The Temple Reader

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Xenophon The wonder followed: which was that this young scholar or philosopher, after all the captains were murdered in parley by treason, conducted these ten thousand foot through the heart of all the King's high countries, from Babylon to Grecia, in safety, in despite of all the King's forces, to the astonishment of the world, and the encouragement of the Grecians in times succeeding to make invasion upon the Kings of Persia. Francis Bacon THE RETURN OF THE TEN THOUSAND [This passage describes the arrival of the Greek troops, who had been enticed into the service of Cyrus, fought for him, and had then been treacherously treated, at the shore of the Euxine Sea, after a terrible march across Asia Minor. In order to avoid as much as possible the constant harassing of the various tribes through whose country they passed, it was necessary to journey over the mountains, where they met with violent storms, wilder than any they had known. For nearly eight months they suffered, but moved on, and at length reached the sea which many of them knew, shouting, when they saw the gleam of the water away below them, Thalassa, Thalassa ! ] After a long march through deep snow, the Greeks reached the river Euphrates, and crossed it with the water up to their waists. From there they marched through a deep snow over three desert stages. The third of these stages was fraught with difficulties, and the north wind blew in their faces, frost-biting them and freezing the men's limbs. At that point a certain one of the augurs said that they ought to sacrifice to the wind, and when this was done it seemed to all to have clearly stopped the troublesomeness thereof. The depth of the snow was six feet, so that many of the beasts of burden and slaves were lost, and as many as thirty of the sold...