ngs to stand forward as a volunteer at that
moment, when there was every motive to decline responsibility, and no
special duty to impel him. But if by chance a Spartan or an Arcadian had
been found thus forward, he would have been destitute of such talents as
would enable him to work on the minds of others--of that flexibility,
resource, familiarity with the temper and movements of an assembled
crowd, power of enforcing the essential views and touching the opportune
chords, which Athenian democratical training imparted. Even Brasidas and
Gylippus, individual Spartans of splendid merit, and equal or superior
to Xenophon in military resource, would not have combined with it that
political and rhetorical accomplishment which the position of the latter
demanded. Obvious as the wisdom of his propositions appears, each of
them is left to him not only to initiate, but to enforce: Cheirisophus
and Kleanor, after a few words of introduction, consign to him the duty
of working up the minds of the army to the proper pitch.

How well he performed this, may be seen by his speech to the army, which
bears in its general tenor a remarkable resemblance to that of
Perikles[48] addressed to the Athenian public in the second year of the
war,[49] at the moment when the miseries of the epidemic, combined with
those of invasion, had driven them almost to despair. It breathes a
strain of exaggerated confidence, and an undervaluing of real dangers,
highly suitable for the occasion, but which neither Perikles nor
Xenophon would have employed at any other moment. Throughout the whole
of his speech, and especially in regard to the accidental sneeze near at
hand which interrupted the beginning of it, Xenophon displayed that
skill and practice in dealing with a numerous audience, and a given
situation, which characterized more or less every educated Athenian.
Other Greeks, Lacedaemonians or Arcadians, could act, with bravery and in
concert; but the Athenian Xenophon was among the few who could think,
speak, and act, with equal efficiency. It was this threefold
accomplishment which an aspiring youth was compelled to set before
himself as an aim, in the democracy of Athens; and which the
Sophists[50] as well as the democratical institutions--both of them so
hardly depreciated by most critics--helped and encouraged him to
acquire. It was this threefold accomplishment, the exclusive possession
of which, in spite of constant jealousy on the part of Boeoti