Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/143

Rh might complete his education. On returning to Persia, he continued another year in the class of the boys. He lived cheerfully on the same rigorous fare as the rest, and surpassed them all in exercises and in diligence of attention. With the exception of some advice from his father, which has very much the appearance of some of the conversations of Socrates, we hear no more, after this, of the "education of Cyrus." He had now reached man's estate, and on a war between Media and Assyria breaking out, he was appointed to command the Persian force of some forty thousand men which was sent to assist the Medes. He immediately made a long speech, in the style of the Xenophontic orations in the 'Anabasis,' to his chosen body-guard. After this follows an account of improvements effected by Cyrus in the army—a topic which gave Xenophon a good opportunity for developing many of his favourite theories on military organisation. Ambassadors arrived from "the king of India" to learn the particulars of the quarrel between Media and Assyria, and Cyrus sagaciously conciliated them by proposing that the king of India should be made arbitrator in the question.

The chief of Armenia, a country subject to the Medes, showed signs of revolt at this juncture, and Cyrus took his army for the purpose of reducing him to obedience. Having adroitly surrounded the Armenian chief, and made him prisoner, he proceeded to try him solemnly on the charge of treason. Xenophon uses this opportunity to introduce a conversational debate, after his own heart. Tigranes, son of the