Toxaris; Or, Friendship (54)

Adyrmachos, when he heard of the fraud, did not continue his journey to the Bosporos, for Eubiotos was already installed in office, having been summoned from Sauromatia, where he was sojourning. He returned home, collected a great army, and marched through the hill-country upon Scythia. Soon after, Eubiotos, too, made an attack, leading a rabble of Greeks and picked troops from Alania and Sauromatia, forty thousand

strong. He and Adyrmachos joined forces, thus forming an army of ninety thousand men, of whom a third were mounted archers. But wefor I, too, had a share in their rising, and contributed a hundred found horsemen on the occasion of the ox-hide-assembled to the number of nearly thirty thousand, counting the horsemen, and awaited the onset. Arsakomas was in command. When we saw them coming we advanced to meet them, sending the cavalry against them first. When the battle had been fiercely waged a long time our side began to give in. Our phalanx was gradually broken into, and finally the whole Scythian army was cut in two, and one part retired, not distinctly worsted, however; indeed, their flight looked like an orderly retreat, and even the Alanians did not dare to pursue them far. But the Machlyeans and Alanians surrounded the other half, which was the smaller, and cut them down in every direction with a generous discharge of arrows and darts, so that the surrounded were almost exhausted, and most of them were already throwing down their arms.