Cornelius Nepos

“ Datames charges the remaining Pisidian resistors. He strikes with the first blow, he chases them down, he kills many, he takes the camp of the enemy. So, through this plan he simultaneously thwarted the traitors and crushed the enemy, and transformed an event that had been thought to be his doom into his salvation. We have read of no act of any other commander that was ever planned more cleverly or executed more quickly than this.
VII. But Sysinas, his oldest son, separated from him, went to the king and accused his father of rebellion. ”

“ To prevent him from entering the pass where the Cilician Gates are located, Datames was eager to occupy them first. But he could not assemble his forces so rapidly. As a result he was pushed back, with the force which he had assembled, and chose a place that could not be surrounded by enemies and that an enemy could not pass without being pressed on both sides, where, if he chose to fight, a large number of enemies could not harm his small force much. ”

“ He had moved his camp from this spot and he had always come out inferior in numbers but superior in every battle, because he never engaged a contingent unless he had trapped his opponents in constricted places, which often happened to him because he was familiar with the region and planned cunningly. ”

“ V. While he was doing this, Artaxerxes realised that he had sent his foremost commander from such a great war to such a small matter and regretted his decision, so he sent Aces as a messenger to the army to say that Datames should not set out to do what he had said and should not leave the army. Before he had reached the place he had been sent, he ran into the man who was bringing Aspis to the king. When Datames received great gifts from the king for this speed, he became the object of a great deal of emnity among the courtiers because they saw that he alone had achieved more than all of them. ”