Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/183

EFFECTS OF XENOPHON'S SPEECH. 161 had the means of escaping by sea, evei. under the worst circum- stances, are stated by Xenophon rather under than above the reality. At the same time no orator ever undertook a more diffi- cult case, or achieved a fuller triumph over unpromising conditions. If we consider the feelings and position of the army at the instant of their breaking into the town, we shall be astonished that any commander could have arrested their movements. Though fresh from all the glory of their retreat, they had been first treacherously entrapped over from Asia, next roughly ejected, by Anaxibius ; and although it may be said truly that the citizens of Byzantium had no concern either in the one or the other, yet little heed is commonly taken, in military operations, to the distinction between garrison and citizens in an assailed town. Having arms in their hands, with consciousness of force arising out of their exploits in Asia, the Cyreians were at the same time inflamed by the oppor- tunity both of avenging a gross recent injury, and enriching them- selves in the process of execution ; to which we may add, the excitement of that rush whereby they had obtained the reentry, and the farther fact, that without the gates they had nothing to expect except poor, hard, uninviting service in Thrace. "With soldiers already possessed by an overpowering impulse of this nature, what chance was there that a retiring general, on the point of quitting the army, could so work upon their minds as to induce them to renounce the prey before them ? Xenophon had nothing to invoke except distant considerations, partly of Hellenic repu- tation, chiefly of prudence ; considerations indeed of unquestionable reality and prodigious magnitude, yet belonging all to a distant fu- ture, and therefore of little comparative force, except when set forth in magnified characters by the orator. How powerfully he worked upon the minds of his hearers, so as to draw forth these far-removed dangers from the cloud of present sentiment by which they were overlaid, how skilfully he employed in illustration the example of his own native city, will be seen by all who study his speech. Never did his Athenian accomplishments, his talent for giving words to important thoughts, his promptitude in seizing a pres- ent situation and managing the sentiments of an impetuous multi- tude, appear to greater advantage than when he was thus suddenly called forth to meet a terrible emergency. His pre- established reputation and the habit of obeying his orders, were VOL. ix. Hoc.