Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/194

 172 HISTORY OF GREECE. up with immense interest, so that Xenophon became better off than any man in the army ; though he himself slurs over the magni tude of the present, by representing it as a delicate compliment to restore to him a favorite horse. Thus gratefully and instantaneously did Zeus the Gracious re- spond to the sacrifice which Xenophon, after a long omission, had been admonished by Eukleides to offer. And doubtless Xenophon was more than ever confirmed in the belief, which manifests itself throughout all his writings, that sacrifice not only indicates, by the interior aspect of the immolated victims, the tenor of coming events, but also, according as it is rendered to the right god and at the right season, determines his will, and therefore the course of events, for dispensations favorable or unfavorable. But the favors of Zeus the Gracious, though begun, were not yet ended. Xenophon conducted the army through the Troad, and across mount Ida, to Antandrus ; from thence along the coast to Lydia, through the plain of Thebe and the town of Adramyt- tium, leaving Atarneus on the right hand, to Pergamus in Mysia, a hill-town overhanging the river and plain of Kaikus. This district was occupied by the descendants of the Eretrian Gongylus, who, having been banished for embracing the cause of the Per- sians when Xerxes invaded Greece, had been rewarded (like the Spartan king Demaratus) with this sort of principality under the Persian empire. His descendant, another Gongylus, now occupied Pergamus, with his wife Hellas and his sons Gorgion and Gon- gylus. Xenophon was here received with great hospitality. Hel- las acquainted him that a powerful Persian, named Asidates, was now dwelling, with his wife, family, and property, in a tower not far off, on the plain ; and that a sudden night-march, with three hundred men, would suffice for the capture of this valuable booty, to which her own cousin should guide him. Accordingly, having sacrificed and ascertained that the victims were favorable, Xeno- phon communicated his plan after the evening meal to those captains who had been most attached to him throughout the expe- dition, wishing to make them partners in the profit As soon as it became known, many volunteers, to the number of six hundred, pressed to be allowed to join. But the captains repelled them, declining to take more than three hundred, in order that the booty might afford an ampler dividend to each partner.