The Greeks were now in Armenia. Before them stretched a wide rolling plateau, sombre, lonely, savagely inclement at that season; and yet they found it at first like Elysium after their torments up among the clouds. They crossed two streams, the Bitlis Tchai, by whose deep trench the caravans still travel, and the Kara Su. It was in the country of the satrap Tiribazos, who kept following the invaders with an army. So the march went on. One night they reached the usual “palace surrounded by villages,” and there, finding plenty to eat and drink, with joy refreshed their weariness. It was judged imprudent to billet the men out among the villages, so they bivouacked in the open. Then the snow came—a soft, persistent snow; and in the morning nothing seemed desirable except to remain warm and drowsy under that white blanket. At last Xenophon sprang up, and began to chop wood, so that the men were shamed and got up too, and took the log from him, and kindled fires, and anointed themselves with a local unguent. But all were certain that such another night would be the death of them; so it was resolved that they should find quarters among the villages. Off rushed the soldiers with cheers.
But the retreat must proceed. They caught a man who told them that Tiribazos meant to attack them in a high defile upon their road. This stroke they anticipated and, crossing the pass, marched day after day in a wilderness of snow. At one point in their dreadful journey they waded up to their waists across the icy waters of the upper Euphrates. The snow got deeper and deeper. Worst of all the wind—the north wind—blew in their faces. The snow became six feet deep. Baggage-cattle, slaves, some thirty of the soldiers themselves disappeared in the drifts. At last by the mercy of the gods the wind dropped a little, and they found an abundance of wood, which they burned, and so cleared spaces in the snow, that they might sleep upon the ground. Then they must bestir themselves and labour on again. Men began [(Note 77)]to drop from hunger-faintness. Xenophon got them a mouthful to eat; whereupon they got on their legs and stumbled forward with the rest. All the time bands of marauders prowled about the skirts of the army. If a beast were abandoned, they swooped down upon it, and shortly you would hear them quarrelling over the carcase. Not only the beasts were lost, but every now and then a man would fall out because of frostbite or snow-blindness. Once a whole bunch of soldiers dropped behind, and, seeing a dark patch where a hot spring had melted the snow, they sat down there. Xenophon implored them to get up; wolfish enemies were at their heels. Nothing he could say moved them. Then he lost his temper. The only result was a tired suggestion from the men that he should cut their throats. Darkness was falling; nearer and nearer came the clamour of the pillagers wrangling over their spoils. Xenophon and his men lay concealed in the bare patch, which sloped down into a cañon smoking with the steam of the hot spring. When the miscreants came near, up sprang the soldiers with a shout, while the outworn men whooped at the pitch of their voices. The startled enemy “flung themselves down the snow into the cañon, and not one ever uttered a sound again.”
Not long after, the Greeks came to some villages, one of which was assigned to Xenophon and his men. It was occupied so rapidly that the inhabitants had not time to escape. An extraordinary village it was, for the houses were all underground. You entered the earth-house at a hole “like the mouth of a well,” and, descending a ladder, found yourself in a fine roomy chamber, shared impartially by “goats and sheep and cows and poultry” as well as people. There was store of provender for the animals, and wheat and barley and greens for folk. There was also “barley-wine,” which you sucked through a reed, and which was “a very delightful beverage to one who had learned to like it.” Xenophon naturally lived with the headman of the village, whom he graciously invited to dinner at the expense of the house. He managed to reassure the headman, who was troubled about many things, including the capture of his daughter, who had just been married. So the wine was produced, and they made a night of it. Next morning, awakening among the cocks and the hens and the other creatures, Xenophon went to call on Cheirisophos, taking the headman with him. On the way they looked in at all the houses and in each they found high revelry. They were forced to come down the ladder and have breakfast. Xenophon has forgotten how many breakfasts he had that morning, but he remembers lamb, kid, pork, veal and poultry, not to mention varieties of bread. If anybody proposed to drink somebody’s health, he was haled to the bowl and made to shove in his head and “make a noise like an ox drinking.” To the headman the soldiers offered “anything he would like.” (When you think of it, they could scarcely do less.) The poor man chose any of his relations whom he noticed. At the headquarters of Cheirisophos there were similar scenes. The soldiers in their Greek way had wreathed their heads for the feast, making wisps of hay serve the purpose of flowers, and had formed the Armenian boys “in their strange clothes” into picturesque waiters. Xenophon took seventeen magnificent young horses which his village had been rearing for the King, and divided them among his officers, keeping the best for himself. In return he presented the headman with an oldish steed of his own, which he rather thought was going to die.
After a jolly week the weary retreat began again. The headman told the Greeks to tie bags upon the feet of their horses to keep them from falling through the frozen surface of the snow. He went as guide with Cheirisophos in the van. As they marched on and on, never coming to a human habitation, the general flew into a rage and struck the guide. Next morning they found that the man had disappeared in the night. This turned out to be the worst thing that had befallen them yet. After a week of padding the hoof over a white desert with no relief for the eyes but their own red rags, they came to a river. It was the Araxes, and if they had taken the right turn here, a few days more would have brought them to Trebizond. Unfortunately, misled perhaps by the sound of the native name, they got it into their heads that the river was the Phasis, about which everybody knew that it flowed through the land of the Colchians into the Black Sea. Therefore they went down the Araxes.
Fighting began at the very outset. Moreover provisions soon failed them. They were now in the wild country of the “Taochians,” who lived in strong places, where they had stored all their supplies. The army must capture one of these strongholds or starve. The first they came to was typical. It was simply an enclosed space on the top of a precipice. A winding stream served as a moat. There was only one narrow way of approach to the stockade, and this path was commanded by an insuperable cliff. Within the stockade huddled a throng of men and women and animals. On the top of the cliff were Taochian warriors, who flung stones and precipitated rocks on any Greek who ventured to set foot on the path. Several who ventured had their legs broken or their ribs crushed. Some shelter was afforded by a wood of tall pines, through which about seventy soldiers filtered, until no more than fifty or so feet of open ground lay between them and the stockade. An officer called Kallimachos began to amuse the army by popping out and into the wood, thus drawing the fire of the stoners, who let fly at him with “more than ten cart-loads of rock.” Then, in a lull of the stones, two or three made a sudden dash across the exposed ground and into the stockade. The rest followed at their heels. Then occurred a very horrible thing. The women flung their babies down the precipice and jumped after them. A sort of heroic madness swept the helpless defenders. Aeneas of Stymphalos gripped a man who had a splendid dress on; the man flung his arms about Aeneas and took him with him over the cliff. Hardly any were saved.
Now the ten thousand entered the country of the Chalybians, the bravest race they met on all their march; whose strongholds the Greeks did not take. The Chalybians, who wore an immense tasselled breastplate of linen, and carried a prodigious long spear and a short sword, used to cut off the heads of their enemies and go into battle, swinging the heads, and singing and dancing. Having escaped from such savages, the army crossed a river and marched many parasangs, turning west by a route that led them perhaps by way of the modern towns of Alexandropol and Kars to a populous city by Xenophon named Gymnias, which must have been near Erzerum. Here they found a guide, who promised to set them on the true road home. Him they followed for four days. On the fifth day Xenophon, who as usual was in command of the rearguard, heard a great and distant shouting. At once he and his men concluded that the van had been attacked, for the whole country was up in arms. Every moment the far-off clamour increased. As they stared at the mountain-side, which the van had just ascended, they noticed that, whenever a company had got a certain distance, the men suddenly took to their heels and tore up the mountain for their lives. It was clear that something extraordinary was happening. Xenophon sprang on his horse and, followed by the cavalry, galloped to the rescue. But now in a little they could hear what they were crying on the mountain; it was The Sea! The Sea! Then the rearguard also ran, and the baggage-animals and the horses too! And on the top they fell to embracing one another, officers and men indiscriminately, and the tears ran down their faces. Then they raised a great cairn of stones on that hill-top, overlooking “the col of Vavoug,” where the road still passes.
IV
ELEUTHERIA
What was the special gift of Greece to the world? The answer of the Greeks themselves is unexpected, yet it is as clear as a trumpet: Eleutheria, Freedom. The breath of Eleutheria fills the sail of Aeschylus’ great verse, it blows through the pages of Herodotus, awakens fierce regrets in Demosthenes and generous memories in Plutarch. “Art, philosophy, science,” the Greeks say, “yes, we have given all these; but our best gift, from which all the others were derived, was Eleutheria.”