It began, Herodotus tells us, with woman stealing. Some Cretan Greeks made of with Europa, daughter of the King of Tyre; and from there relations between Europe and Asia went from bad to worse. Whatever the cause, once the Persian -- kinsmen to the greeks, the same people in fact, but who took the eastern rather than the western route in the invasion from the north--had established their empire, war was inevitable. Things went so far that after marathon, thepersian emperor hired a slave to remind him daily of the unconquered Greeks. The turning point was Thermopylae. Leonidas King of Sparta and his three-hundred man bodyguard were unable to hold the pass after the treason of Ephialtes, but Leonidas' refusal to retreat when the situation was hopeless did more than inspire the Greeks; it terrified the Persian army. So many Persians -- including many of the Royal bodyguard, the Immortals -- were lost at Thermopylae that Xerxes had them secretly buried. "We were ordered to hold the pass. We have received no orders to retreat," Leonidas told his men after they were surrounded. He sent the others home, but remained with the Spartans. No one knows where the Persians are buried; but Leonidas and the Three Hundred lie beneath a bronze plaque that says simply: "Stranger, go and tell the Spartans that we remain here in faith to orders." The Persian host marched south and took Athens. Although their Phoenician allied navy was destroyed at Salamis, the Persians remained in control of upper Greece for another year; in 479 BC a Spartan army destroyed a much larger Persian host at Platea, and Europe was never again seriously threatened by Asia until Constantinople fell to Suleiman the Magnificent. At Platea, the Persian Royal encampment fell into the hands of Pausanius, King of Sparta. The King ordered the Persian slaves to prepare a meal in the usual style for a Persian king; and had his own servants set out the black bean soup and dark bread that was the customary fare of the Spartans in both war and peace. Then he invited the other Greek officers to share his joke. "Look you at the golden vessels and the delicacies of the east which the Persians are accustomed to," Pausanius said. He pointed to his own table. "Behold the folly of the Persians, who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us of our poverty." In fact, the Spartan diet was so spare that one visiting ambassador, dining at the Royal table with the Kings of Sparta, remarked "Now I know why the Spartans are not afraid to die!" The reply was: "But you forgot the sauce; for after ten hours on the drill field, our meals taste as good to us as your accustomed food does to you." The Persians could not defeat the Greeks, but Greeks were good at doing it to themselves. For 27 years Athens and Sparta fought, and the final Spartan victory was a hollow one. When the war was finished, the Green independent farmers were gone. Mercenaries The citizen soldiers had turned out to save the state so often that they were citizens no longer. They knew no trade but war, and were eager to hire out to anyone who would employ them. Greek mercenaries became the mainstay of the Persian army, and it was as a Persian admiral that an Athenian commander ended Spartan hegemony in the Aegean. While the Asians could not conquer Europe, the Europeans were slowly doing it for them; a process that would not end until Alexander. When Alexander crossed the Granicus and set out to conquer the known world, cutting himself off from his base and marching across degrees of latitude and longtitude, distances too vast to measure in leagues or miles, he did not do so blindly. There had been a Greek army there before him. Xenophon of Athens was born in 430 BC. He was a student and friend of Socrates from 404 to 401, and lived through the Peloponesian -- or Greek Civil -- War, although it is thought that he saw little action during it. (Athens surrendered in 405.) He was of the knightly class -- that is, those who could afford the enormous expense of a war horse and equipment -- and took part in the defense of the aristocratic party against the r-establishment of "democracy" at Athens. Although there was amnesty after the Athenian civil wars, Athens could not have been a comfortable place for Xenophon. In 401, Xenophon enlisted as a volunteer in the Greek mercenary army of Cyrus, a younger son of Darius who hoped to overthrow his older brother, Ataxerxes. Cyrus the Younger seems to have had many of the qualities of his great ancestor, Cyrus the Great, and it is probably fortunate for Europe that his venture did not succeed. In any event, Cyrus enlisted some 100,000 oriental troops and about 13,000 Greeks, of whom 10,000 were hoplites. The Greeks were under the command of Clearchus, a Spartan officer who had been expelled by the ephors for attempting to make himself tyrant of Byzantium. The Spartan government also sent 600 heavy infantry, probably the Royal bodyguards of the two kings; Sparta was interested in Cyrus as a stabilizing force in Asia Minor. The army was not told where it was going or the purpose of the expedition; but some of the officers must have become suspicious when, after passing through the hill country whose tribes they were ostensibly to subdue, the army found itself facing soldiers of the Great King at the Cilician Gates. However, no Greek feared Persian and Asiatic troops, and Cyrus was able to persuade them to attack. The impregnable pass could hardly have been forced, however, had not Cyrus had an allied army behind the pass; and surrounded, the forces of the Great King abandoned their position. At Tarsus the army guessed their purpose. They were to march on Babylon, hundreds of leagues into the interior of Asia, three months' march from the sea. The Greeks flatly refused, but through ploys worthy of Stephen Potter, Clearchus and Cyrus tricked them into marching east. Wading across the Euphrates they plunged into the "Arahian" desert. "In this region the ground was entirely a plain, level as the sea. It was covered with wormwood and odoriferous shruhs, but there were no trees. There were wild asses, and ostriches, and bustards, and antelopes, which we hunted; but no man succeeded in catching an ostrich." Ataxerxes was ravaging the country ahead of tint, army, and provisions were scarce. Moreover, the city of Babylon was protected by high walls and water. The Wall of Media, 100 feet high and 20 inroad, stretched from the Tigris to the Euphrates, and behind it was the Royal Canal. Finally, there was a trench forty miles long joining the Wall at one end the Euphrates at the other, with a space no more than seven yards between the trench and the river. The Great King had 400,000 men, but sent to Media for its army as well; but as he waited for reinforcements, the fast marching army of Cyrus came to the Wall and river and passed over the 7 yard bridge without resistance. Ataxerxes now determined to fight at Cunaxa. Cunuxa The battle plan of Cyrus was perfect; had he only carried it out, he would have been Great King by nightfall. The Greeks bore through the Persian army and had it in rout; and Ataxerxes' subjects were already saluting Cyrus as Great King when the young general caught sight of his brother. He charged with his personal cavalry, routed the Persian bodyguard, and actually struck his brother on the breastplate when a Persian soldier stabbed Cyrus under the eye with a javelin. "Thus died Cyrus, a man who, of all the Persians since Cyrus the Elder was most princely and most worthy of empire. When he was yet a boy he surpassed them in everything; for all the Persian nobles are educated at the gates of the king, where they learn virtuous conduct but never see or hear anything disgraceful ... Here Cyrus first showed himself most remarkable for courage, truth, and obedience to his elders; and for his superior horsemanship." Xenophon's eulogy shows Cyrus as intelligent, just, courageous, and ready to reward his friends and punish his enemies. Had he lived, the Persian Empire might not have fallen to Alexander. After the death of Cyrus, the Great King attacked the camp and seized his brother's provisions; but when he then turned on the Greeks they routed him and took it all back again. Then they learned that Cyrus was dead. Surrender Refused Ataxerxes' demand for surrender was refused. The Great King then offered them provisions and a truce so they could be conducted out of Persia. With no guides, no maps, not even knowing the course of the Tigris, the Greeks thought they had no choice. It was 1,500 miles back to Sardis the way they had come, provided they could find that again; and they turned north under Persian guides, following the army of the Great King at a distance. For two hundred miles they marched northward without incident. Then, after skirmishes between the Greeks and the Persian army, Tissaphemes, the Persian satrap, invited the Greek generals to a parley. Unwisely they accepted, and five generals with some twenty captains entered the camp of Tissaphemes. None resumed alive. Tissaphemes believed his treachery to have won the day. The Greeks were now hopelessly lost. Between them and the west lay the "Arabian" desert; to the north was the unknown; and the route south was closed by the Great King's army. They were also on the wrong side of the uncrossable Tigris. Their homes lay ten thousand stadia across unknown lands; hostile cities and nations were around them; there were no provisions; and their officers were dead. An OrienW army would have collapsed in disorder. Moreover, the barbarian allies deserted them, and the Greeks had no cavalry at all, "making it certain that if they defeated their enemies they would not kill a man, while if they were defeated none of them should be left alive." In the meeting next morning, the Greeks elected new officers. There was no voice raised for surrender. Xenophon, one of the newly elected commanders, made this speech: "Having seen the enemies, no matter how they have outnumbered us, flee from our charge, what reason have we to fear them? And to what disadvantage is it that the troops of Cyrus have fled? They are more cowardly than those we have defeated, for they left us to flee to them. It is always better that those who will run away be on the other side rather than our own! "And if you are disheartened because the enemy have a great number of cavalry and we have none, consider that ten thousand cavalry are but ten thousand men; for no one ever perished in battle of being bitten or kicked by a horse; it is men who fight. We rest upon a surer support than cavalry, for they are raised upon their horses and are afraid not only of us, but of falling; while we standing on the ground strike with greater force, and more surely. In one point only have cavalry the advantage, that it is safer for them to flee than for us." Preparation Under Xenophon's persuasion the Greeks voted a resolution that should anyone be disobedient to the newly elected officers, all should join in punishing the recalcitrant; and thus they established discipline. " For the enemy will be disappointed in their expectation that we will perish from want and disorder, and will see before them ten thousand Clearchuses instead of one, who will not allow a single soldier to play the part of a coward." In preparation for their long march the Greeks burned their tents and baggage, and in good order began to follow the Tigris to the north. The first day they were harassed by Persian missile weapons, and the Greek Cretan bowmen "shot to a less distance than the Persians, and the javelin men did not hurl far enough to reach the slingers." A charge from the Greeks chased the enemy away, but not one Persian was wounded; for the "Greeks had no cavalry, nor could they outrun the enemy infantry, and the Barbarian cavalry inflicted wounds in their retreat, shooting backwards as they rode." This was the famous Parthian shot, corrupted in modern language as a "parting shot." On the first day, then, the Greeks managed no more than 25 stadia, or about 3 miles. That night the Greeks opted out the Rhodians in their midst and plaited slings, and cast lead bullets; for the Rhodians were accustomed to this use, and could fling their pellets double the distance of the Persian sling. Two hundred men volunteered for the slinger corps, and the fifty horses scrounged from the baggage train were gathered together to form a cavalry escort. Persian breastplates and cavalry equipment were issued to the mounted men, who were put under Lycius of Athens. The Persian harassing forces were treated to a surprise attack the next day, and about twenty horses were captured. Another Persian attack was beaten off and the army marched inexorably northward, without guides, without provisions, under inexperienced officers, ten thousand stadia from home; but undaunted. On the march the Greeks learned tactics. They found that a square was a bad formation for a marching army, and divided the force into bodies much like that of a modern force: an advance guard, advance party, main bocly, and six companies of a hundred men each who acted as file closers and rear guard; whenever the square needed to break up to pass a narrow defile the six companies filled in the gaps and held the roads until the army had passed. The Persians never dared camp closer than 60 stadia (about 7 miles) from the Greek army for fear of a surprise attack at night; for the Persian cavalry was vulnerable to infantry action until the horses could be saddled and the men mounted on them, and a Greek raid could have meant disaster for Tisserphenes. Thus, without a pitched battle, the army passed north through the Persian Empire until it reached the high Carduchian mountains; and there they encountered fierce, but independent, tribesmen. This was the costliest part of the retreat, with the Greeks forced to fight battles even to recover their dead and give them proper funeral rites. It was one long battle with few respites until they reached the River Centrites, where they saw arrayed on the other side the hosts of the Great King; the satrap of Armenia had brought his army against them. By accident, a second ford a few miles from the Armenian army was discovered, and by cleverly shuttling forces back and forth between fords the river was passed. A charge by the rear guard broke up the pursuit of the Carduchi tribesmen, while the main body of the army secured the bridgehead. Pressed before and behind by superior force, the crossing could only have been made by the most disciplined troops; it is doubtful if many modern armies could have accomplished it. It was now December, and the army had to march through the high passes of Armenia. Xenophon himself had to flog soldiers to their feet to keep them from freezing in the snow. There was more hard fighting in the hills, including one fight more horrible than the rest; for when the Greeks had succeeded in driving back the hill tribesmen and forcing their way to the clifftop village, all the "women, holding theirr children in their arms, leaped off the cliff to their deaths." Shout Then, finally, the army climbed a hill; and Xenophon, with the rear guard, heard a shout. Thinking that new enemies were attacking the front, for they were harassed from the rear as well, Xenophon sent a group of picked men forward. "But as the noise still increased, and drew nearer, and as those who came up from time to time kept running at full speed to join those who were continually shouting, the cries becoming louder as the men became more numerous, it appeared to Xenophon that it must be something of great moment. Mounting his horse, therefore, and taking with him Lycius and the cavalry, he hastened forward to give aid, when presently they heard the soldiers shouting, "The sea, the sea!" and cheering one another. They then all began to run, and the rear guard as well as the rest, and the baggage cattle and horses were put to their speed; and when they had all arrived at the top, the men embraced one another, and their generals and captains, with tears in their eyes. And the soldiers brought stones and raised a large mound on which they placed hides, and shields and staves taken from the enemy." From there the ten thousand -- or what was left of them -- went by land and sea through Greek settlements, and returned home. The worst was over. But they had proved that could only the Greeks stay together, and fight not as Spartans and Corinthians and Argives and Athenians but as Greeks, nothing in the Persian Empire could halt them; a lesson Alexander and his father Phillip learned well from Xenophon's ANABASIS. More Xenophon Xenophon Greek Hoplite and Persian Immortal Timeline: Greco-Persian Wars Greek Phalanx Large Map (59K) Jumbo Map (slow: 127K) Back to Conflict Number 5 Table of Contents Back to Conflict List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Dana Lombardy This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com