Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/40

 16 WORKMEN AND HEROES fashion, and m a perfectly independent way, as the noblest of training. His youth, however, was spent in the distressful later years of the Peloponnesian War, which ended in fearful gloom and disaster for his native city. Intimate, apparently, with the great historian Thucydides, whose unfinished work he seems to have edited, and subsequently to have continued in his own " Hellenica," he must have long foreseen the collapse of the Athenian empire, and then he and many other adventurous spirits found themselves in a society faded in prosperity, with no scope for energy or enterprise. Such was the somewhat tame and vul- gar Athens which succeeded to that of Pericles and Aristophanes, and which could not tolerate the spiritual boldness of Socrates. He tells us himself, in the third book of his "Anabasis," how he was tempted to leave Athens for the East by his friend Proxenus, who had made the acquaintance of the chivalrous and am- bitious Cyrus, brother of the Persian king, and governor of southern Asia Minor. This prince was preparing secretly to invade Persia and dethrone his brother, and for that purpose was gathering troops and courting the favor of the Greeks. His splendid gifts were on a scale sufficient to dazzle men of small means and smaller prospects, like the youth of conquered Athens. Xenophon thought it right to consult his spiritual guide, Socrates, on the propriety of abandoning his country for hireling service. The philosopher advised him to consult the oracle at Delphi, but the young man only asked what gods he might best conciliate before his departure, and Socrates, though noting the evasion of his advice, acquiesced. When Xenophon arrived at Sardis, Proxenus presented him to Cyrus, who invited him to accompany him on his pretended campaign to Pisidia, and then coaxed him on with the rest into his enterprise against the king Artaxerxes. On this expedition or anabasis up the country, Xenophon was only a volunteer, with no command, and under no man's orders, but accompanying the army on horseback, and enjoying the trip as a bright young man, well appointed by the prince, and full of intelligent curiosity, was sure to enjoy it. But then came the decisive day of Cunaxa, where Xenophon offered his services as an extra aide-de- camp to Cyrus, and where he witnessed the victory of his countrymen and the defeat of their cause by the rashness and death of Cyrus In the crisis which followed he took no leading part, till the generals of the 10,000 Greeks were en- trapped and murdered by Tissaphernes. Then, in the midst of the panic and de- spair which supervened, he tells us in graphic words how he came to be a leader of men. He, too, with the rest, was in sore distress, and could not sleep ; but anon getting a snatch of rest he had a dream. It seemed to him that there was a stoim, and a thunderbolt fell on his father's house and set it all in a blaze. He sprang up in terror, and, pondering the matter, decided that in part the dream was good, in that when in great danger he had seen a light from Zeus ; but partly, too, he feared it, for it came from the king of heaven. But as soon as he was fully awake the first clear thought that came into his head was : " Why am I lying' here ? The night advances, and with the coming day the enemy will be upon us. If we fall into the king's hands we must face torture, slavery, and death, and yet here we lie, as if it were a time for rest ! What am I waiting for? Is it a gen-