Xenophon's Anabasis (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.9.29)

far because it fled, running with its feet and raising its wings like a sail. But the bustards, if one flushes them quickly, can be caught. For they fly only a short distance, like partridges, and quickly grow tired. Their meat was most delicious. Proceeding through this land, they arrive at the Mascas a river in Mesopotamia river, which is one plethron a measure of length, approximately 100 feet in width. There was a large deserted city there, the name of which was Corsote. It was encircled by the Mascas. They remained there for three days, and the army provisioned itself. From there, he marches thirteen desert stages, ninety parasangs, keeping the Euphrates river on his right, and arrives at the gates. During these stages, many of the pack animals perished from hunger. For there was no grass, nor any other tree, but the entire land was bare. The inhabitants, digging for millstones around the river and shaping them, would take them to Babylon and sell them, and by buying grain in exchange, they survived. As for the army, the grain ran out, and there was no way to purchase it, except in the Lydian market, in the camp of Cyrus's barbarians non-Greeks/foreigners, where a kapithe a unit of dry measure, about two quarts of wheat or barley flour cost four sigloi a silver coin, roughly equivalent to the Greek drachma. The siglos is worth seven and a half Attic obols. The kapithe held two Attic choinikes a measure of capacity, about one quart each. Thus, the soldiers survived by eating meat. These stages, which he traveled very long, were whenever he wished to reach either water or fodder. And when at one point, some narrow passage and mud appeared, making it difficult for the wagons to pass, Cyrus stopped with the most noble and fortunate men around him, and ordered Glus and Pigres, taking some of the barbarian army, to assist in moving the wagons. When it seemed to him that they were doing it sluggishly, as if in anger, he ordered the best of the Persians around him to hasten