Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/74

64 with his men, for the least mistake is fatal. But this is all over now; the calm has come. And since I strike nobody now, when by the favour of the gods I am in good spirits, and am no longer depressed with cold, hunger, and fatigue, and now that I have more wine to drink, you may see that it was at all events not through insolence that I struck any one before. If such things are to be brought up against me, I would ask in common fairness that some of you stand up on the other side and recall a few of the occasions on which I have helped you against the cold, or against the enemy, or when sick, or in distress."

These words produced the desired effect. Many individuals responded to the appeal, "so that," as Xenophon briefly tells us, "it was all right in the end,"—that is to say, that he was not merely acquitted, but stood higher than before in the estimation of the army.

The remaining history of the return of the ten thousand Greeks is a record of the successive triumphs of Xenophon's good sense, governing capacity, and persuasive oratory. And a very difficult task he appears to have had in keeping the army straight, now that it had got into the region of Greek colonies. When the pressure of the Persian cavalry and of hostile mountain tribes was removed, the Cyreian army constantly tended to lose its unity, and resolve itself into sections and individual atoms. Xenophon alone, as Mr Grote points out, possessed a power, not shared by the other generals, of working on the minds of the soldiers collectively, and of keeping up an esprit de corps among them. He owed this to his Athenian education. He always treated every assemblage of the soldiers as an agora, or formal meeting for debate.