After a march thus painful and perilous, the rear division at length found themselves in safety among their comrades in villages with well-stocked houses and abundance of corn and wine. So eager, however, were Xenophon and Cheirisophus to obtain the bodies of the slain for burial, that they consented to purchase them by surrendering the guide, and to march onward without any guide;—a heavy sacrifice in this unknown country, attesting their great anxiety about the burial.[169]
For three more days did they struggle and fight their way through the narrow and rugged paths of the Karduchian mountains, beset throughout by these formidable bowmen and slingers; whom they had to dislodge at every difficult turn, and against whom their own Kretan bowmen were found inferior, indeed, but still highly useful. Their seven days’ march through this country, with its free and warlike inhabitants, were days of the utmost fatigue, suffering and peril; far more intolerable than anything which they had experienced from Tissaphernes and the Persians. Right glad were they once more to see a plain, and to find themselves near the banks of the river Kentritês, which divided these mountains from the hillocks and plains of Armenia,—enjoying comfortable quarters in villages, with the satisfaction of talking over past miseries.[170]
[170] Xen. Anab. iv, 3, 2. His expressions have a simple emphasis which marks how unfading was the recollection of what he had suffered in Karduchia.
Καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐνταῦθα ἀνεπαύσαντο ἄσμενοι ἰδόντες πεδίον· ἀπεῖχε δὲ τῶν ὀρέων ὁ ποταμὸς ἓξ ἢ ἕπτα στάδια τῶν Καρδούχων. Τότε μὲν οὖν ηὐλίσθησαν μάλα ἡδέως, καὶ τὰ ἐπιτήδεια ἔχοντες καὶ πολλὰ τῶν παρεληλυθότων πόνων μνημονεύοντες. Ἕπτα γὰρ ἡμέρας, ὅσασπερ ἐπορεύθησαν διὰ τῶν Καρδούχων, πάσας μαχόμενοι διετέλεσαν, καὶ ἔπαθον κακὰ ὅσα οὐδὲ τὰ σύμπαντα ὑπὸ βασιλέως καὶ Τισσαφέρνους. Ὡς οὖν ἀπηλλαγμένοι τούτων ἡδέως ἐκοιμήθησαν.
Such were the apprehensions of Karduchian invasion, that the Armenian side of the Kentritês, for a breadth of fifteen miles, was unpeopled and destitute of villages.[171] But the approach of the Greeks having become known to Tiribazus, satrap of Armenia, the banks of the river were lined with his cavalry and infantry to oppose their passage; a precaution, which if Tissaphernes had taken at the Great Zab at the moment when he perfidiously seized Klearchus and his colleagues, the Greeks would hardly have reached the northern bank of that river. In the face of such obstacles, the Greeks, nevertheless, attempted the passage of the Kentritês, seeing a regular road on the other side. But the river was two hundred feet in breadth (only half the breadth of the Zab), above their breasts in depth, extremely rapid, and with a bottom full of slippery stones; insomuch that they could not hold their shields in the proper position, from the force of the stream, while if they lifted the shields above their heads, they were exposed defenceless to the arrows of the satrap’s troops. After various trials, the passage was found impracticable, and they were obliged to resume their encampment on the left bank. To their great alarm they saw the Karduchians assembling on the hills in their rear, so that their situation, during this day and night, appeared nearly desperate. In the night, Xenophon had a dream,—the first, which he has told us, since his dream on the terrific night after the seizure of the generals,—but on this occasion, of augury more unequivocally good. He dreamed that he was bound in chains, but that his chains on a sudden dropped off spontaneously; on the faith of which, he told Cheirisophus at daybreak that he had good hopes of preservation; and when the generals offered sacrifice, the victims were at once favorable. As the army were taking their morning meal, two young Greeks ran to Xenophon with the auspicious news that they had accidentally found another ford near half a mile up the river, where the water was not even up to their middle, and where the rocks came so close on the right bank that the enemy’s horse could offer no opposition. Xenophon, starting from his meal in delight, immediately offered libations to those gods who had revealed both the dream to himself in the night, and the unexpected ford afterwards to these youths; two revelations which he ascribed to the same gods.[172]