When all was ready for the battle to begin, the Greeks, not waiting to be attacked, charged on the run against the Persian left wing. The Persians, who seem to have thought that on such an occasion absence of body was a good deal better than presence of mind, waited just long enough to hear the Greeks give a fierce shout to Mars, accompanied by a significant clatter of spears and shields. That satisfied them, and, turning like a flock of frightened sheep, they ran for their lives.
Cyrus, who had refused to put on a helmet, now dashed into the fight with uncovered head, making straight for King Artaxerxês, who occupied the centre of his army. "I see the man!" he cried, and, hurling his lance, he struck and slightly wounded the Great King; but that fratricidal blow was the last, for just then a javelin pierced Cyrus under the eye, and he fell from his horse and was slain. His head and right hand were then cut off to serve as a warning to traitors. The native or Asiatic troops, seeing the disaster, fled, and did not stop till they had reached a former camp eight miles away.
Meanwhile the victorious Ten Thousand, knowing nothing of what had happened to Cyrus, pursued the Persians as long as light lasted; then when the sun had set they returned to find that their camp had been plundered by the enemy, and that they must go to bed supperless. It was not until sunrise of the next day that they learned that Cyrus was dead; that their companions in arms had fled; and that they were left a mere handful of men without a leader, and without provisions, in the heart of the enemy's country.
How to retreat from such a position was the supreme question. They could not return the way they came, for that road led them through the desert, where it would be impossible to get food. If they were to get back alive they must take the northern route to the shores of the Black Sea. This would lead them through a fertile but rough country, in which they would have to find their way as best they could across rivers and over mountains, harassed by the Persians in the rear, and encountering savage tribes who would dispute their progress. At the shortest such a march would be about six hundred miles even in an air line, with prospect of something like six hundred more before they reached the Mediterranean.
After many delays, this latter course was the one they finally resolved to take, and owing to Xenophon's courage and resolution it turned out successfully.
After eight months of wandering, hardships, and peril, they all came in sight of the Euxine, and perhaps no shipwrecked sailors clinging to a raft ever cried "Land!" "Land!" with more joy than those Greeks who had climbed a hill-top shouted "The Sea!" "The Sea!"
Thanks to their own bravery, to their able leader, and finally to Persian vacillation and cowardice, this little army had now reached a place of safety. It was long, however, before they got back to their native country, and when they did, they were not to arrive at its shores asleep, on shipboard, as the much wandering and storm-tossed Ulysses came to his beloved Ithaca.
It is doubtful, indeed, how many of them ever got back to their Spartan or Athenian homes, for we know that most of them could not make up their minds to live quiet lives of peace again; but preferred fighting in behalf of the independence of the Ionian cities which Greece had planted on the coast of Asia Minor.
Such was the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. If we may accept the judgment of Rollin, a once noted historian, it has never had a parallel in history. If we consider its results, it certainly merits all that Rollin claims for it, for it convinced the Greek people that the apparent power of the Persian empire was utterly unreal. They saw that, as Cyrus had said, its only strength was in "numbers and noise." This conviction grew, and two generations after Xenophon's return, it led to that grand invasion of Persia by Alexander the Great which was to revolutionize the ancient world.
What, then, had the retreat of the Greeks accomplished? First, it proved that ten thousand men not afraid to die are worth more than a million who lack that courage; and next, though it was a retreat, yet it suggested that advance which eventually spread the Greek language, Greek culture and Greek civilization in countries where they were before unknown.