As soon as the design against his brother’s throne was decided, the younger Cyrus, with increased sedulity, extended his connections among the Greeks. They alone, among the nations of that time, knew how to train armies so that thousands of men might act as one machine. Hence their heavy-armed had a power in the shock of battle that no number of more irregular troops, however brave, could resist. Through the long and extensive war lately concluded, Greece abounded with experienced officers, and with men of inferior rank, much practised in arms, and little in any peaceful way of livelihood. Opportunity was thus ready for raising a force of Grecian mercenaries, almost to any amount. What required circumspection was to avoid alarming the court of Susa; and this the defective principles and worse practice of the Persian administration made even easy. Cyrus therefore directed his Grecian commanders, in the several towns, to enlist Greeks, especially Peloponnesians, as many as they could; with the pretence of strengthening his garrisons against the apprehended attempts of Tissaphernes. In Miletus, so the popularity of his character prevailed, a conspiracy was formed for revolting to him; but before it could be carried into effect, it was discovered; and, by the satrap’s order, the ringleaders were executed, and many of their adherents banished. Cyrus not only protected the fugitives, but besieged Miletus by land and sea; and this new war furnished an additional pretence for levying troops.
Notwithstanding the character of frankness, honour, and strict regard for truth which Cyrus generally supported, the candour of Xenophon, his friend and panegyrist, has not concealed from us that he could stoop to duplicity when the great interest of his ambition instigated. So far from acknowledging any purpose of disobedience to the head of the empire, he condescended to request from that brother, against whose throne and life his preparations were already directed, the royal authority for adding Ionia to his immediate government. The request was granted; at the instance, it was said, of Parysatis, who preserved much influence with her elder son, while she incited the nefarious views of the younger against him.
Among the many Greeks admitted to the conversation and to the table of Cyrus, was Clearchus, a Lacedæmonian; who, after serving in the armies of his own commonwealth, through the Peloponnesian War, found himself, at the age of fifty, still uneasy in rest. Seeking opportunity for military employment, he thought he had discovered it in the Thracian Chersonesus, where the Greek settlers were harassed by incursions of the neighbouring barbarians; and he persevered in representation and solicitation to the ephors till he obtained a commission for a command there. Hastening his departure, at Corinth an order of recall overtook him. The disappointment was more than he could bear; he resolved to disobey the revered scytale; and proceeded, in defiance of it, to act in pursuance of his commission received. For this he was, in absence, condemned to death; a sentence operating to his banishment for life.
What fair hope now remained to Clearchus does not appear; but the need of military talents, continually and extensively occurring among the various warring commonwealths and scattered colonies of the Greeks, always offered some prospect for adventurers of any considerable military reputation; and, in the moment, a still more inviting field, possibly always in his view, appeared in the court of Cyrus. Thither he went, and, under a forbidding outside, a surly countenance, a harsh voice, and rough manners, the prince discovering in him a character he wanted, after short intercourse, made him a present of ten thousand darics, near eight thousand pounds sterling.
Clearchus did not disappoint this magnificent generosity. Employing the whole of the prince’s present in raising troops, he offered, as an individual adventurer, that protection to the Chersonesites which, as a general of the Lacedæmonian forces, he had been commissioned to give, but which the Lacedæmonian government, though claiming to be the protecting power of the Grecian name, had finally refused to afford. His service was accepted; and his success against the barbarians, together with the uncommon regularity and inoffensiveness of his troops in the friendly country, so gratified, not the Chersonesites only, but all the Hellespontine Greeks, that, while he generally found subsistence at the expense of the enemy, they provided large pay for his army by voluntary contribution. Hence, with a discipline severe sometimes to excess, he preserved the general attachment of those under him; and thus a body of troops was kept in the highest order, ready for the service of Cyrus.
The circumstances of Thessaly afforded another opportunity. Aristippus, a Thessalian of eminence, probably banished by faction, had been admitted to the prince’s familiarity. Returning afterwards to his own country, and becoming head of his party, divisions were still such that civil war followed. Then Aristippus thought he might profit from that claim which the ancient doctrine of hospitality gave him upon the generosity of Cyrus. He requested levy-money for two thousand men, with pay for three months. Cyrus granted them for four thousand, and six months; only stipulating that without previous communication with him no accommodation should be concluded with the adverse party. Thus another body of troops, unnoticed, was maintained for Cyrus.
Proxenus, a Theban of the first rank and highest connections, happy in his talents, cultivated under the celebrated Gorgias, of manners to win, and character to deserve esteem, dissatisfied with the state of things in his own city, passed, at the age of towards thirty, to the court of Cyrus, with the direct purpose of seeking employment, honour, and fortune; and, in Xenophon’s phrase, of so associating with men in the highest situations that he might earn the means of doing, rather than lie under the necessity of receiving favours. Recommended by such advantages, Proxenus not only obtained the notice, but won the friendship of Cyrus, who commissioned him to raise a Grecian force, pretended for a purpose which the Persian court could not disapprove, the reduction of the rebellious Pisidians.
Thus engaged in the prince’s service, it became the care of Proxenus to obtain in his foreign residence the society of a friend, of disposition, acquirements, and pursuits congenial to his own. With this view he wrote to a young Athenian, with whom he had long had intimacy, Xenophon, son of Gryllus, a scholar of Socrates, warmly urging him to come and partake of the prince’s favour, to which he engaged to introduce him. In the actual state of things at Athens enough might occur to disgust honest ambition. Xenophon therefore, little satisfied with any prospect there, accepted his friend’s invitation; and to these circumstances we owe his beautiful narrative of the ensuing transactions, which remains, like the Iliad, the oldest and the model of its kind.
For a Grecian land-force Cyrus contented himself with what might be procured by negotiation with individuals and the allurement of pay. But he desired the co-operation of a Grecian fleet, which, in the existing circumstances of Greece, could be obtained only through favour of the Lacedæmonian government. By a confidential minister therefore, despatched to Lacedæmon, he claimed a friendly return for his assistance in the war with Athens. The ephors, publicly acknowledging the justness of his claim, sent orders to Samius, then commanding on the Asiatic station, to join the prince’s fleet, and follow the directions of his admiral, Tamos, an Egyptian.
Preparation being completed, and the advantageous season for action approaching, all the Ionian garrisons were ordered to Sardis, and put under the command of Xenias, the Arcadian, commander of the Grecian guard, which had attended Cyrus into Upper Asia. The other Grecian troops were directed to join; some at Sardis, some at places farther eastward. A very large army of Asiatics, whom the Greeks called collectively Barbarians, was at the same time assembled. The pretence of these great preparations was to exterminate the rebellious Pisidians; and, in the moment, it sufficed for the troops. It could, however, no longer blind Tissaphernes; who, not choosing to trust others to report what he knew or suspected, set off, with all the speed that the way of travelling of an Eastern satrap would admit, with an escort of five hundred horse, to communicate personally with the king. Meanwhile Cyrus marched from Sardis, with the forces already collected, by Colossæ to Celænæ in Phrygia, a large and populous town, where he halted thirty days. There he was joined by the last division of his Grecian forces, which now amounted to about eleven thousand heavy-armed, and two thousand targeteers. His Asiatics or barbarians were near a hundred thousand.[b]