

At a distance of about two miles from Persepolis was a great pile of marble rock, and here Darius I. caused his tomb to be made whilst he was yet alive. So steep and inaccessible was the cliff that the only way of placing the body in the tomb prepared for it was by raising it from below with ropes. Afterwards three other royal tombs were hewn out of the same rock, and three more in another, not far off.

All Persians were allowed to have many wives, and the Great King had often a very large number; Darius, for example, had three hundred and sixty—almost as many as there are days in the year. Yet only one of these was the Queen; all the rest were so far beneath her that, when she approached, they had to bow themselves to the ground before her.

Like all Persians, the King only ate once a day, but the meal lasted a very long time. He sat at centre of the table, upon a divan framed in gold and covered with rich hangings. At his right hand was the Queen-Mother; at his left, the Queen-Consort. The princes and intimate friends of the King, who were called his table-companions, usually took their meal in an adjoining room. On feast days, however, they were permitted to dine in the royal presence, and on these occasions, seats made of cushions or carpets were placed for them upon the floor.

The power of the Great King was bounded by no law; from his will there was no appeal. He was a despot in the strictest sense of the word, and his subjects were all alike his slaves, from the lowest to the highest, not even excepting his nearest relations. In the whole world there was only one person whom he was required to treat with any kind of respect; this was his mother.

Neither was the Persian nation what it had been in the time of the great Cyrus, when even the nobles were simple in their habits, and when every Persian made it his pride to ride well, to shoot well, and always to speak the truth. Now, nobles and people alike had become luxurious and pleasure-loving, caring for nothing but to increase their own power and wealth, no matter at what cost to the subject nations.

The empire was unwieldy in size, and moreover it lacked any real bond of union. The various nations of which it was composed differed in language, in manners, and in habits of life. Each province was interested in its own local affairs, but was profoundly indifferent to the fate of the empire at large; and in time of war the soldiers were so little inclined to risk their lives for a monarch of whom they knew nothing that they only fought under compulsion, and often had to be driven with whips to face the enemy.

In order to provide for the government of the empire, it was subdivided into provinces, and each province, or group of two or more provinces, was placed under the charge of one of the great lords. It was the duty of these governors—or Satraps, as they were called—to act as the representative of the sovereign, to maintain law and order, and to take care that the people had no opportunity of revolting from their subjection to the Great King.

The power of the satraps was practically absolute, and a thoroughly disloyal Satrap could even go so far as to seize some favourable opportunity to detach his province from the empire and make himself an independent sovereign. The King was, indeed, accustomed to make a journey of inspection every year into one or other of his provinces, but in each province such visits were of rare occurrence, and a Satrap who wished to seek his own advantage, instead of studying the interests of the King and of the empire, had every opportunity of doing so. The empire is large, he might well say to himself, and the King is far away.

With a view to checking such tendencies on the part of the Satraps, the Persian nobles were trained in habits of implicit obedience and subjection to the sovereign, and were kept in constant fear of being ruined by some report of treason or misgovernment on their part which should reach the ears of the King. Upon the smallest suspicion, and without any sort of trial, a man who was accused of plotting treason against the King might be removed from his post, and either openly or secretly put to death. A story is told of Darius I., who was one of the best of the Great Kings, that once, when he was about to engage in an expedition against the Scythians, a Persian noble prostrated himself before him, and craved as a boon that of his three sons he might be allowed to keep one at home with him. The King answered that he should keep them all at home, and gave command to put them to death immediately.

In a similar manner the people were crushed by severe and cruel laws, just as wild animals are cowed by ill-treatment and want of food. As conquered nations they were not expected to have any attachment to the King, or any interest in the welfare of the empire, and although now and again services rendered to the King would be rewarded by overwhelming favours, yet the means chiefly relied upon for securing good behaviour was the certainty that every offence would meet with prompt and barbarous punishment. Not only criminals, but even persons merely suspected of having committed crimes, were put to death in the most horrible manner. Some were crushed between stones, others were torn limb from limb, and others, again, suffered painful imprisonment in troughs. For merely trifling offences they were cruelly mutilated.

There is a Persian proverb that the King has many eyes and ears. In every state the king must have means of knowing through his trusted officers, who see and hear for him, what is going on among the people. But in Persia the arrangements for obtaining information of this kind were reduced to a science. Satraps and people alike were constantly watched by a body of spies, and so secretly was this done that it was not even known who were the officers employed. A favourite device of the spies was to feign a friendship for the person whose actions they wished to report, and a man might be arrested and executed without once suspecting the false friend who had given information of his real or imaginary guilt. Sometimes the spy would denounce an innocent man for no other reason than to bring himself into notice as active in the King's service.

Another plan was to take note of every one who passed along the roads which led from the various Residences of the Great King to the other principal towns of the empire. These roads were commanded by fortresses where officers were stationed whose duty it was to enquire of every wayfarer whither he was going and on what errand, and any messenger carrying a letter was obliged to give it up for inspection. This was intended to check the free passage of suspicious persons, and to prevent the sending of letters not approved by the government; but it must often have been easy to find means of evading the King's officers.

In order that the King might be informed as quickly as possible of any risings or disturbances in the provinces, a very complete system of postal communication had been arranged. Besides the fortresses, there were stations all along the roads, at intervals of about fifteen miles apart, where the traveller could find shelter for the night. Here the swiftest horses and horsemen were always waiting in readiness to carry on the post at full gallop without a moment's delay, whether in burning sun or blinding snow: and thus there came to be a saying that the Persian post-riders fly faster than the cranes. A messenger sent from Susa to Sardis, traveling at the ordinary speed, would take a hundred days to reach his destination; but by means of the King's posts a letter could be conveyed in six or seven days and nights. It must not be supposed, however, that ordinary letters were carried so fast. The King's posts were entirely reserved for the King's business, and by this means he had the advantage of getting news from the provinces and sending back his commands before any one else knew what was going on.

But, in spite of all these precautions, the King, like his subjects, lived in constant fear. He never showed himself to the people, except surrounded by his ten thousand guards. If he gave an audience, the person admitted to the royal presence was compelled, on pain of death, to present himself dressed in a robe with long sleeves falling over the bands, so that he should not be able to use his hands against his sovereign. If he entertained guests at his table, those among them who were considered the most faithful were placed at his right hand, and the less trusted at his left, because, in case of need, he would be better able to defend himself with the right hand than with the left. Each dish that was set before him was first tasted by an officer in the royal presence, lest there should be poison in the food, and in like manner, the cup-bearer always drank first from the cup that he handed.

Under such a system of mutual fear and distrust, the seeds of ruin and decay were sown throughout the Persian empire, and each succeeding century saw it tottering more helplessly towards its final overthrow. But from without everything appeared fair and prosperous, and up to the very last, the Great Kings were careful to maintain all the pomp and splendour of imperial power.

In many respects Hellas was a complete contrast to Persia. The country was a very small one, and it was further divided into a number of tiny states, each with a free government of its own, and independent of all the rest. To the Hellene citizen, the one supreme necessity of life was freedom, and consequently in almost all the states the government was in the hands of men chosen by the people. Now and again a monarchy would be established in one or other of the states, but it never lasted long, and in their horror of tyrants, the Hellenes were apt to overlook the advantages of a firm, stable government.

It is true that in Hellas there were many slaves, but they formed a class apart and were in no sense citizens. The citizens themselves were free, and the Hellenes were convinced that honour, courage, and high-mindedness can only flourish among free men. It was their greatest pride to recall the battles fought by their countrymen in former days against the Barbarians of Persia, when, although outnumbered by ten to one, a handful of free men had put to flight a host of slaves.

The Queen was beautiful, and wise and clever, and she had great influence over her husband, and seldom failed in persuading him to do as she wished. She hoped therefore to induce the King to name Cyrus as his successor, especially as there was much that could be urged in favour of her plan.

It was certainly true that the throne of Persia descended, as a rule, from the father to his first-born son, but there was nothing to prevent an elder son being passed over in favour of a younger, and such a course was not without precedent. In the present case, an excuse might be found in the fact that the birth of Artaxerxes had taken place before his father came to the throne, whereas Cyrus had been born in the purple, and moreover bore the honoured name of the greatest of Persian sovereigns.

But a much stronger argument was the difference in character between the two men. Artaxerxes was weak and indolent, and lived constantly at the King's court, hating exertion of any kind. Cyrus, on the contrary, was active and energetic, and had already given striking proofs of ability, both as a soldier and ruler of men, for at the age of eighteen, he had been appointed satrap of the provinces of Lydia, Greater Phrygia and Cappadocia.

Cyrus had many friends. He was a man just after the Persian heart,—a bold rider, an unrivalled archer and spear-thrower, and a passionate lover of the chase, especially when it was dangerous. He also excited the admiration of the Persians by his power of drinking an enormous quantity of wine without becoming intoxicated. This was looked upon as a sign of manliness, and a great distinction.

In the pleasant and peaceful occupation of Cyrus also took great delight. This charming pursuit had been raised almost to the rank of a religious duty by Zoroaster, the founder of the Persian religion, who had taught his disciples that when occupied in the planting and tending of trees useful to man, they were engaged in a good action, well-pleasing to God; and in consequence of this precept, almost every palace stood in the centre of a large park or tract of enclosed land, covered with beautiful old trees.

The palace of Cyrus stood in such a park, called by the Persians a paradise. Here he might often be seen, attending to the trees with the utmost diligence. Here too was a convenient bunting-ground, ready to his hand, for the forest was full of wild animals who found abundant pasture in its pleasant glades. One day when Cyrus was out hunting he was attacked by a she-bear, who dragged him from his horse, and gave him several wounds before he could kill her. One of his companions came to his help, and for this service Cyrus rewarded him in so princely a manner as to make him an envied man.

As a friend, Cyrus was always generous and openhanded, and he delighted in making small presents as well as great. According to an old custom, every subject who came to his court brought with him gifts, and these Cyrus always accepted, but not for himself; he took them in order that he might divide them among his friends. Sometimes, at a banquet, if he observed that the wine set before him was better than usual, he would send away part of it to one of his friends with some such message as this: Drink this good wine to-day with your dearest friend. Or perhaps the gift would consist of half a goose or part of a loaf of bread, which would be taken to the friend with the message, Cyrus has enjoyed this, and desires that you should taste it also.

If he gave a promise, or entered into an agreement, it was certain that he would keep his word. A friendship once formed he ever afterwards regarded as sacred. Any one who did him a service, whether in war or in peace, was rewarded tenfold. At the same time, any one who offended or injured him might expect the most savage retaliation. He is said to have once prayed to the gods to grant that he might live until he had repaid all his friends and all his enemies.

As a governor, Cyrus was strictly and sternly just. Well-doers were encouraged and rewarded, but evildoers met with immediate punishment; and as a warning to others, criminals who had been deprived of hands, legs or eyes, were exposed to view in the most frequented streets. In the whole empire there were no provinces in which natives and strangers alike were so secure from robbery and murder as in those governed by Cyrus.

Meanwhile the Great King Darius II. felt his end approaching, and as he wished to have both his sons beside his death-bed, he sent for Cyrus to come to Susa. On receiving the message, the young prince set out at once for the King's court, accompanied by Tissaphernes, the satrap of a neighbouring province, whom he looked upon as one of his friends. He took with him also a body-guard of three hundred Hellenes, who had entered his service.

Cyrus was full of hope that the influence of his mother, and the favour with which he was regarded by the Persians generally, would cause his father to bequeath the throne to him, and not to Artaxerxes. If the choice of their future sovereign had been left to the people, they would probably have chosen Cyrus. But in Persia, the naming of the successor was the right of the reigning king, and the hopes of Cyrus were doomed to disappointment. On his death-bed, Darius named, not his younger, but his elder son; and the upright tiara, encircled with the golden crown, passed to Artaxerxes.

Cyrus was vexed and angry at the failure of his hopes, and probably took little pains to conceal his feelings, for he was of a very passionate nature. However this may have been, Tissaphernes, whose friendship for him had been merely feigned, went to the new King and told him that his brother had made up his mind to have him murdered.

The beginning of a new reign had often in Persia been signalled by bloody deeds, and the murder of a brother was by no means an unheard-of crime. Artaxerxes was therefore ready enough to believe the accusation, and immediately gave orders for his brother's arrest, for he was resolved to defeat his ambitious schemes by the most effectual of all methods, namely by putting him to death.

Cyrus had many friends at the court, but there was not one who dared to come forward in his behalf, except his mother, Queen Parysatis. She indeed was ready to risk everything in order to save her favourite son, and being also the mother of the Great King, with a sacred claim upon his love and respect, she succeeded at last, after endless entreaties, in shaking his resolution and inducing him to pardon Cyrus.

Artaxerxes was far from being a great man, but he was at least easy-going and good-natured, and now his mother so far prevailed upon him, that he not only set Cyrus at liberty, but also reinstated him in his former dignities, and allowed him to depart to his own province.

Cyrus returned therefore to his Residence at Sardis, full of bitterness and disappointment. It is not known whether or not he had really plotted the murder of his brother. The story may very possibly have been invented by Tissaphernes through envy of Cyrus, and in the hope of succeeding to the government of his provinces.

This much however is at least certain, that after having been treated as guilty of high treason, and condemned to death in consequence, Cyrus had but one object in life, and that to further this object, he did not hesitate to employ the power entrusted to him for a very different purpose. From this time forward his whole mind was set upon obtaining by conquest the throne of Persia.

On the other hand however, it might be urged that the Great King could not at once assemble his whole force. So immense were the distances in this huge empire, that a whole year of preparation would be required, in order to bring up the army to its full strength. And Cyrus intended, if possible, to take his brother by surprise. He believed moreover that his disadvantage in point of numbers would be more than counterbalanced by the infinitely superior quality of at least a part of his army.

It was from among the Hellenes that he hoped to enlist such troops as could not fail to ensure his success. Some years before this, he had visited Hellas as his father's ambassador at the time of the Peloponnesian war, and had observed the unusual talent displayed by the Hellenes for military enterprise. He had made many friends among them, whose friendship he still retained, and he was anxious to induce as many Hellene soldiers as possible to enter his service.

The Hellenes had always been fond or adventure, and just at this time there were numbers of them willing and eager to engage themselves to a foreign master who promised good wages, especially when this master was a prince well known to be generous and open-handed, and above all, a lover of Hellas and the Hellenes. During the long Peloponnesian war they had become accustomed to an unsettled, adventurous camp-life, and now that the war was over, they did not care to return to peaceful pursuits.

But Cyrus could not, without betraying his plans, begin openly to enlist foreign troops. It was necessary to find a pretext for employing them, and in this he was helped by fortune. For several hundred years there had been established along the west coast of Asia, numerous flourishing colonies of Ionian Hellenes. At first, and for a long time, they were free states, but they had been conquered at last by the Persians, and now they formed part of the Persian empire, and were included in the satrapy of Tissaphernes.

Most fortunately however for Cyrus it happened that just at this time the Ionian cities rebelled, not against the Great King, but against Tissaphernes, and begged Cyrus to take them under his protection. To this he gladly agreed, for it gave him a pretext for declaring war against Tissaphernes, and supplied a cloak with which to cover the preparations he was making for his great enterprise. Accordingly he sent word to the Ionian cities that their garrisons should be strengthened by the addition of Hellene soldiers, which he proceeded to levy for the purpose. He also raised troops for the relief of Miletus, one of the largest of the cities, and the only one left in the hands of Tissaphernes, who had received the news of the intended revolt in time to enable him to take prompt measures for suppressing it. He had removed the garrison, put to death the leaders of the opposition, and banished all suspected persons. These banished inhabitants had come to Cyrus, and in answer to their entreaties, he agreed to besiege Miletus both by land and water.

It may seem strange that, one satrap should have been able to wage war against another, whilst all the time both continued to be subjects of the Great King. But in point of fact, such rivalries between neighbouring satraps were rather encouraged than otherwise by the Great Kings, who lived in constant fear lest one or other of the great lords should take it into his head to make himself an independent sovereign, and consequently felt more secure when they were occupied in quarrelling among themselves. In this case moreover, the royal revenue suffered no loss through the revolt of the Ionian cities, for Cyrus took care to forward the tribute which they were required to send to Susa, just as regularly as it had before been sent by Tissaphernes.

Other opportunities also offered themselves to Cyrus for increasing the number of Hellene soldiers in his pay. About this time he received a visit from a Spartan named Clearchus, whose acquaintance he had made during the Peloponnesian war, and of whose ability as a military commander he had the highest opinion. Clearchus had come to him with a request on behalf of the cities of the Hellespont, who were at war with their barbarous neighbours, the Thracians, and could not hold their own against them without help. He wished to aid his countrymen by raising an army for their defence, and asked Cyrus to grant him for this purpose a sum of 10,000 darics. The request was a large one, but it was at once granted by Cyrus.

Shortly afterwards there came to him a Hellene from Thessaly, with a similar request. In his country, the party of which he was leader found itself hard pushed by the opposing faction, and he also desired to raise an army by means of which he and his friends might again have the upper hand. He asked Cyrus to let him have as much money as would enable him to hire 2,000 men for three months. I will give you gold enough, said Cyrus, to hire 4,000 men for six months, on condition that you prolong the quarrel with your enemies until I send for you.

Other requests of a similar kind were also granted by Cyrus, always with an intimation that he might require the troops later on for his own service. And thus he secretly collected a force of Hellenes which he kept employed in other undertakings, but ready to come to him when he should want them.

Meanwhile he was careful not to neglect any means of improving the Barbarian soldiers of his provinces, and this could be done openly, for it was part of his duty as satrap to practise the troops in all kinds of military exercises calculated to increase their efficiency.

All this time the Great King was constantly sending spies to Sardis to find out what his brother was doing, but on their return the spies invariably reported that they had seen nothing that could be regarded as suspicious. The fact was that Cyrus knew so well how to make himself agreeable to the spies, that although they reached Sardis as the friends of the King, they always became, before leaving it, the friends of Cyrus.

Every step that he took was weighed by Cyrus with the utmost caution; every difficulty that was likely to present itself on the road to Susa was considered carefully and deliberately, in order to ascertain the best means of overcoming it. No feeling of impatience was allowed to urge him on to any rash or premature action.

At last, three years after his return from the court, he judged that the preparations were sufficiently advanced, and that the time had come when he might venture to call in the companies of Hellene mercenaries from their various services, and also assemble his Persian troops.

Even now however he took care not to disclose the real object of the campaign. For had he announced his intention of marching against Susa, the Great King would have been at once put upon his guard, and moreover he had every reason to fear that the Hellenes would refuse to enter upon the expedition, if they knew how desperate was the venture, and how far it would lead them from their homes. By means of his posts the King could hear in less than a week of what was doing at Sardis, but an army could not march from thence to Susa in less than six months.

For these reasons Cyrus announced that the expedition was to be directed against the marauding tribes of Pisidia, who had often made raids upon the neighbouring provinces, and laid them waste. These tribes must, he said, be exterminated, in order to maintain the safety of the empire.

But there was one whose sharp eyes had followed all the doings of Cyrus with the close watchfulness of hatred, and who saw clearly through the veil with which he sought to conceal his real purpose. This was his neighbour, Tissaphernes. When he heard of the great host gathered together for the expedition against the Pisidians, Tissaphernes felt certain that Cyrus was aiming at nothing short of the throne of Persia; and taking with him a troop of five hundred cavalry, he set off at full speed for Susa, that he might be the first to warn the King of the approaching danger.

Of the Persian troops, the most brilliant and useful were the cavalry. The Persians had long been famous for their skill and activity as horsemen; they were also excellent archers, and could draw their long bows at full gallop with as accurate an aim as if they were standing still and undisturbed on solid ground.

Among the Hellenes, on the contrary, the most useful, and at the same time the most numerous, were the Hoplites, or heavy infantry. There were no cavalry, and in the whole army only forty mounted men, nearly all of whom were officers.

The hoplites wore a helmet, breast-plate and greaves of iron, and carried an oval shield of oxhide, overlaid with metal, which protected them from the mouth to the ankles. On its inner side the shield had a handle for holding it, and a strap wide enough for a shoulder-belt was attached to it at each end, so that it could be carried over the back. This was the usual way of carrying it on the march, when the enemy was known to be in the neighbourhood so that it was necessary to have the shield at hand, but not when the soldiers were engaged in actual fighting. For weapons of attack, they carried a spear measuring from seven to eight feet in length, made of strong wood with a solid iron point, and a short sword, or curved sabre. None but fine strong men could enter the ranks of the hoplites, for the full weight of the armour and weapons that they had to carry was no less than seventy pounds. The light infantry were armed quite differently. They had but one weapon of defence, a shield which was only two feet in length; besides this they had little to carry but their clothes, for they were practically a troop of foot cavalry, and it was necessary that they should be very active, and able both to advance and retreat with extreme rapidity. According to their weapons of attack, they were subdivided into troops of lancers, archers and slingers. The lancers carried several light javelins, from three to four feet in length, the archers carried bows and arrows, and the slingers carried slings, with which they hurled stones or leaden bullets at the enemy.

And now the great host is well on its way. Try to imagine the dense, suffocating clouds of dust that must have been raised by the progress of such an army! Supposing the troops to have marched ten abreast, leaving one pace between each rank, the Barbarian army would have formed a procession more than three miles long, and the Hellene army would have covered about a third of a mile more. Besides this, there was the long train of baggage-wagons, the great droves of animals brought for slaughter, the numberless beasts of burden, and the crowds of people who in some capacity or other followed the army, but did not march in the ranks.

Even in the Hellene army, which in comparison with the Barbarian force was but scantily provided with camp-followers, there were great numbers of slaves whose duty it was to pitch the tents, to prepare the food, and to attend generally to the comfort of the troops. The tents and utensils were packed with the other luggage in wagons which the slaves drove, or piled on the backs of transport animals which the slaves led. Many of the Hellene officers moreover, and even some of the private soldiers, had brought their own slaves to wait upon them and to carry their heavy shields and helmets when there was no likelihood of their being attacked on the march. Behind these came a number of provision-dealers and other merchants, who brought goods of all kinds to sell to the troops, and who were always ready to buy from them any spoil that they might have an opportunity of taking. Still further in the rear were trumpeters, heralds, sacrificing priests, soothsayers and surgeons.

But the Hellene camp-followers were outnumbered a hundred times by the followers of the Barbarian army. For in addition to the other slaves, the luxurious Persian lords had brought with them their cooks, their bakers, and all manner of personal attendants, besides enormous tents in which to house the many members of their households who accompanied them to the war. The complete length of the procession formed by the army and its retinue was nothing short of six miles.

This immense multitude, great enough to people a good-sized town, required every day to be fed, either by buying such provisions as could be obtained on the spot, when the country through which they were marching was fruitful and well-peopled, or, when the country was waste and desolate, by falling back upon the stores which they had brought with them. These stores they were careful to renew whenever there was an opportunity of doing so.

In the Barbarian army, the officers were entrusted with the duty of providing food for the troops, and seeing that each man received every day his due portion of bread, meat and wine. In the Hellene army, the men catered for themselves, for their pay was given them in money instead of food.

The ordinary pay of a Hellene soldier was one daric a month, or about twenty-one shillings of our money, and out of this he was expected to provide his own weapons. The captains received twice as much as the private soldiers, and the generals four times as much. To us such a sum appears a very miserable pittance, but it must be remembered that in those days the value of money was far greater than it is now. Moreover all alike, whether officers or privates, might count upon a good share of booty from the enemy's country.