The Retreat of the Ten Thousand by C. Witt

For twenty days the army halted at Tarsus. It seemed indeed, at one time, that at this point the expedition would break down altogether. For the Hellene troops, on whom Cyrus based all his hopes of conquest, became restive and dissatisfied. They had been engaged to punish the Pisidian marauders, but had now passed the country of the Pisidians, and were naturally beginning to ask themselves what was the real object of the expedition. Their suspicions were increased moreover by the opposition of the Cilician prince. His resistance had certainly been of the feeblest, but still he had made an attempt to stop their passage through his mountains, and had thus declared himself the enemy of Cyrus. What reason could he have had for taking such a course, were it not that he had received instructions from the Great King to bar the passage of Cyrus, because he was a rebel and was advancing to unseat him from his throne?

The Hellenes now discovered for the first time that they were intended to march on for hundreds of miles into the very heart of the Persian empire, and then risk their lives in battle against the Great King, of whose boundless resources they had often heard. For such a mad enterprise as this, they had not been engaged, they said, and they would never have agreed to enter upon it. For, putting aside the extreme length of the march to Susa, how could they expect that in case the hopes of Cyrus should be doomed to disappointment, it would be possible for them, a mere handful of strangers in an unknown country, to break through the ranks of the enemy, and make their way back to their own land?