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[105] 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 dishonor 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. Endeavor 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 manoeuvres, but under our own sense of
the duty of obedience."

This speech completely arrested the impetuous impulse of the army,
brought them to a true sense of their situation, and induced them to
adopt the proposition of Xenophon. They remained unmoved in their
position on the Thrakion, while three of the captains were sent to
communicate with Anaxibius. While they were thus waiting, a Theban named
Koeratadas approached, who had once commanded in Byzantium under the
Lacedaemonians during the previous war. He had now become a sort of
professional general looking out for an army to command wherever he
could find one, and offering his services to any city which would engage
him. He addressed the assembled Cyreians, and