The Exploits of Xenophon Page 9
We then marched to join Thibron, past Troy and along the coast of Mysia until we came to Pergamus. Here was the estate of Gongylus, a Greek whose family had been banished from Eretria eighty years earlier for taking the Persian side in the war with Xerxes. His wife, Hellas, entertained me with great hospitality.
Hellas told me that Asidates, an enormously wealthy Persian noble, was staying at his castle in the valley of the river Caicus with all his family and possessions.
‘If you lead out three hundred men,’ she said, ‘and surprise him at night, you’ll capture the whole lot of them.’
After dinner I set off, taking with me just the officers who had been my closest friends during the long march, as I wanted to do them a good turn. Plenty of others wished to join us, but we would not let them—assuming too readily that we had only to break in and grab Asidates and the loot.
We arrived at midnight. All around the castle were the slaves and the cattle, but we didn’t waste time on them. What we wanted was inside.
The castle, however, was much more formidable than we expected. It had a wall eight bricks thick and battlements defended by a garrison which knew its business. Our assault failed, so we started to drive a trench under the walls. By daylight our tunnel was through. But as soon as the leading man knocked out a brick, thereby letting the light in, a great spit used for roasting oxen was plunged into the hole and caught him through the thigh.
The garrison archers kept the tunnel under so fierce a fire that we could not use it. Meanwhile, the signal beacons were flaming away on the battlements and soon all the available forces of the province were about our ears: cavalry, Assyrian infantry, 800 light troops, and more coming up over the plain from Parthenium and Apollonia.
We cleared out as fast as we could, marching in hollow square and taking with us, in the centre of it, all the slaves and cattle we could capture. I can’t say we wanted them. We really took them to give ourselves a motive for not running away.
Hellas’ son, in spite of his mother’s entreaties, came out to the rescue with his personal retainers. So did another of the local Greek exiles with his men. We reached home in safety with 200 prisoners and a flock of sheep, but half of us had been wounded by sling-stones or arrows. Among the casualties was my old friend Agasias, who of course had been fighting and enjoying it from beginning to end.
The next night I led out the whole army as if I intended to resume the march south. I reckoned that we could make another dash for Asidates’ castle when he, thinking we had gone, had relaxed his precautions. But his nerve had broken. He abandoned his castle and tried to escape, and his whole caravan walked right into our army. That’s what happens when you make proper sacrifices. We took him for ransom, with his wife and children and all his horses, cattle and treasure.
The army was delighted and decided—Spartans, generals, captains, soldiers and all—to give me a farewell presentation by letting me have first pick at the loot.
Soon afterwards I handed over the army to Thibron to be merged with his own, and I returned to Athens.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1955, 1961 by Geoffrey Household
Illustrations copyright © 1961 by The Bodley Head Ltd.
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-5040-1050-4
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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