Anabasis

If I should give the advice which in my judgment is best, may many blessings come to me; otherwise, the opposite. For what men term acred counsel[*](Hecatonymus alludes to the proverb Counsel is a sacred thing, i.e. it must be given honestly.) seems verily to be my portion; since to-day if I be found to have given good counsel, there will be many to praise me, but if it be ill, there will be many among you to curse me.

Now I know that we shall have far more trouble if you are conveyed by sea, for upon us will fall the duty of providing the ships; while if you journey by land, upon you will fall the task of doing the fighting.

Nevertheless, I must say what I believe; for I am acquainted with both the country of the Paphlagonians and their power. Their country possesses these two things, the fairest plains and the loftiest mountains.

And, in the first place, I know at once where you must make your entry: there is no place save where the peaks of the mountains rise high on either side of the road; holding these peaks a mere handful of men could command the pass, and if they are so held, not all the men in the world could effect a passage. All this I could even point out if you should care to send some one to the spot with me.

Secondly, I know that they have plains and a cavalry which the barbarians themselves regard as superior to the whole of the King’s cavalry. Indeed, only now these Paphlagonians have failed to present themselves when the King summoned them, for their ruler is too proud to obey.

If you should, after all, find yourselves able not only to seize the mountains, whether by stealth or by anticipating the enemy, but also on the plain to conquer in battle both their cavalry and their more than one hundred and twenty thousand infantry, you will come to the rivers. First is the Thermodon, three plethra in width, which I fancy would be difficult to cross, especially with great numbers of the enemy in front and great numbers following behind; second, the Iris, likewise three plethra wide; third, the Halys, not less than two stadia in width, which you could not cross without boats—and who will there be to supply you with boats?—and similarly impassable is the Parthenius also, to which you would come if you should get across the Halys.

For my part, therefore, I believe that this journey is not merely difficult for you, but a thing of utter impossibility. If you go by sea, however, you can coast along from here to Sinope, and from Sinope to Heracleia; and from Heracleia on there is no difficulty either by land or by water, for there are ships in abundance at Heracleia.

When he had thus spoken, some of his hearers were suspicious that he spoke as he did out of friendship for Corylas, for he was his official representative at Sinope; others imagined that he even had the idea of obtaining gifts on account of this advice; while still others suspected that the real purpose of his speech was to prevent the Greeks from going by land and so doing some harm to the territory of the Sinopeans. At any rate, however, the Greeks voted to make the journey by sea.

After this Xenophon said: Men of Sinope, my troops have chosen the route which you advise; but the matter stands in this way: if there are to be ships enough so that not so much as one man will be left behind here, we shall set sail; but if the plan should be to let some of us stay behind and others sail, we shall not set foot on the ships.

For we know that wherever we hold the upper hand, we should be able both to keep ourselves safe and to obtain provisions; but let us once get caught where we are weaker than the enemy, and it is perfectly clear that we shall be in the position of slaves. Upon hearing these words the Sinopeans told them to send ambassadors.

And they sent Callimachus the Arcadian, Ariston the Athenian, and Samolas the Achaean. These men accordingly set out.

At this time, as Xenophon’s eyes rested upon a great body of Greek hoplites, and likewise upon a great body of peltasts, bowmen, slingers, and horsemen also, all of them now exceedingly efficient through constant service and all there in Pontus,[*](Xenophon uses the term Πόντος both of the Euxine Sea and of the region along its south-eastern coast. See below.) where so large a force could not have been gathered by any slight outlay of money, it seemed to him that it was a fine thing to gain additional territory and power for Greece by founding a city.

It would become a great city, he thought, as he reckoned up their own numbers and the peoples who dwelt around the Euxine. And with a view to this project, before speaking about it to any of the soldiers, he offered sacrifices, summoning for that purpose Silanus the Ambraciot, who had been the soothsayer of Cyrus.

Silanus, however, fearing that this thing might come to pass and that the army might settle down somewhere, carried forth to the troops a report that Xenophon wanted them to settle down, so that he could found a city and win for himself a name and power.

As for Silanus, his own desire was to reach Greece as quickly as possible; for the three thousand darics, which he had received from Cyrus at the time when he sacrificed for him and had told the truth about the ten days,[*](See Xen. Anab. 1.7.18.) he had brought safely through.

When the soldiers heard this report, some of them thought it was best to settle down, but the majority thought otherwise. And Timasion the Dardanian and Thorax the Boeotian said to some Heracleot and Sinopean merchants who were there, that if they did not provide pay for the troops so that they would have provisions for the voyage from Cotyora, there would be danger of that great force remaining in Pontus. For Xenophon, they went on, wishes and is urging that as soon as the ships come, we should then say all of a sudden to the army:

Soldiers, now we see that you are without means either to supply yourselves with provisions on the homeward voyage, or to do anything for your people at home when you have got back there; but if you wish to pick out some spot in the country that lies round about the Euxine and put to shore wherever you may wish—he who so desires to go back home and he who so desires to stay behind—here are your ships, so that you could make a sudden attack at whatever point you may wish.