From here the Greeks marched through the Macronians three stages, ten parasangs. On the first day they arrived at the river which was the border between the land of the Macronians and that of the Scythenians. The land they had above them on the right was most diffi cult, and they had another river on the left , into which the river on the border flowed, which they had to cross. This one was thickly fringed with trees, not massive ones but closely packed. When the Greeks reached them, they began cutt ing them down, hurrying to get out of the place as quickly as possible. But the Macronians, with wicker shields, lances, and hair tunics, were drawn up in order on the opposite side of the crossing. They kept encouraging one another and hurling stones into the river, but they did not reach their mark or do any harm.
Then a man approached Xenophon, one of the peltasts, and claimed that he had been a slave at Athens and said that he knew the language of these people. “I think,” he said, “this is my fatherland. And unless something prevents it, I am willing to converse with them.” “But nothing prevents it,” he said, “but converse and learn fi rst who they are.” When he asked, they said that they were Macronians. “Ask, then,” he said, “why they are drawn up in order against us and why they want to be our enemies.” They answered, “Because it is you who are coming against our land.” The generals bid him say, “Not in order to do any harm, but having made war against the King, we are going back to Greece, and we wish to reach the sea.” The Macronians asked if they would give pledges to this eff ect, and they said that they were willing both to give and to receive pledges. Here the Macronians gave a barbarian lance to the Greeks, and the Greeks gave a Greek one to them, for they said that these were pledges; both called upon gods as witnesses. Immediately aft er the pledges, the Macronians began cutting down the trees and building the road in order to get them across, mingling with the Greeks in their midst. And to the extent they were able, they provided a market; and they led them for three days, until they brought the Greeks to the borders of the Colchians.
Here there was a mountain, large but accessible. And on this mountain the Colchians were drawn up in order. And at first the Greeks formed an opposing phalanx, as intending to march against the mountain like this. But then the generals decided to gather together and deliberate about how they would contend as nobly as possible. Xenophon then said, “It seems we should discontinue the phalanx and put our companies in columns, for the phalanx will immediately be broken apart, since in one part we will find the mountain impassable and in another easily passable. This will produce immediate despondency when, drawn up in a phalanx, they see it broken apart. Also, if we go against them drawn up in depth, the enemy will extend beyond us, and they will use their extra troops however they wish. But if we go drawn up to only a shallow depth, it would not be amazing if our phalanx should be cut through somewhere by both masses of arrows and of people falling on us in great numbers.
If this happens anywhere, it will be bad for the whole phalanx. But it seems to me that we should put the companies in columns, spacing the companies with so much ground for each so that the outer companies are outside of the enemy’s wings. In this way we, our outer companies, will be outside the enemy phalanx; and the best of us, leading the columns, will advance first, and each captain will lead wherever it may be easy to pass. And it will not be easy for the enemy to enter into the gap between columns, since there are companies on one side and the other, and it will not be easy to cut down a company that is coming on in column. But if any of the companies is hard pressed, the neighboring one will help out. And if any one of the companies is somewhere able to ascend to the summit, none of the enemy will remain any longer.” They decided on this, and they put their companies into columns. Going along from the right to the left , Xenophon said to the soldiers, “Men, these whom you see are the only ones still hindering us from being where we have been hurrying to for a long time; we must even devour them raw, if we can.”
Greeks Ascend with Cyrus to Get the Heights
