previous next
[145]

And assuredly we have no greater reason to fear the army which wanders about1 with the King nor the valor of the Persians themselves; for they were clearly shown by the troops who marched inland2 with Cyrus to be no better than the King's soldiers who live on the coast. I refrain from speaking of all the other battles in which the Persians were worsted, and I am willing to grant that they were split with factions, and so where not inclined to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the struggle against the King's brother.

1 Contemptuous, recalling Aristoph. Ach. 81.

2 The famous “ten thousand” led by Cleararchus, a Spartan, were employed by Cyrus, the younger son of Dareius, against his brother Artaxerxes, the Persian king, 401-399. The death of Cyrus, due to his rashness in the very moment of victory, deprived the rebellion of its leader and left the Greek army stranded in the heart of Asia. Xenophon, who has described this expedition in the Anabasis, led the remnant of this army after many months of hardship back to the shore of the Black Sea. See Grote, Hist. viii. pp. 3O3 ff. The expedition, though unsuccessful in its purpose, was regarded as a triumph of courage and a demonstration of the superiority of the Greeks over the Persians in warfare. The episode is used in Isoc. 5.90-93 with the same point as here.

load focus Greek (George Norlin)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Asia (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (10 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (4):
    • Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, THE CASES
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.3.1
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.4.2
    • Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 3.6.1
  • Cross-references in notes to this page (2):
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (2):
    • Isocrates, To Philip, 90
    • Aristophanes, Acharnians, 81
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: