Hellenica

Xenophon

Xenophon, creator; Xenophon in Seven Volumes Vol 1 and Vol 2; Brownson, Carleton L. (Carleton Lewis), b. 1866, editor; Brownson, Carleton L. (Carleton Lewis), b. 1866, editor, translator

And what better test could there be of this than the way we made war upon one another? Well then, would you say that you are superior in intelligence, you who having a wall, arms, money, and the Peloponnesians as allies, have been worsted by men who had none of these? Is it the Lacedaemonians, then, think[*](403 B.C.) you, that you may pride yourselves upon? How so? Why, they have delivered you up to this outraged populace, just as men fasten a clog upon the necks of snapping dogs and deliver them up to keepers, and now have gone away and left you.

Nevertheless, my comrades, I am not the man to ask you to violate any one of the pledges to which you have sworn, but I ask you rather to show this virtue also, in addition to your other virtues,—that you are true to your oaths and are god-fearing men. When he had said this and more to the same effect, and had told them that there was no need of their being disturbed, but that they had only to live under the laws that had previously been in force, he dismissed the Assembly.

So at that time they appointed their magistrates and proceeded to carry on their government; but at[*](401 B.C.) a later period, on learning that the men at Eleusis were hiring mercenary troops, they took the field with their whole force against them, put to death their generals when they came for a conference, and then, by sending to the others their friends and kinsmen, persuaded them to become reconciled. And, pledged as they were under oath, that in very truth they would not remember past grievances, the two parties even to this day live together as fellow-citizens and the commons abide by their oaths.