THE MEDIAN AND THE CYROPAEDIA OF XENOPHON. 21 



who ruled over Phrygia by the Hellespont, is said to have done 

 the same. Immense booty was taken in the camp. The con- 

 federate army was dissolved for the time : to meet again in 

 greater force before the walls of Sardis. 



The King of the Assyrians — as the Greek writers so often call 

 the King of Babylon — seems at this time to have retired within 

 the walls of Babylon. Cyrus, on his part, appears to have been 

 perfectly conscious that his army at the moment would be quite 

 insufficient to undertake such an enterprise as the siege of the 

 great city of Babylon — although he seems at this time to have 

 been sometimes in its immediate neighbourhood — and he appears 

 to have kept his army moving about through the territory of 

 Babylonia, and letting it be known to all that he was very ready 

 to receive any of the rulers of the surrounding territories who 

 might be willing to join his standard. 



And it is at this time that Xenophon records that incident of 

 such special interest and importance in relation to the subject of 

 the present paper, namely : the coming over of Gobryas to 

 Cyrus. Xenophon tells how at this time an Assyrian man of 

 rank appeared on horseback, with an escort of horse, and said 

 that he wished to see Cyrus. When he was brought into the 

 presence of Cyrus, he said that he was an Assyrian by birth, 

 that he possessed a strong fortress, and was ruler of an extensive 

 territory. Xenophon mentions no name for the territory, but 

 the Cuneiform Inscriptions give Gobryas the title of " Governor 

 of Gutium." He went on to say that he had a body of 2300 

 Horse which he furnished to the King of the Assyrians, and the 

 king had been one of his greatest friends. " But," he continued, 

 " that good king died in battle against you, and his son, who is 

 now my bitterest enemy, possesses the kingdom. Therefore," 

 he said to Cyrus, " I come as a suppliant to you, and fall down 

 before you, and offer myself as a servant and an ally, and you, 

 I beseech, become an avenger for me ; and I adopt you just 

 as my son, as far as may be ; for I am childless as regards any 

 male children. For he who was my only son, handsome and good, 

 0 Master, and loving and honouring me in a way that might 

 make any father happy, and to whom the former Idng had 

 purposed to give the princess his daughter in marriage, was out 

 hunting one day with the present king when a bear, first, and 

 then a lion, coming into view, in each case the king shot a dart 

 at the beast and missed, and in each case my son shot and 

 brought down the game — and in his rash excitement cried, 



