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

In fact, you are now free to journey in security whithersoever you may choose, whether by land or by sea. And you, at the moment when such abundant freedom reveals itself to you, when you are sailing to the very place where you have long been eager to go and the mightiest are suing for your aid, when pay is within sight and the Lacedaemonians, who are deemed the most powerful leaders, have come to lead you—do you, I say, think that now is the proper time to put me to death with all speed?

It was not so, surely, in the days when we were in straits, O you who remember better than all other men; nay, then you called me father, and you promised to keep me for ever in memory as a benefactor! Not by any means, however, are these men, who have now come after you, wanting in judgment; therefore, I imagine, they also think none the better of you for behaving in this manner towards me. With these words he ceased speaking.

Then Charminus the Lacedaemonian arose and said: No, by the twin gods; I, at any rate, think you are unjust in being angry with this man; for I can bear witness for him myself. When I and Polynicus asked Seuthes about Xenophon, to learn what sort of a man he was, Seuthes had no fault to find with him save that, as he said, he was too great a friend of the soldiers, and on that account, he added, things went the worse for him, both so far as we the Lacedaemonians were concerned and on his own account.

After him Eurylochus of Lusi rose and said: Yes, and I believe, men of Lacedaemon, that you ought to assume leadership over us in this enterprise first of all, in exacting our pay from Seuthes whether he will or no, and that you should not take us away till that is done.