Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/44

34 unanimously adopted the arrangements best calculated to secure their retreat.

Next day, having burnt their carriages and tents, and all superfluous baggage, and having dined, they formed themselves into a hollow square, with the baggage-bearers in the centre. Cheirisophus, as being a Lacedæmonian, was put in command of the front; four of the captains were chosen to command the flanks; while Xenophon and Timasion, as the two youngest, took charge of the rear. In this order they crossed the Zab, marching so as to follow upwards the left bank of the Tigris. The cowardly Persians did not dare to dispute with them the passage of the Zab; but as soon as they were marching on the other side, two hundred cavalry, and four hundred archers and slingers, came after them to harass their rear. Some Greeks were wounded, and they had no means of retaliation, having neither horsemen nor slingers. Xenophon, however, actually made a sally on foot with a few men against the Persian cavalry, who, instead of cutting him off, turned and fled as soon as he appeared. The Greek army, thus harassed, only marched two and a half miles during the day, when they got to some villages. Here Xenophon set to work to make use of the lesson which, he said, the enemy had given them. With the horses that they had with them he organised a small troop of fifty cavalry, and he got together as many as two hundred Rhodians, skilled in using the sling with leaden bullets instead of stones. During a day's halt these preparations were completed, and then the Greeks, starting very early in the morning, got over a deep