Chirisophus gave a shout, and then plunged into the water with his division, half the army, wading in near perfect formation across the deepening river. They were led by Lycius and his ragtag band of cavalry, and as the men marched into the steadily deepening flow they trusted implicitly in the Rhodians' account that the water would not rise above their waists. In reality, the crossing was even easier than expected, for Rhodian boys are short, and the water scarcely rose to the middle of a full-grown man's thighs. The Armenian troops on the far side let loose a barrage of arrow and sling fire, but since they dared not approach closer to the Greeks, most of their missiles fell short, to the chagrin of their officers whom we could see exhorting and even beating their targeteers to advance within shooting range.
Xenophon, meanwhile, had split his half of the army again into two parts, his hoplites remaining at the river bank to guard the provisions and cover Chirisophus' crossing, while the Rhodian slingers and other light troops doubled back downstream toward our previous night's camp. As they progressed in a quick trot, they loudly sounded the horns and reeds, purposely warning the enemy of their march and leading the Armenians to assume that Xenophon wished to cross at a point downstream, thus trapping the enemy in a pincer maneuver between his and Chirisophus' troops. Taking the bait, the overeager Armenian cavalry leaped into action, falling out of their tenuous formation, and galloped madly downstream in a disorganized mob to defend against Xenophon's audacious assault on their flank.
Seeing this, Lycius whipped his horse in the middle of his crossing, and in an inspired display of sheer nerve, raced his band of cavalry straight across at the larger, but unorganized, mass of enemy riders, to the accompanying roar of Chirisophus' marching infantry. The astonished Armenian cavalry skidded to a halt in confusion as to which of the two attacks, Xenophon's or Lycius', most required their attention. They stood dumbly for a moment, their horses milling and rearing in growing alarm at Lycius' fast-approaching and frenetically screaming riders. Suddenly, the Armenian cavalry wheeled as one, like a flock of starlings startled by a loud noise from below, and scattered in panic into the hills, to the deafening shouts of Xenophon's light troops who had been watching the scene unfold from the near side of the river.
Chirisophus, meanwhile, who was steadily completing his own crossing, kept his men in formation and pressed straight toward the wonder-struck Armenian foot soldiers. The Armenians, seeing their cavalry fleeing like rabbits and the strangely armored, hypnotically chanting Greek warriors advancing relentlessly toward them out of the misty depths of the river, themselves panicked and quickly retreated off the high banks.
Chirisophus captured the heights without a struggle and pumped his fist in triumph, and Xenophon, seeing that all had gone well with the initial crossing, now doubled back toward the pack animals and hoplites. By the time he returned with his winded troops, the last of the Hellenic baggage train had crossed and was now safely in Chirisophus' protection. Xenophon then lined up his hoplites with their backs to the river, facing the gathering Kurd forces, and prayed for the strength and time to cover the Rhodians' crossing before the Kurds charged and overwhelmed our now vastly diminished and outnumbered troops. As his men stood nervously in array, facing the approaching Kurdish army, he paced in front of them, his mind racing to improvise a strategy.
"Hold your weapons!" he shouted finally, "until the first Kurdish sling-stone hits a shield. When you hear the rattle of that stone, chant the battle hymn, sound the salpinx and go at the enemy for all you're worth. We have only one chance-terrify them!"
At the first sling-shot from the now-charging Kurds, the men erupted in a massive roar, echoed by the Rhodians picking their way gingerly behind us through the water, and the Hellenic troops eagerly watching the action on the heights above the far bank. The deafening bellow hit the startled Kurds like a blast from an open furnace, and they falteringly careened to a halt and stared. As the Greek salpinx blared, the hoplites sprinted through the gravel straight at the enemy lines in a massed charge worthy of Plataea. The lightly armored Kurds did not wait to test our mettle in hand-to-hand fighting. Spinning in terror, they dropped their weapons where they stood and began clambering hand over hand back up the steep banks which they had just charged down only moments before. As soon as Xenophon saw that the Kurds had turned, he ordered the salpinx to sound a general retreat, and the Greeks, needing no further encouragement, themselves skidded to a halt, and again in a frenzied sprint, went tearing in the opposite direction back toward the river, leaping into the water and wading frantically for the other side.
For a moment Chirisophus' troops on the far heights had an unprecedented view of the two armies, thousands of men, their front lines barely yards apart, both simultaneously fleeing each other in terror, and they roared out their laughter and encouragement to the splashing hoplites. The Kurds finally realized they had been tricked, and it was with no small effort that the Kurdish officers succeeded in reversing their men's course to give chase to the fleeing Greeks.
At this point, however, Chirisophus' peltasts, who had been waiting on the far bank for just such an emergency, themselves charged into the water, javelins at the thong and arrows at the string. They met Xenophon's troops midstream and covered their retreat with a withering fire straight into the faces of the baffled Kurds, who again were forced to halt their charge and retreat in chaos. To cheers from the spectators above, the entire army was able to complete the terrible crossing with scarcely a single casualty, except for a few overeager peltasts who gave chase to the Kurds beyond the midpoint of the river and were cut down upon their arrival at the other side.
For once, the gods had been with us.
BOOK TEN
In vain, man's expectations, in vain, his boastful words.
God brings the unthought to be,
As here we see.
– EURIPIDES
THE AGONY OF hatred, the ecstasy of love. Trite notions, easily separable into their distinct, almost opposite component parts, sung of by poets and wept at by lovers from time immemorial and undoubtedly for a hundred generations to come. The ecstasy of hatred, the agony of love. A no-less-common state of affairs, though comprehended by fewer numbers, perhaps only the Clearchuses among us: the impetus behind the movers of the world, the creators and killers and bestirrers of humanity. Again, they are sentiments easily divided into their identifiable and perfectly contrasting elements, like gold so assayed by fire as to congeal into pure, glistening droplets, distinguishing itself from the surrounding slag.
Pain, denial, triumph, tears, passion, revenge, betrayal, rapture. To which condition do we ascribe these emotions and motivations, to hatred, or to love? The admixture becomes more dense, more difficult to define, and the two seem to meld seamlessly into each other. Although the two perfect, unalloyed extremes may be easily distinguished, and unskilled poets and petty philosophers will make much of their facile ability to do so, the twilight region between the two, that murky area that incorporates irreducible elements of both, or perhaps of a third component newly created by the commingling of the others, is much less easily described. War and hatred are evil, love sublime. And yet: there are good men who could, if they wished, live in peace but who choose instead to fight; who could live a life of ease, but instead enjoy hardship; who could derive joy from lavishing riches on their beloved, but instead spend their wealth on warfare, toiling under the command of Ares rather than of Aphrodite, and even putting the former in the service of the latter.