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3i6 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE — had new generals elected, himself one of them, and directed the march, lighting and flying, towards the unexplored Northern mountains. There was scarcely a day or night without adventure, till the memorable afternoon of January 27, 400 B.C., when they caught sight of the sea near Sinope ; and not much peace of mind for Xenophon till he handed his army over to the Spartan Harmost Thibron in the March of 399. It was a brilliant and heroic achievement. True, the difticulties were not so great as they seemed ; for this march itself was the first sign to Europe of that internal weakness of the Oriental Empires which was laid bare by Alexander, Pompey, Lucullus, and the various conquerors of India. But Xenophon's cheery courage, his compara- tively high intellect and culture, his transparent honour, his religious simplicity, combined with great skill in managing men and a genuine gift for improvising tactics to meet an emergency, enabled him to perform an exploit which many an abler soldier might have at- tempted in vain. He was not ultimately successful as a cofidottiere. His Ten Thousand, proud as he is of their achievements afterwards, must have contained some of the roughest dare-devils in Greece ; and Xenophon, like Proxenus, treated them too much like gentlemen. Old Clearchus, knout in hand and curse on lips, never lighten- ing from his gloom except when there was killing about, Was the real man to manage them permanently. For Xenophon the ' Anabasis ' was a glory and a faux pas. He found a halo of romance about his head, and his occupation gone. He remembered that Socrates had never liked the expedition ; that the god at Delphi had not been fairly consulted ; and he consoled himself with the reflection that if he had been more pushing he would