(M583) He expected to find the passes over the mountains, a day’s journey from Issus, defended, but the Persian general Abrocomas fled at his approach, and Cyrus easily crossed into Syria by the pass of Beilan, over Mount Amanus. He then proceeded south to Myriandus, a Phœnician maritime town, where he parted from his fleet. Eight days’ march brought his army to Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, where he remained five days to refresh his troops. Here again the Greeks showed a reluctance to proceed, but, on the promise of five minæ a head, nearly one hundred dollars more than a year’s pay, they consented to advance. It was here Cyrus crossed the river unobstructed, and continued his march on the left bank for nine days, until he came to the river Araxes, which separates Syria from Arabia. Thus far his army was well supplied with provisions from the numerous villages through which they passed; but now he entered a desert country, entirely without cultivation, where the astonished Greeks beheld for the first time wild asses, antelopes, and ostriches. For eighteen days the army marched without other provisions than what they brought with them, parched with thirst and exhausted by heat. At Pylæ they reached the cultivated territory of Babylonia, and the alluvial plains commenced. Three days’ further march brought them to Cunaxa, about seventy miles from Babylon, where the army of Artaxerxes was marshaled to meet them. It was an immense force of more than a million of men, besides six thousand horse-guards and two hundred chariots. But so confident was Cyrus of the vast superiority of the Greeks and their warfare, that he did not hesitate to engage the overwhelming forces of his brother with only ten thousand Greeks and one hundred thousand Asiatics. The battle of Cunaxa was fatal to Cyrus; he was slain and his camp was pillaged. The expedition had failed. (M584) Dismay now seized the Greeks, as well it might—a handful of men in the midst of innumerable enemies, and in the very centre of the Persian empire. But such men are not driven to despair. They refused to surrender, and make up their minds to retreat—to find their way back again to Greece, since all aggressive measures was madness. This retreat, amid so many difficulties, and against such powerful and numerous enemies, is one of the most gallant actions in the history of war, and has made those ten thousand men immortal.