[39]
“And if you, my son,” he went on, “should1 do nothing more than apply to your dealings with men the tricks that you used to practise so constantly in dealing with small game, do you not think that you would make a very considerable advance in the art of taking advantage of the enemy? For you used to get up in the coldest winter weather and go out before daylight to catch birds, and before the birds were astir you had your snares laid ready for them and the ground disturbed had been made exactly like the ground undisturbed; and your decoy birds had been so trained as to serve your purposes and to deceive the birds of the same species, while you yourself would lie in hiding so as to see them but not to be seen by them; and you had practised drawing your nets before the birds could escape.
1 The lessons of the chase applied to the arts of war
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 5 and 6. Walter Miller. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1914.
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