at that moment all-powerful;
Kleanor had been before, not indeed a general, but a captain, or one in
the second rank of officers:--he was an elderly man--and he was an
Arcadian, while more than the numerical half of the army consisted of
Arcadians and Achaeans.[45] Either of these two therefore, and various
others besides, enjoyed a sort of prerogative, or established
starting-point, for taking the initiative in reference to the dispirited
army. But Xenophon was comparatively a young man, with little military
experience:--he was not an officer at all, either in the first or second
grade, but simply a volunteer, companion of Proxenus:--he was moreover a
native of Athens, a city at that time unpopular among the great body of
Greeks, and especially of Peloponnesians,[46] with whom her recent long
war had been carried on. Not only therefore he had no advantages
compared with others, but he was under positive disadvantages. He had
nothing to start with except his personal qualities and previous
training; in spite of which we find him not merely the prime mover, but
also the superior person for whom the others make way. In him are
exemplified those peculiarities of Athens, attested not less by the
denunciation of her enemies than by the panegyric of her own
citizens,--spontaneous and forward impulse, as well in conception as in
execution--confidence under circumstances which made others
despair--persuasive discourse and publicity of discussion, made
subservient to practical business, so as at once to appeal to the
intelligence, and stimulate the active zeal, of the multitude. Such
peculiarities stood out more remarkably from being contrasted with the
opposite qualities in Spartans--mistrust in conception, slackness in
execution, secrecy in counsel, silent and passive obedience. Though
Spartans and Athenians formed the two extremities of the scale, other
Greeks stood nearer on this point to the former than to the latter.

If, even in that encouraging autumn which followed immediately upon the
great Athenian catastrophe[47] before Syracuse, the inertia of Sparta
could not be stirred into vigorous action without the vehemence of the
Athenian Alkibiades--much more was it necessary, under the depressing
circumstances which now overclouded the unofficered Grecian army, that
an Athenian bosom should be found as the source of new life and
impulse. Nor would any one, probably, except an Athenian, either have
felt or obeyed the prompti