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After Cyrus had traversed Lydia and Phrygia as well as the regions bordering on Cappadocia, he arrived at the boundaries of Cilicia and the entrance at the Cilician Gates. This pass is narrow and precipitous, twenty stades in length, and bordering it on both sides are exceedingly high and inaccessible mountains; and walls stretch down on each side from the mountains as far as the roadway, where gates have been built across it. [2] Leading his army through these gates, Cyrus entered a plain which in beauty yields to no plain in Asia, and through which he advanced to Tarsus, the largest city of Cilicia, which he speedily mastered. When Syennesis, the lord of Cilicia, heard of the great size of the hostile army, he was at a great loss, since he was no match for it in battle. [3] When he was summoned to Cyrus' presence and had been given pledges, he went to him, and on learning the truth about the war he agreed to join him as an ally against Artaxerxes; and he sent one of his two sons along with Cyrus, giving him also a strong contingent of Cilicians for his army. For Syennesis, being by nature unscrupulous and having adjusted himself to the uncertainty of Fortune, had dispatched his other son secretly to the King to reveal to him the armaments that had been gathered against him and to assure him that he took the part of Cyrus out of necessity, but that he was still faithful to the King and, when the opportunity arose, would desert Cyrus and join the army of the King. [4]

Cyrus rested his army twenty days in Tarsus, and after this, when he would have resumed the march, the troops suspected that the campaign was against Artaxerxes. And as each man reckoned up the length of the distances entailed and the multitude of hostile peoples through whom they would have to pass, he was filled with the deepest anxiety; for the word had got about that it was a four months' march for an army to Bactria and that a force of more than four hundred thousand soldiers had been mustered for the King. [5] Consequently the soldiers became most fearful and vexed, and in anger at their commanders they attempted to kill them on the ground that the commanders had betrayed them. But when Cyrus entreated one and all of them and assured them that he was leading the army, not against Artaxerxes, but against a certain satrap of Syria, the soldiers yielded, and when they had received an increase in pay, they resumed their former loyalty to him.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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