[1] However, Perdiccas felt confident of carrying out his projects by himself, and thought that the country they had left behind them needed an efficient and faithful guardian, and therefore sent Eumenes back from Cilicia, ostensibly to his own satrapy, but really to reduce to obedience the adjacent country of Armenia, which had been thrown into confusion by Neoptolemus.
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[2] Accordingly, although Neoptolemus was a victim of ostentation and empty pride, Eumenes tried to constrain him by personal intercourse; then, finding that the Macedonian men-at-arms were conceited and bold, he raised a force of cavalry as a counterpoise to them, by offering the natives of the country who were able to serve as horsemen immunity from contributions and tributes,
[3] and by distributing horses that he had bought among those of his followers in whom he placed most confidence; the spirits of these men, too, he incited by honours and gifts, and developed their bodies by exercise and discipline; so that a part of the Macedonians were amazed, and a part emboldened, when they saw that in a short time he had assembled about him no fewer than sixty-three hundred horsemen.
Eumenes. Plutarch. Bernadotte Perrin (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1919.
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