“It was a wonderful scene, and some day I must tell you all about it. But I must own that for a time I felt as uncomfortable as ever I did in my life. After dinner when the bowl had passed round two or three times, in came a Thracian leading a white horse. He took the bowl from the cup-bearer, and said, ‘Here is a health to thee, King Seuthes. Let me give you this horse. Mounted on him thou shalt take whom thou wilt, and when thou retirest from the battle thou shalt dread no pursuer.’ Then another gave a slave, and another some robes for the Queen, and a fourth a silver saucer and a finely embroidered carpet. All the while I was sitting in an agony, for I was in the place of honor, and had nothing to offer. However ‘our lady of Athens,’ who is the inspirer of clever devices, and, it may be Father Bacchus also, for I had drained two or three cups, helped me out of my difficulty. When the cup-bearer handed me the goblet, I rose and said, ‘King Seuthes, I present you with myself and these my trusty comrades. With their help you will recover the lands that were your forefathers’ and gain many new lands with them. Nor shall you win lands only, but horses many, and men many, and fair women also.’ Up got the King, at this, and we drained the cup together.
“Seuthes was not going to let the grass grow under his feet. When we left the banqueting tent—this was at sunset because we wanted to set the guards about our camp—the King, who, for all his potations, was as sober as a water-drinker, sent for the generals and said, ‘My neighbors have not yet heard of this alliance of ours. Let us go and take them by surprise.’ And so we did. We went that night and brought back booty enough to pay for our day’s pay, I warrant you.
“Well, we went on fighting for Seuthes for two months till we had conquered the whole countryside for him. Then the conquered tribes flocked to him—give a Thracian plenty to eat and drink and good pay and he will fight in any quarrel—till he did not want any more. That perhaps was not to be wondered at, but, like the mean hound that he was, he tried to get out of paying us.
“Just at this moment when I thought that we should have to settle with the sword for judge, Sparta declared war against the Persians and wanted all the men she could get. So Thuisbron, their commander-in-chief, came over and engaged the men at the same rate of pay that Seuthes was giving or rather promising. We never got anything but a wretched fragment from the King.
“By this time I had had about enough of campaigning of this fashion. Not a drachma had I made. In fact I was poorer than when I set out. I had even to sell my favorite horse, but Thuisbron bought it back for me.
“Just at the last I had a stroke of luck. That is another story I must tell you some day. But fortunately we took prisoners a Persian noble with his wife and children, his horses and cattle and all that he had. The next day I left the army, but before I went they gave me the pick of the beasts of all kinds. It was a handsome present, I can tell you.”
“So, on the whole,” said Callias, “you came pretty well out of the business. You returned at least not poorer than you went, you have won for yourself a name which those who come after us will not, I take it, forget, and you helped, at least, to save the lives of many Greeks from perishing shamefully by the hands of the barbarians. Are you not content?”
“Yes,” replied Xenophon, “all the more content on account of one thing you have not mentioned. For this indeed pleases me in the matter that we Greeks have now found a way by which we may both go to the capital of the Persians and return therefrom. Verily, I sometimes wish we had not been so eager to retreat, but had stopped and made ourselves masters of the country of our enemies. Perhaps we were not strong enough; but, if I can see so far into the future, some one will do this hereafter, and Greece will be avenged of all that she has suffered at the hands of the barbarians.”
“The Master will be glad,” Callias went on after a pause.
The “Master” of course was Socrates. Xenophon looked at the young man with some surprise.