Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/48

 26 HISTORY OF GREECE. Cyrus, was an enterprise so full of difficulty and danger> that the decision to which they came was recommended by the best con- siderations of reason. To go on was the least dangerous course of the two, besides its chances of unmeasured reward. As the remaining Greek officers and soldiers followed the ex- ample of Klearchus and his division, the whole army marched forward from Tarsus, and reached Issus, the extreme city of Kili- kia, in five days' march, crossing the rivers Sarus 1 and Pyra- mus. At Issus, a flourishing and commercial port in the angle of the Gulf so called, Cyrus was joined by his fleet of fifty tri- remes, thirty-five Lacedaemonian and twenty-five Persian tri- remes ; bringing a reinforcement of seven hundred hoplites, under the command of the Lacedaemonian Cheirisophus, said to have been despatched by the Spartan Ephors. 2 He also received a farther reinforcement of four hundred Grecian soldiers ; making the total of Greeks in his army fourteen thousand, from which 1 The breadth of the river Sarus (Scihun) is given by Xcnophon at threo hundred feet ; which agrees nearly with the statements of modern travellers (Koch, Der Zug der Zelm Tausend, p. 34). Compare, for the description of this country, Kinncir's Journey through Asia Minor, p. 135 ; Col. Chesney, Euphrates and Tigris, ii, p. 211 ; Mr. Ainsworth, Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 54. Colonel Chesney affirms that neither the Sarus nor the Pyramus is ford- able. There must have been bridges ; which, in the then flourishing state of Kilikia, is by no means improbable. He and Mr. Ainsworth, however, differ as to the route which they suppose Cyrus to have taken between Tarsus and Issus. Xenophon mentions nothing about the Amanian Gates, which afterwards appear noticed both in Arrian (ii, 6. ii, 7) and in Strabo (xiv, p. 676). The various data of ancient history and geography about this region are by no means easy to reconcile ; see a valuable note of Miitzel on Quintus Curtius, iii, 17, 7. An inspection of the best recent maps, either Colonel Chesney's or Kiepert's, clears up some of these better than any verbal description. We see by these maps that Mount Amanus bifurcates into two branches, one of them flanking the Gulf of Issus on its western, the other or its east- ern side. There are thus two different passes, each called Pylne Amanides or Amanian Gates ; one having reference to the Western Amanus, the other to the Eastern. The former was crossed by Alexander, the latter by Darius, before the battle of Issus ; and Arrian (ii, 6 ; ii, 7) is equally ''or rect in saying of both of them that they passed the Amanian Gates tho'iyh both did not pass the same gates.
 * Diodor. xiv. 21.