PREFACE.

IT has been truly remarked, in discussing the results of the eventful battle of Cunaxa, that had victory attended the steps of the Greeks we should then have been without the Anabasis, the choicest piece of ancient military history, and fairly worth the history of all the Persian dynasties since that period.' The same high authority and distinguished geographer, Major Rennell, who makes this remark, has also pronounced the Expedition, taken in all its parts, as perhaps the most splendid of all the military events that have been recorded in ancient history; and it is acknowledged at all hands to have been rendered no less interesting and impressive in the description, by the happy mode of relating it.

This celebrated Expedition of the younger Cyrus, and still more the Retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, by revealing the weakness of Persia, further paved the way to the overthrow of that vast empire: strong, as Xenophon remarks, with regard to the extent of country and numbers of men, but weak by reason of the great distance of places, and the division of its forces; and it thus assisted, as Archdeacon Wilberforce points out (The Five Empires, &c., pp. 113, 149), in the accomplishment of the promises of God, as made in the prophecies of Daniel, and prepared the way for the third of the great empires which were to precede the coming of the Saviour of mankind.

But this remarkable work has been read, and its geographical details have been either taken for granted, or referred to proximate delineations of territory and places, which communicated to the mind anything but a sensible or positive satisfaction in tracing the progress. of the armies. In many cases the reader was compelled, after much examination, to take for granted what the mind naturally required to be verified; and in others, to forego all enquiry as entirely hopeless.

A reader of modern military history would regard as very imperfect a work which would be found deficient in the necessary details of geography. In books of travel the defect would be felt still more. The Anabasis, independent of its merits arising from the grandeur of the subject, the high reputation of its author, and the military exploits which it records (offering in these a romarkable contrast to the recent campaign of Affghanistan), contains a great variety of incident to recommend it: it combines with the character of a military history, that of a book of travel likewise; and if military operations generally receive their character from the nature of the ground on which they are performed, how much more. must they do so when combined with a lengthened journey through hostile countries, and amid inclement seasons! Nor can the mind be satisfied except when such details are accompanied by representations and descriptions, which at once serve to render manifest the several movements, and to develop the causes which led to them.

The present illustrator of the Anabasis has by accident enjoyed advantages possessed by no other person,

of following at intervals the whole line of this celebrated Expedition, from the plain of Caystrus, and the Cilician gates, through Syria down the Euphrates, to the field of Cunaxa, and of again travelling in the line of the still more memorable retreat across the plains of Babylonia and Media by Larissa and Mes-Pyla, and thence through the well-defended passes of the Tigris and Kurdistan, to the cold elevated uplands of Armenia, which were the scene of so many disasters and so much suffering to the Greeks. Then again, from Trebizond westward he has visited on various parts of the coast of Asia Minor localities to which an interest is given by the notices of the Athenian historian, independent of their own importance as ancient sites or colonies; and where he has not been personally on that part of the route, as well as in the localities of the first assembling the troops under Cyrus, the researches of W. J. Hamilton, Pococke, Arundel, and others, fully fill up the slight deficiencies which might otherwise occur. Indeed, out of a journey evalued by the historian at three thousand four hundred and sixty-five miles altogether, there is not above six hundred miles that the illustrator has not personally explored.

It was his original intention to have embodied what researches were connected with this Expedition and Retreat, into his Travels; but there were two insuperable objections to that proceeding: first, that mere geographical details, separated from the text, would possess little or no interest to the general reader. It is also this consideration which has led him to join to the illustrations a brief and conciso narrative of events, following in all cases the historian himself as closely as

possible, so that whilst obliged to abbreviate, he should still neither maim nor distort the original; and to avoid the supposition of modernizing the version to his own views, he has followed the translation of Spelman, which is used in a similar enquiry by Major Rennell, and by Mr. Baillie Fraser, and which is indeed generally admitted in this country; but at the same time, where the circumstances imperiously demanded it, he has had recourse to explanations derived from the original, as given by Hutchinson, and in more recent times by Long.

The second objection was, that the different countries traversed by the Greeks were visited by the author at different times: North Syria and the Euphrates were explored during his employment with the Euphrates Expedition, from 1835 to 1837; the Tigris, Larissa, and Mes-Pyle, on a return-journey from Baghdad, in 1837; Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, in the autumn of 1839; Mesopotamia in the winter of 1840; part of Upper Tigris to Eskí Móșul in the summer; and the passes of Kurdistan, the 'Alí Tágh or Niphates, and the uplands of Armenia, in the autumn of the same year. The earlier of these journeys were performed when employed by the Royal Geographical Society, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Many of the districts herein included have been the scene of the researches of others; and even on the Tigris Captain Lynch had, previous to 1840, descended that river on a raft from Diyár Bekr to Mósul; but the illustrator was the first European who succeeded in crossing the mountain-passes of Kurdistan on the Tigris by land, and that only after the failure of a first attempt made in 1837.

The illustrator is sanguine in his hopes that such a work will prove useful and acceptable; and that it may even render a history, the excellency and beauty of which have been household themes for centuries, more approachable and more casily followed than heretofore. The various attempts which have been made by the learned of all countries to effect what is now offered to the public, testify to the want that was experienced. Among the most prominent of these may be mentioned the great quarto work of Major Rennell1, the labors of Delisle, of D'Anville3, and of Gosselin'; the Geographical Dissertation of Forster, appended to Spelman's Translation; and the Index Geographicus attached to Hutchinson's Xenophon; not to mention the multiple commentaries of Leunclavius, Stephanus, Larcher, Capellus, Al Porti, Mureti, D'Ablancourt, Spelman, Mannert", Cramor", Baillie Fraser, and others.

The aspect which Xenophon is made to assume in his modern dress is most remarkable. If the Index Geographicus, published in 1745, be consulted, it will be found that not one in ten sites is identified with an existing position or ruin, while in the present day, scarcely one in ten is wanting in immediate identification. This

Illustrations of the History of the Expedition of Cyrus, &c. 4to. London, 1816.

2 Détermination Géographique, &c. Mém. de l'Académie Royale. An. 1728.

3 L'Euphrate et le Tigre. 4to. Paris. 1779.

Récherches sur la Géographie

des Anciens. Par P. F. Gosselin. 4to. Paris.

5 Géographie des Grecs et des Romains.

6 Asia Minor. 2 vols. 8vo.

7 Mesopotamia and Assyria, (Edin. Cabinet Library.) A work which contains much original information, as well as valuable criticism.