XENOPHON 17 eral to lead me ? and where is he ? or till I am myself of riper age to command ? Older I shall never be, if to-day I surrender to mine enemies." And so he rouses the officers of his murdered friend, Proxenos, and appeals to them all to be up and stirring, to organize their defence and appoint new leaders to direct them. Before dawn he has some kind of confidence restored, and the new organization in progress. Presently the Persians send to demand the surrender of the army whose generals they had seized, and find to their astonishment that their task of subduing the Greeks must begin afresh. Meanwhile the policy of the Greek army becomes defined. They threaten to settle in Mesopotamia and build a for- tified city which shall be a great danger and a torment to the king. They really desire to escape to the coast, if they can but find the way. It was the king's policy to let them depart, but so harass them by the way as to produce disorder and rout, which meant absolute destruction. It was in conduct- ing this retreat, as a joint general with the Spartan Cheirisophos, that Xeno- phon showed all his resource. There were no great pitched battles ; no room for strategy or large combinations ; but ample scope for resource in the details of tactics for meeting new and sudden difficulties, for maintaining order among an army of men that only acknowledged leaders for their ability. At first, in the plains, as they journeyed northward, the danger was from the Persian cavalry, for their own contingent had. deserted to the enemy. This difficulty, which well-nigh ruined the 10,000, as it ruined Crassus in his retreat at Carrhae, he met by organ- izing a corps of Rhodian slingers and archers, whose range was longer than that of the Persians, and who thus kept the cavalry in check. When the plains were passed, and the mountains reached, there arose the new difficulties of forcing passes, of repelling wild mountaineers from positions commanding the road, of providing food, and avoiding false routes. The narrative of the surmounting of all these obstacles with tact and temper is the main subject of the famous " Anabasis." Still graver dangers awaited Xenophon when the retreating army had at last hailed the welcome sea the Black Sea and with returning safety returned jealousies, insubordinations, and the great problem what to do with this great army when it arrived at Greek cities. Xenophon had always dreamt of forming on the bor- der of Hellenedom a new city state, which should honor him as its founder. The wilder spirits thought it simpler to loot some rich city like Byzantium, which was saved with difficulty from their lawlessness. The Spartan governors, who now ruled throughout the Greek world, saw the danger, and were determined to de- lay and worry the dangerous horde until it dissipated ; and they succeeded so well that presently the 6,000 that remained were glad to be led by Xenophon to take service under the Spartan commander Thibron in Asia Minor (399 B.C.). But Xenophon was not given any independent command. He appears to have acted on the staff of the successive Spartan commanders till with King Agesilaus he at- tained personal influence, and probably planned the new expedition of that king to conquer Persia, which was only balked by a diversion wrought by Persian gold in Greece, With Agesilaus Xenophon returned therefore to Greece, and was pres- ent at the great shock of the rival infantries, the Theban and the Spartan, at
