If, even in that encouraging autumn which followed immediately upon the great Athenian catastrophe before Syracuse, the inertia of Sparta could not be stirred into vigorous action without the vehemence of the Athenian Alkibiades,—much more was it necessary under the depressing circumstances which now overclouded the unofficered Grecian army, that an Athenian bosom should be found as the source of new life and impulse. Nor would any one, probably, except an Athenian, either have felt or obeyed the promptings to stand forward as a volunteer at that moment, when there was every motive to decline responsibility, and no special duty to impel him. But if by chance, a Spartan or an Arcadian had been found thus forward, he would have been destitute of such talents as would enable him to work on the minds of others[148]—of that flexibility, resource, familiarity with the temper and movements of an assembled crowd, power of enforcing the essential views and touching the opportune chords, which Athenian democratical training imparted. Even Brasidas and Gylippus, individual Spartans of splendid merit, and equal or superior to Xenophon in military resource, would not have combined with it that political and rhetorical accomplishment which the position of the latter demanded. Obvious as the wisdom of his propositions appears, each of them is left to him not only to imitate, but to enforce;—Cheirisophus and Kleanor, after a few words of introduction, consign to him the duty of working up the minds of the army to the proper pitch. How well he performed this, may be seen by his speech to the army, which bears in its general tenor a remarkable resemblance to that of Perikles addressed to the Athenian public in the second year of the war, at the moment when the miseries of the epidemic, combined with those of invasion, had driven them almost to despair. It breathes a strain of exaggerated confidence, and an undervaluing of real dangers, highly suitable for the occasion, but which neither Perikles nor Xenophon would have employed at any other moment.[149] Throughout the whole of his speech, and especially in regard to the accidental sneeze near at hand which interrupted the beginning of it, Xenophon displayed that skill and practice in dealing with a numerous audience and a given situation, which characterized more or less every educated Athenian. Other Greeks, Lacedæmonians or Arcadians, could act, with bravery and in concert; but the Athenian Xenophon was among the few who could think, speak, and act, with equal efficiency.[150] It was this tripartite accomplishment which an aspiring youth was compelled to set before himself as an aim, in the democracy of Athens, and which the sophists as well as the democratical institutions, both of them so hardly depreciated, helped and encouraged him to acquire. It was this tripartite accomplishment, the exclusive possession of which, in spite of constant jealousy on the part of Bœotian officers and