The seer, supposing that he must have returned laden with wealth, could scarcely believe him; but when on questioning him further he learnt that Xenophon, although he had sacrificed to Zeus the King, had offered nothing since he left Athens to Zeus the Kindly,' the mystery was explained. The kindly god must receive a whole burnt offering and a slaughter of little pigs in his honour was followed at once by a distribution of pay to the army and by the restoration of his favourite horse, which the Spartans had repurchased and for which they refused any recompense at his hands. He thus had not only his horse but more than a year's pay in advance. The kindly Zeus was indeed working zealously on his behalf: but when, having marched by Antandros to Atarneus, the army reached Pergamos, a prospect of still greater luck was opened for Xenophon. His hostess, Hellas, the wife of Gongylos,2 told him that he might win a splendid prize by seizing the tower or castle of a wealthy Persian named Asidates. The sacrifices at once favoured the enterprise; but a vigorous attack by 600 of his comrades ended in a retreat which at the cost of wounds to nearly half their men enabled them to bring back about 200 captives and some cattle. On the next day the assault, repeated with the full force of the army, was followed by the capture of Asidates himself with his whole family and all his property. Thus came true,' says Xenophon, with a faith which nothing can daunt or shake, 'the signs of the victims offered before the first attack:' and thus also were more than realised any visions of wealth which may have floated before his eyes as he started on the eastward march from Sardeis. With eager gratitude his comrades bade him make his own choice out of all the spoil; and Xenophon returned to Athens a rich man, to find that the great teacher whose wisdom he revered and by whose counsels he was guided had drunk the fatal draught of hemlock a few days or a few weeks before his arrival. 1 Zeus Meilichios. Xen. An. vii. 8, 4. 2 This was a descendant of the Eretrian Gongylos who in the Persian War had taken the side of Xerxes. Xen. H. iii. 1, 6. 3 The signification of the expedition and retreat of the Ten Thousand is pretty much that of the campaigns of Alexander. If neither can be said strictly to belong to the history of the Greek country, they both form part of the history of the artificial Greek people which comes into prominence just as the ancient Hellenic cities dwindle away and lose all political existence. This fact alone justifies the careful study of a narrative which otherwise might have been passed by with a very brief notice. It must further be remembered that this expedition of the Ten Thousand, although owing to the death of Cyrus it failed to dethrone Artaxerxes, left on the Hellenic world generally a profound impression that the Persian empire could not possibly withstand the determined assault of a Greek army well disciplined and well provided, under the command of an able and ambitious general. This conviction, CHAPTER II. SOKRATES. SOKRATES had already reached an age of more than seventy years,1 when three Athenian citizens, the leather-seller Anytos, the poet Charges brought against Sokrates by Anytos, Meletos, and Lykon. 400 B.C. Meletos, and the rhetor Lykon, brought against him three charges, the first of rejecting the gods worshipped at Athens, the second of setting up new deities of his own, the third of corrupting the youth of the city. Of these three men Anytos, as many would have it, had escaped condemnation for his failure to relieve the garrison at Pylos only by bribing the jurymen who tried him. During the tyranny which ensued on the fall of Athens he had been nearly ruined in his estate: and his eagerness to retrieve his broken fortunes roused in him a feeling of indignation when he was told that Sokrates had spoken of his son as far too fine a youth to be put to an unsavoury trade. The other two had, so far as we can learn, no further causes for antipathy to Sokrates than those which affected the classes to which they severally belonged. Of these classes Sokrates, for whatever reasons, had incurred the determined enmity. As a citizen, this illustrious man had lived a life not merely blameless but deserving the gratitude of his countrymen. He had Early life of behaved with credit among the Athenian hoplites Sokrates. at Potidaia and Delion; with righteous zeal he had firmly opposed the madness of the people whom Theramenes was hounding on to the murder of the generals after Argennoussai; 3 with the same fearless composure he had gone quietly home when the Thirty despots commissioned him with four others to arrest and bring before them the Salaminian Leon. Of his earlier life there is little to say. He may have followed for a time the occupation of his father Sophroniskos, and he may have carved the group of Charites which were shown in the Akropolis as his work. Some said that as a young man he had lived viciously; but, expressed again and again by rhetoricians like Lysias and Isokrates, tended greatly, we cannot doubt, to determine the purpose of Alexander the Great; and thus the masterly retreat of Xenophon became directly a cause of the expedition, which carried the name and the language of Hellas to the plains of the Penj-áb. 1 · Έτη γεγονώς πλείω ἑβδομήκοντα. Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 17. This fact may be accepted without entering here into questions concerning the genuineness of the celebrated Apology. 2 See P. 452. although with his thorough frankness he admitted that the work of self-discipline was with him a severe struggle, there seems to be no ground for the imputation. That he betook himself with some eagerness to the study of physics may fairly be gathered from the Platonic dialogue in which Sokrates is represented as receiving the instructions of Parmenides. By that philosopher he is said to have been counselled to test all theories and inferences by the method of his pupil the Eleatic Zenon,-in other words, not merely to assure himself that the conclusion was warranted by the premisses, but to weigh carefully all that could be urged against the latter. Sckrates and the science Such tests, it is obvious, might be used to upset the system of which Zenon was so vehement a champion. It was almost impossible that Sokrates could fail to discover the verbalism in which the Eleatic philosophers often involved themselves; nor in the hypotheses maintained by one philo- of Physics. sopher after another could he well see much more than a series of guesses of which the latest held its ground only until some other thinker came forward to prove its absurdity. Beyond all doubt, the formation of these theories by exploding the old mythological creed vastly aided the growth of the human mind; but it would have been strange indeed if some one had not sooner or later risen to protest against the multiplication of hypotheses for which it was impossible to adduce the manifest evidence of fact. Such a thinker arose in Sokrates, in whose mind the contradictory conclusions of the philosophers (or, as they were called, Sophists) caused a revulsion never to be overcome. The uncertainty of the explanations offered for the motions of the planets or the changes of the seasons was for him the proof that they who attempted to explain such things were invading a region into which the gods would allow no prying. Whatever astronomical knowledge might be needed for navigation or other practical purposes might, he thought, be easily learnt from night-watchers and pilots; but attempts to determine the distances of the planets and the modes of their revolution betrayed impiety of the same kind which led Anaxagoras to assert the identity of Fire and the Sun. Sokrates and the science of Ethics. Turning, therefore, with disgust from the wranglings of philosophers who reviled each other with the fury of lunatics,1 Sokrates beheld before him, as he thought, a vast field in which the plough had scarcely turned a single furrow. If it was impossible for man to determine what were the constituents of the sun, it was surely not impossible for him to ascertain the conditions of his own life, the laws which he must obey, the nature of his relations to other men, and the character of 1 Xen. Mem. I. i. 14. were received with shouts of applause: but whatever their wishes might be, ships were not forthcoming, and Cheirisophos undertook to go and get them from his friend Anaxibios, the harmost of Byzantion. His departure left to Xenophon the task of regulating the whole army until his return. To all his counsels about the discipline of the camp and the arrangement of forageing expeditions they gave unanimous assent: when in the event of other means failing them he urged the need of insisting that the inhabitants of the maritime cities should put the roads in good order for their march, his proposal was met by angry and even wrathful murmurs. They would not stir a step by land: they were quite willing to gather a fleet of transports by seizing such merchant vessels as might be passing. Many were thus seized, their rudders taken off and their cargoes put under guard, to be restored to the owners together with a fair recompense in money for the use of the ships when Their wants they should be no longer needed. Time passed on. were supplied chiefly by inroads into the lands of hostile tribes; but Cheirisophos did not return, and the hated march by land was seen to be inevitable for all who could not be taken into the merchantmen. Room could be found only for the sick, for the women and children, and the men who might be over forty years of age. These were accordingly embarked, and three days later the fleet and the army reached Kerasous,' another colony from Sinope. During the ten days spent here, a review showed that they could still muster 8,600 heavy-armed men, making up with the light-armed troops a total exceeding a myriad. No such Greek force had been seen in the countries bordering on the Black Sea, and no Greek force had performed with so little loss an exploit altogether unparalleled in the history of Hellenic warfare. The to exist south of the Bingöl-dagh has been naturally supposed to be the hot spring mentioned in the narrative of the retreat. With more likelihood the city of Gymnias has been identified with the modern town Gumisch-Khana, notable for its silver mine, which would account for the size and prosperity of the ancient city. The name Thêchês seems to be preserved in that of the mountainrange known as the Tekieh-Dagh; but the spot where the soldiers first caught sight of the sea is not determined. Beyond these conjectures, with their different degrees of likelihood, we can speak with confidence only of the general direction of their march, which must at first have been northward and then, after the crossing of the Euphrates, westward. If the time spent on the march seem long, this impression will be at once removed when we take into account the enormous difficulties of a winter journey even for modern travellers among the mountains of Armenia; and the Greeks were frequently without guides, fighting their way through the territories of hostile clans, and dependent for their support on what they might get either by purchase or by force. 1 The fact here stated proves of itself that this Kerasous is not the town which now bears the same name. The modern Kerasoun, it is asserted, could not be reached from Trebizond in less than ten days. lives of 2,000 men,1 or more, had it is true been sacrificed in the march between Sardeis and Kunaxa, among the Karduchian defiles and in the deadly cold of an Armenian winter; but few retreats, nevertheless, have under like circumstances been effected at so small a sacrifice. The fame of this great achievement preceded them from one Hellenic city to another; but admiration for the skill of the leaders and the endurance of the men had a hard struggle with the stronger feelings of suspicion and fear. Their intentions and wishes could not be known until they were clearly announced; and even then the harsh measures forced upon Xenophon and his followers in order to obtain the indispensable supplies of food might seem to give the lie to their professions. This uncertainty as to their character might at one moment make the inhabitants of the cities which they approached nervously afraid of admitting them within their walls, and at another feverishly anxious to be rid of guests so burdensome and so formidable. Protest of the envoys from Sinopê. Passing on from Kerasous, the army reached the borders of the Mosynoikoi, who by their messenger the Trapezuntine Timesitheos declared that they would not let the Greeks pass through their land, if they came with any hostile intent, but added that they would be not sorry to have their services against some neighbouring enemies. The bargain was struck; but the discipline of the Greeks was no longer what it had been, and the first enterprise undertaken ended in something like ignominious defeat. The attack had been irregular, and Xenophon expressed himself as rather gratified than vexed at reverse which showed to them the true character of their guides and the paramount need of maintaining order among themselves. A second foray carried out with their old discipline yielded abundant booty, and the stores of bread and grain sustained the army on their march through the lands of barbarous tribes, until they reached another of those isolated settlements which Greek enterprise had scattered far beyond the bounds of Continuous or Continental Hellas.2 At this city of Kotyora, a colony from Sinôpê, the Cyreians ended their land march, but not their troubles. Eight months had passed since the prince who had lured them to the great Mesopotamian plain had flung away his 1 The total numbers of the Greeks gathered at Issos fell short of 14,000 by only 100. But one thousand had, by whatever means, disappeared before the battle of Kunaxa. If the numbers reviewed at Kerasous amounted to about a myriad (Xen. An. v. 7, 9, including the peltastai LL and other light-armed troops, the men who had dropped away in the interval would be not far short of 3,000, -a loss which, if desertions be taken into account, is in no way surprising. 2 See Book I. ch. 8. |