All this was an unknown world to him. He and Agrestides must go alone,—perhaps never to return, and he might possibly end his life in a Persian dungeon, or leave his body on some mountain pass. However, he must not give way to foolish fears; he had gone through greater perils many times before, and a vista of fresh adventures, larger successes, opened up before him, ending ever with the attainment of the one fixed object of his thoughts and his desire—the liberation and the final triumph of his country. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXI ‘Usque adeone mori miserum est? * * * * * * * Descendam, magnorum haud unquam indignus avorum.’ VIRGIL: _Æneid_. ‘Is it, then, so very sad a thing to die? I will descend, and ne’er unworthy prove Of you, my mighty ancestors.’ THREE months before the departure of Alkibiades from the court of Pharnabazos, Kritias had sent secret messages to Lysandros warning him of the growing feeling of regret among the Athenian people for the loss of their late strategos. He reminded the Spartan admiral that it was the part of a wise man never to despise the aspirations even of the abject—for Kritias still prided himself on his philosophy—and hinted that as long as the dreaded opponent of both of them was alive, the foolish people would continue to aspire. And who could tell, he added, what such a one as that might do? Even Lysandros, the assassin of three thousand valiant soldiers, prisoners of war, shrank from the suggestion when he understood the full meaning of the missive of the philosophic Kritias. Even he would rather not, if he could help it, stain his hands deeper, and in the blood of such a one as Alkibiades. Lysandros was himself, on his father’s side, sprung of heroic ancestry. He too was of the Herakleidai. He might massacre three thousand common soldiers, but he hesitated, and almost refused, to take a part in an act such as that which was suggested to him. He sent back an ambiguous answer.