Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/38

 16 HISTORY OF GREECE. in Phrygia, where Menon overtook him with a reinforcement of one thousand hoplites, and five hundred peltasts, Dolopes, JEni* anes, and Olynthians. He then marched three days onward to Kelsenoe, another Phrygian city, " great and flourishing," with a citadel very strong both by nature and art. Here he halted no less than thirty days, in order to await the arrival of Klearchus, with his division of one thousand hoplites, eight hundred Thracian peltasts, and two hundred Kretan bowmen ; at the same time So- phaenetus arrived with one thousand farther hoplites, and Sosiaa with three hundred. This total of Greeks was reviewed by it not possible to obtain accurate measurements, in much of the country traversed by Cyrus (Strabo, ii, p. 73.) Colonel Chesney remarks, " From Sardis to Cunaxa, or the mounds of Mohammed, cannot be much under or over twelve hundred and sixty-five geographical miles ; making 2.364 geographical miles for each of the five hundred and thirty-five parasangs given by Xenophon between those two places." As a measure of distance, the parasang of Xenophon is evidently untrust- worthy. Is it admissible to consider, in the description of this march, that the parasangs and stadia of Xenophon are measurements rather of time than of space ? From Sardis to Kelsenae, he had a measured road and numbered parasangs of distance ; it is probable that the same mensuration and numeration continued for four days farther, as far as Keramon-Agora, (since I imagine that the road from Kelaenae to the Halys and Kappadokia must have gone through these two places,) and possibly it may have con- tinued even as far as Ikonium or Dana. Hence, by these early marches, Xenophon had the opportunity of forming to himself roughly an idea of the time (measured by the course of the sun) which it took for the army to march one, two, or three parasangs ; and when he came to the ulterior por- tions of the road, he called that length of time by the name of one, two, or three parasangs. Five parasangs seem to have meant with him a full day's march; three or four, a short day; six, seven, or eight, a long, or very long day. "We must recollect that the Greeks in the time of Xenophon had no port- able means of measuring hours, and did not habitually divide the day into hours, or into any other recognized fraction. The Alexandrine astrono- mers, near two centuries afterwards, were the first to use upy in the sens* of hour (Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologic, vol. i, p. 239.) This may perhaps help to explain Xenophon's meaning, when he talki about marching five or seven parasangs amidst the deep snows of Armenia I do not however suppose that he had this meaning uniformly or steadily present to his mind. Sometimes, it n }uld seem, he must have used th word in its usual meaning of distance.