Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/139

 EETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND. 117 To lay down, with any certainty, the line which the Greeks followed from the Euphrates to Trebizond, appears altogether impossible. 1 cannot admit the hypothesis of Mr. Ainsworth, who conducts the army across the Araxes to its northern bank, carries them up northward to the latitude of Teflis in Georgia, then brings them back again across the Harpa Chai (a northern affluent of the Araxes, which he identifies with the Harpasus mentioned by Xenophon) and the Araxes itself, to Gymnias, which he places near the site of Erzerum. Professor Koch (p. 104-108), who dissents with good reason from Mr. Ainsworth, pro- poses (though with hesitation and uncertainty) a line of his own which appears to me open greatly to the same objection as that of Mr. Ainsworth. It carries the Greeks too much to the northward of Erze- rum, more out of their line of march from the place where they crossed the Eastern Euphrates, than can be justified by any probability. The Greeks knew well that, in order to get home they must take a westerly direction (see Anab. iii. 5, 15). Their great and constant purpose would be to make way to the westward, as soon as they had crossed the Euphrates ; and the road from that river, passing near the site of Erzerum to Trebizond, would thus coincide, in the main, with their spontaneous tendency. They had no motive to go northward of Erzerum, nor ought we to suppose it without some proof. I trace out, therefore, a line of march much less circuitous ; not meaning it to be understood as the real road which the army can be proved to have taken, but simply because it Beems a possible line, and because it serves as a sort of approximation to complete the reader's idea of the entire ground travelled over by the Ten Thousand. Koch hardly makes sufficient account of the overwhelming hardships with which the Greeks had to contend, when he states (p. 96) that if they had taken a line as straight, or nearly as straight as was practi- cable, they might have marched from the Euphrates to Trebizond in sixteen or twenty days, even allowing for the bad time of year. Con* sidering that it was mid-winter, in that very high and cold country, with deep snow throughout ; that they had absolutely no advantages or assistance of any kind ; that their sick and disabled men, together with their arms, were to be carried by the stronger ; that there were a great many women accompanying them ; that they had beasts to drive along, carrying baggage and plunder, the prophet Silanus, for exam- ple, having preserved his three thousand darics in coin from the field of Kunaxa until his return ; that there was much resistance from the Chalybes and Taochi ; that they had to take provisions where provi- sions were discoverable ; that even a small stream must have impeded them, and probably driven them out of their course to find a ford, CDnsidering the intolerable accumulation of these and other hardships, we reed not wonder at any degree of slowness in their progress. It