36 HISTORY OF GREECE. ties, and entreated Klearchus to desist from farther assault The latter at first refused. Indignant that his recent insult and nar- row escape from death should be treated so lightly, he desired Proxenus to retire. His wrath was not appeased, until Cyrus himself, apprised of the gravity of the clanger, came galloping up with his personal attendants and his two javelins in hand. " Kle- archus, Proxenus, and all you Greeks (said he), you know not what you are doing. Be assured that if you now come to blows, it will be the hour of my destruction, and of your own also, shortly after me. For if your force be ruined, all these natives whom you see around, will become more hostile to us even than the men now serving with the King." On hearing this (says Xenophon) Klearchus came to his senses, and the troops dis- persed without any encounter." J After passing Pylae, the territory called Babylonia began. The hills flanking the Euphrates, over which the army had hithertc been passing, soon ceased, and low alluvial plains commenced.2 Traces were now discovered, the first throughout their long march, of a hostile force moving in their front, ravaging the country and burning the herbage. It was here that Cyrus detected the trea- son of a Persian nobleman named Orontes, whom he examined in his tent, in the presence of various Persians possessing his inti- mate confidence, as well as of Klearchus with a guard of three 1 Xen. Anab. i, 5,11-17
- The commentators agree in thinking that we are to understand by Pylae
a sort of gate or pass, marking the spot where the desert country north of Babylonia with its undulations of land, and its steep banks along the river was exchanged for the flat and fertile alluvium constituting Baby- lonia proper. Perhaps there was a town near the pass, and named after it. Now it appears from Col. Chesney's survey that this alteration in the nature of the country takes place a few miles below Hit. He observes (Euphrates and Tigris, vol. i, p. 54) "Three miles below Hit, the remains of aqueducts disappear, and the windings become shorter and more frequent, as the river flows through a tract of country almost level." Thereabouts it is that I am inclined to place Pylse. Colonel Chesney places it lower down, twenty-five miles from Hit. Pro fessor Koch (Zug der Zehn Tausend, p. 44), lower down still. Mr. Ains worth places it as much as seventy geographical miles lower than Hit (Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 81); compare Hitter, Erd kunde. "West Asien, x p. 16 ; xi, pp. 755-763.
