Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/111

 CAVALRY ORGANIZED 89 when Xenoplion employed his rear guard, hoplites and peltasts, to charge and repel them, he not only could never overtake any one, but suffered much in getting back to rejoin his own main body. Even when retiring, the Persian horseman could discharge his arrow or cast his javelin behind him with effect ; a dexterity which the Pftrthians exhibited afterwards still more signally, and which the Persian horsemen of the present day parallel with their carbines. This was the first experience which the Greeks had of marching under the harassing attack of cavalry. Even the small detach- ment of Mithridates greatly delayed their progress ; .so that they accomplished little more than two miles, reaching the villages in the evening, with many wounded, and much discouragement. 1 " Thank Heaven," (said Xenophon in the evening, when Cheiri- sophus reproached him for imprudence in quitting the main body to charge cavalry, whom yet he could not reach.) " Thank Heaven, that our enemies attacked us with a small detachment only, and not with their great numbers. They have given us a valuable lesson, without doing us any serious harm." Profiting by the lesson, the Greek leaders organized during the night and during the halt of the next day, a small body of fifty cavalry ; with two hundred Rhodian slingers, whose slings, furnished with leaden bullets, both carried farther and struck harder than those of the Persians hurl- ing large stones. On the ensuing morning, they started before daybreak, since there lay in their way a ravine difficult to pass. They found the ravine undefended (according to the usual stupidity of Persian proceedings), but when they had got nearly a mile be- yond it, Mithridates reappeared in pursuit with a body of four thousand horsemen and darters. Confident from his achievement of the preceding day, he had promised, with a body of that force, to deliver the Greeks into the hands of the satrap. But the latter were now better prepared. As soon as he began to attack them, the trumpet sounded, and forthwith the horsemen, slingers, and darters, issued furth to charge the Persians, sustained by the hop- lites in the rear. So effective was the charge, that the Persians fled in dismay, notwithstanding their superiority in number ; while the ravine so impeded their flight that many of them were slain, and eighteen prisoners made. The Greek soldiers of their own 1 Xen. Anab. iii, 3, 9.