Under King Croesus, who was said to own as much gold as Midas but who had been cursed by the gods, Sardis was restored and became even more wealthy than in the past. In the last century Sardis, like the rest of Asia Minor, passed over to Persian control, and despite sometimes heavy-handed governance by the king's satraps and descendants, the most recent of whom was the young Cyrus, the city had over the years continued to prosper.
It was from Sardis that Darius and Xerxes had launched their expeditions against the Greeks almost a hundred years earlier, the former's culminating in his defeat at Marathon, the latter's being fatally delayed by the Spartans at Thermopylae. From here, battles famous in Greek history had been commanded and planned, and soldiers in all three Ionian wars had been drawn chiefly from the region of Sardis and had made their last stand here against Athens' retaliatory raids. We wandered the city's libraries and monuments by day, its taverns and theaters by night, and before I realized how fast time was passing, Xenophon noted that we had spent three weeks, and a considerable quantity of our dwindling supply of silver.
We packed the next day, reclaiming our mules from the stockyard where they had been kept, and within two hours of leaving the city saw the first stockades of the army, fencing thousands of pack animals and their forage, and after that mile after mile of neat rows of military tents, most of leather, some of the cheaper yet more durable canvas now becoming more common among armies. The numbers of troops that had assembled on the plain were astonishing. Proxenus had said in his letter that Cyrus was raising a force to be led by Greek mercenaries to put down an uprising of the Pisidians; but the Pisidians were a backward, barbarian race, and surely their defeat did not require the massive army we saw gathered here before us. This was not the ragtag bunch of worn Spartan mercenaries and hangdog Persian slave soldiers we had expected to see. An indefinable feeling, one of tension and unease, sat low and heavy in the pit of my stomach as we rode through the camp, surrounded on all sides by heavily armed, bearded Persian soldiers who did not even bother to disguise the hostile glances they shot our way.
Xenophon asked the first officer he saw where we might find Proxenus of Boeotia. He looked at our dusty garments in frank appraisal of our intentions, and cautiously directed us toward the center of camp, to general staff headquarters. We wound for an hour through the narrow alleys of tents and thronging soldiers, a camp that was no less an independent and wealthy city than Sardis itself, with its own markets, taverns, baths, and residential sections. We were finally stopped by two enormous Ethiopian guards, wearing leopard skin tunics and carrying eight-foot spears, who informed us in camp Greek that we could not pass into Cyrus' compound without his permission.
Xenophon inquired after Proxenus, and they pointed us to a tent alley nearby, which I found later to be the Greek quarters, and the first officer we encountered, in the first tent we passed, was Proxenus.
Had I simply passed him in the streets I would never have recognized him, but when he locked Xenophon in that familiar bear hug and flashed his old grin at me, I knew that he was still, at heart, the Proxenus we had known years before.
"Xenophon!" he shouted heartily, and gestured to some of his captains to come meet us. "Are you shaving yet? By the gods, look at those shoulders! Gentlemen," he said to his gathering mates, "this handsome young devil is the cousin I've been telling you about. I babysat him in Athens years ago when he still needed his nose wiped, and now look at him-he's on the verge of growing up!"
The men laughed heartily, for Xenophon had indeed grown since Proxenus had last seen him-he now stood half a head taller and twenty pounds heavier than his boyhood friend. Proxenus himself seemed much smaller than I remembered, or perhaps his own growing reputation in my mind had simply not kept pace with his physical stature; but his years fighting with the Spartans had made him into a wary, hardened soldier, tanned and scarred. Much to my amazement, he was also the general of a battle-tested troop of two thousand utterly devoted men whom he had recruited primarily from among his former brigade in the war with Sparta-fifteen hundred hoplites with their attendants, and an additional five hundred light infantry, all of whom looked to him unquestioningly as their leader.
Xenophon grinned happily, slipped the strap supporting his luggage on the mule, and tossed the heavy bundle to Proxenus, who mock-staggered under its weight. "Thank you for the warm welcome, cousin," he said, glancing around at the tents surrounding him. "Conditions are a mite shabby, but I'm sure you'll correct that. Meanwhile, my quarters, please."
Proxenus feigned an expression of insult and ostentatiously dropped the bags on the ground, but then laughed heartily and clapped Xenophon on the back again. "You are truly welcome, cousin, and you too, Theo the Giant," he said, addressing me. "I thought Xenophon had grown, but by the gods, I'd hate to face an army of Syracusans if they're all built like you!" Then speaking seriously to his friends, "I've known Xenophon since he was a boy, and have followed his military career for years. I'm proud to say he is one of the finest cavalry officers ever to be dismissed from Athens' service, and in this day, it is a compliment to have been dismissed by those rump-humpers now in charge over there. Welcome to our campaign, Xenophon; the prince will be pleased."
At this, the men laughed even harder, to Proxenus' consternation, since he was trying to provide a formal introduction to his friend. The irony soon became apparent, however, when he looked away from Xenophon, whom he had just presented as a fine cavalry officer, to the animal on which he had just ridden in-the dusty, swaybacked mule who just at that moment was attempting to uproot a tent peg. Proxenus grinned. "Come with me," he said. "You can wash up and rest from your journey. I have to see to some affairs with my troops tonight, but we'll catch up on old times tomorrow." He led us to the officers' baths, a serious affair befitting the army of the satrap of Sardis, where we spent the rest of the afternoon washing and dozing until one of Proxenus' orderlies arrived to take us to the tent to which we had been assigned.
The next day, Proxenus gave us a tour of the enormous encampment and explained his role in the army. He had served Boeotia energetically during the war, and was especially well known for his expertise in the construction and use of the Boeotian engine. This consisted of a long, straight log, split in two lengthwise, with the two halves carefully hollowed out, lined with iron or tin and then fitted back together into a hollow tube. An enormous bellows was attached to the nether end, and a large iron cauldron containing a blazing mixture of sulfur and pitch hung from the front. The entire contraption was mounted on a cart covered with a heavy plank roof to protect its drivers from enemy arrows and missiles, and when it had been brought sufficiently near the opposing army or its palisades, the bellows were worked, forcing a stream of air through the long tube over the flaming cauldron at the other end, throwing a murderous, sticky flame over its target. Xenophon and I glanced at each other knowingly. This, then, was the "dragon" that Thrasybulus had applied to such murderous effect against us at Phyle. Since its initial use during the war, Proxenus had managed to make numerous improvements to the engine's design, increasing its efficiency, and had even developed portable models that could be taken on campaign, a formal demonstration of which he was eager to give us.
We rode several miles out of camp to a barren place Proxenus used as a testing ground for his engines, far from the stares and comments of the other troops and the city's onlookers. There, a handpicked group of thirty men were responsible for maintaining and firing the engines, the latest version of which consisted of a barrel about twenty feet long and one foot in diameter. They rolled it to the edge of camp, where a training palisades had been set up in imitation of an enemy fortress or barricade. At Proxenus' count, the bellows were expertly inserted and the cauldron hung. While a wooden cap was placed on the front end, the bellows crew pumped a dozen puffs or so into the log to build air pressure. When the pressure had built up sufficiently, it blew the cap off, and as the forced air rushed out, a terrifying stream of flame shot forty feet across the field to the barricade, setting it on fire and scorching the grass along the way, to the bare earth.