head of the file, marched forward with
great alacrity, but all the rest stood still. "I asked him," continued
the officer, "what he was doing. 'Marching,' said he, 'as you ordered
me to do.' 'It was not you alone that I ordered to march,' said I,
'but all.' So I sent him back to his place, and then gave the command
again. Upon this they all advanced promiscuously and in disorder
toward me, each one acting for himself, without regard to the others,
and leaving the file-leader, who ought to have been at the head,
altogether behind. The file-leader said, 'Keep back! keep back!' Upon
this the men were offended, and asked what they were to do about such
contradictory orders. 'One commands us to advance, and another to keep
back!' said they; 'how are we to know which to obey?'"

Cyrus and his guests were so much amused at the awkwardness of these
recruits, and the ridiculous predicament in which the officer was
placed by it, that the narrative of the speaker was here interrupted
by universal and long-continued laughter.

"Finally," continued the officer, "I sent the men all back to their
places, and explained to them that, when a command was given, they
were not to obey it in confusion and unseemly haste, but regularly and
in order, each one following the man who stood before him. 'You must
regulate your proceeding,' said I, 'by the action of the file-leader;
when he advances, you must advance, following him in a line, and
governing your movements in all respects by his.'

"Just at this moment," continued the officer, "a man came to me for a
letter which was to go to Persia, and which I had left in my tent. I
directed the file-leader to run to my tent and bring the letter to me.
He immediately set off, and the rest, obeying literally the directions
which I had just been giving them, all followed, running behind him
in a line like a troop of savages, so that I had the whole squad of
twenty men running in a body off the field to fetch a letter!"

When the general hilarity which these recitals occasioned had a little
subsided, Cyrus said he thought that they could not complain of the
character of the soldiers whom they had to command, for they were
certainly, according to these accounts, sufficiently ready to obey the
orders they received. Upon this, a certain one of the guests who was
present, named Aglaitadas, a gloomy and austere-looking man, who had
not joined at all in the merriment which the conversation had caused,
a