William F. Ainsworth Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand Greeks

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. 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 boon 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.<br><br>This celebrated Expedition of the younger Cyrus, and still more the Retreat of tho ton 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.