Xenophon.
Among other illustrious Greeks that were thus to be led so far from home was Xenophon, the Athenian historian, who was induced by his friend Proxenus, of Bœotia, to join the expedition. He was of high family, and a pupil of Socrates, but embarked against the wishes and advice of his teacher.
When the siege of Miletus was abandoned, and Cyrus began his march, his object was divined by the satrap Tissaphernes, who hastened to Persia to put the king on his guard.
Cyrus reviews his army. The Greeks perceive that they have been deceived.
At Celenæ, or Kelænæ, a Phrygian city, Cyrus halted and reviewed his army. Grecian re-enforcements here joined him, which swelled the number of Greeks to thirteen thousand men, of whom eleven thousand were hoplites. As this city was on the way to Pisidia, no mistrust existed as to the object of the expedition, not even when the army passed into Lycaonia, since its inhabitants were of the same predatory character as the Pisidians. But when it had crossed Mount Taurus, which bounded Cilicia, and reached [pg 297] Tarsus, the Greeks perceived that they had been cheated, and refused to advance farther. Clearchus attempted to suppress the mutiny by severe measures, but failed. He then resorted to stratagem, and pretended to yield to the wishes of the Greeks, and likewise refused to march, but sent a secret dispatch to Cyrus that all would be well in the end, and requested him to send fresh invitations, that he might answer by fresh refusals. He then, with the characteristic cunning and eloquence of a Greek, made known to his countrymen the extreme peril of making Cyrus their enemy in a hostile country, where retreat was beset with so many dangers, and induced them to proceed. So the army continued its march to Issus, at the extremity of the Issican Gulf, and near the mountains which separate Cilicia from Syria. Here Cyrus was further re-enforced, making the grand total of Greeks in his army fourteen thousand.
Cyrus crosses into Syria. He crosses the Euphrates. Battle of Cunaxa.
He expected to find the passes over the mountains, a day's journey from Issus, defended, but the Persian general Abrocomas fled at his approach, and Cyrus easily crossed into Syria by the pass of Beilan, over Mount Amanus. He then proceeded south to Myriandus, a Phœnician maritime town, where he parted from his fleet. Eight days' march brought his army to Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, where he remained five days to refresh his troops. Here again the Greeks showed a reluctance to proceed, but, on the promise of five minæ a head, nearly one hundred dollars more than a year's pay, they consented to advance. It was here Cyrus crossed the river unobstructed, and continued his march on the left bank for nine days, until he came to the river Araxes, which separates Syria from Arabia. Thus far his army was well supplied with provisions from the numerous villages through which they passed; but now he entered a desert country, entirely without cultivation, where the astonished Greeks beheld for the first time wild asses, antelopes, and ostriches. For eighteen days the army marched without other provisions than what [pg 298] they brought with them, parched with thirst and exhausted by heat. At Pylæ they reached the cultivated territory of Babylonia, and the alluvial plains commenced. Three days' further march brought them to Cunaxa, about seventy miles from Babylon, where the army of Artaxerxes was marshaled to meet them. It was an immense force of more than a million of men, besides six thousand horse-guards and two hundred chariots. But so confident was Cyrus of the vast superiority of the Greeks and their warfare, that he did not hesitate to engage the overwhelming forces of his brother with only ten thousand Greeks and one hundred thousand Asiatics. The battle of Cunaxa was fatal to Cyrus; he was slain and his camp was pillaged. The expedition had failed.
Dismay of the Greeks. They retreat.
Dismay now seized the Greeks, as well it might—a handful of men in the midst of innumerable enemies, and in the very centre of the Persian empire. But such men are not driven to despair. They refused to surrender, and make up their minds to retreat—to find their way back again to Greece, since all aggressive measures was madness.
This retreat, amid so many difficulties, and against such powerful and numerous enemies, is one of the most gallant actions in the history of war, and has made those ten thousand men immortal.