The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER THREE

OUR DEPARTURE FROM Sardis on the ninth day of March was splendid, a day of sunshine and confidence, and the entire city turned out along the route to view the spectacle. The men began marching at first light, and by midday not even half the enormous army had taken to the road yet. The tremendous cloud of dust raised by the tramping feet obscured the sun so that no one could see the entire army in a glance, but watching the thousands upon thousands of solemn faces as the troops passed by in their wide columns gave sufficient indication of power as to impress even the gods. Only Clearchus and his most recently recruited troops were absent, as they would be joining us later on the march.

The procession was led by long trains of surly pack camels, followed by herds of goat and sheep for the daily sacrifices, to obtain the gods' favor before battle and hazardous river crossings. These were followed by big-eyed, lowing oxen trailing enormous wagons laden with the troops' heavy equipment and supplies. The animals' early lead would allow them and the gear to arrive at the daily campsites first and begin seeking forage, and would allow the quartermaster's slaves to start setting up tents and cook sites for the arriving troops. The oxen were followed by forty elephants, which Cyrus had acquired from Indian traders. They were the first such beasts I had ever seen, and were fearsome, seemingly holdovers from the age of the Titans. They stood as tall as a small tree and were hairless and wrinkled, from a distance appearing to have a tail at both ends. If one didn't know better, they would seem to be walking backwards, although I soon learned that the large, flapping ears were a reasonably accurate indicator as to the location of the head. These creatures, however, were merely for show during the grand departure from Sardis. The forage they would have required would have been too difficult to support during a normal march, so after the grand review was finished, Cyrus ordered them to be circled back to the city to continue assisting in the construction of its defensive works.

Cyrus' native troops followed next: a hundred thousand Persians, Lydians, Egyptians and even Ethiopians, bedecked in their own country's armor and clothing, each with their individual drummers and pipers to keep the marching feet in rhythm, their native officers shouting orders in barbaric tongues. The pennants and standards of the native brigades flew proudly, and each unit tried to outdo the others during this lead march out of Sardis before the prince's watchful eyes.

Behind the infantry, led by the prince himself, rode the Persian cavalry, thousands of identical white Arabian stallions, prancing and snorting, their proud riders sitting erect and motionless, wearing pointed bronze helmets and chain mail that glittered in the sun like the squamae of fish. Surrounding them were ranks of pantalooned Medes marching in perfect precision, bearing gilded and bejeweled lances topped with silken banners woven in the form of dragons; as the breeze blew through their gaping jaws, they seemed to hiss with rage, their long tails fluttering behind them on the wind. Following the cavalry, in the place of honor usually reserved for the general's bodyguard, came the proud Greeks, marching in unison, their scarlet cloaks fluttering in the breeze and the long, oiled braids of the Spartans among them carefully dressed and flowing down their backs. It would have been wonderful to roll out a walking display of Proxenus' Boeotian engines, but the crowd was too pressing for it to be safe, and Clearchus, who detested the machines in any case, had vetoed any discussion of the matter among his captains, even during his temporary absence. Proxenus and Xenophon, along with the other officers, rode alongside the columns of marching troops, though not so much to keep them in order as to keep the crowds contained. So enthused were the onlookers by this time that it was difficult to restrain the women and girls from flitting into the columns to plant kisses on the men's faces, or the male bystanders from thumping our Greeks stoutly on the shoulders in a jubilant display of well-wishing and hope for success against the upstart Pisidians. Following close behind were Cyrus' six hundred cavalry bodyguard, his "Immortals," in demeanor and discipline every bit as fearsome as the Greeks. These men were hand-picked from every nation under Persian dominion, but were uniformed and armed identically, and had been trained for years to serve no personal desire and to favor no master before their duty of protecting Cyrus. They were somewhat put out at having to march behind the Greeks in the army's column, but during the course of the next few months, Clearchus made special efforts to ingratiate himself with them, as far, at least, as he was capable, given his lack of social skills. Eventually the Greeks and Cyrus' Immortals gained a grudging respect for each other.

The rear of the column consisted of more native infantry and the army's twenty "scythe chariots," the curved blades on their hubs sheathed for safety but still cutting ominously through the air, to the delight of the crowd and the utter disdain of the Spartans, who loathed any such gimmickry. Behind this was Cyrus' personal retinue, an enormous mob: the quartermaster general, with his ninety subalterns, responsible for billeting and feeding the troops; a company of haughty horsemen, couriers for the prince and the senior officers; and carriages bearing dozens of Persian seers, priests and their assistants. They were accompanied by an equal number of vehicles loaded with their supplies: lavish robes and other garments, ceremonial knives, chalices, incense, scrolls, and vessels. Next were the covered wagons bearing the royal wardrobes, which despite their size were dwarfed by those bearing the wardrobes of the Persian generals, much to the scoffing and hilarity of the Greeks. The importance of the marchers and goods declined rapidly from this point: fifty empty carriages and wagons used for reserve, an entire herd of unmounted horses, each led by a Persian boy in pantaloons and slippers, and an unending parade of vehicles reserved for the prince's concubines, valets, physicians, barbers, footmen, apothecaries, scribes, porters, tailors, laundry women, the head cook and his fourteen assistants, the prince's taster and two replacement tasters, engineers, historians-one's head spins.

After this came the real show-the enormous, straggling, jeering and cheering crowd of camp followers-leather tanners, con artists, prostitutes, water sellers, musicians, jugglers, seamstresses, money changers, laundry women, wives and children of the soldiers themselves, and a horde of beggars and tramps trailing behind, a complete representation of the entire lower strata of Persian and Greek society, a veritable city of thousands, half again as many as the soldiers themselves, who made their living serving and fleecing the army by day and entertaining it by night, or perhaps the other way around. They were despised by the officers and army regulars, but ultimately tolerated and even protected, because otherwise the services they provided would have to be rendered by the troops themselves, and trained fighting men were too valuable to be wasted on mundane camp tasks.

I shall not go into excessive detail regarding the daily progress of our march. For the most part the routine was uneventful. Cyrus had arranged for sufficient provisions from the outset, so we were not dependent upon foraging from the countryside as we passed through. Consequently, our arrival in each city and village was not feared by the inhabitants, but was instead an occasion for cautious celebration. The prince traveled with an ever-present chest of copper coins, which he would toss in handfuls to the crowds on either side, with the expansive gestures of a benevolent father. The crowds would mill frantically around the caravan, competing with the native company of beggars from Sardis, and create an uproar as they scrambled in the dust for the tiny coins that became trampled underfoot. Cyrus and his minions rode past, solemn, imperious, only the occasional tight-lipped smile breaking the gravity of their demeanor, watching as their subjects rolled in the filth at the feet of their horses.

Thus we traveled steadily eastward across the length of Asia Minor, in good weather and order, the men challenged every day by Cyrus' insistence on readiness and drilling, and by daily inspections of our equipment and weapons. We tramped straight into the heart of Pisidia-though contrary to our expectations of battle and plunder, we fired not a single arrow nor captured any enemy territory. The prince disdainfully ignored the barbarian warriors lined up warily along the ridge tops, watching our enormous trains of baggage, our servants, and our camp followers in awe. Five weeks into the march, we stopped at one of the Great King's palaces on the River Meander, which we used for a month as a way station to regroup and retrain, and to resettle the baggage. It was here, legend has it, that Apollo punished the leering satyr Marsyas, who had challenged the god to a music match. Apollo played his lyre upside-down and demanded that Marsyas match this feat with his flute, which of course he was unable to do. After flaying the foolish satyr alive, Apollo hung his skin on the wall of a nearby cave, whence comes the source of a small but wild local river fittingly named the Marsyas.

It was here, too, that the long-awaited Clearchus joined us with the remaining core of the army he had raised earlier with Cyrus' darics, a thousand fierce and silent scarlet-cloaked Spartan men-at-arms, each with two or three helot slaves to carry their heavy armor and weapons. He also brought eight hundred broad-shouldered Thracian targeteers who had defected to his forces, and two hundred Cretan bowmen. These were to form the hard-muscled center of Cyrus' Greek army, over which Clearchus himself was general, the counterpart to a Persian named Ariaius who commanded Cyrus' native forces. Clearchus was as terrifying an individual as Proxenus had led us to believe, and worse. His face was so homely and pockmarked as to be almost comical, but he had an evil, jagged scar running halfway down the side of his temple, which he was constantly picking at, keeping it inflamed, perhaps intentionally, for effect. His beard was so ragged and lice-infested as to raise eyebrows even for a Spartan, and he never smiled-in fact, he hardly even talked except to cuss out his men, and could barely chew for the rotten blackness of his teeth. He rode disdainfully among his troops, scarcely deigning to show obeisance to Cyrus, but his new recruits marched in perfect unison, without a single wasted movement or word, showing little concern and even less curiosity at the hundred thousand native troops gathered to watch their arrival. They followed Clearchus' smallest gesture and command as closely as if they were a single machine-a war machine, one begotten in turn by a determined god.

During the army's reorganization here at the Meander, Clearchus, surveying the situation, flew into a fury and demanded that the quantity of baggage and camp followers be drastically reduced-the Spartans refused to fight to protect clothing wagons, flute girls and kitchen staff. Cyrus resisted for a time, although when Clearchus threatened to march away with the troops he had just brought, the prince acquiesced in part, cutting the baggage train and followers by half, and paying the latter in gold to return to their homes. He insisted, however, in the face of much Spartan grumbling, on keeping a small coterie of slave girls and attendants-the prince was Persian, and had appearances to keep up.

In view of what the Fates had in store for me, I cannot say whether the prince's stubbornness in this affair was to my benefit or not, though his decision had as great an impact on my life as any decree from the gods, or from the Spartans, for that matter.

Clearchus be damned.