02-14-2012, 06:42 AM
Quote:He proposed a plan that had Clearchus followed, Artaxerxes might have had lost the battle. Had he not, the Greeks would have been surrounded and slain, which was the fear of Clearchus.
As for an oblique attack, yes, it would have been mighty possible and if anyone could have done so, it would have been the Greeks. But to do so, they would not obliquely attack in the space between the two armies. They would redeploy on the left. An oblique advance so far from the inital deployment position would be impossible without marching in column first and this would never have happened in front of the enemy line.
The Greeks are the right side of Cyrus' army. The Asian levies hold the lft side and Cyrus and his picked troops the centre. Cyrus actually instructs Clearchus, having made his battle dispositions, to agein to strateuma kata meson , "to lead his army down on the centre".
It is highly improbable that he means by this for his entire right to countermarch out of the line and march the the rebel left so as to attack the King in his centre. If we are to belive Xenophon the Great King "was so superior in numbers that, although occupying the centre of his own line, he was beyond Cyrus' left wing" though, with telescopic vision, Clearchus was able to see the compact body at the enemy's centre. Further, although Cyrus is so alarmingly outflanked, he leads his own centre in an attack on the Great King himself!
Two possibilities intrude:
Cyrus asked his entire right to leave the line and march to the left there to reform and attack the King and when that did not happen Cyrus launched an attack on the King's centre from his own centre position thus riding across the face of his entire left wing to do so.
Xenophon's numbers are exaggerated and the Great King was, in reality, in a position for both for Clearchus to "lead his army down upon" from where he was stationed and for Cyrus to reach from his centre.
The latter, meaning the Great King's army was nothing like 900,000 and did not outflank Cyrus in any alarming fashing, is much more plausible. And, yes, Clearchus' fear was being flanked and so he would not march obliquely from the river else the left and the right be flanked.
Paralus|Michael Park
Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους
Wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander!
Academia.edu
Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους
Wicked men, you are sinning against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander!
Academia.edu
