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Besides the route of their caravans, across the whole peninsula to Petra, it appears that they sometimes carried their merchandize in boats up the Euphrates to Babylon, or even 240 miles higher up, to Thapsacus, and thence dispersed it in all directions by land.
He then directed his march through Samaria, and arrived at Thapsacus on the Euphrates about the end of August. After crossing the river he struck to the north-east through a fertile and well-supplied country. On his march he was told that Darius was posted with an immense force on the left bank of the Tigris; but on arriving at that river he found nobody to dispute his passage.
But we, who can learn nothing, have no choice but to go north with him again, leaving to our right the Syrian desert roamed by Bedawis in much the same social state as the Anazeh to-day, owing allegiance to no one. We can cross Euphrates at Carchemish or at Til Barsip opposite the Sajur mouth, or where Thapsacus looked across to the outfall of the Khabur.
Meanwhile, Alexander had quitted Egypt, and after delaying some months in Syria while his preparations were being completed, had crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus and marched through northern Mesopotamia along the southern flank of the Mons Masius, a district in which provisions, water, and forage were abundant, to the Tigris, which he must have reached in about lat. 36° 30', thirty or forty miles above the site of Nineveh.
A fleet of forty-eight ships two of them quinqueremes, four quadriremes, twelve triremes, and thirty pentaconters, or fifty-oared galleys was constructed on the Phoenician coast, carried in fragments to Thapsacus on the Euphrates, and there put together and launched on the stream of the Euphrates, down which it sailed to Babylon.
From Armenia, or rather Upper Mesopotamia, came wine, gems, emery, and perhaps stone for building; from Phoenicia, by way of Palmyra and Thapsacus, came tin, perhaps copper, probably musical instruments, and other objects of luxury; from Media and the countries towards the east came fine wool, lapis-lazuli, perhaps silk, and probably gold and ivory.
Further reinforcements were received at Issus, the eastern seaport of Cilicia; Cyrus then marched through the Cilician gate into Syria. At Myriandrus two Greek commanders, probably through jealousy of Clearchus, deserted. Cyrus won popularity by refusing to presume thereon; and the whole force now struck inland to Thapsacus, on the Euphrates. At Thapsacus, Cyrus announced his purpose.
The passage of the Hellespont; the forcing of the Granicus; the winter spent in a political organization of conquered Asia Minor; the march of the right wing and centre of the army along the Syrian Mediterranean coast; the engineering difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the storming of Gaza; the isolation of Persia from Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from the Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to with success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in the political organization of that venerable country; the convergence of the whole army from the Black and Red Seas toward the nitre-covered plains of Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring; the passage of the Euphrates fringed with its weeping-willows at the broken bridge of Thapsacus; the crossing of the Tigris; the nocturnal reconnaissance before the great and memorable battle of Arbela; the oblique movement on the field; the piercing of the enemy's centre a manoeuvre destined to be repeated many centuries subsequently at Austerlitz; the energetic pursuit of the Persian monarch; these are exploits not surpassed by any soldier of later times.
The gates of Syria a narrow pass on the east coast of the Gulf of Issus, shut in, like Thermopylae, between the mountains and the sea, and strengthened moreover by fortifications were left unguarded by Abrocomas; and the army, having traversed them without loss, crossed the Amanus range by the pass of Beilan, and in twenty-nine days from Tarsus reached Thapsacus on the Euphrates.
Xenophon was a horseman, but most of the troops were foot soldiers, and they were joined by a great body of Asiatics, raised by Cyrus himself. They were marched across Syria, crossed the present river Euphrates at the ford Thapsacus, and at Cunaxa, seven miles from Babylon, they met the enormous army which Artaxerxes had raised.
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