Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/57

DISPUTE BETWEEN THE SOLDIERS. 35 erossed over (by means of skins stuffed with hay), and procured plentiful supplies, especially of date-wine and millet. 1 Tt was during this halt opposite Charmande that a dispute occurred among the Greeks themselves, menacing to the safety of all. I have already mentioned that Klearchus, Menon, Proxen- us, and each of the Greek chiefs, enjoyed a separate command over his own division, subject only to the superior control of Cyrus himself. Some of the soldiers of Menon becoming involv- ed in a quarrel with those of Klearchus, the latter examined into the case, pronounced one of Menon's soldiers to have misbe- haved, and caused him to be flogged. The comrades of the man thus punished resented the proceeding to such a degree, that as Klearchus was riding away from the banks of the river to his own tent, attended by a few followers only through the encamp- ment of Menon, one of the soldiers who happened to be cutting wood, flung the hatchet at him, while others hooted and began to pelt him with stones. Klearchus, after escaping unhurt from this danger to his own division, immediately ordered his soldiers to take arms and put themselves in battle order. He himself ad- vanced at the head of his Thracian peltasts, and his forty horse- men, in hostile attitude against Menon's division ; who on their side ran to arms, with Menon himself at their head, and placed themselves hi order of defence. A slight accident might have now brought on irreparable disorder and bloodshed, had not Prox- enus, coming up at the moment with a company of his hoplites, planted himself in military array between the two disputing par- Mr. Ainsworth describes the country on the left bank of the Euphrates, before reaching Pylae, as being now in the same condition as it was when Xenophon and his comrades marched through it, " full of hills and nar- row valleys, and presenting many difficulties to the movement of an army. The illustrator was, by a curious accident, left by the Euphrates steamer on this very portion of the river, and on the same side as the Perso-Greek army, and he had to walk a day and a night across these inhospitable re- gions ; so that he can speak feelingly of the difficulties which the Greckg had to encounter." (Travels in the Track, etc. p. 81.) 1 I incline to think that Charmande must have been nearly opposite Pylae, lower down than Hit. But Major Kennell (p. 107) and Mr. Ains- worth (p. 84) suppose Charmande to be the same place as the modern Hit (the Is of Herodotus). There is no other known town with which we can identify it.