Then, after appealing to the glorious memories of the past, when the Greeks, fighting against overwhelming odds, had once and again turned back the tide of Persian invasion, he addressed himself to deal with the circumstances of the situation. “Our allies have deserted us; but we shall fight better without such cowards. We have no cavalry; but battles are won by the sword; our foes will have the better only in being able to run away more quickly. No market will be given us; but it is better to take our food than to buy it. If rivers bar our way, we have only to cross them higher up. Verily, I believe that not only can we get away, but that if the King saw us preparing to settle here, he would be glad to send us away in coaches and four, so terribly afraid is he of us.
“But how shall we go? Let us burn our tents and all superfluous baggage. The baggage too often commands the army. That is the first thing to do. Our arms are our chief possession. If we use them aright, everything in the country is ours. Let us march in a hollow square, with the baggage animals and the camp followers in the middle. And let us settle at once who is to command each section of the army.”
All this was accepted without demur. Chirisophus was appointed to command the van, Xenophon, with a colleague, as the youngest of the generals, the rear. Practically these two divided the command between them.
The first experience of an encounter with the enemy was not reassuring; in fact it was almost disastrous. Early in the first day’s march, one Mithridates, a personage well known to the Greeks, for he had been high in Cyrus’ confidence, rode up with a couple of hundred horsemen and twice as many slingers and bowmen. He had a look of coming as a friend; indeed, earlier in that day he had come with what purported to be a conciliatory message from Tissaphernes. But on arriving within a moderate distance of the Greeks he halted, and the next moment there was a shower of bullets and arrows from the slings and bows. The Greeks were helpless. They suffered severely, but could do nothing to the enemy in return. The Cretan archers had a shorter range than that of the Persian bows, and the javelin could not, of course, come anywhere near the slingers. At last Xenophon gave the order to charge. Charge the men did, heavy-armed and light-armed alike. Possibly it was better than standing still to be shot at. But they did not contrive to catch a single man. As foot soldiers they were fairly outpaced; and they had no cavalry. Only three miles were accomplished that day, and the army reached the villages in which they were to bivouac, in a state of great despondency. Unless such attacks could be resisted with better success, the fate of the army was sealed.
Xenophon was severely blamed by his colleagues for his action in charging. He frankly acknowledged his fault. “I could not stand still,” he said, “and see the men falling round me without striking a blow, but the charge was no good. We caught none of them, and we did not find it easy to get back. Thanks to the gods, there were not very many of them; if they had come on in force, we must have been cut to pieces.”
After a short silence, he addressed his colleagues again. “We are at a great disadvantage. Our Cretans cannot shoot as far as their Persian archers; and our hand throwers are useless against the slingers. As for the foot soldiers, no man, however fleet of foot, can overtake another who has a bowshot’s start of him, especially as we cannot push the pursuit far from the main body. The simple truth is that we must have slingers and horsemen of our own. I know that there are Rhodians in the army who can sling leaden bullets to a much greater distance than these Persian slings can reach. I propose, first, that we find out who among them have slings of their own; these we will buy at the proper value; if any know how to plait some more, we will pay them the proper price for doing it; the slings thus obtained, we shall soon get a corps of slingers to use them. Give them some advantage and they will enroll themselves fast enough. Now for the cavalry. We have some horses I know. There are some in the rear-guard with me; there are others that belonged to Clearchus; a good many have been taken from the enemy, and are being used as baggage animals. Let us take the pick of these and equip them for the use of cavalry; we shall soon have some very capable horsemen at our service.”
The idea was promptly carried out. That very night a couple of hundred slingers were enrolled, and the next day, which was spent without any attempt to advance, fifty horsemen passed muster, fairly well-mounted and duly furnished with buff jackets and cuirasses. This was only the first of many instances in which Xenophon showed the fertility and readiness of device which did so much to save the army.
The very next day the new forces were brought into action with the happiest results. Mithridates came up again with his archers and slingers, but encountered a reception on which he had not calculated. The cavalry made a brilliant charge, cutting down a number of the infantry and taking prisoners some seventeen horsemen. At the end of the day’s march, the army reached the Tigris. Fourteen weeks of hard and perilous marching lay before them; but they were fairly well-equipped for the work. I shall take an account of some of the principal incidents of the journey from a diary kept by Callias, who acted throughout as aid-de-camp to Xenophon.