Beginning their march in the evening, Xenophon and his detachment of three hundred reached about midnight the tower of Asidates; it was large, lofty, thickly built, and contained a considerable garrison. It served for protection to his cattle and cultivating slaves around, like a baronial castle in the middle ages; but the assailants neglected this outlying plunder, in order to be more sure of taking the castle itself. Its walls however were found much stronger than was expected; and although a breach was made by force about daybreak, yet so vigorous was the defence of the garrison, that no entrance could be effected. Signals and shouts of every kind were made by Asidates to procure aid from the Persian forces in the neighborhood; numbers of whom soon began to arrive, so that Xenophon and his company were obliged to retreat. And their retreat was at last only accomplished, after severe suffering and wounds to nearly half of them, through the aid of Gongylus with his forces from Pergamus, and of Proklês (the descendant of Demaratus) from Halisarna, a little farther off seaward.[281]
Though his first enterprise thus miscarried, Xenophon soon laid plans for a second, employing the whole army; and succeeded in bringing Asidates prisoner to Pergamus, with his wife, children, horses, and all his personal property. Thus (says he, anxious above all things for the credit of sacrificial prophecy) the “previous sacrifices (those which had promised favorably before the first unsuccessful attempt) now came true.”[282] The persons of this family were doubtless redeemed by their Persian friends for a large ransom;[283] which, together with the booty brought in, made up a prodigious total to be divided.
In making the division, a general tribute of sympathy and admiration was paid to Xenophon, to which all the army,—generals, captains, and soldiers,—and the Lacedæmonians besides,—unanimously concurred. Like Agamemnon at Troy, he was allowed to select for himself the picked lots of horses, mules, oxen, and other items of booty; insomuch that he became possessor of a share valuable enough to enrich him at once, in addition to the fifty darics which he had before received. “Here then Xenophon (to use his own language[284]) had no reason to complain of the god” (Zeus Meilichios). We may add,—what he ought to have added, considering the accusations which he had before put forth,—that neither had he any reason to complain of the ingratitude of the army.
As soon as Thimbron arrived with his own forces, and the Cyreians became a part of his army, Xenophon took his leave of them. Having deposited in the temple at Ephesus that portion which had been confided to him as general, of the tithe set apart by the army at Kerasus for the Ephesian Artemis,[285] he seems to have executed his intention of returning to Athens.[286] He must have arrived there, after an absence of about two years and a half, within a few weeks, at farthest, after the death of his friend and preceptor Sokrates, whose trial and condemnation have been recorded in my last volume. That melancholy event certainly occurred during his absence from Athens;[287] but whether it had come to his knowledge before he reached the city, we do not know. How much grief and indignation it excited in his mind, we may see by his collection of memoranda respecting the life and conversations of Sokrates, known by the name of Memorabilia, and probably put together shortly after his arrival.
That he was again in Asia, three years afterwards, on military service under the Lacedæmonian king Agesilaus, is a fact attested by himself; but at what precise moment he quitted Athens for his second visit to Asia, we are left to conjecture. I incline to believe that he did not remain many months at home, but that he went out again in the next spring to rejoin the Cyreians in Asia,—became again their commander,—and served for two years under the Spartan general Derkyllidas before the arrival of Agesilaus. Such military service would doubtless be very much to his taste; while a residence at Athens, then subject and quiescent, would probably be distasteful to him; both from the habits of command which he had contracted during the previous two years, and from feelings arising out of the death of Sokrates. After a certain interval of repose, he would be disposed to enter again upon the war against his old enemy Tissaphernes; and his service went on when Agesilaus arrived to take the command.[288]
But during the two years after this latter event, Athens became a party to the war against Sparta, and entered into conjunction with the king of Persia as well as with the Thebans and others; while Xenophon, continuing his service as commander of the Cyreians, and accompanying Agesilaus from Asia back into Greece, became engaged against the Athenian troops and their Bœotian allies at the bloody battle of Korôneia. Under these circumstances, we cannot wonder that the Athenians passed sentence of banishment against him; not because he had originally taken part in aid of Cyrus against Artaxerxes,—nor because his political sentiments were unfriendly to democracy, as has been sometimes erroneously affirmed,—but because he was now openly in arms, and in conspicuous command, against his own country.[289] Having thus become an exile, Xenophon was allowed by the Lacedæmonians to settle at Skillus, one of the villages of Triphylia, near Olympia in Peloponnesus, which they had recently emancipated from the Eleians. At one of the ensuing Olympic festivals, Megabyzus, the superintendent of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, came over as a spectator; bringing with him the money which Xenophon had dedicated therein to the Ephesian Artemis. This money Xenophon invested in the purchase of lands at Skillus, to be consecrated in permanence to the goddess; having previously consulted her by sacrifice to ascertain her approval of the site contemplated, which site was recommended to him by its resemblance in certain points to that of the Ephesian temple. Thus, there was near each of them a river called by the same name Selinus, having in it fish and a shelly bottom. Xenophon constructed a chapel, an altar, and a statue of the goddess made of cypress-wood: all exact copies, on a reduced scale, of the temple and golden statue at Ephesus. A column near them was inscribed with the following words,—“This spot is sacred to Artemis. Whoever possesses the property and gathers its fruits, must sacrifice to her the tithe every year, and keep the chapel in repair out of the remainder. Should any one omit this duty the goddess herself will take the omission in hand.”[290]
Immediately near the chapel was an orchard of every description of fruit-trees, while the estate around comprised an extensive range of meadow, woodland, and mountain,—with the still loftier mountain called Pholoê adjoining. There was thus abundant pasture for horses, oxen, sheep, etc., and excellent hunting-ground near for deer and other game; advantages not to be found near the Artemision at Ephesus. Residing hard by on his own property, allotted to him by the Lacedæmonians, Xenophon superintended this estate as steward for the goddess; looking perhaps to the sanctity of her name for protection from disturbance by the Eleians, who viewed with a jealous eye the Lacedæmonian[291] settlers at Skillus, and protested against the peace and convention promoted by Athens after the battle of Leuktra, because it recognized that place, along with the townships of Triphylia, as autonomous. Every year he made a splendid sacrifice, from the tithe of all the fruits of the property; to which solemnity not only all the Skilluntines, but also all the neighboring villages, were invited. Booths were erected for the visitors, to whom the goddess furnished (this is the language of Xenophon) an ample dinner of barley-meal, wheaten loaves, meat, game, and sweetmeats;[292] the game being provided by a general hunt, which the sons of Xenophon conducted, and in which all the neighbors took part if they chose. The produce of the estate, saving this tithe and subject to the obligation of keeping the holy building in repair, was enjoyed by Xenophon himself. He had a keen relish for both hunting and horsemanship, and was among the first authors, so far as we know, who ever made these pursuits, with the management of horses and dogs, the subject of rational study and description.
Such was the use to which Xenophon applied the tithe voted by the army at Kerasus to the Ephesian Artemis; the other tithe, voted at the same time to Apollo, he dedicated at Delphi in the treasure-chamber of the Athenians, inscribing upon the offering his own name and that of Proxenus. His residence being only at a distance of twenty stadia from the great temple of Olympia, he was enabled to enjoy society with every variety of Greeks,—and to obtain copious information about Grecian politics, chiefly from philo-Laconian informants, and with the Lacedæmonian point of view predominant in his own mind; while he had also leisure for the composition of his various works. The interesting description which he himself gives of his residence at Skillus, implies a state of things not present and continuing,[293] but past and gone; other testimonies too, though confused and contradictory, seem to show that the Lacedæmonian settlement at Skillus lasted no longer than the power of Lacedæmon was adequate to maintain it. During the misfortunes which befel that city after the battle of Leuktra (371 B.C.), Xenophon, with his family and his fellow-settlers, was expelled by the Eleians, and is then said to have found shelter at Corinth. But as Athens soon came to be not only at peace, but in intimate alliance, with Sparta,—the sentence of banishment against Xenophon was revoked; so that the latter part of his life was again passed in the enjoyment of his birthright as an Athenian citizen and Knight.[294] Two of his sons, Gryllus and Diodorus, fought among the Athenian horsemen at the cavalry combat which preceded the battle of Mantineia, where the former was slain, after manifesting distinguished bravery; while his grandson Xenophon became in the next generation the subject of a pleading before the Athenian Dikastery, composed by the orator Deinarchus.[295]
On bringing this accomplished and eminent leader to the close of that arduous retreat which he had conducted with so much honor, I have thought it necessary to anticipate a little on the future, in order to take a glance at his subsequent destiny. To his exile (in this point of view not less useful than that of Thucydides) we probably owe many of those compositions from which so much of our knowledge of Grecian affairs is derived. But to the contemporary world, the retreat, which Xenophon so successfully conducted, afforded a far more impressive lesson than any of his literary compositions. It taught in the most striking manner the impotence of the Persian land-force, manifested not less in the generals than in the soldiers. It proved that the Persian leaders were unfit for any systematic operations, even under the greatest possible advantages, against a small number of disciplined warriors resolutely bent on resistance; that they were too stupid and reckless even to obstruct the passage of rivers, or destroy roads, or cut off supplies. It more than confirmed the contemptuous language applied to them by Cyrus himself, before the battle of Kunaxa; when he proclaimed that he envied the Greeks their freedom, and that he was ashamed of the worthlessness of his own countrymen.[296] Against such perfect weakness and disorganization, nothing prevented the success of the Greeks along with Cyrus, except his own paroxysm of fraternal antipathy.[297] And we shall perceive hereafter the military and political leaders of Greece,—Agesilaus, Jason of Pheræ,[298] and others down to Philip and Alexander[299]—firmly persuaded that with a tolerably numerous and well-appointed Grecian force, combined with exemption from Grecian enemies, they could succeed in overthrowing or dismembering the Persian empire. This conviction, so important in the subsequent history of Greece, takes its date from the retreat of the Ten Thousand. We shall indeed find Persia exercising an important influence, for two generations to come,—and at the peace of Antalkidas an influence stronger than ever,—over the destinies of Greece. But this will be seen to arise from the treason of Sparta, the chief of the Hellenic world, who abandons the Asiatic Greeks, and even arms herself with the name and the force of Persia, for purposes of aggrandizement and dominion to herself. Persia is strong by being enabled to employ Hellenic strength against the Hellenic cause; by lending money or a fleet to one side of the Grecian intestine parties, and thus becoming artificially strengthened against both. But the Xenophontic Anabasis betrays her real weakness against any vigorous attack; while it at the same time exemplifies the discipline, the endurance, the power of self-action and adaptation, the susceptibility of influence from speech and discussion, the combination of the reflecting obedience of citizens with the mechanical regularity of soldiers,—which confer such immortal distinction on the Hellenic character. The importance of this expedition and retreat, as an illustration of the Hellenic qualities and excellence, will justify the large space which has been devoted to it in this History.