to them all to be
up and stirring, to organize their defence and appoint new leaders to
direct them. Before dawn he has some kind of confidence restored, and
the new organization in progress. Presently the Persians send to demand
the surrender of the army whose generals they had seized, and find to
their astonishment that their task of subduing the Greeks must begin
afresh. Meanwhile the policy of the Greek army becomes defined. They
threaten to settle in Mesopotamia and build a fortified city which shall
be a great danger and a torment to the king. They really desire to
escape to the coast, if they can but find the way.

It was the king's policy to let them depart, but so harass them by the
way as to produce disorder and rout, which meant absolute destruction.
It was in conducting this retreat, as a joint general with the Spartan
Cheirisophos, that Xenophon showed all his resource. There were no great
pitched battles; no room for strategy or large combinations; but ample
scope for resource in the details of tactics for meeting new and sudden
difficulties, for maintaining order among an army of men that only
acknowledged leaders for their ability. At first, in the plains, as they
journeyed northward, the danger was from the Persian cavalry, for their
own contingent had deserted to the enemy. This difficulty, which
well-nigh ruined the 10,000, as it ruined Crassus in his retreat at
Carrhae, he met by organizing a corps of Rhodian slingers and archers,
whose range was longer than that of the Persians, and who thus kept the
cavalry in check. When the plains were passed, and the mountains
reached, there arose the new difficulties of forcing passes, of
repelling wild mountaineers from positions commanding the road, of
providing food, and avoiding false routes. The narrative of the
surmounting of all these obstacles with tact and temper is the main
subject of the famous "Anabasis." Still graver dangers awaited Xenophon
when the retreating army had at last hailed the welcome sea--the Black
Sea--and with returning safety returned jealousies, insubordinations,
and the great problem what to do with this great army when it arrived at
Greek cities. Xenophon had always dreamt of forming on the border of
Hellenedom a new city state, which should honor him as its founder. The
wilder spirits thought it simpler to loot some rich city like Byzantium,
which was saved with difficulty from their lawlessness. The Spartan
governors, who now r