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When Antony saw them die so fast, and the Parthian still in pursuit, he was heard to exclaim several times over, "O, the Ten Thousand!" as if in admiration of the retreat of the Greeks with Xenophon, who, when they had a longer journey to make from Babylonia, and a more powerful enemy to deal with, nevertheless came home safe.
Here it was delivered to a new courier, who, mounted on a fresh horse, took it the next stage on its journey; and thus it passed from hand to hand till it reached its destination. According to Xenophon, the messengers travelled by night as well as by day; and the conveyance was so rapid that some even compared it to the flight of birds.
The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras, acknowledged his marvellous power.
Some of the philosophers, indeed, have expressed themselves in a very handsome manner: for Theophrastus derived his name from the divinity of his style; Aristotle rivalled the glory of Isocrates; and the Muses themselves are said to have spoken from the lips of Xenophon; and, to say no more, the great Plato is acknowledged in majesty and sweetness to have far exceeded all who ever wrote or spoke.
Oh, in Xenophon, of course. In The Retreat of the Ten Thousand. The Master gulped it aloud, in a dead voice: "Most terrible of all is the desert for it is full-of a great want." After a while he knew that he was trying to laugh. "A great want!" he repeated. "A great " Presently it was night again. The Master's mind cleared. Yes, there was the woman, lying in the sand near him.
There were several villages near at hand, and the generals, thinking it no longer dangerous to divide the army, quartered the different divisions among them according to lot. Polykratês an Athenian, one of the captains in the division of Xenophon, requested his permission to go at once and take possession of the village assigned to him, before any of the inhabitants could escape.
It is not given to every great man to have Xenophon and Plato for his biographers; it is not given to every one who has overpassed the limit of life, and, in the natural course of events, has but a little longer to continue, to attain the crown of martyrdom in behalf of virtue and morality. In an evil hour for the glory of Athens, his countrymen put him to death.
He sailed from Byzantium to the Asiatic coast, to acquaint Pharnabazus that the Cyreians could no longer cause uneasiness, and to require his own promised reward. It seems moreover that Xenophon himself departed from Byzantium by the same opportunity.
That this was a very extraordinary reach of presumption, is evident from the care of Xenophon in bringing it before his readers; it is probable, indeed, that neither of the high contracting parties had really acted in a spirit of religious indifference, though it is remarkable of the Spartans, that of all Greek tribes they were the most facile and numerous delinquents under all varieties of foreign temptations to revolt from their hereditary allegiance a fact which measures the degree of unnatural constraint and tension which the Spartan usages involved; but in this case we rather account for the public outrage to religion and universal usage, by a strong political jealousy lest the provisions of the treaty should transpire prematurely amongst states adjacent to Boeotia.
I know that he is ignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and I am sorry for him. Socrates, as reported by Xenophon, put my case in a nutshell.
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