[51] Xen. Anab. ii, 6, 5-15.
[52] Xen. Anab. i, 3, 2-7. Here, as on other occasions, I translate the sense rather than the words.
[53] Xen. Anab. i, 3, 16-21.
[54] The breadth of the river Sarus (Scihun) is given by Xenophon at three hundred feet; which agrees nearly with the statements of modern travellers (Koch, Der Zug der Zehn Tausend, p. 34).
Compare, for the description of this country, Kinneir’s Journey through Asia Minor, p. 135; Col. Chesney, Euphrates and Tigris, ii, p. 211; Mr. Ainsworth, Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 54.
Colonel Chesney affirms that neither the Sarus nor the Pyramus is fordable. There must have been bridges; which, in the then flourishing state of Kilikia, is by no means improbable. He and Mr. Ainsworth, however, differ as to the route which they suppose Cyrus to have taken between Tarsus and Issus.
Xenophon mentions nothing about the Amanian Gates, which afterwards appear noticed both in Arrian (ii, 6; ii, 7) and in Strabo (xiv, p. 676). The various data of ancient history and geography about this region are by no means easy to reconcile; see a valuable note of Mützel on Quintus Curtius, iii, 17, 7. An inspection of the best recent maps, either Colonel Chesney’s or Kiepert’s, clears up some of these better than any verbal description. We see by these maps that Mount Amanus bifurcates into two branches, one of them flanking the Gulf of Issus on its western, the other on its eastern side. There are thus two different passes, each called Pylæ Amanides or Amanian Gates; one having reference to the Western Amanus, the other to the Eastern. The former was crossed by Alexander, the latter by Darius, before the battle of Issus; and Arrian (ii, 6; ii, 7) is equally correct in saying of both of them that they passed the Amanian Gates; though both did not pass the same gates.
[55] Diodor. xiv. 21.
[56] Xen. Anab. i, 4, 3-5. Ἀβροκόμας δ᾽ οὐ τοῦτο ἐποίησεν ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ ἤκουσε Κῦρον ἐν Κιλικίᾳ ὄντα, αναστρέψας ἐκ Φοινίκης, παρὰ βασιλέα ἀπήλαυνεν, etc.
[57] Diodor. xiv.