Note 225 — Chapter LXXI · PROCEEDINGS OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS, FROM THE TIME THAT THEY REACHED TRAPEZUS, TO THEIR JUNCTION WITH THE LACEDÆMONIAN ARMY IN ASIA MINOR.

Xen. Anab. v, 7, 1-3.

Ἐπεὶ δὲ ᾐσθάνετο ὁ Ξενοφῶν, ἔδοξεν αὐτῷ ὡς τάχιστα συναγαγεῖν αὐτῶν ἀγορὰν, καὶ μὴ ἐᾶσαι συλλεγῆναι αὐτομάτους· καὶ ἐκέλευε τὸν κήρυκα συλλέξαι ἀγοράν.

The prudence of Xenophon in convoking the assembly at once is incontestable. He could not otherwise have hindered the soldiers from getting together, and exciting one another to action, without any formal summons.

The reader should contrast with this the scene at Athens (described in Thucydides, ii, 22; and in Vol. VI, Ch. xlviii, p. 133 of this History) during the first year of the Peloponnesian war, and the first invasion of Attica by the Peloponnesians; when the invaders were at Acharnæ, within sight of the walls of Athens, burning and destroying the country. In spite of the most violent excitement among the Athenian people, and the strongest impatience to go out and fight, Perikles steadily refused to call an assembly, for fear that the people should take the resolution of going out. And what was much more remarkable—the people even in that state of excitement though all united within the walls, did not meet in any informal assembly, nor come to any resolution, or to any active proceeding; which the Cyreians would certainly have done, had they not been convened in a regular assembly.

The contrast with the Cyreian army here illustrates the extraordinary empire exercised by constitutional forms over the minds of the Athenian citizens.