Anabasis

Consider, then, whether it is better to go forward against these men with arms advanced, or with arms reversed to behold the enemy coming upon us from behind.

Yet you know that to retire before an enemy does not beseem any man of honour, while to be in pursuit creates courage even in cowards. For my part, at any rate, I should rather advance to the attack with half as many men than to retreat with twice as many. And as to those troops yonder, I know that if we advance upon them, you do not yourselves expect them to await our attack, while if we retire, we all know that they will have the courage to pursue us.

Again, to cross a difficult ravine and get it in your rear when you are about to fight, is not that an opportunity really worth seizing? For it is to the enemy that I should myself wish to have all roads seem easy—for their retreat; as for ourselves, we ought to learn from the very ground before us that there is no safety for us except in victory.

I do wonder, however, that any one regards this particular ravine as more dreadful than the rest of the country we have just marched through. For how is that plain to be recrossed unless we are victorious over the enemy’s horsemen? how the mountains which we have passed through, if such a throng of peltasts are to be following at our heels?

Again, if we do reach the sea in safety, what a great ravine, one may say, is the Euxine! where we have neither ships to take us away nor food to subsist upon if we remain, while the sooner we reach there, the sooner we shall have to be off again in quest of provisions.

Well, then, it is better to fight to-day, with our breakfast already eaten, than to-morrow breakfastless. Gentlemen, our sacrificial victims were favourable, the bird-omens auspicious, the omens of the sacrifice most favourable; let us advance upon the enemy. These fellows, now that they have seen us at all, must not again get a pleasant dinner or encamp wherever they please.