habits of the Phil-Hellene gave way, and the native ferocity of the Asiatic came to the surface.  We see Cyrus under favorable circumstances, while conciliation, tact, and self-restraint were necessities of his position, without which he could not possibly gain his ends—­we do not know what effect success and the possession of supreme power might have had upon his temper and conduct; but from the acts above-mentioned we may at any rate suspect that the result would have been very injurious.

Again, intellectually, Cyrus is only great for an Asiatic.  He has more method, more foresight, more power of combination, more breadth of mind than the other Asiatics of his day, or than the vast mass of Asiatics of any day.  But he is not entitled to the praise of a great administrator or of a great general.  His three years’ administration of Asia Minor was chiefly marked by a barbarous severity towards criminals, and by a lavish expenditure of the resources of his government, which left him in actual want at the moment when he was about to commence his expedition.  His generalship failed signally at the battle of Cunaxa, for the loss of which he is far more to be blamed than Clearchus.  As he well knew that Artaxerxes was sure to occupy the centre of his line of battle, he should have placed his Greeks in the middle of his own line, not at one extremity.  When he saw how much his adversary outflanked him on the left—­a contingency which was so probable that it ought to have occurred to him beforehand—­he should have deployed his line in that direction, instead of ordering such a movement as Clearchus, not unwisely, declined to execute.  He might have trusted the Greeks to fight in line, as they had fought at Marathon; and by expanding their ranks, and moving off his Asiatics to the left, he might, have avoided the danger of being outflanked and surrounded.  But his capital error was the wildness and abandon of his charge with the Six Hundred—­a charge which it was probably right to make under the circumstances, but which required a combination of coolness and courage that the Persian prince evidently did not possess when his feelings were excited.  Had he kept his Six Hundred well in hand, checked their pursuit, and abstained from thrusting his own person into unnecessary danger, he might have joined the Greeks as they returned from their first victory and participated in their final triumph.  At the same time, Clearchus cannot but be blamed for pushing his suit too far.  If, when the enemy in his front fled, he had at once turned against those who were engaging Cyrus, taking them on their left flank, which must have been completely uncovered, he might have been in time to prevent the fatal results of the rash charge made by his leader.