Anabasis

Xenophon

Xenophon, creator; Xenophon in Seven Volumes Volumes 2-3 Anabasis; Brownson, Carleton L. (Carleton Lewis), b. 1866, translator; Brownson, Carleton L. (Carleton Lewis), b. 1866, editor, translator

As soon as the soldiers saw Xenophon, many of them rushed towards him and said: Now is your opportunity, Xenophon, to prove yourself a man. You have a city, you have triremes, you have money, you have this great number of men. Now, should you so wish, you would render us a service and we should make you great.

He replied, desiring to quiet them down: Your advice is certainly good, and I shall do as you say; but if this is what you long for, ground your arms in line of battle with all speed. Then he proceeded to pass along this order himself and bade the others send it on—to ground their arms in battle line.

The men acted as their own marshals, and within a short time the hoplites had fallen into line eight deep and the peltasts had got into position on either wing.

The place where they were, indeed, is a most excellent one for drawing out a line of troops, being the so-called Thracian Square, which is free of houses and level. As soon as their arms were grounded and they had quieted down, Xenophon called the troops together and spoke as follows:

That you are angry, fellow soldiers, and believe you are outrageously treated in being so deceived, I do not wonder. But if we indulge our anger, by taking vengeance for this deception upon the Lacedaemonians who are here and by sacking the city which is in no way to blame, consider the results that will follow.

We shall be declared to be at war with the Lacedaemonians and their allies. And what sort of a war that would prove to be one may at least conjecture by having seen and by recalling to mind the events which have quite lately taken place.

We Athenians, remember, entered upon our war against the Lacedaemonians and their allies with no fewer than three hundred triremes, some afloat and others in the dockyards, with an abundance of treasure already at hand in our city, and with a yearly revenue, accruing at home or coming in from our foreign possessions, of not less than a thousand talents; we ruled over all the islands, we possessed many cities in Asia, in Europe we possessed among many others this very city of Byzantium also, where we now are,—and we were vanquished, in the way that all of you remember.

What fate, then, may you and I expect to suffer now, when the Lacedaemonians still have their old allies, when the Athenians and all who at that time were allied with them have been added to the number, when Tissaphernes and all the rest of the barbarians on the coast are hostile to us, and most hostile of all the King himself, up in the interior, the man whom we came to deprive of his empire, and to kill if we could? With all these banded together against us, is there any man so witless as to suppose that we should come off victorious?

In the name of the gods let us not be mad, nor let us perish disgracefully as enemies both to our native states and to our own friends and kinsmen. For all of them are in the cities which will take the field against us, and will do so justly if we, after refraining from the seizure of any barbarian city, conquerors though we were, are to take the first Greek city we have come to and pillage that.

For my part, therefore, I pray that sooner than live to behold this deed wrought by you, I may be laid ten thousand fathoms underground. And to you my advice is, that being Greeks you endeavour to obtain your just rights by obedience to the leaders of the Greeks. If you are unable to accomplish this, we must not at any rate, even though wronged, be deprived of our return to Greece.

And now it is my opinion that we should send messengers to Anaxibius and say to him: We have not made our way into the city to do any violence, but to obtain some good thing from you if we can, or if that is not possible, at least to show that we go forth, not because we are deceived, but because we are obedient.

This course was resolved upon, and they sent Hieronymus the Elean, Eurylochus the Arcadian, and Philesius the Achaean to bear this message. So they departed to perform their mission.

While the soldiers were still in session Coeratadas[*](cp. Xen. Anab. 7.1.13 and note thereon.) the Theban came in, a man who was going up and down Greece, not in exile, but because he was afflicted with a desire to be a general, and he was offering his services to any city or people that might be wanting a general; so at this time he came to the troops and said that he was ready to lead them to the Delta,[*](i.e. since he was the only Lacedaemonian among the generals.) as it is called, of Thrace, where they could get plenty of good things; and until they should reach there, he said he would supply them with food and drink in abundance.

When the soldiers heard this proposal and the word that came back at the same time from Anaxibius—his reply was, that if they were obedient they would not be sorry for it, but that he would report the matter to his government at home and would himself devise whatever good counsel he could in their case—

they thereupon accepted Coeratadas as general and withdrew outside the walls. And Coeratadas made an agreement with them that he would join the army on the next day with sacrificial victims and a soothsayer, as well as food and drink for the troops.

Meanwhile, as soon as they had gone forth from the city, Anaxibius closed the gates and made proclamation that any soldier who might be caught inside the city would be sold as a slave.

On the next day Coeratadas arrived with his sacrificial victims and his soothsayer, and there followed him twenty men loaded with barley-meal, another twenty with wine, three with olives, another man with as big a load of garlic as he could carry, and another with onions. After setting down all these things, as though for distribution, he proceeded to sacrifice.

And now Xenophon sent for Cleander and urged him to make arrangements so that he could enter within the wall and thus sail homeward from Byzantium.

When Cleander returned, he said that it was only with very great difficulty that he had accomplished the arrangement; for Anaxibius said it was not well to have the soldiers close by the wall and Xenophon within it; the Byzantines, moreover, were in a factious state and hostile to one another. Nevertheless, Cleander continued, he bade you come in if you are intending to sail away with him.

Xenophon accordingly took his leave of the soldiers and went back within the wall in company with Cleander. As for Coeratadas, on the first day he could not get good omens from his sacrifices nor did he serve out any rations at all to the troops; on the following day the victims were standing beside the altar and Coeratadas had on his chaplet, ready for the sacrifice, when Timasion the Dardanian, Neon the Asinaean, and Cleanor the Orchomenian came up and told him not to make the offering, for he was not to be leader of the army unless he should give them provisions.