Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/79

 TRUCE PROPOSED BY THE PERSIANS. 57 afternoon by the supposed approach of some of the enemy's horse, and by evidences that the enemy were not far off, which induced them to slacken their march for the purpose of more cautious array. Hence they did not reach the first villages before dark ; and these too had been pillaged by the enemy while retreating before them, so that only the first-comers under Klearchus could obtain accom- modation, while the succeeding troops, coming up in the dark, pitched as they could without any order. The whole camp was a scene of clamor, dispute, and even alarm, throughout the night. No provisions could be obtained. Early the next morning Klear- Schneidcr, in his note on this passage, as well as Hitter, (Erdkunde, part, x, 3, p. 17), Mr. Ainsworth (Travels in the Track, p. 103) and Colonel Chesney (Euph. and Tigr. p. 219), understand the words here used by Xen- ophon in a sense from which I dissent. " When it was day, the army pro- ceeded onward on their march, having the sun on their right hand," these words they understand as meaning that the army marched northward; whereas, in my judgment, the words intimate that the army marched east- ward. To have the sun on the right hand, does not so much refer either to the precise point where, or to the precise instant when, the sun rises, but to his diurnal path through the heavens, and to the general direction of the day's march. This may be seen by comparing the remarkable passage in Herodotus, iv, 42, in reference to the alleged circumnavigation of Africa., from the Red Sea round the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar, by the Phojnicians under the order of Nekos. These Phoenicians said, " that in sailing round Africa (from the Red Sea) they had the sun on their right hand" (if rrjv Aij3i>ijv R-epiTiAuovrsf rbv TJE^LOV i^t Set;ip. Hero dotus rejects this statement as incredible. Not knowing the phenomena of a southern latitude beyond the tropic of Capricorn, he could not imagine that men in sailing from East to West could possibly have the sun on their right hand ; any man journeying from the Red Sea to the Straits of Gibral- tar must, in his judgment, have the sun on the left hand, as he himself had flways experienced in the north latitude of the Mediterranean or the Afri- can coast. See Vol. III. of this History, ch. xviii, p. 282. In addition to this reason, we may remark, that Ariseus and the Greeks, starting from their camp on the banks of the Euphrates (the place where they had passed the last night but one before the battle of Kunaxa) and marching northivard, could not expect to arrive, and could not really arrive, nt villages of the Babylonian territory. But they might naturally expect to do so, if they marched eastward, towards the Tigris. Nor would they have hit upon the enemy in a northerly march, which would in fact hare been something near to a return upon their own previous steps. They would moreover have been stopped by the undefended Trench, which could onl? fie passed at the narrow opening close to the Euphrates. 3*