Peltasts and chariots at Cunaxa

[Sean Manning]

One often reads in email or conversation the idea that the Greeks at Cunaxa who opened their ranks to avoid the scythed chariots were the psiloi or peltasts, or at least that there were some psiloi in front of the phalanx to break up the chariot charge. The main difficulty here is that the account of the Greek fight at Anabasis 1.8 seems to deal exclusively with the hoplites, the peltasts being returned to at Anabasis 1.10 when Xenophon has the occasion to mention Tissaphernes. It is not improbable that Xenophon would mislead in this way, but that is not a positive argument.

Has anyone gone over this in detail? Maybe Otto Lendle? For my thesis work I have been avoiding Cunaxa because I believe there are much more interesting questions to ask about Cyrus' revolt.

Is it the Greeks who open up their ranks? Judging by the Dakyns version, it seems to be the Persians of Artaxerxes, opening up their formation to let their chariots withdraw, but then again, this version has the charioteers themselves disappear without explanation:

http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/x...abasis.asp

Hi Marja,

It has taken me some time to reply because I wanted to look at the Greek of the passage.

The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae text of that passage (Xen. An. 1.8.20) is as follows:

τὰ δ' ἅρματα ἐφέροντο τὰ μὲν δι' αὐτῶν τῶν πολεμίων, τὰ δὲ καὶ διὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κενὰ ἡνιόχων. οἱ δ' ἐπεὶ προΐδοιεν, διίσταντο· ἔστι δ' ὅστις καὶ κατελήφθη ὥσπερ ἐν ἱπποδρόμῳ ἐκπλαγείς· καὶ οὐδὲν μέντοι οὐδὲ τοῦτον παθεῖν ἔφασαν, οὐδ' ἄλλος δὲ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ μάχῃ ἔπαθεν οὐδεὶς οὐδέν, πλὴν ἐπὶ τῷ εὐωνύμῳ τοξευθῆναί τις ἐλέγετο.

So “And some of the chariots were rushing through the enemy, and others without their drivers through the Greeks, who whenever they saw them coming divided. Someone was overtaken, stunned like a man in a horse race, but they say that he suffered no harm, nor did any other of the Greeks in this fight suffer anything, except that someone on the left wing was said to have been shot with an arrow.” Since the context is the charge of the Greek hoplites, I think that the natural reading is that the Greek hoplites divided. The Cyropaedia tells us that Xenophon believed that the Persian charioteers jumped out before their chariots met the Greeks, and that he believed that scythed chariots could be effective against the front of a phalanx of hoplites if the drivers were brave and bold. But it is hard to say whether this last is based on experience!