[4] So the Medes and Tigranes with his men washed away the stains of
battle, and put on the apparel that was laid out for them, and fell to
dinner, and the horses had their provender too. They sent half the bread
to the Persians but no relish with it and no wine, thinking that Cyrus
and his men possessed a store, because he had said they had enough and
to spare. But Cyrus meant the relish of hunger, and the draught from the
running river. [5] Thus he regaled his Persians, and when the darkness
fell he sent them out by fives and tens and ordered them to lie in
ambush around the camp, so as to form a double guard, against attack
from without, and absconders from within; any one attempting to make off
with treasures would be caught in the act. And so it befell; for many
tried to escape, and all of them were seized. [6] As for the treasures,
Cyrus allowed the captors to keep them, but he had the absconders
beheaded out of hand, so that for the future a thief by night was hardly
to be found. Thus the Persians passed their time. [7] But the Medes
drank and feasted and made music and took their fill of good cheer and
all delights; there was plenty to serve their purpose, and work enough
for those who did not sleep.

[8] Cyaxares, the king of the Medes, on the very night when Cyrus set
forth, drank himself drunk in company with the officers in his own
quarters to celebrate their good fortune. Hearing uproar all about him,
he thought that the rest of the Medes must have stayed behind in the
camp, except perhaps a few, but the fact was that their domestics,
finding the masters gone, had fallen to drinking in fine style and
were making a din to their hearts' content, the more so that they had
procured wine and dainties from the Assyrian camp. [9] But when it was
broad day and no one knocked at the palace gate except the guests
of last night's revel, and when Cyaxares heard that the camp was
deserted--the Medes gone, the cavalry gone--and when he went out and saw
for himself that it was so, then he fumed with indignation against Cyrus
and his own men, to think that they had gone off and left him in the
lurch. It is said that without more ado, savage and mad with anger as he
was, he ordered one of his staff to take his troopers and ride at once
to Cyrus and his men, and there deliver this message:

[10] "I should never have dreamed that Cyrus could have acted towards
me with such scant respect, or, if he could have thought of it,