Part 3 (1/2)
rings, which he especially asked for. Thus loaded with presents, he left them, having first shown them a village wherein they could find quarters--as well as the road which they were to take through the territory of the Makrones.
When they reached the river which divided the land of the Makrones from that of the Skythini, they perceived the former a.s.sembled in arms on the opposite side to resist their pa.s.sage. The river not being fordable, they cut down some neighboring trees to provide the means of crossing.
While these Makrones were shouting and encouraging each other aloud, a light-armed foot-soldier in the Grecian army came to Xenophon, saying that he knew their language, and that he believed this to be his country. He had been a slave at Athens, exported from home during his boyhood--he had then made his escape (probably during the Peloponnesian War, to the garrison of Dekeleia), and afterwards taken military service. By this fortunate accident, the generals were enabled to open negotiations with the Makrones, and to a.s.sure them that the army would do them no harm, desiring nothing more than a free pa.s.sage and a market to buy provisions. The Makrones, on receiving such a.s.surances in their own language from a countryman, exchanged pledges of friends.h.i.+p with the Greeks, a.s.sisted them to pa.s.s the river, and furnished the best market in their power during the three days' march across their territory.
The army now reached the borders of the Kolchians, who were found in hostile array, occupying the summit of a considerable mountain which formed their frontier. Here Xenophon, having marshalled the soldiers for attack, with each company of 100 men in single file, instead of marching up the hill in phalanx, or continuous front with only a scanty depth--addressed to them the following pithy encouragement--”Now, fellow-soldiers, these enemies before us are the only impediment that keeps us away from reaching the point at which we have been so long aiming. We must even eat them raw, if in any way we can do so.”
Eighty of these formidable companies of heavy-armed foot-soldiers, each in single file, now began to ascend the hill; the light-armed foot-soldiers and bowmen being partly distributed among them, partly placed on the flanks. Cheirisophus and Xenophon, each commanding on one wing, spread their light-armed foot-soldiers in such a way as to outflank the Kolchians, who accordingly weakened their centre in order to strengthen their wings. Hence the Arcadian light-armed foot-soldiers and heavy-armed foot-soldiers in the Greek centre were enabled to attack and disperse the centre with little resistance; and all the Kolchians presently fled, leaving the Greeks in possession of their camp, as well as of several well-stocked villages in their rear. Amidst these villages the army remained to refresh themselves for several days. It was here that they tasted the grateful, but unwholesome honey, which this region still continues to produce--unaware of its peculiar properties. Those soldiers who ate little of it were like men greatly intoxicated with wine; those who ate much, were seized with the most violent vomiting and diarrhoea, lying down like madmen in a state of delirium. From this terrible distemper some recovered on the ensuing day, others two or three days afterwards. It does not appear that any one actually died.
Two more days' march brought them to the sea, at the Greek maritime city of Trapezus or Trebizond, founded by the inhabitants of Sinope on the coast of the Kolchian territory. Here the Trapezuntines received them with kindness and hospitality, sending them presents of bullocks, barley-meal, and wine. Taking up their quarters in some Kolchian villages near the town, they now enjoyed, for the first time since leaving Tarsus, a safe and undisturbed repose during thirty days, and were enabled to recover in some degree from the severe hards.h.i.+ps which they had undergone. While the Trapezuntines brought produce for sale into the camp, the Greeks provided the means of purchasing it by predatory incursions against the Kolchians on the hills. Those Kolchians who dwelt under the hills and on the plain were in a state of semi-dependence upon Trapezus; so that the Trapezuntines mediated on their behalf and prevailed on the Greeks to leave them unmolested, on condition of a contribution of bullocks.
These bullocks enabled the Greeks to discharge the vow which they had made, on the proposition of Xenophon, to Zeus the Preserver, during that moment of dismay and despair which succeeded immediately on the ma.s.sacre of their generals by Tissaphernes. To Zeus the Preserver, to Herakles[71] the Conductor, and to various other G.o.ds, they offered an abundant sacrifice on their mountain camp overhanging the sea; and after the festival ensuing, the skins of the victims were given as prizes to compet.i.tors in running, wrestling, boxing, and other contests. The superintendence of such festival games, so fully accordant with Grecian usage and highly interesting to the army, was committed to a Spartan named Drakontius; a man whose destiny recalls that of Patroklus and other Homeric heroes--for he had been exiled as a boy, having unintentionally killed another boy with a short sword. Various departures from Grecian customs however were admitted. The matches took place on the steep and stony hill-side overhanging the sea, instead of on a smooth plain; and the numerous hard falls of the compet.i.tors afforded increased interest to the by-standers. The captive non-h.e.l.lenic boys were admitted to run for the prize, since otherwise a boy-race could not have been obtained. [”Horses also ran; and they had to gallop down the steep, and, turning round in the sea, to come up again to the altar.[72] In the descent, many rolled down; but in the ascent, against the exceedingly steep ground, the horses could scarcely get up at a walking pace. There was consequently great shouting, and laughter, and cheering from the people.”[73]] Lastly, the animation of the scene, as well as the ardor of the compet.i.tors, was much enhanced by the number of the women present.
- 10. The Greek cities on the Black Sea; their feelings toward the Ten Thousand.
We now commence a third act in the history of this memorable body of men. After having followed them from Sardis to Kunaxa as mercenaries[74]
to procure the throne for Cyrus--then from Kunaxa to Trapezus as men anxious only for escape, and purchasing their safety by marvellous bravery, endurance, and organization--we shall now track their proceedings among the Greek colonies on the Euxine and at the Bosphorus of Thrace, succeeded by their struggles against the meanness of the Thracian prince Seuthes, as well as against the treachery and arbitrary harshness of the Lacedaemonian commanders Anaxibius and Aristarchus.
Trapezus, now Trebizond, where the army had recently found repose, was a colony from Sinope, as were also Kerasus and Kotyora farther westward; each of them receiving a governor from the mother-city, and paying to her an annual tribute. All these three cities were planted on the narrow strip of land dividing the Euxine from the elevated mountain range which so closely borders on its southern coast. At Sinope itself, the land stretches out into a defensible peninsula, with a secure harbor, and a large breadth of adjacent fertile soil. So tempting a site invited the Milesians,[75] even before the year 600 B.C., to plant a colony there, and enabled Sinope to attain much prosperity and power. Farther westward, not more than a long day's journey for a rowing vessel from Byzantium, was situated the Megarian[76] colony of Herakleia, in the territory of the Mariandyni.
The native tenants of this line of coast, upon which the Greek settlers intruded themselves (reckoning from the westward), were the Bythynian Thracians, the Mariandyni, the Paphlagonians, the Tibareni, Chalybes, Mosynoeki, Drilae, and Kolchians. Here as elsewhere, these natives found the Greek seaports useful, in giving a new value to inland produce, and in furnis.h.i.+ng the great men with ornaments and luxuries to which they would otherwise have had no access. The citizens of Herakleia had reduced into dependence a considerable portion of the neighboring Mariandyni, and held them in a relation resembling that of the natives of Esthonia and Lavonia to the German colonies in the Baltic. Some of the Kolchian villages were also subject in the same manner to the Trapezuntines; and Sinope doubtless possessed a similar inland dominion of greater or less extent. But the princ.i.p.al wealth of this important city arose from her navy and maritime commerce; from the rich thunny fishery[77] attached to her promontory; from the olives in her immediate neighborhood, which was a cultivation not indigenous, but only naturalized by the Greeks on the seaboard; from the varied produce of the interior, comprising abundant herds of cattle, mines of silver, iron, and copper, in the neighboring mountains, wood for s.h.i.+p-building, as well as for house-furniture, and native slaves. The case was similar with the three colonies of Sinope, more to the eastward--Kotyora, Kerasus, and Trapezus; except that the mountains which border on the Euxine, gradually approaching nearer and nearer to the sh.o.r.e, left to each of them a more confined strip of cultivable land. For these cities the time had not yet arrived to be conquered and absorbed by the inland monarchies around them, as Miletus and the cities on the western coast of Asia Minor had been. The Paphlagonians were at this time the only native people in those regions who formed a considerable aggregated force, under a prince named Korylas; a prince tributary to Persia, yet half independent--since he had disobeyed the summons of Artaxerxes to come up and help in repelling Cyrus--and now on terms of established alliance with Sinope, though not without secret designs, which he wanted only force to execute, against that city. The other native tribes to the eastward were mountaineers both ruder and more divided; warlike on their own heights, but little capable of any aggressive combinations.
Though we are told that Perikles had once despatched a detachment of Athenian colonists to Sinope, and had expelled from thence the despot Timesilaus,--yet neither that city nor any of her neighbors appear to have taken part in the Peloponnesian war, either for or against Athens; nor were they among the number of tributaries to Persia. They doubtless were acquainted with the upward march of Cyrus, which had disturbed all Asia; and probably were not ignorant of the perils and critical state of his Grecian army. But it was with a feeling of mingled surprise, admiration, and alarm, that they saw that army descend from the mountainous region, hitherto only recognized as the abode of Kolchians, Makrones, and other a.n.a.logous tribes, among whom was perched the mining city of Gymnias.
Even after all the losses and extreme sufferings of the retreat the Greeks still numbered, when mustered at Kerasus, 8600 heavy-armed foot-soldiers, with light-armed foot-soldiers, bowmen, and slingers, making a total of above 10,000 military persons. Such a force had never before been seen in the Euxine. Considering both the numbers and the now-acquired discipline and self-confidence of the Cyreians, even Sinope herself could have raised no force capable of meeting them in the field.
Yet they did not belong to any city, nor receive orders from any established government. They were like those mercenary armies which marched about in Italy during the fourteenth century, under the generals called Condottieri, taking service sometimes with one city, sometimes with another. No one could predict what schemes they might conceive, or in what manner they might deal with the established communities on the sh.o.r.es of the Euxine. If we imagine that such an army had suddenly appeared in Sicily, a little time before the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, it would have been probably enlisted by Leontini and Katana in their war against Syracuse. If the inhabitants of Trapezus had wished to throw off the dominion of Sinope,--or if Korylas the Paphlagonian were meditating war against that city--here were formidable auxiliaries to second their wishes. Moreover there were various tempting sites, open to the formation of a new colony, which, with so numerous a body of original Greek settlers, would probably have overtopped Sinope herself.
There was no restraining cause to reckon upon, except the general h.e.l.lenic sympathies and education of the Cyreian army; and what was of not less importance, the fact that they were not mercenary soldiers by permanent profession, such as became so formidably multiplied in Greece during the next generation--but established citizens who had come out on a special service under Cyrus, with the full intention, after a year of lucrative enterprise, to return to their homes and families. We shall find such gravitation towards home steadily operative throughout the future proceedings of the army. But at the moment when they first emerged from the mountains, no one could be sure that it would be so.
There was ample ground for uneasiness among the Euxine Greeks, especially the Sinopians, whose supremacy had never before been endangered.
- 11. Plans of the army for the future.
An undisturbed repose of thirty days enabled the Cyreians to recover from their fatigues, to talk over their past dangers, and to take pride in the antic.i.p.ated effect which their unparalleled achievement could not fail to produce in Greece. Having discharged their vows and celebrated their festival to the G.o.ds, they held an a.s.sembly to discuss their future proceedings; when a Thurian[78] soldier named Antileon exclaimed--”Comrades, I am already tired of packing up, marching, running, carrying arms, falling into line, keeping watch, and fighting.
Now that we have the sea here before us, I desire to be relieved from all these toils, to sail the rest of the way, and to arrive in Greece outstretched and asleep, like Odysseus.”[79] This pithy address being received with vehement acclamations, and warmly responded to by all, Cheirisophus offered, if the army chose to empower him, to sail forthwith to Byzantium,[80] where he thought he could obtain from his friend the Lacedaemonian admiral Anaxibius, sufficient vessels for transport. His proposition was gladly accepted; and he departed to execute the project.
Xenophon then urged upon the army various resolutions and measures, proper for the regulation of affairs during the absence of Cheirisophus.
The army would be forced to maintain itself by marauding expeditions among the hostile tribes in the mountains. Such expeditions accordingly must be put under regulation: neither individual soldiers, nor small companies, must be allowed to go out at pleasure, without giving notice to the generals; moreover, the camp must be kept under constant guard and scouts, in the event of surprise from a retaliating enemy. It was prudent also to take the best measures in their power for procuring vessels; since, after all, Cheirisophus might possibly fail in bringing an adequate number. They ought to borrow a few s.h.i.+ps of war from the Trapezuntines, and detain all the merchant s.h.i.+ps[81] which they saw; uns.h.i.+pping the rudders, placing the cargoes under guard, and maintaining the crew during all the time that the s.h.i.+ps might be required for transport of the army. Many such merchant vessels were often sailing by; so that they would thus acquire the means of transport, even though Cheirisophus should bring few or none from Byzantium. Lastly, Xenophon proposed to require the Grecian cities to repair and put in order the road along the coast, for a land-march; since, perhaps, with all their efforts, it would be found impossible to get together a sufficient stock of transports.
All the propositions of Xenophon were readily adopted by the army, except the last. But the mere mention of a renewed land-march excited such universal murmurs of repugnance, that he did not venture to put that question to the vote. He took upon himself however to send messages to the Grecian cities, on his own responsibility; urging them to repair the roads, in order that the departure of the army might be facilitated.
And he found the cities ready enough to carry his wishes into effect, as far as Kotyora.
The wisdom of these precautionary suggestions of Xenophon soon appeared; for Cheirisophus not only failed in his object, but was compelled to stay away for a considerable time. An armed s.h.i.+p with fifty oars was borrowed from the Trapezuntines, and committed to the charge of a Lacedaemonian provincial, named Dexippus, for the purpose of detaining the merchant vessels pa.s.sing by. This man having violated his trust, and employed the s.h.i.+p to make his own escape out of the Euxine, a second was obtained and confided to an Athenian, Polykrates; who brought in successively several merchant vessels. These the Greeks did not plunder, but secured the cargoes under adequate guard, and only reserved the vessels for transports. It became however gradually more and more difficult to supply the camp with provisions. Though the army was distributed into suitable detachments for plundering the Kolchian villages on the hills, and seizing cattle and prisoners for sale, yet these expeditions did not always succeed; indeed on one occasion, two Grecian companies got entangled in such difficult ground, that they were destroyed to a man. The Kolchians united on the hills in increased and menacing numbers, insomuch that a larger guard became necessary for the camp; while the Trapezuntines--tired of the protracted stay of the army, as well as desirous of exempting from pillage the natives in their own immediate neighborhood--conducted the detachments only to villages alike remote and difficult of access. It was in this manner that a large force under Xenophon himself, attacked the lofty and rugged stronghold of the Drilae--the most warlike nation of mountaineers in the neighborhood of the Euxine, well-armed, and troublesome to Trapezus by their incursions.
After a difficult march and attack, which Xenophon describes in interesting detail, and wherein the Greeks encountered no small hazard of ruinous defeat--they returned, in the end completely successful, and with a plentiful booty.
- 12. The Ten Thousand begin their march westward.
At length, after long awaiting in vain the reappearance of Cheirisophus, increasing scarcity and weariness determined them to leave Trapezus. A sufficient number of vessels had been collected to serve for the transport of the women, of the sick and wounded, and of the baggage. All these were accordingly placed on board under the command of Philesius and Sophaenetus, the two oldest generals; while the remaining army marched by land, along a road which had been just made good under the representations of Xenophon. In three days they reached Kerasus,[82]
another maritime colony of the Sinopians, still in the territory called Kolchian; there they halted ten days, mustered and numbered the army, and divided the money acquired by the sale of their prisoners. Eight thousand six hundred heavy-armed foot-soldiers, out of a total probably greater than eleven thousand, were found still remaining; besides targeteers[83] and various light troops.
During the halt at Kerasus, the declining discipline of the army became manifest as they approached home. Various acts of outrage occurred, originating now, as afterwards, in the intrigues of treacherous officers. A captain named Klearetus persuaded his company to attempt the plunder of a Kolchian village near Kerasus, which had furnished a friendly market to the Greeks, and which rested secure on the faith of peaceful relations. He intended to make off separately with the booty in one of the vessels: but his attack was repelled, and he himself slain.