The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  Earlier in the day Cyrus had warned us not to be unnerved by the battle cries of the barbarians. As a Persian himself, he was well accustomed to their practiced technique of trying to break their enemies' concentration even before coming to blows, by emitting an ear-piercing shriek that would carry for miles, designed to strike terror into the hearts of all who heard it. But this time the prince was wrong: The barbarians came marching in complete and utter silence, without a sound from their men other than the insistent tramping. In its own way, this was even more unnerving, making them seem more like shades or gods than creatures of flesh and blood.

  I glanced at Xenophon, who stood transfixed by the sheer wonder at seeing in this barren, empty landscape the vast multitude of men and animals suddenly appearing from nowhere. Only Clearchus seemed unmoved by the spectacle. He trotted ceaselessly up and down the lines on his enormous, frothing war-charger, fine-tuning placements here, berating an officer there, his long, carefully dressed braids flying out behind him from under his full-faced Spartan battle helmet-a terrifying sight, only his glittering eyes and bushy chin exposed from beneath the polished bronze.

  Cyrus pounded up to our lines, searching out Clearchus, who calmly finished bellowing orders to his captains before he turned to the prince, waiting impatiently on his skittish horse. "Your highness!" Clearchus exulted, a murderous glint flashing through the deep eye sockets of his bronze helmet, "This is your Greek army! These are the men who will lead you to victory!"

  Cyrus ignored Clearchus' boasting. "Victory! Victory over the enemy's auxiliaries perhaps. The false king and his Immortals are marching against us in the center of their forces-if we defeat them there, the battle is won. You are on the wrong end of our lines, General! Fall back and cross with your men to the left!"

  Clearchus gaped at Cyrus in astonishment, then scanned the approaching forces more carefully and saw that what the prince said was true-the enemy was so numerous that the king's center actually faced our far left, so much did the king's lines overlap and extend beyond ours. Still, the value of shifting his troops to the other end of the line at this late hour was dubious, and the prince's implicit questioning of his tactical skills was intolerable. He whipped his helmet off in a rage.

  "Wrong end, my ass! The first rule of battle, Prince, is to position your strongest troops to anchor the right. Absent us, the king's cavalry will cut through your right like butter and fold you up from behind. With our forces hard against the river, we can't be outflanked on this side at least. Believe it-I've been doing this since before you were born. As long as I command the Greek troops they stay on your right."

  Now it was Cyrus' turn to gape at his subordinate's direct challenge, and after an astonished pause, he lit into the Spartan with a barrage of oaths and insults that made my hair rise, even under the soaked helmet and caul. Proxenus, Xenophon, and I froze as we watched Cyrus and Clearchus rant at each other, shouting and gesturing as the vast forces of the enemy continued their inexorable march toward us across the plain. Artaxerxes would not wait for our tactical dispute to be resolved before launching his troops into battle. I despaired at seeing the two generals at the point of coming to blows, but Clearchus remained unyielding. There are few men more stubborn than an old soldier, and none more stubborn than a Spartan. The prince finally raised the palm of his hand sharply, cutting off Clearchus in mid-sputter.

  "I have staked my life and my fortune on defeating the false king in this battle," he seethed, in a voice barely audible to the rest of us, "and I will not be stymied by a petty autocrat. You have resisted my orders, but I do not have the time to enforce them. The enemy is almost upon us! If you will not take on the king, by the very gods, I will myself! And we shall see this matter through again after the battle, Clearchus, I assure you."

  Wheeling his horse with an angry jerk of the reins he cantered off, his chestnut hair flowing freely behind him, and Clearchus angrily jammed his own helmet back on his head. His long Spartan braids, oiled and black yet streaked with the gray of his years, draped over his shoulders like the snakes of the gorgon.

  "Stupid, vain son of a whore doesn't even wear a battle helmet," Clearchus spat, not bothering to lower his voice to prevent the rest of us from witnessing his insubordination. "If he wants to feel the wind through his hair he'd do better to ride without his pants. At least then he wouldn't be jeopardizing the whole fucking army."

  Proxenus spoke up for the first time, pressing his horse against the side of Clearchus' nervous animal to calm him, and looking straight into the face of the furious Spartan.

  "Clearchus, your position is correct, but this is no time to break with the prince. Whether Cyrus is right or wrong, you disobeyed his direct order, which you would never tolerate from us. For the sake of the army and our future, send an olive branch before battle commences."

  Clearchus stared at him in a fury, and I thought he might even strike Proxenus with his sword for second-guessing him; but after a long moment he glanced away in silence, the cords in his neck working furiously as he clenched his jaw and surveyed the rapidly approaching enemy. He coughed harshly, clearing his throat of the thick, acrid dust, and then turning his head to the side he seized his nose between thumb and forefinger and blew two arching strings of snot to the ground, narrowly missing Proxenus' horse. He then twisted in his seat the other way to locate the prince, who by now had stationed himself at a more favorable viewing area several hundred yards away. "You," he said, glancing at Xenophon. "Run a message to Cyrus over there: Tell him I will take heed, and all will go well." With that, he wheeled his horse contemptuously and galloped off to make further preparations. Xenophon and I raced over to Cyrus' position, anxious to deliver the message and return to our own forces before the battle commenced.

  The two sides were now no more than a quarter mile apart, and we were able to distinguish the Persians' various units. The black cloud of marchers separated into individuals. Cavalry in white, silk-decked corselets supported the heavy infantry in the enemy's left wing facing us, and Clearchus passed word down the line that these riders would be led by Tissaphernes himself. He was proven right a moment later when the enemy commander's personal banner-a golden, winged horse on a black pennant-hove into view. "A gold daric to the man who kills that donkey-faced son of a bitch!" Clearchus bellowed to all within earshot. The men's excitement visibly increased.

  Within minutes, we were able to identify the king's vanguard to our left, the fearsome Medes, marching in disciplined silence with their rouged faces, bright purple pantaloons, and bejeweled necks and ears. They resembled Cyrus' effeminate eunuch slaves, but their chain mail vests, plumed bronze helmets and tanned, muscular arms added a sinister effect to their otherwise delicate appearance, which was intended to strike terror into less disciplined forces, as does the ambiguous face of a clown to a small child. They were followed by troops from the dozens of nations over which the king of Persia held sway, and from which he had forcibly conscripted his forces: Phrygians, Assyrians, Bactrians, Arabians, Chaldeans, Armenians, Kurds-the list was endless. Even the most expert among our troops were, in the end, unable to tell one from the other, much less recall each of their peculiar fighting styles, weapons, and special penchants for killing. Most astonishing of all was the variety of weapons and defensive devices arrayed before us-from the light wicker shields carried by the Cissian archers, so different from our own thick oak and bronze bowls, to the thin, reedlike spears carried by the Egyptians, which were deadly when thrown at medium range, but which were too light for close-in sparring. Perhaps most unnerving to all but the Spartans were the sixty Persian scythe-chariots pulled by white stallions. Their drivers grinned murderously beneath their visors as they surveyed our lines, waiting for the opportunity to charge into the fray with their axle-mounted knives, slicing in half or running down any soldiers who might stand in their way. To Clearchus the range of men and techniques was of no consequence. He held all enemy forces in equal disdain, convinced that the superior Spartan discipli
ne and endurance of his troops were capable of overcoming any number of enemy forces he might face.

  As the enemy steadily approached, Clearchus dismounted and strode over to the seers waiting before the front lines of troops. Like Euripides, he believed that it is with the gods' favor that wise commanders launch an attack, never against their wishes, and so he ordered a goat sacrificed to Zeus and then to Phobos, God of Fear and Rout, seeking to avert the latter's eyes from our men and to focus them instead on the Persians. Clearchus himself began the ritual, and despite the relentless advance of the enemy troops, he carefully and deliberately followed the prescribed protocol, slicing his blade through the beast's exposed throat and letting the blood spurt and gush, placating the gods. As it fell, it soaked into the hot, parched earth, leaving only a dark, steaming stain which itself would be effaced within minutes by the stifling dust, as the earth healed itself of the scars and stains inflicted by men in their puny affairs.

  Clearchus had not yet called his troops to attention. Though they carefully watched the advancing hordes and the sacrifices, they feigned nonchalance, glancing out of the corners of their eyes, their shields leaning against their legs and the gripcords exposed, some of the men still sitting down. Xenophon and I had been warned in advance by Proxenus of this unsettling habit of the Spartans, a calculated effect designed to indicate their scorn for the advancing enemy. It was not until the Persian archers, some 200 yards distant, finally began finding their range that the men casually stood up and mounted their shields.

  At a signal from Clearchus' trumpeter the Greeks bellowed the watchword we had devised, Zeus soter kai Nike! "Savior Zeus and Victory!" clanging their shields and increasing the volume of their roar with each repetition until the very earth seemed to shudder. After a moment, the reedy, high-pitched wailing of the battle pipes soared over our voices, an otherworldly top-note rising in arrhythmic counterpoint to the bass of the hellish chorus. The rising, rolling beat of the oxhide drums, which we felt as a thumping tremor in our bellies, resonated through the ranks, and as the throbbing beat suddenly doubled we broke as one into the chanted war hymn, the paean to Apollo. The thunder of the massed ten thousand voices and the explosive clanging and crashing of spears on shields rolled over the field between the opposing forces, and seemed to hit the Persians almost physically, like a wall. The enemy companies directly across the field from our right wing faltered and their front visibly wavered as the troops behind them began to cluster in bunches. At another deafening blast from the salpinx we broke toward the Persians' left wing in a trot. Our hoplites maintained a flawless, tight phalanx formation on the slightly downward sloping plain, while the light infantry followed close behind, fitting their arrows on the run, forever chanting the bloody hymn. As we approached to within fifty yards of the enemy lines, the heavy infantry broke off the rhythm of the war chant and commenced a full-throated, wordless wail, a howl as if of pent-up rage, summoning Ares, the implacable god of war, with the deafening cry, "Eleleu! Eleleu! Eleleu!" They snapped their spears down in perfect unison to full horizontal, the freshly sharpened edges and tips glinting their promise of painful death in the blinding sun. The mouths of the terrified enemy soldiers before us worked soundlessly, contorted in fear, and their officers' horses rolled their eyes wildly and reared their heads to the side in an effort to escape the bellowing wall of men and metal fast approaching.

  The enemy line faltered, its front ranks stopping dead. The rearward Persian marchers, unable to see what was happening uphill beyond their leading comrades, kept pushing forward, tripping over those who had halted in front, and in turn being pushed by their fellows in the rear. Encouraged at this sign of hesitation, the Greek heavy infantry picked up its pace to a full sprint, armor and shields crashing madly. The discipline of the Greek forces was heart-stopping-men prepared against those unprepared, good order against disorder, troops surging forward in absolute, deadly precision, as tight and as uniform as the scales on an asp.

  As for what happened next, it is impossible to say whether the gods were responsible, or whether no enemy could resist a tide of men as determined as ours. The Persian ranks collapsed without a struggle in the face of the Greek hell-storm, unable to muster even the deafening crash one usually hears as the lead warriors of the opposing forces collide and fold into one another in a chaos of metal, body fluids, and screams. The front line broke and we plowed over them as if they were so many molehills, neglecting even to kill those we ran over, but simply trampling them and moving on to the next rank, a seething, roaring wall of iron and death. The frenzied camp followers swarming close behind us stripped the dead of their valuables and food, using clubs and discarded spearheads to make short work of any enemy soldiers who remained twitching or sobbing after being mowed down by our surging hoplites. The Persians in the front lines tried desperately to wheel and run to the rear, but their comrades behind, fifteen or twenty ranks thick, marched doggedly forward like the slaves they were, under the whips and threats of their sergeants, blocking the path of the panic-stricken front ranks and hindering their retreat. Slaughter ensued, panic fed upon panic. Even those few Persians originally inclined to take a stand and fight lost heart when they saw they had been deserted on all sides, and then they themselves joined the terrified mob.

  Our archers took special aim at the enemy chariot drivers, who had held slightly back behind their heavy infantry, waiting for a gap in the fighting to open up through which they could drive their lethal scythes without cutting apart their own men. The Spartans loathed such machines, and had not used them in their own forces for a hundred years. They did, however, relish the thought of facing them, for they had mastered the trick of calmly opening up gaps between which the chariot drivers would charge harmlessly, while one or two Spartans darted in from the side and stabbed the horse or driver. In his youth, Clearchus was known to be well accomplished in this trick.

  The Spartans were to be disappointed, however, for not a single Persian scythe-chariot even made it to the Greek lines. Our bowmen toppled several of the drivers, and in the ensuing chaos none of the Persian infantry even bothered to pick up their comrades' reins. The panicked horses raced about aimlessly among their own men, the razor-sharp blades violating the sanctity and virginity of fragile skin, lopping off an arm here, a head there, gouging through men's breastplates and ribs as if they were cheese, exposing the gods' secrets to the eyes of leering and terrified onlookers. I watched as two Boeotians from Proxenus' battalion, brothers as it happened, each took charge of a runaway chariot and began lending method and discipline to the general carnage they were wreaking, turning the Persians' most terrifying weapons against them with devastating effect. They cut a bloody swath through the most densely packed of the enemy lines, and then calmly drove their captured trophies up to Proxenus, grinning, with odd pieces of bloody flesh and dripping helmet leather still hanging off the murderous tines. Socrates once said that to peer inside a human being, you can make him laugh or observe him in love; he neglected to note that you can also use a blade or a spear point. The latter method proves beyond a doubt that people are more alike inside than they are outside, and in fact are scarcely different from pigs or asses.

  Xenophon galloped back and forth the length of our immediate line, wheeling his mount in tight circles at the end of his range, and observing Tissaphernes' forces closely for any indication of an attack or an attempt to outflank our troops. The exercise was useless, however; Tissaphernes' cavalry were helpless in the chaos, and they assembled nervously far to the rear of the battle, awaiting the outcome. I glanced at Proxenus, who was darting in and out of the slaughter on his horse, trying to maintain order among the fury, and at Clearchus, who after having led his men directly to the enemy lines, had backed away to monitor the situation, and was now sitting on his horse impassively on the edge of the fray, watching as his men mowed down the enemy as if harvesting wheat in a field.

  Finally the Persians' surviving middle and rear ranks reversed their march and be
gan a general retreat. The Greeks ran them down as they went, tripping over the bodies of the fallen and slipping in the gore on the ground as they churned it into an ankle-deep slurry of mud and piss, salted with shattered weapons and the detritus of dying men. The Hellenes' spears, both the throwing point and the sauroter, the bronze-tipped "lizard-killer" used for standing the weapon in the ground when at rest, had long since broken and shivered on the fragile spines and skulls of the Persians, and our men were now reduced to a frenzied, blind hacking with their short swords. Mobs of Persians threw down their shields and weapons in their panic, forgoing any protection, forgetting even to fight, but doing everything to assist in their own slaughter. The enemy dead numbered in the thousands, while our troops had scarcely lost a man, suffering only from the weary numbness in our limbs from the strain of the relentless killing.

  Clearchus at last roused himself from his apparent boredom at the appalling carnage, and ordered his trumpeter to sound a halt. For what seemed an eternity, nothing happened. The horrifying bloodbath continued unabated. Finally, however, after further trumpet blasts, Clearchus resorted to riding into the slaughter himself, swinging and beating at his own men with the flat of his sword to drive them back, to force a respite. The mad blood-trance lifted and the Greeks staggered, gasping, to a halt. The shattered men slowly lowered their arms and stood trembling in place, dropping their weapons in exhaustion. The terrible roar of battle died away to a mere echo in our heads, which was gradually replaced by the moans of the injured and dying. The troops' appearance was hellish, godlike-so slathered in gore from helmet to greaves they might have been wallowing in it like dogs, their eyes glittering evilly through the darkness of their visors, the muscles in their shoulders and thighs swollen and taut. Their chests heaved, quaking legs collapsing in exhaustion, some crumpling into the steaming, fetid muck, kicking aside corpses and unclaimed viscera to make room for themselves. Moans of agony filled the still, heavy air, the death throes of bleeding Persians who had not yet been dispatched by the pitiless camp followers. The ground was purple with blood, it flowed in rivulets into puddles and pools and collected in hollows, corpses lay mingled with each other, shields pierced, spears splintered, daggers unsheathed, some on the ground, most stuck in bodies, some still in the hands of the dead. The hardiest of the Greek troops struggled to remain on their feet, their hands shaking from the shock of the slaughter and the intensity of their effort, and they sought out comrades, even strangers, to lean against in their exhaustion and to feel some human comfort.