Anabasis

Thereupon Xenophon also and his party bivouacked where they were, without a fire and without dinner, after stationing such guards as they could. When it came toward morning, Xenophon sent the youngest of his troops to the sick men with orders to make them get up and force them to proceed.

Meanwhile Cheirisophus sent some of the troops quartered in the village to find out how the people at the rear were faring. Xenophon’s party were glad enough to see them, and turned over the invalids to them to carry on to the camp, while they themselves continued their journey, and before completing twenty stadia reached the village where Cheirisophus was quartered.

When all had come together, the generals decided that it was safe for the different divisions of the army to take up quarters in the several villages. Cheirisophus accordingly remained where he was, while the other generals distributed by lot the villages within sight, and all set off with their respective commands.

Then it was that Polycrates, an Athenian captain, asked to be detached from his division; and with an active group of men he ran to the village which had fallen to Xenophon’s lot and there took possession of all the villagers, the village chief included, seventeen colts which were being reared for tribute to the King, and the village chief’s daughter, who had been married eight days before; her husband, however, was off hunting hares, and was not taken in the village.

The houses here were underground, with a mouth like that of a well, but spacious below; and while entrances were tunnelled down for the beasts of burden, the human inhabitants descended by a ladder.[*](Such underground villages are still to be found in Modern Armenia.) In the houses were goats, sheep, cattle, fowls, and their young; and all the animals were reared and took their fodder there in the houses.

Here were also wheat, barley, and beans, and barleywine in large bowls. Floating on the top of this drink were the barley-grains and in it were straws, some larger and others smaller, without joints;

and when one was thirsty, he had to take these straws into his mouth and suck. It was an extremely strong drink unless one diluted it with water, and extremely good when one was used to it.

Xenophon made the chief man of this village his guest at dinner and bade him be of good cheer, telling him that he should not be deprived of his children, and that before they went away they would fill his house with provisions by way of reward in case he should prove to have given the army good guidance until they should reach another tribe.

He promised to do this, and in a spirit of kindliness told them where there was wine buried. For that night, then, all Xenophon’s soldiers, in this village where they were thus separately quartered, went to bed amid an abundance of everything, keeping the village chief under guard and his children all together within sight.

On the next day Xenophon took the village chief and set out to visit Cheirisophus; whenever he passed a village, he would turn aside to visit the troops quartered there, and everywhere he found them faring sumptuously and in fine spirits; there was no place from which the men would let them go until they had served them a luncheon,

and no place where they did not serve on the same table lamb, kid, pork, veal, and poultry, together with many loaves of bread, some of wheat and some of barley.

And whenever a man wanted out of good fellowship to drink another’s health, he would draw him to the bowl, and then one had to stoop over and drink from it, sucking like an ox. To the village chief they offered the privilege of taking whatever he wanted. He declined for the most part to accept anything, but whenever he caught sight of one of his kinsmen, he would always take the man to his side.

Again, when they reached Cheirisophus, they found his troops also feasting in their quarters, crowned with wreaths of hay and served by Armenian boys in their strange, foreign dress; and they were showing the boys what to do by signs, as if they were deaf and dumb.

As soon as Cheirisophus and Xenophon had exchanged warm greetings, they together asked the village chief, through their Persian-speaking interpreter, what this land was. He replied that it was Armenia. They asked him again for whom the horses were being reared. He answered, as tribute for the King; and he said that the neighbouring country was that of the Chalybians, and told them where the road was.

Then Xenophon took the village chief back for the time to his own household, and gave him a horse that he had got when it was rather old, to fatten up and sacrifice, for he understood that it was sacred to the Sun-god. He did this out of fear that the horse might die, for it had been injured by the journey; and he took for himself one of the colts[*](See 28 above) and gave his captains also a colt apiece.

The horses of this region were smaller than the Persian horses, but very much more spirited. It was here also that the village chief instructed them about wrapping small bags round the feet of their horses and beasts of burden when they were going through the snow; for without these bags the animals would sink in up to their bellies.