e lived for a year in pain
and disgrace and died the death of a felon.

Agias the Arcadian and Socrates the Achaean were both among the
sufferers who were put to death. To the credit, be it said, of both,
no one ever derided either as cowardly in war: no one ever had a fault
to find with either on the score of friendship. They were both about
thirty-five years of age.

BOOK III

(In the preceding pages of the narrative will be found a full
account, not only of the doings of the Hellenes during the
advance of Cyrus till the date of the battle, but of the
incidents which befell them after Cyrus' death at the
commencement of the retreat, while in company with
Tissaphernes during the truce.)

I

After the generals had been seized, and the captains and soldiers who 1
formed their escort had been killed, the Hellenes lay in deep
perplexity--a prey to painful reflections. Here were they at the
king's gates, and on every side environing them were many hostile
cities and tribes of men. Who was there now to furnish them with a
market? Separated from Hellas by more than a thousand miles, they had
not even a guide to point the way. Impassable rivers lay athwart their
homeward route, and hemmed them in. Betrayed even by the Asiatics, at
whose side they had marched with Cyrus to the attack, they were left
in isolation. Without a single mounted trooper to aid them in pursuit:
was it not perfectly plain that if they won a battle, their enemies
would escape to a man, but if they were beaten themselves, not one
soul of them would survive?

Haunted by such thoughts, and with hearts full of despair, but few of
them tasted food that evening; but few of them kindled even a fire,
and many never came into camp at all that night, but took their rest
where each chanced to be. They could not close their eyes for very
pain and yearning after their fatherlands or their parents, the wife
or child whom they never expected to look upon again. Such was the
plight in which each and all tried to seek repose.

Now there was in that host a certain man, an Athenian (1), Xenophon,
who had accompanied Cyrus, neither as a general, nor as an officer,
nor yet as a private soldier, but simply on the invitation of an old
friend, Proxenus. This old friend had sent to fetch him from home,
promising, if he would come, to introduce him to Cyrus, "whom," said
Proxenus, "I consider to be worth my fatherland and more to me."

(1) The reader