Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/42

32 escaped, wounded, from the massacre, brought the news of it, and of the arrest of the generals, to the Greek camp. The receipt of this intelligence caused great panic and depression in the little army, who reflected that they were isolated in a hostile and treacherous country, a thousand miles from home, without guides or commissariat, with many large rivers before them, and the enemy's cavalry all round. "Reflecting," says Xenophon, "on these circumstances, and being disheartened at them, few tasted food for that evening, few kindled fires, and many did not come to the place of arms during the night, but lay down to rest where they severally happened to be, unable to sleep for sorrow and longing for their country, their parents, their wives, and their children, whom they never expected to see again." The feelings of the Greeks at this unhappy moment might be compared, to some extent, with those of our own betrayed army at Cabul in 1842, when on the eve of their despairing attempt to regain British India through the mountains, the snow, and the enemy. But the Greeks had better grounds of hope left to them, for their military prestige was quite unimpaired. They had not lost a man except by foul and treacherous murder, and they had never yet found the native troops, in whatever numbers, able to stand up against them.

But it seemed as if there were only one man to whose mind these encouraging thoughts suggested themselves. And that man was Xenophon. But for him, it seemed likely that the Greeks would have abandoned themselves to unresisting despair. Xeno-