Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/63

 UNDEFENDED TRENCH. 4J of defence against the approaching invaders. Yet we hear with surprise, and the invaders themselves found with equal surprise, that not a man was on the spot to defend it ; so that the whola Cyreian army and baggage passed without resistance through the narrow breadth of twenty feet. This is the first notice of any defensive measures taken to repel the invasion, except the pre- caution of Abrokomas in burning the boats at Thapsakus. Cyrua had been allowed to traverse all this immense space, and to pass through so many defensible positions, without having yet struck a blow. And now Artaxerxes, after having cut a prodigious extent of trench at the cost of so much labor, provided a valuable means of resistance, especially against Grecian heavy-armed Marching with a known enemy not far off in front, Cyrus must have kept his army in something like battle order, and therefore must havo moved slowly. Moreover the discovery of the treason of Orontes must itself have been an alarming fact, well calculated to render both Cyrus and Klearchus doubly cautious for the time. And the very trial of Orontes appears to have been conducted under such solemnities as must have occa- sioned a halt of the army. Taking these circumstances, we can hardly suppose the Greeks to hare got over so much as thirty English miles of ground in the three entire daya of march. The fourth day they must have got over very little ground in- deed; not merely because Cyrus was in momentary expectation of the King's main army, and of a general battle (i, 7, 14), but because of the great delay necessary for passing the trench. His whole army (more than one hundred thousand men), with baggage, chariots, etc., had to pass through the narrow gut of twenty feet wide between the trench and the Eu phrates. He can hardly have made more than five miles in this whole day's march, getting at night so far as to encamp two or three miles beyond the trench. We may therefore reckon the distance marched over between Pylse and the trench as about thirty-two miles in all ; and two or threo miles farther to the encampment of the next night. Probably Cyrus would keep near the river, yet not following its bends with absolute precision ; so that in estimating distance, we ought to take a mean between the straight line and the full windings of the river. I conceive the trench to have cut the Wall of Media at a much wider angle than appears in Col. Chesney's map ; so that the triangular space included between the trench, the Wall, and the river, was much more ex- tensive. The reason, we may presume, why the trench was cut, was, to defend that portion of the well-cultivated and watered country of Babylonia which lay outside of the Wall of Media which portion (as we shall sea hereafter in the marches of th3 Greeks after the battle) was very consid- erable.