The first conquest is of oneself
Xenophon's hardest lesson about command is the least martial: that the general's first conquest is of himself. The platform reads self-control — enkrateia — as the foundation on which his whole account of military command rests. The leader who cannot govern his own fear, anger, appetite and despair cannot govern men in a crisis, because in extremity the army takes its bearing from the bearing of the one who leads it. The self-mastery his Socrates taught as the root of all virtue is, for the soldier Xenophon, the root of all command.
Why the link is practical, not pious
The platform reads the connection as a hard practical observation, not a moral platitude. In the Anabasis, the army's survival depended again and again on its leaders keeping their heads when panic would have destroyed everyone — on Xenophon's own steadiness in the night march, the ambush, the river crossing, the council that teetered toward collapse. Fear is contagious, and so is composure; the leader who masters his own fear contains the army's, and the leader who loses his spreads it. Self-control, in the field, is not a private virtue but a condition of collective survival.
Self-command and the willing soldier
The platform reads self-control as also the foundation of the leader's authority. The general who is intemperate, who seizes more than his share, who indulges his comfort while his men suffer, forfeits the moral standing that wins willing obedience. The Cyrus of the Cyropaedia and the leaders Xenophon admires share their men's hardships, eat plainly, endure what they ask others to endure — and command devotion because of it. The platform reads this under leadership through example: self-command is what makes the example worth following.
The two halves of command
The platform reads the lesson as the bridge between Xenophon's military and ethical thought, and as one half of a larger truth about rule. The leadership of others rests on the leadership of oneself — a point that finds its complement in the inward discipline of Marcus Aurelius, set beside Xenophon's outward art in Leadership in the Cyropaedia vs the Meditations. The practical demonstration of the whole lesson is the march itself, read in what the Anabasis teaches.