Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/395

365 THE BATTLE OF CUNAXA 365

Consider how powerless these hands of ours if called upon to combine their action at two points more than a single fathom's length apart ; and these feet could not stretch asunder even a bare fathom ; and these eyes, for all the wide-reaching range we claim for them, are incapable of seeing simultaneously the back and front of an object at even closer quarters. But a pair of brothers, linked in bonds of amity, can work each for the other's good, though seas divide them.

THE BATTLE OF CUNAXA

From the Anabasis, Book I. viii. §§ li-29.

At this time the barbarian army was evenly advan- cing, and the Hellenic division was still riveted to the spot, completing its formation as the various contin- gents came up. Cyrus, riding past at some distance from the lines, glanced his eye first in one direction and then in the other, so as to take a complete survey of friends and foes ; when Xenophon the Athenian, seeing him, rode up from the Hellenic quarter to meet him, asking whether he had any orders to give. Cyrus, pulling up his horse, begged him to make the announcement generally known that the omens from the victims, internal and external, were good. While he was still speaking he heard a confused mur- mur passing through the ranks, and asked what it meant. The other replied that it was the watchword being passed down for the second time. Cyrus won- dered who had given the order, and asked what the watchword was. On being told it was " Zeus our Saviour and Victory," he replied, " I accept it ; so let it be," and with that remark rode away to his own