Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/159

SPEECH OF XENOPHON. 137 defence, 1 Xenophon immediately sent round the herald to sum- mon the army into the regular agora, with customary method and ceremony. The summons was obeyed with unusual alacrity, and Xenophon then addressed them, refraining, with equal generosi- ty and prudence, from saying anything about the last proposition which Timasion and others had made to him. Had he mentioned it, the question would have become one of life and death between him and those other officers. " Soldiers (said he), I understand that there are some men here calumniating me, as if I were intending to cheat you and carry you to Phasis. Hear me, then, in the name of the gods. If I am shown to be doing wrong, let me not go from hence unpunished ; but if, on the contrary, my calumniators are proved to be the wrong-doers, deal with them as they deserve. You surely well know where the sun rises and where he sets ; you know that if a man wishes to reach Greece, he must go westward, if to the barbaric territories, he must go eastward. Can any one hope to deceive you on this point, and persuade you that the sun rises on this side, and sets on 1 Xen. Anab. v, 7, 1-3. 'E7re2 <5e r/cr&uvero d Eevofyuv, edo&v airy u( Ta%iaTa vvvayaytlv avruv ayopdv, K.a.1 (4% idaai avTCkeyrjvat, avTOudrovg' Kal tKtfave rbv KT/pvKa avT^e i;ai dyopdv. The prudence of Xenophon in convoking the assembly at once is incon- testable. He could not otherwise have hindered the soldiers from getting together, and exciting one another to action, without any formal sum- mons. The reader should contrast with this the scene at Athens (described in Thucydides, ii, 22; and in Vol. VI, Ch. xlviii, p. 133 of this History) dur- ing the first year of the Peloponnesian war, and the first invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians ; when the invaders were at Acharnae, within sight of the walls of Athens, burning and destroying the country. In spite of the most violent excitement among the Athenian people, and the strongest impatience to go out and fight, Perikles steadily refused to call an assem- bly, for fear that the people should take the resolution of going out. And what was much more remarkable the people even in that state of excite- ment though all united within the walls, did not meet in any informal assembly, nor come to any resolution, or to any active proceeding; which the Cyreians would certainly have done, had they not been convened in a regular assembly. The contrast with the Cyreian army here illustrates the extraordinary empire exercised by constitutional forms over the minds of the Athenian citizens.