Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/39

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MUTINY OF THE SOLDIERS. 17 Cyrus in one united body at Kelsenoe ; eleven thousand hoplites and two thousand peltasts. 1 As far as Kelsenaa, his march had heen directed straight towards Pisidia, near the borders of which territory that city is situated So far, therefore, the fiction with which he started was kept up. But on leaving Kelsenas, he turned his march away from Pisidia, in a direction nearly northward ; first in two days, ten parasangs, Jo the town of Peltae ; next in two days farther, twelve parasangs, to Keramon-Agora, the last city in the district adjoining Mysia. At Peltae, in a halt of three days, the Arcadian general Xenias celebrated the great festival of his country, the Lykoea, with its usual games and matches, in the presence of Cyrus. From Ke- ramon- Agora, Cyrus marched in three days the unusual distance of thirty parasangs, 2 to a city called Kaystru-Pedion, (the plain 1 Xen. Anab. i, 2, 8, 9. About Kelamae, Arrian, Exp. Al. i, 29, 2 ; Quint Curt, iii, 1, 6.

  • These tbree marches, each of ten parasangs, from Keramon-Agora to

Kaystru-Pedion, are the longest recorded in the Anabasis. It is rather surprising to find them so ; for there seems no motive for Cyrus to have hurried forward. When he reached Kaystru-Pedion, he halted five days. Koch (Zug der Zehn Tausend, Leipsic, 1850, p. 19) remarks that the three days' march, which seem to have dropped out of Xenophon's calculation, comparing the items with the total, might conveniently be let in here ; sa that these thirty parasangs should have occupied six days' march instead of three : five parasangs per day. The whole march which Cyrus had hitherto made from Sardis, including the road from Keramon-Agora to Kaystra- Pedion, lay in the great road from Sardis to the river Halys, Kappadokia, and Susa. That road (as we see by the March of Xerxes, Herodot. vii, 26; y, 52) passed through both Kelsenae and Kolossae; though this is a pro- digious departure from the straight line. At Kaystru-Pedion, Cyrus seems to have left this great road ; taking a different route, in a direction nearly south-east towards Ikonium. About the point, somewhere near Synnada, where these different roads crossed, see Mr. Ainsworth, Trav. in the Track, p. 28. I do not share the doubts which have been raised about Xenophon's ac- curacy, in his description of the route from Sardis to Ikonium ; though the names of several of the places which he mentions are not known to us, and their sites cannot be exactly identified. There is a great departure from the straight line of bearing. But we at the present day assign more weight to that circumstance than is suited to the days of Xenophon. Straight toads, stretching systematically over a large region of country, are not of that age ; the communications were probably all originally made, between VOL. IX. 20C