[280] It appears that the epithet _Meilichios_ (the Gracious) is here applied to Zeus in the same euphemistic sense as the denomination _Eumenides_ to the avenging goddesses. Zeus is conceived as having actually inflicted, or being in a disposition to inflict, evil; the sacrifice to him under this surname represents a sentiment of fear, and is one of atonement, expiation or purification, destined to avert his displeasure; but the surname itself is to be interpreted _proleptice_, to use the word of the critics—it designates, not the actual disposition of Zeus (or of other gods), but that disposition which the sacrifice is intended to bring about in him. See Pausan. i, 37, 3; ii, 20, 3. K. F. Herrmann, Gottesdienstl. Alterthümer der Griechen, s. 58; Van Stegeren, De Græcorum Diebus Festis, p. 5 (Utrecht, 1849). Thus gratefully and instantaneously did Zeus the Gracious respond to the sacrifice which Xenophon, after a long omission, had been admonished by Eukleides to offer. And doubtless Xenophon was more than ever confirmed in the belief, which manifests itself throughout all his writings, that sacrifice not only indicates, by the interior aspect of the immolated victims, the tenor of coming events,—but also, according as it is rendered to the right god and at the right season, determines his will, and therefore the course of events, for dispensations favorable or unfavorable. But the favors of Zeus the Gracious, though begun, were not yet ended. Xenophon conducted the army through the Troad, and across mount Ida, to Antandrus; from thence along the coast to Lydia, through the plain of Thêbê and the town of Adramyttium, leaving Atarneus on the right hand, to Pergamus in Mysia, a hill-town overhanging the river and plain of Käikus. This district was occupied by the descendants of the Eretrian Gongylus, who, having been banished for embracing the cause of the Persians when Xerxes invaded Greece, had been rewarded (like the Spartan king Demaratus) with this sort of principality under the Persian empire. His descendant, another Gongylus, now occupied Pergamus, with his wife Hellas and his sons Gorgion and Gongylus. Xenophon was here received with great hospitality. Hellas acquainted him that a powerful Persian, named Asidates, was now dwelling, with his wife, family, and property, in a tower not far off, on the plain; and that a sudden night-march, with three hundred men, would suffice for the capture of this valuable booty, to which her own cousin should guide him. Accordingly, having sacrificed and ascertained that the victims were favorable, Xenophon communicated his plan after the evening meal to those captains who had been most attached to him throughout the expedition, wishing to make them partners in the profit. As soon as it became known, many volunteers, to the number of six hundred, pressed to be allowed to join. But the captains repelled them, declining to take more