That evening Xenophon sacrificed an ox to Zeus in the main temple, and early the next morning we boarded a merchant ship carrying heavy-fleeced Attic sheep, bound for Ephesus. As we pulled away in the tender, we looked back and saw that old one-eyed Gryllus had appeared on the rain-soaked beach, pushing his way through the fishmongers and loincloth-clad porters in a belated effort to intercept his son before departure. We sat in the boat, frozen at the sight of Gryllus standing knee-deep in the receding surf, shaking his fists in rage and howling curses that were mercifully dissolved in the wind by the gods before reaching our ears. In one final, futile gesture of fury at Xenophon's betrayal, Gryllus hurled stone after stone at us, which splashed harmlessly into the water far short of our vessel. It was for no man's sake, least of all Proxenus' or Cyrus', that Xenophon had embarked on his journey toward the Persians, but rather in search of a road that led to Zeus. In seeking out one immortal, however, he left others behind, for he never saw Socrates, or his father, again.
BOOK THREE
Hoards of wealth have I, left behind when I departed
On this ill-starred journey, and yet more shall I bear home from hence,
Gold and ruddy bronze, and lovely, fair-sashed women,
And gleaming gray iron, all that fell to me as spoils…
– HOMER
CHAPTER ONE
TO THE ACCOMPANIMENT of the groans and rattling chains of the sweat-drenched slaves wielding the oars, the ship bumped to the wharf at Ephesus, the closest port to Sardis though still more than fifty miles distant. I seized our gear, and Xenophon and I leaped onto the quay, not even bothering to take leave of the ship's brutish captain. We quickly wolfed down a few hunks of steaming flat bread slathered with a spicy lentil sauce that I purchased from a nearby vendor, and after a bit of haggling, I bought two healthy Cappadocian asses to carry ourselves and our baggage. In the echo of our journey to Delphi, we spent three days traveling the "King's Highway," the road that ultimately led to the royal city of Susa, on which Sardis was the most important way station. Climbing up from the coastal route, the road passed over bleak, desiccated hills as barren as Aphrodite's marriage to lame Hephaestus. It descended finally into the Cryon valley before taking up the left bank of the Hermus River, which led us directly into the city. Our original plans had been to inquire immediately into the whereabouts of Cyrus' army, but the sights and sounds of this oriental metropolis, the largest city we had ever seen, were so beguiling that we decided to find an appropriate inn and spend a day or two touring before leaving to visit Proxenus.
Sardis did not disappoint. Surrounded by the fertile vineyards and farms through which Xenophon and I had passed while riding into town, the ancient city rose towering from the flat plain, a massive, rock-walled fortress with battered turrets soaring into the sky. Its clamorous markets, the overwhelming odors of the spices and herbal potions sold on every street corner, and the exuberant, thronging citizens from every nation of the world reminded me of Athens in my childhood, before its devastation and impoverishment. It was so long since I had enjoyed the pleasures of a prosperous, optimistic city that even when alone in our rooms, listening to the muffled street sounds outside, I was exhilarated at the prospects waiting just outside my door.
Some three hundred years earlier Sardis, even then a great city, had been overwhelmed by hordes of pale-skinned barbarians who had swept down from the north in endless numbers like packs of ravenous wolves, devouring all its riches and mingling their wild barbarian blood with that of the refined and delicate natives. It was said that so many men and women were killed during the barbarians' brutal sweep through the city that when the carnage was over, thousands of children were left wandering the streets, homeless and wailing. The offspring of royalty mingled with those of the lowest cowherds, and the children's identities were obliterated through the effacement of their outward customs and manners as they scrounged for scraps in the gutters. It was finally decided that no one could determine their origins with certainty, for every child claimed to have been sired by the king, and so they were simply lined up in the market like so much chattel and auctioned to the highest bidder, as slaves of the barbarians or for adoption by surviving Sardesian adults. Since that time, each baby has been imprinted with a tiny, discreet tattoo shortly after birth, usually along the hairline on the nape of the neck, depicting an identifiable family symbol such as an animal or a letter. When walking through the streets, I enjoyed noticing these small signs on young babies riding in slings on their nurses' backs, with their soft, hairless heads slumped forward in sleep.
Under King Croesus, who was said to own as much gold as Midas but who had been cursed by the gods, Sardis was restored and became even more wealthy than in the past. In the last century Sardis, like the rest of Asia Minor, passed over to Persian control, and despite sometimes heavy-handed governance by the king's satraps and descendants, the most recent of whom was the young Cyrus, the city had over the years continued to prosper.
It was from Sardis that Darius and Xerxes had launched their expeditions against the Greeks almost a hundred years earlier, the former's culminating in his defeat at Marathon, the latter's being fatally delayed by the Spartans at Thermopylae. From here, battles famous in Greek history had been commanded and planned, and soldiers in all three Ionian wars had been drawn chiefly from the region of Sardis and had made their last stand here against Athens' retaliatory raids. We wandered the city's libraries and monuments by day, its taverns and theaters by night, and before I realized how fast time was passing, Xenophon noted that we had spent three weeks, and a considerable quantity of our dwindling supply of silver.
We packed the next day, reclaiming our mules from the stockyard where they had been kept, and within two hours of leaving the city saw the first stockades of the army, fencing thousands of pack animals and their forage, and after that mile after mile of neat rows of military tents, most of leather, some of the cheaper yet more durable canvas now becoming more common among armies. The numbers of troops that had assembled on the plain were astonishing. Proxenus had said in his letter that Cyrus was raising a force to be led by Greek mercenaries to put down an uprising of the Pisidians; but the Pisidians were a backward, barbarian race, and surely their defeat did not require the massive army we saw gathered here before us. This was not the ragtag bunch of worn Spartan mercenaries and hangdog Persian slave soldiers we had expected to see. An indefinable feeling, one of tension and unease, sat low and heavy in the pit of my stomach as we rode through the camp, surrounded on all sides by heavily armed, bearded Persian soldiers who did not even bother to disguise the hostile glances they shot our way.