told, this post does not even halt at night: the night-messenger
relieves the day-messenger and rides on. Some say that, when this is
done, the post travels more quickly than the crane can fly, and, whether
that is true or not, there is no doubt it is the quickest way in which a
human being can travel on land. To learn of events so rapidly and be
able to deal with them at once is of course a great advantage. [19]
After a year had passed, Cyrus collected all his troops at Babylon,
amounting, it is said, to one hundred and twenty thousand horse, two
thousand scythe-bearing chariots, and six hundred thousand foot. [20]
Then, seeing that all was got together, he set out for that campaign of
his, on which, the story says, he subdued the nations from the borders
of Syria as far as the Red Sea. After that there followed, we are told,
the expedition against Egypt and its conquest. [21] From that time
forward his empire was bounded on the east by the Red Sea, on the north
by the Euxine, on the west by Cyprus and Egypt, and towards the south by
Ethiopia. Of these outlying districts, some were scarcely habitable,
owing to heat or cold, drought or excessive rain. [22] But Cyrus himself
always lived at the centre of his dominions, seven months in Babylon
during the winter season, where the land is warm and sunny, three months
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