Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/181

SPEECH OF XENOPHON. 159 the hophtes eight deep, the peltasts on each flank. It was in this position that Xenophon addressed them as follows : u Soldiers ! I am not surprised that you are incensed, and that you think yourselves scandalously cheated and ill-used. But if we give way to our wrath, if we punish these Lacedaemonians now before us for their treachery, and plunder this innocent city, reflect what will be the consequence. We shall stand proclaimed forthwith as enemies to the Lacedaemonians and their allies ; and what sort of a war that will be, those who have witnessed and who still recollect recent matters of history, may easily fancy. We Athenians entered into the war against Sparta with a powerful army and fleet, an abundant revenue, and numerous tributary cities in Asia as well as Europe, among them this very Byzantium in which we now stand. We have been vanquished in the way that all of you know. And what then will be the fate of us soldiers, when we shall have as united enemies, Sparta with all her old allies and Athens besides, Tissaphernes and the barbaric forces on the coast, and most of all, the Great King whom we marched up to dethrone and slay, if we were able ? Is any man fool enough to think that we have a chance of making head against so many combined enemies ? Let us not plunge madly into dis- honor and ruin, nor incur the enmity of our own fathers and friends ; who are in the cities which will take arms against us, and will take arms justly, if we, who abstained from seizing any barbaric city, even when we were in force sufficient, shall nevertheless now plunder the first Grecian city into which we have been admitted. As far as I am concerned, may I be buried ten thousand fathoms deep in the earth, rather than see you do such things ; and I exhort you, too, as Greeks, to obey the leaders of Greece. En- deavor, while thus obedient, to obtain your just rights ; but if you should fail in this, rather submit to injustice than cut yourselves off from the Grecian world. Send to inform Anaxibius that we have entered the city, not with a view to commit any violence, but in the hope, if possible, of obtaining from him the advantages which he promised us. If we fail, we shall at least prove to him that we quit the city, not under his fraudulent manreuvres, but under our own sense of the duty of obedience." 1 1 Xen. Anab. vii, 1, 30-..l.