42 HISTORY OF GREECE. soldiers, and occupied it seemingly until the very last moment, throws it up from some unaccountable panic, and suffers a whole army to pass unopposed through this very narrow gut. Having surmounted unexpectedly so formidable an obstacle, Cyrus as well as the Greeks imagined that Artaxerxes would never think of fighting hi the open plain. All began to relax in that careful array which had been observed since the midnight review, insomuch that he himself proceeded hi his chariot instead of on horseback, while many of the Greek soldiers lodged their arms on the waggons or beasts of burden. 1 On the next day but one after passing the undefended trench, they were surprised, at a spot called Kunaxa, 2 just when they were about to halt for the mid-day meal and repose, by the sudden in- 1 Xen. Anab. i, 7, 20. The account given by Xenophon of this long line of trench, first dug by order of Artaxerxes, and then left useless and unde- fended, differs from the narrative of Diodorns (xiv, 22), which seems to be borrowed from Ephorus. Diodorus says that the king caused a long trench to be dug, and lined with carriages and waggons as a defence for his bag- gage ; and that he afterwards marched forth from this entrenchment, with his soldiers free and nnincumbered, to give battle to Cyrus. This is a statement more plausible than that of Xenophon, in this point of view, that it makes out the king to have acted upon a rational scheme ; whereas in Xenophon he appears at first to have adopted a plan of defence, and then to have renounced it, after immense labor and cost, without any reason, so far as we can see. Yet I have no doubt that the account of Xenophon is the true one. The narrow passage, and the undefended trench, were both facts of the most obvious and impressive character to an observing sol- dier.
- Xenophon does not mention the name Kunaxa, which comes to us from
Plutarch (Artaxerx. c. 8), who states that it was five hundred stadia (about fifty-eight miles) from Babylon ; while Xenophon was informed that the field of battle was distant from Babylon only three hundred and sixty stadia. Now, according to Colonel Chesney (Euphrates and Tigris, vol. i, p. 57), Hillah (Babylon) is distant ninety-one miles by the river, or sixty* one and a half miles direct, from Felujah. Following therefore the dis- tance given by Plutarch (probably copied from Ktesias), we should place Kunaxa a little lower down the river than Felnjah. This seems the most probable supposition. Rennell and Mr. Baillie Eraser so place it ( Mesopotamia and Assyria, p. 186, Edin. 1842), I think rightly ; moreover the latter remarks, what most of the commentators overlook, that the Greeks did not pass through the Wall of Media until long after the battle. See a note a little below, the beginning of my next chapter, in reference to that Wall.
