The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER THREE

THE MIGHTY EUPHRATES. The two words are inseparable, like twins joined by the rib cage, like the Great Nile, like Olympian Zeus. Even here, five hundred miles from its mouth, the river was a half mile wide, larger than any flow we had seen in our lives, a king among rivers. The flood plains extended for miles on either bank, and the irrigation channels alone, which had been built by men generations earlier, could each have served a city the size of Athens. How far must this river have traveled, from what distant rainy lands or glacier-studded mountains, to bring such quantities of water to this desert, otherwise bereft of any moisture? The locals showed us fish they had caught, ancient creatures longer than two men together, fearsome things with reptilian snouts, from which the men would remove the eggs for their own consumption, then release back into the stream. Such monsters would have given men pause even if found in the vastness of the sea. Here in a fresh-water flow, their presence was terrifying. The river at this point could be crossed only by a long pontoon bridge, but we saw that the one that had once been there had been recently burned. The two ends were still smoldering from the fire set only days before. Abrocomas had decided not to keep his date with Cyrus at the intended place, and had fled with three hundred thousand men across the river to combine his forces with those of King Artaxerxes.

The army camped here for five days while Cyrus pondered his next move, and on the fourth evening the prince assembled the Hellenic officers in his tent compound for a feast and a council of war. Xenophon invited me to accompany him, and I gratefully accepted, even if I was not permitted to do other than stand quietly in the shadows near the doorway, with the other squires and guards. The enormous tent had been decorated inside as a monumental battle trophy, a brilliant move by Cyrus designed to hearten and bring out the warlike spirit of his guests. They had scarcely settled on their couches when Cyrus stood up.

"Captains," he said, eschewing the typically flowery speech Persians reserve for such formal occasions. "I will not mince words. Ordinarily, in order to gain power, the second son of a great king, like myself, either resigns himself to some minor satrapy or resorts to an assassin's skills. His position is nebulous, he remains always at the mercy of others. I prefer war. In war, a man either wins or loses. The outcome is clear. The gangrenous member is lopped off cleanly, the wound does not fester.

"Abrocomas fled before us in fear, his tail between his legs, even though his forces outnumbered ours by a factor of three. It is his misfortune that combining his army with those of my brother the king will not increase his strength; a company of cowards only makes those around them more cowardly. We will now have a million men to rout, instead of three hundred or seven hundred thousand. Tell your men to rest their sword arms with special care-the killing we have before us is much more than we had any right to hope for."

Cyrus then sat back down at his place, and calmly sipped from his goblet. All in the tent had fallen to stunned silence at this display of bluster. Hardly a man moved but for the slaves padding softly among the diners, filling their cups. Xenophon shot a cautious glance over at me where I stood in the shadows.

Certain of the captains, namely Clearchus' Spartans, nodded their heads and began banging their fists enthusiastically on the table in front of them, shouting their approval. Others, however, muttered under their breath, despairing as to how they would break the news to their men, who were already pressed to the limit by the long march and unwilling to venture any farther from the sea than they already had. After a few minutes, Proxenus stood up, and the room fell silent again.

"Prince Cyrus, permit me to speak openly, anticipating the reactions of our men." Cyrus nodded in assent.

"We have loyally followed you this far, first in our belief that we were to punish the Pisidians, then the Cilicians, and finally Abrocomas here at the Euphrates. Each time we pushed the men farther from Ionia. But pushing Greeks away from the sea is like herding cats from a plate of fish. The men will say that your true intent all along was to engage the king's army, and that you hid this from them; that you prevented them from returning weeks ago when we were camped in Cilicia; and now that we have advanced as far as the Euphrates you have deceived them again, as it is even more difficult to return home now. Prince Cyrus, I tell you with all respect, it is at your own peril that you attempt to cross the Syrian deserts and fight the king with a Greek army, unless you make amends with the Hellenic troops and convince them that it is in their interest to continue following you."

I held my breath at Proxenus' audacity. Cyrus, of course, was not dense. Proxenus' hint was so broad as to be bordering on extortion, but the prince did not flinch. He gazed evenly at Proxenus, who remained standing, staring back at the prince impassively, as the other officers shifted uneasily at their places. Finally he smiled, and standing up he raised his cup to Proxenus.

"And I thought I was a man of direct words," Cyrus said as the men chuckled tensely, though in some relief. "Proxenus, you know my circumstances as well as any man here. For practical reasons I cannot carry wagonloads of gold to distribute to the men each month. But I acknowledge that the men may have had… other expectations." The officers nodded at this, and Cyrus paused for a moment as if thinking, his eyes still locked on Proxenus.

"Let us strike a bargain, then, which you will carry back to your men. When we reach Babylon, each man will be entitled to five minas of silver." A general buzzing started up among the men in the tent, and even the slaves paused in their tasks to listen more closely. The sum was huge. "And," he continued, "I shall double their current wages to a full three darics per month until their safe return to Ionia."

The officers gasped. Proxenus, inscrutable as always, paused briefly before raising his cup to the prince in return. "A generous offer, your lordship. I shall convey it to my men, and though I cannot yet speak for them, I feel confident that under those conditions they would follow you to Hades and back."

The officers erupted in loud exclamations, standing up and raising their goblets to the prince, and clapping each other on the shoulders. Xenophon, however, was slow to raise his cup and stood quietly in place beside Proxenus, saying not a word while the men around him chattered enthusiastically with each other. He would tell me later that he imagined that the sorceress Circe had cast her weird spell on the greed-blinded men and turned them to swine. I wondered what old Gryllus would have said, when told of a war fought by Greeks not for pride or principle, but for three Persian darics a month.

The banquet proceeded in a merry way. Cyrus' slaves poured copious amounts of pine-aged, resinous Thasian wine carried all the way from Greece for the enjoyment of the guests. Steaming stacks of roast fish were brought in fresh from the river, drenched in syrupy pomegranate and peach juices and garnished with leeks and other greens, followed by thrushes served on steaming beds of asparagus. Just as the guests' appetites had been whetted, a chorus of oboes sounded and six men staggered into the tent carrying a roasted ox spit between two poles. Laying it carefully upon a wide, flat board, one of them drew a scimitar, and with three enormous blows split open the beast's belly from sternum to crotch. The attendants leaned their arms into the cavity up to their shoulders, for what we expected to be the removal of the viscera, only to proudly emerge with a roasted sheep, steaming and dripping with onions and herbs, the sauces pouring from its sides. The man with the scimitar then split this open, spattering the nearby guests with fragrant juices. A roast pig emerged from the mess, its own belly neatly sewn up. The scimitar man gave a sigh of mock exasperation, to the delight of the guests, and with another blow split open the pig. It had been stuffed with a kid goat, the empty spaces filled with baked apples that had been simmering for hours inside the entire concoction, lending their perfumed fragrance to the meat of all the animals surrounding them. The scene continued, each animal containing another one smaller-a fat goose, a chicken, a partridge, an ortolan, a nightingale, and several animals more, no doubt down to a final grasshopper or grub, though I was too far in the back of the tent to see what precisely the cook was displaying. The servants soon ensured that every man was happily gnawing a favored limb, and watched carefully that no empty space appeared on a guest's plate without another slab of steaming meat or a chunk of flat, toasted bread being heaped on.

A banquet by Cyrus would not have been complete without entertainment, and this he provided in abundance, from the talent he had brought with him or later recruited among the camp followers. The Spartans looked on in dumb amazement and no little consternation as jugglers and tumblers, whose services they thought they had banned months ago from the army's presence, pranced through the tent, sometimes performing several acts at once for various groups of eaters. Clearchus, because of his fierce countenance, was a favored foil of the jesters and magicians, though amazingly, he took it in good humor. Lovely, nude flute girls from Syria supplied even more active entertainment, dancing and contorting their limber bodies through ever-spinning series of hoops tossed into the air and caught in time with the music, or juggling small, razor-sharp swords, glittering in the lamplight. One girl danced and writhed on the floor with an enormous trained snake, and it was remarkable the things she had taught it, or perhaps she had drugged it.

Suddenly, however, at a signal from Cyrus, all the slaves simultaneously snuffed out the lamps along the walls, to the consternation of the always tense Clearchus and his captains. The callipygian beauties then danced wildly with flaming torches, threatening constantly to set the tent or the Spartans' long hair afire, but never failing to complete their intricate steps in perfect precision. The cheering for their performance was deafening. On their way out, they stepped delicately among the diners, seeking spare coins, pausing here and there to good-naturedly slap a wayward hand that had accidentally worked its way too high up a slender, brown thigh.

To the surprise of all, Clearchus then stood up with a serious expression, pounding the table with the flat of his hand for attention until all were silent. He expressed his thanks to Cyrus in a gravelly voice, and swaying slightly on his feet, moved seamlessly into what we soon perceived with dismay was a military harangue.

"Fellow officers: These girls have proven that they have no less natural ability than men, but lack only judgment and physical strength. No one who witnesses these amazing feats of swordplay and fire can deny that courage is a trait that can be taught, when these fragile girls throw themselves so daringly onto the sharp blades. Just so, we Spartans must also teach our troops, by rote if necessary, to heed the call to arms and to exhibit such courage that…"

Cyrus, exasperated at this unexpected and unwarranted interruption of his celebration, tossed a hunk of hard bread at Clearchus, striking him in the throat and stopping him in mid-harangue. The Spartan looked up, shocked at this violation of protocol and military solemnity, and peered fiercely through the darkness and haze of the tent in an attempt to see the source of the offense. Cyrus' cheerful voice rang out through the silence.

"Sit down, Clearchus, and shut up. Tonight I don't give a damn whether you are a Spartan general or my old grandmother. There is a time to show courage, and a time to be merry. No one questions your superiority in matters of war. But if you persist in demonstrating your inferiority in matters of sociability, I will not hesitate to throw you bodily out of the tent!" With this he clapped twice and two enormous Ethiopians stepped to his side, all but invisible in the dim light of the tent but for the whites of their eyes and gleaming teeth, who stared avidly at the astonished Clearchus. The men roared at this unprecedented slap to the fierce general, and he sat back down on his couch with a sheepish expression. The Spartan captains, unused to the quantities of wine they had been drinking, spontaneously broke out in a Spartan victory song, clumsily attempting to make up for Clearchus' awkward digression, and the musicians gamely accompanied them as the other officers joined in.

As the dancers and flute girls drifted back toward the rear entrance, Cyrus began looking expectantly toward the front, barely able to maintain his concentration. The officers' table conversation had resumed, and the tent was again filled with raucous laughter, the boasts and taunts of happy men. Finally, the prince was rewarded as the tent flap was pulled aside and Asteria stepped into the room, looking for all the world like Artemis or golden Aphrodite, her small lyre under one arm, her eyes cast demurely down to her feet, a shy smile on her face. She wore a diaphanous gown that allowed fleeting glimpses of her girlish profile as she passed in front of the lamps. Her waist-length black hair had been elaborately braided and coiled about her head, with an assortment of colorful feathers threaded through the locks, forming a lovely contrast to her bare, unadorned neck and arms. She was barefoot and wore only the lightest of rouge on her cheeks, for her naturally olive complexion already lent her a radiant glow in the lamplight. She was heart-breakingly young and beautiful, though the gentle swell and quiver of her breasts visible through the thin fabric of her backlit gown betrayed the fact that she was a grown woman, and one who was fully aware of the enervating effect she was having on the room.

A eunuch silently drew a low chair onto the carpet in the middle of the tent, gleaming in the torchlight with its inlaid whorls of silver and ivory. The master craftsman who had made it for Cyrus' ancestors centuries ago had added a low footrest under the seat, mortised into the very frame, a perfect design for a musician to rest a foot while plucking the lyre. Over it all was draped a heavy fleece for comfort. Asteria gently sat down on the magnificent chair, and the room went silent.

From the first, single pluck of the lyre's string she held the men captive and breathless, entranced by her beauty and by the sweet, crystalline purity of her voice. She fingered the instrument's strings almost randomly at first, as if searching for a motif or attempting to identify mood and pattern, then suddenly seemed to be completely absorbed by the music she was playing. Her fingers tumbled over the strings like a vessel floating down a current, pausing here and there to explore eddies and avoid shoals, picking up speed along the straight rapids and then vacillating over the still waters of a heavenly lake shimmering in the moonlight. The girl sang in flawless Greek, a love ode set to a melody undoubtedly of her own device, for it had elements of Persian intervals quite unlike what one might have heard sung in Athens, which were in striking counterpoint to the song's utterly Grecian mood and lyrics. Her face assumed an expression of such utter concentration as to be almost unbearable, like one of those ambiguous masks used in the theater, on which pleasure and anguish meet and coexist, seeming to break over each other alternately like waves against the outgoing tide. I was astonished to find, or perhaps I merely imagined, that as Asteria's gaze swept calmly about the room from man to man while she sang, it seemed to linger on me, so that I felt as if she were addressing me alone. No doubt every man felt the same, for she was trained in the ways of pleasing an audience, and what better measure of success than for each man to feel as if he had been the recipient of a private performance? Still, I was certain her gaze had stayed on mine longer than her childhood music instructors might have dictated.

There is an ancient Greek word, a strange and lovely word rarely used anymore in its earliest sense, which describes the gradual return of a vibrating lyre string to its point of rest and equilibrium after the instrument has ceased to sound. In modern times, a more sinister meaning has overtaken the original. As Asteria's last, sweet note died slowly into silence, calling this ancient word to mind, every man, slave and general alike, held his breath. Then looking up at us, she smiled shyly, stood quickly with a deferential nod to Cyrus, and skipped out the rear of the tent to join her companions. The men's conversation again began filling the room, though more subdued this time, as the raucous mood had been broken and reverie had taken its place. Once touched by the gods, it is difficult for a mortal to return so soon to the toils of the earth. The banquet broke up shortly afterwards, as each man excused himself, thanking the prince and pledging his own assistance in the forthcoming venture. Xenophon and I walked slowly back to our camp, each in our own silent thoughts, each undoubtedly thinking the same thing.

The word, my Muses prod; what is the ancient word I mentioned, with the two-faced meaning? A word connoting aspects of both art and brutality, life and death, beauty and terror, a strange word in its ability to encompass such things simultaneously, a word tragic in the loss of its benign significance in favor of one more searing. Such a word, so fitting in many ways to my own little tale, this word I gingerly lift and expose from its grave one last time, in the hope that its earlier meaning, that of a peaceful resolution of a gently sounding chord, might thereby not be forgotten without at least a wake.

The word is katastrophe.