On the next morning, Klearchus communicated what had passed to the Greeks, insisting on the necessity that all the generals should go to Tissaphernes pursuant to his invitation; in order to reëstablish that confidence which unworthy calumniators had shaken, and to punish such of the calumniators as might be Greeks. So emphatically did he pledge himself for the good faith and philhellenic dispositions of the satrap, that he overruled the opposition of many among the soldiers; who, still continuing to entertain their former suspicions, remonstrated especially against the extreme imprudence of putting all the generals at once into the power of Tissaphernes. The urgency of Klearchus prevailed. Himself with four other generals,—Proxenus, Menon, Agias, and Sokrates,—and twenty lochages or captains,—went to visit the satrap in his tent; about two hundred of the soldiers going along with them, to make purchases for their own account in the Persian camp-market.[128]
On reaching the quarters of Tissaphernes,—distant nearly three miles from the Grecian camp, according to habit,—the five generals were admitted into the interior, while the lochages remained at the entrance. A purple flag, hoisted from the top of the tent, betrayed too late the purpose for which they had been invited to come. The lochages and the Grecian soldiers who had accompanied them were surprised and cut down, while the generals in the interior were detained, put in chains, and carried up as prisoners to the Persian court. Here Klearchus, Proxenus, Agias, and Sokrates were beheaded after a short imprisonment. Queen Parysatis, indeed, from affection to Cyrus, not only furnished many comforts to Klearchus in the prison, by the hands of her surgeon, Ktesias, but used all her influence with her son Artaxerxes to save his life; though her efforts were counteracted, on this occasion, by the superior influence of queen Stateira, his wife. The rivalry between these two royal women, doubtless arising out of many other circumstances besides the death of Klearchus, became soon afterwards so furious, that Parysatis caused Stateira to be poisoned.[129]
Menon was not put to death along with the other generals. He appears to have taken credit at the Persian court for the treason of entrapping his colleagues into the hands of Tissaphernes. But his life was only prolonged to perish a year afterwards in disgrace and torture,—probably by the requisition of Parysatis, who thus avenged the death of Klearchus. The queen-mother had always power enough to perpetrate cruelties, though not always to avert them.[130] She had already brought to a miserable end every one, even faithful defenders of Artaxerxes, concerned in the death of her son Cyrus.
Though Menon thought it convenient, when brought up to Babylon, to boast of having been the instrument through whom the generals were entrapped into the fatal tent, this boast is not to be treated as matter of fact. For not only does Xenophon explain the catastrophe differently, but in the delineation which he gives of Menon, dark and odious as it is in the extreme, he does not advance any such imputation; indirectly, indeed, he sets it aside.[131] Unfortunately for the reputation of Klearchus, no such reasonable excuse can be offered for his credulity, which brought himself as well as his colleagues to so melancholy an end, and his whole army to the brink of ruin. It appears that the general sentiment of the Grecian army, taking just measure of the character of Tissaphernes, was disposed to greater circumspection in dealing with him. Upon that system Klearchus himself had hitherto acted; and the necessity of it might have been especially present to his mind, since he had served with the Lacedæmonian fleet at Miletus in 411 B.C., and had, therefore, had fuller experience than other men in the army, of the satrap’s real character.[132] On a sudden he now turns round, and on the faith of a few verbal declarations, puts all the military chiefs into the most defenceless posture and the most obvious peril, such as hardly the strongest grounds for confidence could have justified. Though the remark of Machiavel is justified by large experience,—that from the short-sightedness of men and their obedience to present impulse, the most notorious deceiver will always find new persons to trust him,—still such misjudgment on the part of an officer of age and experience is difficult to explain.[133] Polyænus intimates that beautiful women, exhibited by the satrap at his first banquet to Klearchus alone, served as a lure to attract him with all his colleagues to the second; while Xenophon imputes the error to continuance of a jealous rivalry with Menon. The latter,[134] it appears, having always been intimate with Ariæus, had been thus brought into previous communication with Tissaphernes, by whom he had been well received, and by whom he was also encouraged to lay plans for detaching the whole Grecian army from Klearchus, so as to bring it all under his (Menon’s) command, into the service of the satrap. Such at least was the suspicion of Klearchus; who, jealous in the extreme of his own military authority, tried to defeat the scheme by bidding still higher himself for the favor of Tissaphernes. Imagining that Menon was the unknown calumniator who prejudiced the satrap against him, he hoped to prevail on the satrap to disclose his name and dismiss him.[135] Such jealousy seems to have robbed Klearchus of his customary prudence. We must also allow for another impression deeply fixed in his mind; that the salvation of the army was hopeless without the consent of Tissaphernes, and, therefore, since the latter had conducted them thus far in safety, when he might have destroyed them before, that his designs at the bottom could not be hostile.[136]
Notwithstanding these two great mistakes,—one on the present occasion, one previously, at the battle of Kunaxa, in keeping the Greeks on the right contrary to the order of Cyrus,—both committed by Klearchus, the loss of that officer was doubtless a great misfortune to the army; while, on the contrary, the removal of Menon was a signal benefit,—perhaps a condition of ultimate safety. A man so treacherous and unprincipled as Xenophon depicts Menon, would probably have ended by really committing towards the army that treason, for which he falsely took credit at the Persian court in reference to the seizure of the generals.
The impression entertained by Klearchus, respecting the hopeless position of the Greeks in the heart of the Persian territory after the death of Cyrus, was perfectly natural in a military man who could appreciate all the means of attack and obstruction which the enemy had it in their power to employ. Nothing is so unaccountable in this expedition as the manner in which such means were thrown away,—the spectacle of Persian impotence. First, the whole line of upward march, including the passage of the Euphrates, left undefended; next, the long trench dug across the frontier of Babylonia, with only a passage of twenty feet wide left near the Euphrates, abandoned without a guard; lastly, the line of the Wall of Media and the canals which offered such favorable positions for keeping the Greeks out of the cultivated territory of Babylonia, neglected in like manner, and a convention concluded, whereby the Persians engaged to escort the invaders safe to the Ionian coast, beginning by conducting them through the heart of Babylonia, amidst canals affording inexpugnable defences if the Greeks had chosen to take up a position among them. The plan of Tissaphernes, as far as we can understand it, seems to have been, to draw the Greeks to some considerable distance from the heart of the Persian empire, and then to open his schemes of treasonable hostility, which the imprudence of Klearchus enabled him to do, on the banks of the Great Zab, with chances of success such as he could hardly have contemplated. We have here a fresh example of the wonderful impotence of the Persians. We should have expected that, after having committed so flagrant an act of perfidy, Tissaphernes would at least have tried to turn it to account; that he would have poured, with all his forces and all his vigor, on the Grecian camp, at the moment when it was unprepared, disorganized, and without commanders. Instead of which, when the generals (with those who accompanied them to the Persian camp) had been seized or slain, no attack whatever was made except by small detachments of Persian cavalry upon individual Greek stragglers in the plain. One of the companions of the generals, an Arcadian named Nikarchus, ran wounded into the Grecian camp, where the soldiers were looking from afar at the horsemen scouring the plain without knowing what they were about,—exclaiming that the Persians were massacring all the Greeks, officers as well as soldiers. Immediately the Greek soldiers hastened to put themselves in defence, expecting a general attack to be made upon their camp; but no more Persians came near than a body of about three hundred horse, under Ariæus and Mithridates (the confidential companions of the deceased Cyrus), accompanied by the brother of Tissaphernes. These men, approaching the Greek lines as friends, called for the Greek officers to come forth, as they had a message to deliver from the king. Accordingly, Kleanor and Sophænetus, with an adequate guard, came to the front, accompanied by Xenophon, who was anxious to hear news about Proxenus. Ariæus then acquainted them that Klearchus, having been detected in a breach of the convention to which he had sworn, had been put to death; that Proxenus and Menon, who had divulged his treason, were in high honor at the Persian quarters. He concluded by saying,—the king calls upon you to surrender your arms, which now (he says) belong to him, since they formerly belonged to his slave Cyrus.[137]
The step here taken seems to testify a belief on the part of these Persians, that the generals being now in their power, the Grecian soldiers had become defenceless, and might be required to surrender their arms, even to men who had just been guilty of the most deadly fraud and injury towards them. If Ariæus entertained such an expectation, he was at once undeceived by the language of Kleanor and Xenophon, who breathed nothing but indignant reproach; so that he soon retired and left the Greeks to their own reflections.
While their camp thus remained unmolested, every man within it was a prey to the most agonizing apprehensions. Ruin appeared impending and inevitable, though no one could tell in what precise form it would come. The Greeks were in the midst of a hostile country, ten thousand stadia from home, surrounded by enemies, blocked up by impassable mountains and rivers, without guides, without provisions, without cavalry to aid their retreat, without generals to give orders. A stupor of sorrow and conscious helplessness seized upon all. Few came to the evening muster; few lighted fires to cook their suppers; every man lay down to rest where he was; yet no man could sleep, for fear, anguish, and yearning after relatives whom he was never again to behold.[138]
Amidst the many causes of despondency which weighed down this forlorn army, there was none more serious than the fact, that not a single man among them had now either authority to command, or obligation to take the initiative. Nor was any ambitious candidate likely to volunteer his pretensions, at a moment when the post promised nothing but the maximum of difficulty as well as of hazard. A new, self-kindled, light—and self-originated stimulus—was required, to vivify the embers of suspended hope and action, in a mass paralyzed for the moment, but every way capable of effort. And the inspiration now fell, happily for the army, upon one in whom a full measure of soldierly strength and courage was combined with the education of an Athenian, a democrat, and a philosopher.
It is in true Homeric vein, and in something like Homeric language, that Xenophon (to whom we owe the whole narrative of the expedition) describes his dream, or the intervention of Oneirus, sent by Zeus, from which this renovating impulse took its rise.[139] Lying mournful and restless, like his comrades, he caught a short repose; when he dreamt that he heard thunder, and saw the burning thunder-bolt fall upon his paternal house, which became forthwith encircled by flames. Awaking, full of terror, he instantly sprang up; upon which the dream began to fit on and blend itself with his waking thoughts, and with the cruel realities of his position. His pious and excited fancy generated a series of shadowy analogies. The dream was sent by Zeus[140] the King, since it was from him that thunder and lightning proceeded. In one respect, the sign was auspicious,—that a great light had appeared to him from Zeus, in the midst of peril and suffering. But on the other hand, it was alarming, that the house had appeared to be completely encircled by flames, preventing all egress, because this seemed to indicate that he would remain confined where he was in the Persian dominions, without being able to overcome the difficulties which hedged him in. Yet doubtful as the promise was, it was still the message of Zeus addressed to himself, serving as a stimulus to him to break through the common stupor and take the initiative movement.[141] “Why am I lying here? Night is advancing; at daybreak the enemy will be on us, and we shall be put to death with tortures. Not a man is stirring to take measures of defence. Why do I wait for any man older than myself, or for any man of a different city, to begin?”