Anabasis XV

The army continues quickly after its success of the last chapter, but finds it is pushing through very deep snow in the Armenian mountains. This is a new peril -- very different from the sands of Arabia, or the dry mountains of Kurdistan. They lose quite a few men and beasts in the snow, and have to abandon others who are snowblind or who lose their toes to frostbite. They learn that the shoes they have been making not of leather but the rawhide of recently slain animals, to replace their good shoes now worn, are partly to blame; and that they must remove the shoes at night to avoid having the rawhide freeze to their feet.

Eventually they come to a set of mountain villages that have adapted to the snow in interesting ways. They have built homes that are underground, with entrances like wells that broaden out as you descend. They also dig passages for their animals, who live underground in these homes with them. And they have great bowls filled with all manner of edible grains, floated in barleywine that has become quite strong. They pull out the grains to eat, and drink the strong beer, to keep themselves through the winter. They are not delighted by the arrival of the Greeks, but do not resist them and indeed make them welcome for a short time. 

Xenophon takes the headman* of one of the villages as a guide, promising that his family will not be troubled in return for his good service. Yet the Greeks also take his young son along, a babe, clearly as a hostage for his good behavior even though Xenophon never uses the term. In fact, during the next passage through the snow another of the Greek generals grows cross because the headman has not lead them to more villages, and strikes him. The headman flees, abandoning his son. The Greeks at least proved fond of the boy, and took care of him.

They come then upon a contested mountain pass, and seize it by a clever maneuver. They have some other local guides they have captured, and those young men help them find goat and sheep paths to grounds above the enemy army. They light fires once they have seized the high ground, so that the enemy below knows they have been outflanked. When the main army pushes up against them, and the flankers push down, the enemy -- now unnamed, because the Greeks no longer really know whom they are fighting -- readily gives way in the face of disciplined attack. 

* If you want to hear what "headman" sounds like in Greek, there's a great scene in The Thirteenth Warrior (1999) in which the Arabic-speaking characters try various languages in order to identify who is in charge of the Viking encampment. One of them is ἡγεμών, "hēgemṓn," or 'headman.' This is not actually the word Xenophon uses; he gives άρχοντας, which is usually translated as "archon" or ‘ruler’. But at least you can get a sense of what it might be like to try to sort out who is in charge in various languages, one of which is Greek.

The one that works in the movie is Latin, “noster Rex,” or ‘our King.’

Ambiguities of Language

I notice that there is a significant usage of ambiguous terms going on in this NYT story about the resignation of the Social Security head in protest of DOGE. There is a very careful construction at work in deploying these terms in this way.

The resignation of Michelle King, the acting commissioner, is the latest abrupt departure of a senior federal official who refused to provide Mr. Musk’s lieutenants with access to closely held data. Mr. Musk’s team has been embedding with agencies across the federal government and seeking access to private data as part of what it has said is an effort to root out fraud and waste. [Emphasis added.]

"Private" data? It's clearly not private, because it is owned by the government. It is thus, to use another ambiguous term that is at least as just, public information. 

But it isn't really public-public, just as it isn't really private-private. It's akin to the copies of your emails that Google or Yahoo owns, and which they can freely choose to share with the FBI if they are asked. They don't need your permission, and you have no legal expectation of privacy. Here, the government owns this copy of the information, which DOGE has lawful authority to access. 

Which brings us to "breach."

“S.S.A. has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a group that promotes the expansion of Social Security. “It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more.”

Warning about the risks of Mr. Musk's team accessing the data, Ms. Altman added, “There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is.” [Emphasis added.]

It's not a "breach" in any normal sense of the term; it's just a government agency with oversight powers accessing the records of another agency over which it has oversight responsibilities. They're not stealing the information. They're not 'breaching security.' They are part of the security; this is their job.

Now the use of 'private' was in the Times' own voice; here they are simply quoting someone who said something they liked even better. It's misleading and without context, which makes it even better for them because the point of the article is to lead the reader in a particular direction.

Class Warfare in the USA

I don't quite buy this argument, but there is something to be said for doing a class-based analysis of the present moment. I think he has the classes wrong. His opening statement is to the effect that it's a war between factions of the elite, in which the working class is powerless. 

It might strike some as odd: The new president of the United States won the election by rallying the working class against the establishment swamp, yet he has placed at the helm of his assault on the elite-controlled Deep State none other than the richest man in the world. But this is only a paradox if you grant a couple of assumptions that the above description presupposes: that the “working class” is actually represented at all in our political system, and that anyone but the “elite” is involved in the power struggles within it. Understanding what’s really happening in the second Trump administration requires disabusing ourselves of both of these notions. What we’re seeing is the latest battle in a long war between two factions of the American elite. The working class are just extras on the set—moral props in a struggle that has nothing to do with them. 

It's definitely true that neither Trump nor Musk are nor ever have been 'working class.' However, they are both outliers from their economic class, and in any case individuals and not classes. The story the author wants to tell is about an elite that is divided into two factions by whether they possess more cultural or more economic capital.

Generally speaking, members of the elite are relatively affluent in both economic and cultural capital. But the composition of one’s portfolio matters. Within the ruling class, Bourdieu regards those who are far richer in cultural capital than economic capital as structurally subordinate—in his words, “the dominated fractions of the dominant class.” Those with the inverse mix—who are rich in money but don’t necessarily boast the most illustrious educational credentials—are the dominant fraction of the dominant class. 

So the story is that Trump represents the dominant fraction of the dominant class, as does Musk; and they are striving to further subordinate the faction that is defined by its cultural capital, e.g. education and cultural knowledge. These are the two classes, the rich wanting more freedom from regulation, and the educated wanting comfortable government jobs programs. 

The problem for me is Weber's insight that the bureaucracy constitutes its own class with its own class interests that diverge from the rest of the citizenry -- even from the 'class' they were drawn from. And it has its own power, too: far from being subordinate, that Administrative class functionally deposed the last President and governed without him exactly as they wished. They ran the police, they ran the military, they ran the government from stem to stern. Even though the government includes many 'working class' men -- soldiers and police officers usually are, for example -- they were led by a class whose interests did not align with theirs, or indeed with any other citizens'. 

It's true that we are finding out that USAID and other mechanisms established something like a 'jobs program' that itself pursued political ends from outside the government. Wealthy networked NGOs and activist groups molded politics in the precise interests of the Administrative class. Because it paid their comfortable salaries, the Administrative class aligned that part of 'those far richer in cultural capital than economic capital' with itself. There is no doubt, however, that the Administrative class was dominant: it set their agenda in its own interest. DOGE is effectively severing that tie, which may in time lead to those two factions drifting apart.

Meanwhile, the rich part of that class seems often to align itself with the Administrative class, just because they end up subject to its powers. Facebook was all about joining in on unconstitutional Administrative efforts towards backdoor censorship, as was Twitter until Musk bought it. All the big corporations were lining up in favor of Wokeness until Bud Light crossed -- well, it crossed the working class. That was really the first blow, Bud Light's loss of its majestic stature and wealth brought about by working people refusing to drink the stuff any more. They too are why Trump got elected in numbers to big to 'fortify.' 

So I don't think this analysis is quite right, but I do think it's a useful exercise to examine what classes there are and try to sort out how they are trying to influence the game. The working class has not proven powerless, and the elite isn't quite divided up the way the author thinks. It is worth thinking about, though.

Two Charts on US Population

Sourced from Wikipedia.

Sourced from the Social Security Administration, according to Elon Musk.

Some reconciliation of these numbers needs to occur. The obvious place to start is verifying Musk's figures are accurate, and the Social Security Administration does in fact have these figures. If that's right, then there's a significant delta that needs to be figured out.

Review: Knightriders

So I don't know how I never heard of this movie before last week, because it seems like the kind of thing that somebody should have suggested to me before now. Knightriders is a 1981 film about a group of medieval re-enactors who joust on motorcycles instead of horses, which is as close as you could easily come to the way I spent the 1990s-2010s aside from the trips abroad. We did Scottish Highland Games instead of Renaissance Fairs, but it was just a big bunch of bikers teaching people how to use historic weaponry on the weekends in our spare time. The movie should have come up.

It never did. It took the algorithm to find it for me, giving me an AI-generated review of the thing. It stars Ed Harris, who is a great actor and wasn't bad here. The plot is less Excalibur than Roger Corman, although Excalibur is probably why this movie didn't become very famous. It was also 1981, and swallowed up all the attention for Arthurian-themed moviegoers.

There's a connection, though: the sword from the more famous movie ended up in the hands of an outlaw biker who changed his name legally to Arthur Pendragon. That's exactly the sort of thing the hero of Knightriders would have done.

In the end he walks into a schoolhouse and surrenders his sword to a boy who'd come to him earlier in the film, right in front of the teacher and everything. Nobody says anything against it. 

I think it's an interesting meditation on what would have happened in Le Morte Darthur if Arthur had just accepted events instead of contesting them: surrendering his throne to Mordred, his wife to Lancelot, his sword to the next heir. If Arthur had simply accepted that his time had come and let go, wouldn't it all have been better?

Maybe. That's the hard part, though, isn't it? 

 “There likewise I beheld Excalibur

  Before him at his crowning borne, the sword

  That rose from out the bosom of the lake,

  And Arthur rowed across and took it—rich

  With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,

  Bewildering heart and eye—the blade so bright

  That men are blinded by it—on one side,

  Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,

  ‘Take me,’ but turn the blade and ye shall see,

  And written in the speech ye speak yourself,

  ‘Cast me away!’  And sad was Arthur’s face

  Taking it, but old Merlin counselled him,

  ‘Take thou and strike! the time to cast away

  Is yet far-off.’  So this great brand the king

  Took, and by this will beat his foemen down.”

Anabasis XIV

The Greeks find the broad river between the land of the Kurds and Armenia to be too deep to cross while it is contested. They stay for more than a day, the Kurds having taken over their better camp behind them, trapped between two enemy forces with a river to cross. 

Xenophon has a dream of being held in iron fetters that fall away. He relates this the next morning, and just about the time he finishes some young men come up all excited. They tell him that they've seen some old women washing clothes further down the river, and that they thought the river therefore must be safe to cross at that location. They stripped naked and crossed with only their daggers, and found that at no point was the river so deep as their crotch. Xenophon and his companions are delighted and pour libations, and determine to cross the river in two divisions, the vanguard taking the opposing shore, the baggage train passing between, and the rearguard -- commanded by Xenophon -- crossing at the end to hold off the Kurdish assault.

This works more or less well, as the enemies on the opposing side once again don't really want to fight. The Kurds really do and do their best to kill as many Greeks as possible on their way out, but the strategy is sound and it brings the Greeks out of Kurdistan at last.

On the far side of the river they march for a few days until they are confronted by a large army. The army's commander, a local grandee, says he wants to let them march through if they will do so without burning the land -- although they may take supplies if needed. The Greeks agree to this, but once again it turns out that keeping your word is not a virtue much respected by these denizens of the Near East. The Greeks are used to this by now, and keep careful watch for betrayal; when it happens, they storm and capture the camp of the grandee, plundering it for its goods. 

Armored MMA

What fun! I enjoyed historical European martial arts among several other kinds, and was our university co-president for ARMA for some years. I would have liked doing this even a few years ago. 

Imagination Time

Al Sharpton has a hypothetical for you.

UPDATE: More imagination. 

The most generous interpretation of her remarks is that she thinks the Nazis were allowed free speech by Weimar and that’s how they got into power. That isn’t true either, however. The Weimar Republic censored hate speech and particularly anti-Semitic speech. The Nazis came to power in spite of censorship, not because of a lack of it. 

Shane vs. High Noon

Althouse has an amusing reply to a Maureen Dowd column that notes, in passing, that the headline writers don't know the difference between Shane and High Noon. We do here! Both of those films have featured regularly in commentary for the decades that the Hall has been in action.

Here are a few relevant pieces for old time's sake. 

And here's a celebration of Jack Palance, the anti-hero of Shane, on the occasion of his passing.

Wild World of Sports

Donald Trump became the first sitting President to attend a Super Bowl in person, and apparently did a flyover of the Daytona 500 as well. Both the football and the NASCAR crowds seemed to appreciate him.

Meanwhile in Canada, Justin Trudeau attended the USA/Canada match of the "4 Nations Tournament" (the other two are Finland and Sweden). The crowd booed the US National Anthem, and perhaps consequently there were three fistfights between opposing hockey players in the first nine seconds of the game. The USA won 3-1, and will play the winner of the other two nations in the final.

It's not that weird for big sporting spectacles to end up tying in with politics, in the manner of Roman emperors attending the games at the Coliseum. Is it a healthy way to let off some of the stress and steam? Maybe.

Anabasis XIII: Towards the Kurds

Watching the Persian forces burn their own villages, the Greeks are encouraged a bit: this seems like a confession by their enemies that they cannot control the Greek force. The problem that they face is nevertheless that there are mountains on one side of them, and the Tigris on the other, and they don't really know where they are. 

They are presented with an innovative solution for crossing the Tigris using the skins of some of the animals they have captured to create a pontoon bridge. This is considered but rejected because of the enemy cavalry on the far side, which will surely not allow the engineering project.

Thus they go forth in an unexpected direction to plunder and collect prisoners, whom they interrogate about the surrounding country. In this way they learn which way the various roads go, and also that if they proceed north they will come into the country of the Kurds. They go in that direction, and the Persians apparently cease pursuing them as they pass out of country controlled by the King of Persia, and also because they don't want to tangle with the Kurds themselves.

Now I want to say some kind words about the Kurds while we are on the topic. They are a fierce mountain people, and as you can see an ancient one. They have had a difficult existence all their long history, being subjected to the empires of Persians, Greeks, Turks, and others all the long time. Yet I have found them to be a forthright and honest people. The ones I knew in Iraq were brave men and had no second thoughts about speaking their minds. One time in a tribal conclave where several Arab sheikhs were present voicing their concerns and desires to us, a Kurdish police chief who had authority over the area simply turned to us and said, "You know they are lying about everything, don't you?" It is my opinion that the Kurds should prosper and receive the freedom to form a nation that has so long been denied them by circumstance: because it would require part of Syria and part of Iraq and part of Iran and part of Turkey, they are constantly denied. We would be wise and to help them overcome this difficulty and create a homeland, however much it annoyed our 'allies' in Turkey.

But I digress. The subject is not the Kurds of today, but the Kurds of thousands of years ago.

The Greeks cross a mountain range and plunder a set of Kurdish villages, which are abandoned because of the surprise with which the Greeks came upon them. The Greeks capture quite a bit of food, and choose to abandon the weaker of their baggage animals at this time. In the hope of not making enemies of the Kurds, who might be friendly since the Persians hated them, the Greeks only take food and not brazen kitchenware or other goods. (Slaves taken by the raid are 'confiscated' by the generals, I assume to be set free since they don't wish to march with extra mouths or offend the Kurds: but Xenophon mentions that a few good looking women 'or boys' are taken in spite of this effort. This boy-attraction is one of the features of ancient Greece that is less admirable than others.) 

They march on through storm and attacks. The Kurds roll stones down the mountains onto them and assail them fiercely. The Greeks torture prisoners taken and kill one outright, because he won't tell them how to find the right road. The next guy decides to talk, emphasizing that the guy they killed didn't want to tell them the truth because he had a daughter who lived down that way. An honorable death, then; he was doing what a father might do. The Greeks at this point are waging plain war on the country with limited concession. You would not want them coming upon your daughter either. 

They send a detachment of light infantry to march fast and seize a difficult passage that their new guide warns them they won't be able to get through if they don't control it in advance. This advance unit doesn't know the terrain, though, and takes only part of what is needed. There is a hard fight to get through the heights that ended up still being commanded by the Kurds. The Greeks capture a Kurdish village with great stores of wine among other things; it is to their credit as a disciplined force that they do not become so drunk that they are disabled by hangovers. Also to their credit, they release their guide and let him return freely home. 

The next day is another hard fight, with the Kurds using the high ground effectively against them. They march from village to village, bivouacking in each by night and plundering it. In this way they maintain their logistics through the mountains to the next plain. They reckon up that the Kurds had cost them more in their rough guerilla attacks than the Persians had with their formal armies. For a moment the Greeks think they might be at last free: but then horsemen show up, this time from the Armenian kingdom. 

UPDATE: I rewrote this section for greater clarity about whom the Greeks were fighting in particular episodes. 

Anabasis XII

The lack of cavalry tells on the first day, in which the Persians send cavalry to spy upon and then harass the Greeks. The mounted bowmen and slingers that the Persians employ inflict significant damage on the rear guard during the march to the villages. Xenophon decides to break formation and charge them, but on foot his men cannot reach the enemy before they can withdraw; and the Persian archers (raised to 'shoot straight and speak the truth') are pretty good shots even while retreating. 

The Greeks reach the villages they mean to plunder, and spend some time refitting some of their pack horses as cavalry mounts. They identify about fifty men who are fit to serve as cavalry, and also some slingers, in order to disrupt future such attempts by the Persians who are following them. 

The Persians return with a thousand cavalry instead of a few hundred, but the Greeks have crossed a ravine before they arrive. The new Greek force is able to deploy against the Persians during their own crossing, striking the vanguard and driving it into retreat. They kill a few Persians and mutilate the bodies to make clear that they're not interested in playing nice any more. 

After this the Ten Thousand march through a set of ruins of cities and fortresses where the Medes -- the same ones who provoked the building of the Median Wall -- had been contesting the area with the Persians during their short-lived empire. Tissaphernes arrives with a very large force, but he shows the typical Persian desire not to risk any lives in the fighting, so he tries to bombard them again. Their new force repels him successfully with disciplined and accurate return fire from the slingers.

The Ten Thousand begin to recover enemy bows and arrows, which are different from the ones they knew at home but which they are able to employ successfully. They also discover in their raids of villages additional bowstrings and lead that can be cast into bullets. Their slingers prove to be better than the Persian ones, having a longer range. The Persians continue to follow, but they are having the worst of the skirmishes.

The hollow square formation, which again is novel I think in this era, proves to have some practical difficulties for traversing bridges, valleys, etc. The Greek generals begin making adaptations on the fly to address these difficulties: 

The generals accordingly, having recognsied the defect, set about curing it. To do so, they made six lochi, or divisions of a hundred men apiece, each of which had its own set of captains and under-officers in command of half and quarter companies. It was the duty of these new companies, during a march, whenever the flanks needed to close in, to fall back to the rear, so as to disencumber the wings. This they did by wheeling clear of them. When the sides of the oblong again extended, they filled up the interstices, if the gap were narrow, by columns of companies, if broader, by columns of half-companies, or, if broader still, by columns of quarter-companies, so that the space between was always filled up. If again it were necessary to effect a passage by bridge or otherwise, there was no confusion, the several companies crossing in turns; or, if the occasion arose to form in line of battle, these companies came up to the front and fell in.

As they leave the plains and begin to rise into the hills they discover another problem, which is that their formation is easily attacked if the enemy is able to cover it from an elevated position. The first day this happens they suffer a large number of wounded among their light infantry. After this they make an additional modification and assign a division of the force to hold the heights while the bulk marches on the roads below. This is slow, though, as the heavy infantry so assigned have to struggle in their armor up to the hills and then along the crests. 

They have the advantage that the Persians do not wish to fight at night, being a large collection of strangers rather than a disciplined and unified force. Thus, the Persian cavalry withdraws each night some miles away to camp, catching up to raid the Greeks the next day. The Greeks begin just occupying villages during the fighting hours, so that their superior marksmanship can tell on the Persians; then they begin marching at night after the Persians withdraw, gaining a few days of peace in this way.

On the fourth day of this strategy, however, the Persians force march themselves to a mountain overnight and occupy the heights of one of its arms, which the Greeks have to pass. Xenophon leads a charge up the heights of the arm, which the Persians abandon to retreat to the summit: they do not wish to come to direct blows with the heavy infantry. The climb is very difficult for the hoplites, but they eventually win the summit as well, the Persians withdrawing before them. 

The Persians now switch tactics as well. They have learned that they cannot win against the Greeks in a stand up fight -- they have superior numbers and combined arms, but lack the unity and morale. Thus, they switch to the extraordinary remedy of burning their own Persian villages in advance of the Greeks, in the hope of starving the Greek army. 

Anabasis XI

The new generals post picket guards and call a general meeting of the Ten Thousand.  Xenophon attends in his finest fighting clothes, saying that he intends to look his best whether conquering or dying. This sentiment has been repeated many times since: consider the men of the French Foreign Legion Régiment étranger de parachutistes shaving before they jumped into Điện Biên Phủ, already surrounded by artillery on the high ground. 

Xenophon gives exactly the right speech to win the men; he then counsels exacting discipline, burning the wagons and their tents so they can match faster and lighter, and living off the enemy’s villages through plunder. They adopt a hollow square marching structure to protect their vulnerable enabler units, and start the fires. 

One interesting feature of Xenophon’s talk is his explanation of why they shouldn’t worry about the enemy having cavalry while they don’t. Xenophon was a cavalryman himself, and probably understood that he was greatly exaggerating the advantages and downplaying the weaknesses of infantry versus cavalry. Yet we can look forward more than a generation to Alexander using Macedonian phalanx to conquer the world; or the Roman hollow square formation; or more than a thousand years to the schiltrons at the Bannockburn pushing Edward’s knighthood into the river to drown; or the Spanish tercio of the Thirty Years War. Xenophon hit upon a viable solution to the problem, and I believe he did so at a time when it was novel. 

Americana

My sister is up in Seattle for some reason, and she sent this photo that she took yesterday afternoon. 

Congratulations Tulsi

Tulsi Gabbard, just confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, has the qualifications of having been abused by the system and driven out of the Democratic Party for ideological reasons. In this, she is like the President himself. I trust that her personal experience of being subjected to the system will be a strong driving force in reform.

Good hunting.

Anabasis X: Xenophon Steps Forward

In the end of the eighth part I said that "in some respects this is the real beginning of the story of the Ten Thousand[.]" This next chapter shows some signs of actually being the beginning of the story in the sense of being the first thing Xenophon wrote down, with the earlier parts written later to fill in the story. 

For example, Xenophon introduces himself and explains his role in the adventure and how he has come to be here. 

Now there was in that host a certain man, an Athenian, Xenophon, who had accompanied Cyrus, neither as a general, nor as an officer, nor yet as a private soldier, but simply on the invitation of an old friend, Proxenus. This old friend had sent to fetch him from home, promising, if he would come, to introduce him to Cyrus, "whom," said Proxenus, "I consider to be worth my fatherland and more to me."

We've met Xenophon several times already in the story, so it is weird for him to introduce himself as if he were an unknown character. If this was where he started writing, though, it makes sense. 

Xenophon tells us that he had some concerns about going on this expedition. He doesn't tell us what his qualifications to go were. He seems to have been a cavalryman -- his book on horsemanship is good reading, though we often do things quite differently now -- and to have fought in the Athenian civil war following the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. He was an Athenian, but tended to support the Spartan side and to admire their way of life over that of his home city. So he was no stranger to war, even if he accompanied the army as a friend of Cyrus' rather than as a member of the soldiery. 

We now are introduced to Socrates, whom Xenophon admires and looks upon as a trusted counselor. Socrates tells him to soothe his concern about whether to go by visiting the Oracle of Delphi, which Socrates did himself. Xenophon constructs a question for the Oracle along the lines of 'which gods should I sacrifice to in order to help this be a successful expedition?' Socrates is aghast when he learns the nature of the question, having meant that Xenophon should ask whether to go on the expedition, not how. Still, perhaps he got good advice; Xenophon made the sacrifices, and as we know he came through it in the end.

The army is greatly depressed, morale shattered, by the loss of its generals and many of its captains. Finding that he can barely sleep, except for a telling dream that drives him to action, Xenophon gathers the remaining captains he can find for a midnight council. There he speaks very wisely, according to contemporary military science: just as we teach soldiers to attack into an ambush, so too he counsels that action is the only reasonable choice. Let us not wait, but attack!

"Now, however, that they have abruptly ended the truce, there is an end also to their own insolence and to our suspicion. All these good things of theirs are now set as prizes for the combatants. To whichsoever of us shall prove the better men, will they fall as guerdons; and the gods themselves are the judges of the strife. The gods, who full surely will be on our side, seeing it is our enemies who have taken their names falsely; whilst we, with much to lure us, yet for our oath's sake, and the gods who were our witnesses, sternly held aloof. So that, it seems to me, we have a right to enter upon this contest with much more heart than our foes; and further, we are possessed of bodies more capable than theirs of bearing cold and heat and labour; souls too we have, by the help of heaven, better and braver; nay, the men themselves are more vulnerable, more mortal, than ourselves, if so be the gods vouchsafe to give us victory once again.

"Howbeit, for I doubt not elsewhere similar reflections are being made, whatsoever betide, let us not, in heaven's name, wait for others to come and challenge us to noble deeds; let us rather take the lead in stimulating the rest to valour. Show yourselves to be the bravest of officers, and among generals, the worthiest to command. For myself, if you choose to start forwards on this quest, I will follow; or, if you bid me lead you, my age shall be no excuse to stand between me and your orders. At least I am of full age, I take it, to avert misfortune from my own head."

The captains are stirred by this, very much needing a direction at this moment, and so they gather additional men they trust from their units and advise them to begin preparing. A non-Greek among them tries to argue against it and finds himself expelled from the army. The rest pull together a hundred of the top men left alive to vote on new leadership. 

Xenophon gives another version of the speech counseling action, and telling them that it is up to them to save the morale of the army. If they themselves seem afraid, the army will collapse. If they show themselves bold, the men will fall in on bold action. 

He then makes a point that Chesterton also famously makes, Chesterton defending the verse about 'he who will lose his life shall save it.' Xenophon gives the pragmatic version rather than the mystical one: 

This observation, also, I have laid to heart, that they, who in matters of war seek in all ways to save their lives, are just they who, as a rule, die dishonourably; whereas they who, recognising that death is the common lot and destiny of all men, strive hard to die nobly: these more frequently, as I observe, do after all attain to old age, or, at any rate, while life lasts, they spend their days more happily.

The army's best men then vote five new generals to replace the five lost, Xenophon among them. 

Anabasis Interlude II: Plato's Meno

In the very next chapter Xenophon will introduce us to Socrates, not the general but the philosopher. Socrates was a man that Xenophon liked and trusted. We mostly know Socrates through Plato's presentation of him, and it is interesting that Xenophon presents Socrates as being somewhat different from the Socrates we get in Plato. 

An honest man, Xenophon was no trained philosopher. He could neither fully conceptualize nor articulate Socrates's arguments. He admired Socrates for his intelligence, patriotism, and courage on the battlefield.... Like Plato's Apology, Xenophon's Apologia describes the trial of Socrates, but the works diverge substantially and, according to W. K. C. Guthrie, Xenophon's account portrays a Socrates of "intolerable smugness and complacency"....In Memorabilia, he defends Socrates from the accusations of corrupting the youth and being against the gods; essentially, it is a collection of various stories gathered together to construct a new apology for Socrates.

This is thus a good time to point out that Socrates also knew one of the generals just under discussion. As mentioned in the comments to the post below, the general Menon is the same as the Meno that is the namesake of one of Plato's dialogues, the Meno. It is nothing but an account of a discussion Socrates and Meno had about the nature of virtue. Meno had been a student of Gorgias, one of the more infamous Sophists, and Socrates engages Meno in a discussion about virtue -- whether it is a sort of knowledge, whether it can be taught, and what its basic nature might be. 

This foray into philosophy instead of adventure story won't be of interest to everyone, but it fits the theme here well enough that I would feel remiss not to include it. After the jump, we'll do a very quick run through the Meno.