Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/45

Rh ravine which lay in their course before the stupid Persians had taken any measures to stop them. When they were fairly over, the attack on their rear was recommenced, but this time with 1000 cavalry and 4000 archers and slingers. The Greeks, however, did not as before passively endure the annoyances of the enemy. The trumpet sounded, the fifty horsemen charged, the slingers plied their weapons, and the infantry advanced to their support. The natives at once fled in confusion to the ravine, leaving many dead on the fields whose bodies the Greeks mutilated in order to strike terror into the enemy.

They were now allowed without molestation to reach the banks of the Tigris, where they found an ancient deserted city, with massive walls. This the Greeks called Larissa, which was a common name for the ancient Pelasgian towns with Cyclopean masonry in Thessaly and elsewhere. But it has been conjectured that the name really told them was Al Resen, and that the city was the Resen of Scripture. At the present day it is called Nimrúd; and it was here, on the site of the Nineveh of antiquity, that Mr Layard brought to light so many interesting remains of the ancient Assyrian empire. A further march of eighteen miles conducted the Greeks to another deserted city, which they understood to be called Mespila. It was nearly opposite the modem Mossul, and appears to have been originally a continuation of the once colossal Nineveh or Ninus. These cities, or city, had been devastated by Cyrus the Great, and abandoned about one hundred and fifty years before Xenophon came there.