Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
The conversation then ended, the satrap detaining Klearchus to dinner, and treating him in the most hospitable and confidential manner.
Klearchus, who was quite equal to the emergency, bade them reflect that they were now a long distance from home, and that Cyrus had it in his power to make it difficult for them to get back without his permission. Next, they were promised a decided increase of pay if they would keep on.
This remark induced Klearchus to ask the messenger, what was the extent of ground between the Tigris and the canal. The messenger replied that it was a great extent of country, comprising many large cities and villages.
Accordingly Timasion of Dardanus was chosen instead of Klearchus; Xanthiklês in place of Sokratês; Kleanor in place of Agias; Philesius in place of Menon; and Xenophon instead of Proxenus. The captains, who had served under each of the departed generals, separately chose a successor to the captain thus promoted.
The captains, with the Grecian soldiers who had accompanied them, were surprised and cut down, while the generals in the interior were detained, put in chains, and carried up as prisoners to the Persian court. Here Klearchus, Proxenus, Agias, and Sokratês, were beheaded, after a short imprisonment.
Such words from Klearchus are remarkable, as they testify his own complete despair of the situation certainly a very natural despair except by amicable dealing with the Persians; and also his ignorance of geography and the country to be traversed. This feeling helps to explain his imprudent confidence afterwards in Tissaphernês.
Such jealousy seems to have robbed Klearchus of his customary prudence. We must also allow for another impression deeply fixed in his mind; that the salvation of the army was hopeless without the consent of Tissaphernês, and therefore, since the latter had conducted them thus far in safety, when he might have destroyed them before, that his designs at the bottom could not be hostile.
And we may add that Klearchus had not even the advantage of such a map, or probably of any map at all, to enable him to shape his course. Commencement of the Retreat.
Upon that system Klearchus himself had hitherto acted; and the necessity of it might have been especially present to his mind, since he had served with the Lacedæmonian fleet at Miletus in 411 B.C., and had therefore had fuller experience than other men in the army, of the satrap's real character.
Probably Klearchus himself too repented, and with good reason, of having displayed, in his manner of fighting the battle, so little foresight, and so little regard either to the injunctions or to the safety of Cyrus.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking