Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/51

 MARCH TO THAPSAKUS. 29 prevailing discouragement, in the unknown march upon which they were entering.' At Myriandrus Cyrus finally quitted the sea, sending back his fleet, 2 and striking with his land-force eastward into the interior. For this purpose it was necessary first to cross mount Amanus, by the pass of Beilan ; an eminently difficult road, which he was for- tunate enough to find open, though Abrokomas might easily have defended it, if he had chosen. 3 Four days' marcli brought the army to the Chalus (perhaps the river of Aleppo), full offish held sacred by the neighboring inhabitants; five more days, to the sources of the river Daradax, with the palace and park of the Syrian satrap Belesys ; three days farther, to Thapsakus on the Euphrates. This was a great and flourishing town, a centre of commerce enriched by the important ford or transit of the river Euphrates close to it, in latitude about 35 40' N. 4 The river, 1 Xen. Anab. i, 4, 7-9. a Diodor. xiv, 21. 3 See the remarks of Mr. Ainsworth, Ti-vels in the Track of the Ten Thousand, p. 58-61 ; and other citations respecting the difficult road through the pass of Beilan, in Miitzel's valuable notes on Quintus Curtius, iii, 20, 13, p. 101. 4 Neither the Chalus. nor the Daradax, nor indeed the road followed by Cyrus in crossing Syria from the sea to the Euphrates, can be satisfactorily made out (Koch, Zug der Zehn Tauscnd, p. 36, 37). Eespecting the situation of Thapsakus, placed erroneously by Rennell lower down the river at Deir, where it stands marked even in the map an nexed to Col. Chesney's Report on the Euphrates, and by Reichard higher up the river, near Bir see Ritter, Erdkunde, part x. B. iii ; West Asien,p. 14-17, with the elaborate discussion, p. 972-978, in the same volume; also the work of Mr. Ainsworth above cited, p. 70. The situation of Thapsakus is correctly placed in Colonel Chesney's last work (Euphr. and Tigr. p. 213), and in the excellent map accompanying that work ; though I dissent from his view of the march of Cyrus between the pass of Beilan and Thap- gakus. Thapsakus appears to have been the most frequented and best-known passage over the Euphrates, throughout the duration of the Seleukid kings, down to 100 B. c. -It was selected as a noted point, to which observations and calculations might be conveniently referred, by Eratosthenes and other geographers (see Strabo, ii, p. 79-87). After the time when the Roman empire became extended to the Euphrates, the new Zeugma, higher UD the river near Bir or Bihrejik (about the 37tn parallel of latitude) became moif nsed and better known, at least to the Roman writers. The passage at Thapsakus was in the line of to&* iron* PaLiiyra to