[Footnote 49: From the "Anabasis." Translated by J. S. Watson. The "Anabasis" has made Xenophon perhaps the most prominent figure of ancient classical literature, largely because every schoolboy who studies Greek knows at least this book. It stands in that sense to Greek literature as Caesar's "Commentaries" stands to Latin. The book has further value, not only as authentic history, but for the curious details it gives of the manners and customs of savage tribes living along the shores of the Euxine, and of those which prevailed at the Persian court and elsewhere in the Persian state.] [Footnote 50: A Spartan general who, at the instance of Xenophon, had been appointed to lead the van of the retreating Greek army.] [Footnote 51: W. T. Ainsworth, who has made a geographical commentary on Xenophon's "Anabasis," says: "This description of a village on the Armenian uplands applies itself to many that I visited." Houses on exposed elevations he found to be still semisubterranean. Whatever might be the kind of cottage used, domestic animals "participated with the family in the warmth and protection thereof."] III THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA[52] (371 B.C.) For the battle everything was adverse on the side of the Lacedaemonians, while to the enemy everything was rendered favorable by fortune. It was after dinner that the last council of war was held by Cleombrotus; and, as the officers had drunk a little at noon, it was said that the wine in some degree inspired them. And as, when both sides were fully armed, and it was now evident that a battle would take place, the people who had provisions for sale, with some of the baggage-carriers and others who were unwilling to fight, were proceeding first of all to quit the camp of the Boeotians, the mercenaries under Hiero the Phocian peltasts, and the Heraclean and Phliasian cavalry, making a circuit, fell upon them as they were going off, turned them back, and pursued them to the Boeotian camp; so that they made the army of the Boeotians larger and more numerous than before.