The Exploits of Xenophon Read online

  I was all for it, and told him to go ahead and ask them who they were.

  ‘Macrones,’ they replied to his question.

  ‘And now ask them why they want to fight us.’

  ‘Because you are invading our country,’ they answered.

  ‘Tell them we don’t want their country,’ I said. ‘We have been at war with the Great King. We are returning to Greece. And all we want is to reach the sea.’

  ‘Will you swear that is the truth, and exchange gifts in the sight of the gods?’

  We replied that we certainly would. So the Macrones explained that their solemn custom was to exchange spears. We gave them a Greek spear and received a native lance, and both sides swore to preserve the peace.

  After that the Macrones helped us to cut down trees for the crossing and fraternized with us and let us buy whatever they had in their markets. They accompanied us on the march for three days, leaving us when we passed out of their territory into the land of the Colchians.

  Here we were faced with a new problem. Our way to the sea led straight up the side of a long range of hills, and on the top were the Colchians drawn up in line of battle. There was no pass and no alternative route.

  Headquarters wanted a good old-fashioned battle of line against line, but I wouldn’t have it. I said that it was impossible, even for us, to keep formation while climbing, and that we should arrive at the top in any old order. Our line, if we used it, had to be long and thin so that it could not be outflanked, and that meant that the Colchians could charge downhill and break it where they liked. I suggested that we should attack in deep columns, each one to act independently of the rest.

  This proposal was carried by a majority of votes, and while the troops were forming up I had a word with them. I told them that the enemies in front of us were the last between us and the sea, and that we were going to eat them raw.

  The infantry of the line were in eighty deep columns, with orders to pick their own way up the hill and not to bother about the gaps between them; if the enemy dared to get into these gaps, he would be caught and crushed. On the wings were the light infantry under the command of Cheirisophus and myself. We threatened to outflank the Colchians, who thereupon extended their line to meet us and left a hole in the centre of it. Into the hole charged the Arcadians, under the command of our old Cleanor, and that was the end of the battle.

  The top of the range was now ours, and we found it thickly inhabited. The people were great beekeepers, and in the villages, among all the usual stores, were astonishing quantities of honeycomb. Its effect was astonishing, too. The soldiers who ate it suffered from violent stomach disorders and loss of balance. Those who had only a little appeared to be incapably drunk, and those who had a lot went mad. There were so many hundreds of them lying on the ground that it looked as if we had just lost a great battle, and we were correspondingly depressed. However, none of them died, and twenty-four hours after eating the honeycomb, almost at the exact moment, they recovered their senses. Three or four days later they could get up, and said they felt as if they had been purged by the most drastic medicine.

  When we could move, a march of twenty-one miles in two days brought us to Trapezus. This was one of several little ports pushed out along the coast by the Greek city of Sinope, which itself was a colony of Miletus. We did not want to put too great a strain on the resources of Trapezus, so we billeted ourselves in the native village and raided the surrounding tribes for food.

  We stayed here a month, receiving much kindness from our fellow-Greeks. They opened a market for us, gave us cattle and wheat and wine, and finally made peace between us and the Colchians.

  It was now time to fulfil the oath we had taken on that desperate morning after Tissaphernes had assassinated our leaders. We had sworn to offer sacrifice as soon as we reached friendly soil. And there we were at last, with enough cattle—the Colchians, too, had given us some—to make a worthy offering to the gods. So we sacrified to Zeus the Saviour and to Heracles, who guides the lost, and to all the other Immortals to whom thanks were due.

  When the service and sacrifice were over, we held a sports festival and made Dracontius president. He was a Spartan who had been banished from home ever since he was a boy for having accidentally killed one of his schoolmates with a dagger.

  Dracontius was supposed to have chosen a ground for the sports, but when we asked him where it was, he merely waved his hand at the mountain ridge where we were standing. That was a perfectly good place, he said. We could run here, there and everywhere.

  ‘But what about wrestling on this hard ground?’ we asked.

  ‘Oh, it will teach the loser not to be thrown,’ replied our Spartan president.

  There was a mile race for boys, most of whom were captives we had taken on the march, and a long-distance race, which sixty of our Cretan archers went in for, and wrestling, boxing, and fighting with no holds barred. It was a wonderful show because there were lots of entries for every event and the enthusiasm of the spectators, men and women, was immense.

  There was a horse race, too—or what Dracontius thought was one. We had to gallop down the steep hill to the sea, turn round in the water and come up again to the finishing post, which was the altar where we had held our sacrifice. Going down the hill, half of us went over our horses’ heads, and on the way back the horses toiled up the slope in a walking race. It made a grand finale. You should have heard the shouting, the laughter and the cheers!

  At the end of the day we held a meeting of the whole army to decide what we were to do next. The first speaker was Antileon of Thurii.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’m tired of packing my stuff. I’m tired of parades. I’m tired of quick marching and double marching and carrying this heavy shield and spear. I’m tired of forming line and guard duties and battles. And now that I have the sea in front of me, what I’m going to do is to lie on my back on a deck and wake up to find myself in Greece.’

  The men naturally cheered this, and several others got up and spoke to the same effect. In fact there wasn’t a soul who disagreed with Antileon. Even Cheirisophus was a bit of an optimist on this occasion.

  ‘Gentlemen, by a stroke of luck there’s a friend of mine commanding the Spartan fleet at the naval base of Byzantium’, he said. His name is Anaxibius, and if you would like to send me to him, I think I can promise to return with enough ships to carry us. Meanwhile, all you have to do is to wait here.’

  Of course it was voted that Cheirisophus should set off at once, and everyone assumed that our troubles were over. It was left to me to put a bit of common sense into the meeting.

  ‘Splendid!’ I told them. ‘We have all agreed to await Cheirisophus’ return. But what are we going to eat meanwhile? You’ll have to fight for your food, whether you like it or not, so we had better preserve some discipline. Now, this is what I propose:

  ‘First, you are not to go wandering off to forage on your own. The organization of ration parties must be left to headquarters.

  ‘Second, you will be raiding enemy country, and must expect reprisals. Therefore, guard duties will go on as at present.

  ‘Third, it is not at all certain that Cheirisophus can persuade Anaxibius to give us enough ships, so we ought to borrow a warship from Trapezus and capture some of our own.

  ‘Fourth, in case we don’t get any ships at all, we must persuade the colonies to make us roads for a march along the coast. They’ll be only too glad to do it to get rid of us.’

  The army accepted all my proposals except the last, which they howled down. They had had enough of marching. But as a matter of fact I put this point quietly to Trapezus and to the other colonies when we came to them, and they set the roads in order at once, just as I had said they would.

  A few days later Cheirisophus set off. After he had gone, we borrowed a fifty-oar galley from Trapezus, giving the command of it to Dexippus, a Laconian. This scoundrel made off with the ship. I’m glad to say that in the end he was executed for engagi
ng in some sort of underhand business with the native princes of Thrace—but not before he had caused us more trouble.

  Then we borrowed a thirty-oar galley and this time made the Athenian Polycrates captain. He laid his hands on a number of the vessels which used to sail past Trapezus, and we commandeered them. We did not want to get the reputation of pirates, so we stacked the cargoes on the beach under guard, and we paid the crews out of the common army funds.

  Meanwhile, we were eating up all the food in the country and had to go far afield to get more. The people of Trapezus naturally did not want us to set the coastal natives against them, so they showed us the way into the mountains and told us to go and raid the Drilae—one of the most warlike tribes on the Black Sea coast, with inaccessible fortresses. We had heavy fighting, heavy losses and mighty little food.

  At the end of March, when Cheirisophus had still not returned, there was only one thing to do. We had to march again. We had enough ships to carry the surplus baggage, the boys, invalids, veterans over forty and the assortment of women who had joined the army. The rest of us tramped westward along the coast. On the third day we all met at Cerasus, another port belonging to Sinope, and held a review of the army. There were 8,600 of us left out of the 13,000 who had fought at Cunaxa.

  We also settled up the accounts for the Persian and tribal prisoners whom we had sold as slaves. Before distributing the prize money, we set aside one-tenth for a thank-offering to Apollo and Artemis. The generals were entrusted with this money and were to spend it as they wished in the service of the gods.

  Out of my portion I gave a piece of plate to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, inscribed with my name and that of Proxenus. The money which was dedicated to Artemis I spent long afterwards in the place where I am writing—Scillus, close to Olympia.

  I made the river meadows, the little hills and the woods into a park for the goddess, and built in it a miniature of her great temple at Ephesus. Every year we hold an open-air feast for our neighbours and for pilgrims to the shrine. Very well we do them, too, since there is abundance of food from the sacred herds and fields of Artemis, and game which my dear sons and their friends have hunted on the hills.

  7. Discipline Breaks Down

  The army’s problem was how to get along the coast of what is now Turkey all the way from Cerasus to the Bosporus. It could be done only by sea. But the Greek colonies were terrified by this force of hungry, powerful, hard-bitten adventurers. The generals’ only chance of getting ships was by clever diplomacy and good behaviour.

  At Cerasus the army began to get out of hand. There were quarrels in the market and a bad case of a private raid on a town which ended in defeat. Worse still, when three old men were sent by the town to try to clear the matter up in a friendly spirit, the army stoned them to death. When we left Cerasus, we had the reputation of a rabble of hooligans.

  Our few ships coasted along as before, while we of the land party had to cross the territory of the Mossyn-dwellers, whose chieftains live in high wooden towers called Mossyns. They had fair hair and white skins, but they were the most primitive, barbarous people we had met in the whole of our march.

  The Mossyn-dwellers had a sort of consul at Trapezus, a Greek called Timesitheus who looked after their trade with the colony. He very kindly came with us and tried to persuade the Mossyn-dwellers to allow us to march through their country.

  When they flatly refused, Timesitheus, who of course was well informed on the local politics, told us that the country was in a state of civil war. He said that the tribesmen farther to the west would probably help us against the eastern part of their nation, which was holding us up.

  He sent for the western chiefs, and we had a conference with them. I explained that we were on our way home to Greece, and that we had no intention of staying. If the chiefs wanted to wipe out their enemies, I said, this was their chance, for they would never see such a powerful force again.

  The chiefs eagerly agreed and promised to send us ships, men and guides. The ships turned up the next day. They were dugout canoes—300 of them—each holding three men. One of these paddled the canoe away, while the other two landed. When the warriors were on shore, they staged a war dance.

  They stood opposite one another in two lines, just like the chorus in our Greek theatre. All of them carried shields of cowhide on a wicker frame, shaped like an ivy leaf, and spears nine feet long with a point at one end and a knob, carved from the wood, at the other. They also had battle-axes. They wore linen shirts down to their knees and leather helmets with tufts of hair like the points of a crown.

  After their dance one of them sang out a keynote and the rest started chanting. Then they pranced right through our infantry without paying any attention to them and marched straight on a fortress which defended the approach to their capital.

  The capital contained the highest of the wooden towers, built on the top of the citadel. In the tower their king lived as a sort of sacred prisoner, whose court was kept going by all the tribe in common. That was the cause of the civil war. The eastern Mossyn-dwellers had claimed that they alone had the right to the tower and the king.

  Our army had no orders to join in this attack; but some of the soldiers, hoping for loot, broke away and followed the savages. The defenders of the outlying fortress easily repulsed the assault, and those Greeks who had acted without orders ran for their lives—the first time that such a thing had happened in the whole history of the expedition.

  I had to say something about this disgrace, which shocked us all very much. I pointed out that it had only happened through lack of discipline and said we must at once show the friendly Mossyn-dwellers that running away was not a habit of ours. We must prove to the enemy, I insisted, that we were very different soldiers from any they had ever known.

  The next day we sacrificed and found that our luck was good. Then we laid on the operation as a model job: infantry of the line in columns; archers and light infantry in the gaps and well forward; savages on the left flank. The enemy met us at the same fortress and managed to hold the light infantry, but the line simply marched right over them and on to the capital.

  The Mossyn-dwellers defended the houses very obstinately, hurling their nine-foot spears and using long ones, almost too heavy for a man to lift, to hold us off at close quarters. When they found that this time the weight of our attack continually increased instead of weakening, they abandoned the capital. The king refused to come out of his wooden Mossyn and so did those who were left in the first fortress after it had been overrun. They all perished in the flames.

  We raided the town supplies for our food and found bread, stacks of wheat in the stalk and jars of pickled dolphin in slices. There were also jars of dolphin fat, which the Mossyn-dwellers use just as we do oil, and quantities of sweet chestnuts which they eat boiled and whole, and grind into flour for loaves. Their wine was rough but tasted all right when mixed with water.

  After handing over the town to our strange allies, we marched on westwards and met no more resistance. The country was all peaks and deep valleys, and, though the hilltop settlements averaged ten miles from one to another, the inhabitants could shout and be heard across the intervening space. The friendly part of the tribe entertained us in some of these settlements. They liked to show us the children of their wealthy families, who were deliberately fattened on a diet of boiled chestnuts so that they were nearly as broad as they were tall. Their skin was very white and delicate and tattooed all over with patterns of flowers.

  Their customs astonished us. Anything that a Greek would prefer to do in privacy, they loved to do in a crowd. And, when alone, a Mossyn-dweller would carry on as if he were in company, talking to himself and laughing and capering, just as if he were showing off to an audience.

  We were eight days in this country. Then, passing through two smaller tribes in peace, we arrived at Cotyora, another of Sinope’s colonies. We were badly received there, for the town would not accept our sick and wounded nor give us any opp
ortunity to buy food. Consequently, we were forced to take what we wanted.

  This alarmed the city of Sinope, which at once sent a delegation to us headed by a very eloquent politician called Hecatonymus. He said all the right things, expressing the pride of the citizens of Sinope in our victories and their thankfulness that we had arrived safely on the coast. Then he protested, still very politely, against our treatment of Cotyora and suggested that if we did not behave ourselves, Sinope would turn the Paphlagonians loose on us. They were the nation whose territory surrounded Sinope.

  This sort of diplomacy was just what we were brought up on in Athens, so the army asked me to reply.

  Now fortunately the city of Trapezus had been so pleased with our treatment of them—and of their enemies—that they had provided us with some of their own citizens as guides. These were still with us, and I told the delegates from Sinope to ask them what sort of people we were.

  ‘And here are all the crimes we have committed,’ I said. ‘When Cotyora would not sell us food, we took it, and we are still willing to pay for it. When they closed their gates and refused to admit our sick, we just walked in where their walls were weak and found hospital accommodation and paid the expenses. I admit that we then posted a guard on the city gates, but only to insure that our invalids were not ill-treated and that we could remove them when we wished.

  ‘The rest of us, as you can see, are camping in the open in regular military lines. Do we look to you an undisciplined mob? No, we look ready for anything—ready, if we must, to take on both you and the Paphlagonians. But it would suit us much better to ally ourselves with the Paphlagonians—and they, I hear, might be quite glad to get rid of Sinope.’

  This put the delegates in a panic. They insisted that the last thing they wanted was war. No, they had only come to demonstrate their affection for us. They were certain that every word I said was true. As for Hecatonymus (who got a lot of unpleasant looks from his fellow-delegates), what he had meant was that if they had to choose between us and the Paphlagonians, they would choose Greeks every time.