[2] These words sound to me like an author’s note, parenthetically,
    and perhaps inadvertently, inserted into the text.  It is an
    “aside” to the reader, which in a modern book would appear as a
    footnote.

These proposals were carried, and that night two hundred slingers were enrolled, and next day as many as fifty horse and horsemen passed muster as duly qualified; buff jackets and cuirasses were provided for them, and a commandant of cavalry appointed to command—­Lycius, the son of Polystratus, by name, an Athenian.

IV

That day they remained inactive, but the next they rose earlier than 1 usual, and set out betimes, for they had a ravine to cross, where they feared the enemy might attack them in the act of crossing.  When they were across, Mithridates appeared again with one thousand horse, and archers and slingers to the number of four thousand.  This whole body he had got by request from Tissaphernes, and in return he undertook to deliver up the Hellenes to Tissaphernes.  He had grown contemptuous since his late attack, when, with so small a detachment, he had done, as he thought, a good deal of mischief, without the slightest loss to himself.

When the Hellenes were not only right across, but had got about a mile from the ravine, Mithridates also crossed with his forces.  An order had been passed down the lines, what light infantry and what heavy infantry were to take part in the pursuit; and the cavalry were instructed to follow up the pursuit with confidence, as a considerable 3 support was in their rear.  So, when Mithridates had come up with them, and they were well within arrow and sling shot, the bugle sounded the signal to the Hellenes; and immediately the detachment under orders rushed to close quarters, and the cavalry charged.  There the enemy preferred not to wait, but fled towards the ravine.  In this pursuit the Asiatics lost several of their infantry killed, and of their cavalry as many as eighteen were taken prisoners in the ravine.  As to those who were slain the Hellenes, acting upon impulse, mutilated their bodies, by way of impressing their enemy with as frightful an image as possible.

So fared the foe and so fell back; but the Hellenes, continuing their march in safety for the rest of that day, reached the river Tigris.  Here they came upon a large deserted city, the name of which was Larissa[1]:  a place inhabited by the Medes in days of old; the breadth of its walls was twenty-five feet, and the height of them a hundred, and the circuit of the whole two parasangs.  It was built of clay-bricks, supported on a stone basis twenty feet high.  This city the king of the Persians[2] besieged, what time the Persians strove to snatch their empire from the Medes, but he could in no wise take it; then a cloud hid the face of the sun and blotted out the light thereof, until the inhabitants were gone out of the city, and so it was taken.  By the side of this city there was a stone pyramid in breadth a hundred feet, and in height two hundred feet; in it were many of the barbarians who had fled for refuge from the neighbouring villages.