338 THUCYDIDES
strength failed them and they dropped behind, many- were the imprecations and cries which they uttered. So that the whole army was in tears, and such was their despair that they could hardly make up their minds to stir, although they were leaving an enemy's country, having suffered calamities too great for tears already, and dreading miseries yet greater in the un- known future. There was also a general feeling of shame and self-reproach, — indeed they seemed, not like an army, but like the fugitive population of a city captured after a siege ; and of a great city too. For the whole multitude who were marching together numbered not less than forty thousand. Each of them took with him anything he could carry which was likely to be of use. Even the heavy-armed and cavalry, contrary to their practice when under arms, conveyed about their persons their own food, some because they had no attendants, others because they could not trust them ; for they had long been desert- ing, and most of them had gone off all at once. Nor was the food which they carried sufficient ; for the supplies of the camp had failed. Their disgrace and the universality of the misery, although there might be some consolation in the very community of suffer- ing, was nevertheless at that moment hard to bear, especially when they remembered from what pomp and splendor they had fallen into their present low estate. Never had an Hellenic army experienced such a reverse. * They had come intending to enslave others, and they were going away in fear that they would be themselves enslaved. Instead of the prayers and hymns with which they had put to sea, they were now departing amid appeals to heaven of another sort. They were no longer sailors, but landsmen,
