[6] The Hyrcanian cavalry play an important part in the “Cyropaedeia.” 
    They are the Scirites of the Assyrian army who came over to Cyrus
    after the first battle.  Their country is the fertile land touching
    the south-eastern corner of the Caspian.  Cf.  “Cyrop.”  IV. ii. 8,
    where the author (or an editor) appends a note on the present
    status of the Hyrcanians.

It was now high time to consider how they were to beat a retreat.  So seizing all the cattle and sheep to be had, with the slaves, they put them within a hollow square and proceed to drive them off.  Not that they had a thought to give to the spoils now, but for precaution’s sake and for fear lest if they left the goods and chattels behind and made off, the retreat would rapidly degenerate into a stampede, the enemy growing bolder as the troops lost heart.  For the present then they retired as if they meant to do battle for the spoils.  As soon as Gongylus espied how few the Hellenes were and how large the attacking party, out he came himself, in spite of his mother, with his private force, wishing to share in the action.  Another too joined in the rescue—­Procles, from Halisarna and Teuthrania, a descendant of Damaratus.  By this time Xenophon and his men were being sore pressed by the arrows and slingstones, though they marched in a curve so as to keep their shields facing the missiles, and even so, barely crossed the river Carcasus, nearly half of them wounded.  Here it was that Agasias the Stymphalian, the captain, received his wound, while keeping up a steady unflagging fight against the enemy from beginning to end.  And so they reached home in safety with about two hundred captives, and sheep enough for sacrifices.

The next day Xenophon sacrificed and led out the whole army under the 20 cover of night, intending to pierce far into the heart of Lydia with a view to lulling to sleep the enemy’s alarm at his proxmity, and so in fact to put him off his guard.  But Asidates, hearing that Xenophon had again sacrificed with the intention of another attack, and was approaching with his whole army, left his tower and took up quarters in some villages lying under the town of Parthenium.  Here Xenophon’s party fell in with him, and took him prisoner, with his wife, his children, his horses, and all that he had; and so the promise of the earlier victims was literally fulfilled.  After that they returned again to Pergamus, and here Xenophon might well thank God with a warm heart, for the Laconians, the officers, the other generals, and the soldiers as a body united to give him the pick of horses and cattle teams, and the rest; so that he was now in a position himself to do another a good turn.

Meanwhile Thibron arrived and received the troops which he incorporated with the rest of his Hellenic forces, and so proceeded to prosecute a war against Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus[7].