Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/335

 STRATAGEMS, IV. ii. 5-111. 3

Cyrus in his war against the Persians overcame incalculable difliculties with a force of only fourteen thousand armed nien.^

With four thousand men, of whom only four hundred were cavalry, Epaminondas, the Theban leader, conquered the Spartan army of twenty-four thousand infantry and sixteen hundred cavahy.^

A hundred thousand barbarians were defeated in battle by fourteen thousand Greeks, the number assisting Cyrus against Artaxerxes.^

The same fourteen thousand Greeks, having lost their generals in battle, returned unharmed through difficult and unknown places, having committed the management of their retreat to one of their number, Xenophon, the Athenian.^

When Xerxes was defied by the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae and had with difficulty destroyed them, he declared that he had been de- ceived, because, while he had numbers enough, yet of real men who adhered to discipline he had none.^

III. On Restraint ano Disinterestedness

The story goes that Marcus Cato was content with the same wine as the men of his crews.^

When Cineas, ambassador of the Epirotes, offered Fabricius a large amount of gold, the latter rejected it, declaring that he preferred to rule those who had gold rather than to have it himself.'

Atilius Regulus, though he had been in charge

' 280 B.C. Gell. i. 14 tells this story of Fabricius ; usually it is related of Curius. (Jf. Val. Max. iv. iii. .5 ; Cic. de ,b'tH. xvi. 55 ; Plut. Apoiiliih. M'. Curii.

289

VOL. I. U