Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/145

 ALARM CAUSED BY THE ARMY. 123 their neighbors appear to have taken a part in the Peloponnesian war, either for or against Athens ; nor were they among the num- ber 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 Kol- chians, Makrones, and other analogous 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, 1 eight thou- sand six hundred hoplites, with peltasts or targeteers, bowmen, slingers, etc., making a total of above ten thousand military per- sons. 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 estab- lished communities on the shores 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 waj against Syracuse. If the inhabitants of Trapezus had wished to throw off the dominion of Sinope, or if Korylas, the Paphlago- nian, were meditating war against that city, here were formid- able 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 1 Xen. Anab. v, 3, 3 ; v, 7, 9, The maximum of the Grecian force, when mustered at Issus after the junction of those three hundred men who de- serted from Abrokomas, was thirteen thousand nine hundred men. At the review in Babylonia, three days before the battle of Kunaxa, there we mustered, however, only twelve thousand nine hundred (Anab. i, 7, 10).