CHAPTER IV.

XENOPHON.

[Side-note: Xenophon--his character--essentially a man of action and

not a theorist--the Sokratic element in him an accessory.]

There remains one other companion of Sokrates, for whom a dignified

place must be reserved in this volume--Xenophon the son of Gryllus. It

is to him that we owe, in great part, such knowledge as we possess of

the real Sokrates. For the Sokratic conversations related by

Xenophon, though doubtless dressed up and expanded by him, appear to

me reports in the main of what Sokrates actually said. Xenophon was

sparing in the introduction of his master as titular spokesman for

opinions, theories, or controversial difficulties, generated in his

own mind: a practice in which Plato indulged without any reserve, as

we have seen by the numerous dialogues already passed in review.

I shall not however give any complete analysis of Xenophon's works:

because both the greater part of them, and the leading features of his

personal character, belong rather to active than to speculative

Hellenic life. As such, I have dealt with them largely in my History

of Greece. What I have here to illustrate is the Sokratic element in

his character, which is important indeed as accessory and modifying--yet

not fundamental. Though he exemplifies and attests, as a witness,

the theorising negative vein, the cross-examining Elenchus of Sokrates

it is the preceptorial vein which he appropriates to himself and

expands in its bearing on practical conduct. He is the

semi-philosophising general; undervalued indeed as a hybrid by Plato--but

by high-minded Romans like Cato, Agricola, Helvidius Priscus, &c.

likely to be esteemed higher than Plato himself.[1] He is the military

brother of the Sokratic family, distinguished for ability and energy

in the responsible functions of command: a man of robust frame,

courage, and presence of mind, who affronts cheerfully the danger and

fatigues of soldiership, and who extracts philosophy from experience

of the variable temper of armies, together with the multiplied

difficulties and precarious authority of a Grecian general.[2] For our

knowledge, imperfect as it is, of real Grecian life, we are greatly

indebted to his works. All historians of Greece must draw largely from

his Hellenica and Anabasis: and we learn much even from his other

productions, not properly historical; for he never soars high in the

region of ideality, nor grasps at etherial visions--"nubes et

inania"--like Plato.

[Footnote 1: See below, my remarks on the Platonic Euthydêmus, vol.

ii. chap, xxi.**]

[Footnote 2: We may apply to Plato and Xenophon the following

comparison by Euripides, Supplices, 905. (Tydeus and Meleager.)

[Greek: gnô/mê| d' a)delphou= Melea/grou leleimme/nos,

i)son pare/schen o)/noma dia\ te/chnên doro/s,

eu(rô\n a)kribê= mousikê\n e)n a)spi/di;

philo/timon ê)=thos, plou/sion phro/nêma de\

e)n toi=sin e)/rgois, ou)chi\ toi=s lo/gois e)/chôn.]]

[Side-note: Date of Xenophon--probable year of his birth.]

Respecting the personal history of Xenophon himself, we possess but

little information: nor do we know the year either of his birth or

death. His Hellenica concludes with the battle of Mantineia in 362

B.C. But he makes incidental mention in that work of an event five

years later--the assassination of Alexander, despot of Pheræ, which

took place in 357 B.C.[3]--and his language seems to imply that the

event was described shortly after it took place. His pamphlet De

Vectigalibus appears to have been composed still later--not before 355

B.C. In the year 400 B.C., when Xenophon joined the Grecian military

force assembled at Sardis to accompany Cyrus the younger in his march

to Babylon, he must have been still a young man: yet he had even then

established an intimacy with Sokrates at Athens: and he was old enough

to call himself the "ancient guest" of the Boeotian Proxenus, who

engaged him to come and take service with Cyrus.[4] We may suppose him

to have been then about thirty years of age; and thus to have been

born about 430 B.C.--two or three years earlier than Plato. Respecting

his early life, we have no facts before us: but we may confidently

affirm (as I have already observed about[5] Plato), that as he became

liable to military service in 412 B.C., the severe pressure of the war

upon Athens must have occasioned him to be largely employed, among

other citizens, for the defence of his native city, until its capture

in 405 B.C. He seems to have belonged to an equestrian family in the

census, and therefore to have served on horseback. More than one of

his compositions evinces both intelligent interest in horsemanship,

and great familiarity with horses.

[Footnote 3: Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 37. [Greek: tô=n de\ tau=ta

praxa/ntôn] (_i.e._ of the brothers of Thêbê, which brothers had

assassinated Alexander) [Greek: a)/chri ou)= o(de o( lo/gos

e)gra/pheto, Tisi/phonos, presbu/tatos ô(=n tô=n a)delphô=n, tê\n

a)rchê\n ei)=che.]]

[Footnote 4: That he was still a young man appears from his language,

Anabas. iii. 1, 25. His intimacy with Sokrates, whose advice he asked

about the propriety of accepting the invitation of Proxenus to go to

Asia, is shown iii. 1, 5. Proxenus was his [Greek: xe/nos a)rchai=os],

iii. 1, 4.

The story mentioned by Strabo (ix. 403) that Xenophon served in the

Athenian cavalry at the battle of Delium (424 B.C.), and that his life

was saved by Sokrates, I consider to be not less inconsistent with any

reasonable chronology, than the analogous anecdote--that Plato

distinguished himself at the battle of Delium. See below, ch. v.]

[Footnote 5: See ch. v.]

[Side-note: His personal history--He consults Sokrates--takes the

opinion of the Delphian oracle.]

Our knowledge of his personal history begins with what he himself

recounts in the Anabasis. His friend Proxenus, then at Sardis

commanding a regiment of Hellenic mercenaries under Cyrus the younger,

wrote recommending him earnestly to come over and take service, in the

army prepared ostensibly against the Pisidians. Upon this Xenophon

asked the advice of Sokrates: who exhorted him to go and consult the

Delphian oracle--being apprehensive that as Cyrus had proved himself

the strenuous ally of Sparta, and had furnished to her the principal

means for crushing Athens, an Athenian taking service under him would

incur unpopularity at home. Xenophon accordingly went to Delphi: but

instead of asking the question broadly--"Shall I go, or shall I

decline to go?"--he put to Apollo the narrower question--"Having in

contemplation a journey, to which of the Gods must I sacrifice and

pray, in order to accomplish it best, and to come back with safety and

success?" Apollo indicated to him the Gods to whom he ought to address

himself: but Sokrates was displeased with him for not having first

asked, whether he ought to go at all. Nevertheless (continued

Sokrates), since you have chosen to put the question in your own way

you must act as the God has prescribed.[6]

[Footnote 6: Xenoph. Anab. iii. 1, 4-6.]

[Side-note: His service and command with the Ten Thousand Greeks;

afterwards under Agesilaus and the Spartans.--He is banished from

Athens.]

The anecdote here recounted by Xenophon is interesting, as it

illustrates his sincere faith, as well as that of Sokrates, in the

Delphian oracle: though we might have expected that on this occasion,

Sokrates would have been favoured with some manifestation of that

divine sign, which he represents to have warned him afterwards so

frequently and on such trifling matters. Apollo however was perhaps

displeased (as Sokrates was) with Xenophon, for not having submitted

the question to him with full frankness: since the answer given was

proved by subsequent experience to be incomplete.[7] After fifteen

months passed, first, in the hard upward march--next, in the still

harder retreat--of the Ten Thousand, to the preservation of whom he

largely contributed by his energy, presence of mind, resolute

initiative, and ready Athenian eloquence, as one of their

leaders--Xenophon returned to Athens. It appears that he must have come

back not long after the death of Sokrates. But Athens was not at that time

a pleasant residence for him. The Sokratic companions shared in the

unpopularity of their deceased master, and many of them were absent:

moreover Xenophon himself was unpopular as the active partisan of

Cyrus. After a certain stay, we know not how long, at Athens, Xenophon

appears to have gone back to Asia; and to have resumed his command of

the remaining Cyreian soldiers, then serving under the Lacedæmonian

generals against the Persian satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus. He

served first under Derkyllidas, next under Agesilaus. For the latter

he conceived the warmest admiration, and contracted with him an

intimate friendship. At the time when Xenophon rejoined the Cyreians

in Asia, Athens was not at war with the Lacedæmonians: but after some

time, the hostile confederacy of Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, against

them was organised: and Agesilaus was summoned home by them from Asia,

to fight their battles in Greece. Xenophon and his Cyreians were still

a portion of the army of Agesilaus, and accompanied him in his march

into Boeotia; where they took part in his desperate battle and bloody

victory at Koroneia.[8] But he was now lending active aid to the

enemies of Athens, and holding conspicuous command in their armies. A

sentence of banishment, on the ground of Laconism, was passed against

him by the Athenians, on the proposition of Eubulus.[9]

[Footnote 7: Compare Anabas. vi. 1, 22, and vii. 8, 1-6.

See also Plato, Apol. Sokr. p. 33 C, and Plato, Theagês, p. 129; also

below, vol. ii. ch. xv.

Sokrates and Xenophon are among the most imposing witnesses cited by

Quintus Cicero, in his long pleading to show the reality of divination

(Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 25, 52, i. 54, 122). Antipater the Stoic

collected a large number of examples, illustrating the miraculous

divining power of Sokrates. Several of these examples appear much more

trifling than this incident of Xenophon.]

[Footnote 8: Xenoph. Anab. v. 3, 6; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 18.]

[Footnote 9: Diog. L. ii. 51-69. [Greek: e)pi\ Lakônismô=| phugê\n

u(p' A)thênai/ôn kategnô/sthê.]]

[Side-note: His residence at Skillus near Olympia.]

How long he served with Agesilaus, we are not told. At the end of his

service, the Lacedæmonians provided him with a house and land at the

Triphylian town of Skillûs near Olympia, which they had seemingly

taken from the Eleians and re-colonised. Near this residence he also

purchased, under the authority of the God (perhaps Olympian Zeus) a

landed estate to be consecrated to the Goddess Artemis: employing

therein a portion of the tithe of plunder devoted to Artemis by the

Cyreian army, and deposited by him for the time in the care of

Megabyzus, priest of Artemis at Ephesus. The estate of the Goddess

contained some cultivated ground, but consisted chiefly of pasture;

with wild ground, wood and mountain, abounding in game and favourable

for hunting. Xenophon became Conservator of this property for Artemis:

to whom he dedicated a shrine and a statue, in miniature copy of the

great temple at Ephesus. Every year he held a formal hunting-match, to

which he invited all the neighbours, with abundant hospitality, at the

expense of the Goddess. The Conservator and his successors were bound

by formal vow, on pain of her displeasure, to employ one tenth of the

whole annual produce in sacrifices to her: and to keep the shrine and

statue in good order, out of the remainder.[10]

[Footnote 10: Xenoph. Anab. v. 3, 8-12; Diog. L. ii. 52: Pausanias, v.

6, 3.

[Greek: phêsi\ d' o( Dei/narchos o(/ti kai\ oi)ki/an kai\ a)/gron

au)tô=| e(/dosan Lakedaimo/nioi].

Deinarchus appears to have composed for a client at Athens a judicial

speech against Xenophon, the grandson of Xenophon Sokraticus. He

introduced into the speech some facts relating to the grandfather.]

[Side-note: Family of Xenophon--his son Gryllus killed at Mantinea.]

Xenophon seems to have passed many years of his life either at Skillus

or in other parts of Peloponnesus, and is said to have died very old

at Corinth. The sentence of banishment passed against him by the

Athenians was revoked after the battle of Leuktra, when Athens came

into alliance with the Lacedæmonians against Thebes. Some of

Xenophon's later works indicate that he must have availed himself of

this revocation to visit Athens: but whether he permanently resided

there is uncertain. He had brought over with him from Asia a wife

named Philesia, by whom he had two sons, Gryllus and Diodorus.[11] He

sent these two youths to be trained at Sparta, under the countenance

of Agesilaus:[12] afterwards the eldest of them, Gryllus, served with

honour in the Athenian cavalry which assisted the Lacedæmonians and

Mantineians against Epameinondas, B.C. 362. In the important

combat[13] of the Athenian and Theban cavalry, close to the gates of

Mantineia--shortly preceding the general battle of Mantineia, in which

Epameinondas was slain--Gryllus fell, fighting with great bravery. The

death of this gallant youth--himself seemingly of great promise, and

the son of so eminent a father--was celebrated by Isokrates and several

other rhetors, as well as by the painter Euphranor at Athens, and by

sculptors at Mantineia itself.[14]

[Footnote 11: Æschines Sokraticus, in one of his dialogues, introduced

Aspasia conversing with Xenophon and his (Xenophon's) wife. Cicero, De

Invent. i. 31, 51-54; Quintil. Inst. Orat. v. p. 312.]

[Footnote 12: Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 20.]

[Footnote 13: Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 5, 15-16-17. This combat of cavalry

near the gates of Mantineia was very close and sharply contested; but

at the great battle fought a few days afterwards the Athenian cavalry

were hardly at all engaged, vii. 5, 25.]

[Footnote 14: Pausanias, i. 3, 3, viii. 11, 4, ix. 15, 3; Diogenes L.

ii. 54. Harpokration v. [Greek: Kêphiso/dôros].

It appears that Euphranor, in his picture represented Gryllus as

engaged in personal conflict with Epameinondas and wounding him--a

compliment not justified by the facts. The Mantineians believed

Antikrates, one of their own citizens, to have mortally wounded the

great Theban general with his spear, and they awarded to him as

recompense immunity from public burthens ([Greek: a)te/leian]), both

for himself and his descendants. One of his descendants, Kallikrates,

continued even in Plutarch's time to enjoy this immunity. Plutarch,

Agesilaus, c. 35.]

[Side-note: Death of Xenophon at Corinth--Story of the Eleian

Exegetæ.]

Skillus, the place in which the Lacedæmonians had established

Xenophon, was retaken by the Eleians during the humiliation of

Lacedæmonian power, not long before the battle of Mantineia. Xenophon

himself was absent at the time; but his family were constrained to

retire to Lepreum. It was after this, we are told, that he removed to

Corinth, where he died in 355 B.C. or in some year later. The Eleian

Exegetæ told the traveller Pausanias, when he visited the spot five

centuries afterwards, that Xenophon had been condemned in the judicial

Council of Olympia as wrongful occupant of the property at Skillus,

through Lacedæmonian violence; but that the Eleians had granted him

indulgence, and had allowed him to remain.[15] As it seems clearly

asserted that he died at Corinth, he can hardly have availed himself

of the indulgence; and I incline to suspect that the statement is an

invention of subsequent Eleian Exegetæ, after they had learnt to

appreciate his literary eminence.

[Footnote 15: Pausan. v. 6, 3; Diog. L. ii. 53-56.]

[Side-note: Xenophon different from Plato and the other Sokratic

brethren.]

From the brief outline thus presented of Xenophon's life, it will

plainly appear that he was quite different in character and habits

from Plato and the other Sokratic brethren. He was not only a man of

the world (as indeed Aristippus was also), but he was actively engaged

in the most responsible and difficult functions of military command:

he was moreover a landed proprietor and cultivator, fond of strong

exercise with dogs and horses, and an intelligent equestrian. His

circumstances were sufficiently easy to dispense with the necessity of

either composing discourses or taking pupils for money. Being thus

enabled to prosecute letters and philosophy in an independent way, he

did not, like Plato and Aristotle, open a school.[16] His relations,

as active coadjutor and subordinate, with Agesilaus, form a striking

contrast to those of Plato with Dionysius, as tutor and pedagogue. In

his mind, the Sokratic conversations, suggestive and stimulating to

every one, fell upon the dispositions and aptitudes of a

citizen-soldier, and fructified in a peculiar manner. My present work

deals with Xenophon, not as an historian of Grecian affairs or of the

Cyreian expedition, but only on the intellectual and theorising side:--as

author of the Memorabilia, the Cyropædia, Oekonomikus, Symposion,

Hieron, De Vectigalibus, &c.

[Footnote 16: See, in the account of Theopompus by Photius (Cod. 176,

p. 120; compare also Photius, Cod. 159, p. 102, a. 41), the

distinction taken by Theopompus: who said that the four most

celebrated literary persons of his day were, his master Isokrates,

Theodektês of Phasêlis, Naukrates of Erythræ, and himself

(Theopompus). He himself and Naukrates were in good circumstances, so

that he passed his life in independent prosecution of philosophy and

philomathy. But Isokrates and Theodektês were compelled [Greek: di'

a)pori/an bi/ou, misthou= lo/gous gra/phein kai\ sophisteu/ein,

e)kpaideu/ontes tou\s ne/ous, ka)kei=then karpoume/nous ta\s

u(phelei/as].

Theopompus does not here present the profession of a Sophist (as most

Platonic commentators teach us to regard it) as a mean,

unprincipled, and corrupting employment.]

[Side-note: His various works--Memorabilia, Oekonomikus, &c.]

The Memorabilia were composed as records of the conversations of

Sokrates, expressly intended to vindicate Sokrates against charges of

impiety and of corrupting youthful minds, and to show that he

inculcated, before every thing, self-denial, moderation of desires,

reverence for parents, and worship of the Gods. The Oekonomikus and

the Symposion are expansions of the Memorabilia: the first[17]

exhibiting Sokrates not only as an attentive observer of the facts of

active life (in which character the Memorabilia present him also), but

even as a learner of husbandry[18] and family management from

Ischomachus--the last describing Sokrates and his behaviour amidst the

fun and joviality of a convivial company. Sokrates declares[19] that

as to himself, though poor, he is quite as rich as he desires to be;

that he desires no increase, and regards poverty as no disadvantage.

Yet since Kratobulus, though rich, is beset with temptations to

expense quite sufficient to embarrass him, good proprietary management

is to him a necessity. Accordingly, Sokrates, announcing that he has

always been careful to inform himself who were the best economists in

the city,[20] now cites as authority Ischomachus, a citizen of wealth

and high position, recognised by all as one of the

"super-excellent".[21] Ischomachus loves wealth, and is anxious to

maintain and even enlarge his property: desiring to spend magnificently

for the honour of the Gods, the assistance of friends, and the support

of the city.[22] His whole life is arranged, with intelligence and

forethought, so as to attain this object, and at the same time to keep

up the maximum of bodily health and vigour, especially among the

horsemen of the city as an accomplished rider[23] and cavalry

soldier. He speaks with respect, and almost with enthusiasm, of

husbandry, as an occupation not merely profitable, but improving to

the character: though he treats with disrespect other branches of

industry and craft.[24] In regard to husbandry, too, as in regard to

war or steersmanship, he affirms that the difference between one

practitioner and another consists, not so much in unequal knowledge,

as in unequal care to practise what both of them know.[25]

[Footnote 17: Galen calls the Oekonomicus the last book of the

Memorabilia (ad Hippokrat. De Articulis, t. xviii. p. 301, Kühn). It

professes to be repeated by Xenophon from what he himself _heard_

Sokrates say--[Greek: ê)/kousa de/ pote au)tou= kai\ peri\

oi)konomi/as toia/de dialegome/nou], &c. Sokrates first instructs

Kritobulus that economy, or management of property, is an art,

governed by rules, and dependent upon principles; next, he recounts to

him the lessons which he professes to have himself received from

Ischomachus.

I have already adverted to the Xenophontic Symposion as containing

jocular remarks which some erroneously cite as serious.]

[Footnote 18: To _learn_ in this way the actualities of life, and the

way of extracting the greatest amount of wheat and barley from a given

piece of land, is the sense which Xenophon puts on the word [Greek:

philo/sophos] (Xen. Oek. xvi. 9; compare Cyropædia, vi. 1, 41).]

[Footnote 19: Xenoph. Oekonom. ii. 3; xi. 3, 4.

I have made some observations on the Xenophontic Symposion, comparing

it with the Platonic Symposion, in a subsequent chapter of this work,

ch. xxvi.]

[Footnote 20: Xen. Oekon. ii. 16.]

[Footnote 21: Xen. Oekon. vi. 17, xi. 3. [Greek: pro\s pa/ntôn kai\

a)ndrô=n kai\ gunaikô=n, kai\ xe/nôn kai\ a)stô=n, kalo/n te

ka)gatho\n e)ponomazo/menon.]]

[Footnote 22: Xen. Oekon. xi. 9.]

[Footnote 23: Xen. Oekon. xi. 17-21. [Greek: e)n toi=s i(ppokôta/tois

te kai\ plousiôta/tois].]

[Footnote 24: Xen. Oekon. iv. 2-3, vi. 5-7. Ischomachus asserts that

his father had been more devoted to agriculture ([Greek:

philogeôrgo/tatos]) than any man at Athens; that he had bought several

pieces of land ([Greek: chô/rous]) when out of order, improved them,

and then resold them with very large profit, xx. 26.]

[Footnote 25: Xen. Oekon. xx. 2-10.]

[Side-note: Ischomachus, hero of the Oekonomikus--ideal of an active

citizen, cultivator, husband, house-master, &c.]

Ischomachus describes to Sokrates, in reply to a string of successive

questions, both his scheme of life and his scheme of husbandry. He had

married his wife before she was fifteen years of age: having first

ascertained that she had been brought up carefully, so as to have seen

and heard as little as possible, and to know nothing but spinning and

weaving.[26] He describes how he took this very young wife into

training, so as to form her to the habits which he himself approved.

He declares that the duties and functions of women are confined to

in-door work and superintendence, while the out-door proceedings,

acquisition as well as defence, belong to men:[27] he insists upon

such separation of functions emphatically, as an ordinance of

nature--holding an opinion the direct reverse of that which we have seen

expressed by Plato.[28] He makes many remarks on the arrangements of

the house, and of the stores within it: and he dwells particularly on

the management of servants, male and female.

[Footnote 26: Xen. Oekon. vii. 3-7. [Greek: to\n d' e)/mprosthen

chro/non e)/zê u(po\ pollê=s e)pimelei/as, o(/pôs ô(s e)la/chista me\n

o)/psoito, e)la/chista de\ a)kou/soito, e)la/chista de\ e)/roito].

The [Greek: didaskali/a] addressed to Sokrates by Ischomachus is in

the form of [Greek: e)rô/têsis], xix. 15. The Sokratic interrogation

is here brought to bear _upon_ Sokrates, instead of by Sokrates: like

the Elenchus in the Parmenidês of Plato.]

[Footnote 27: Xen. Oekon. vii. 22-32.]

[Footnote 28: See below, ch. xxxvii.

Compare also Aristotel. Politic. iii. 4, 1277, b. 25, where Aristotle

lays down the same principle as Xenophon.]

[Side-note: Text upon which Xenophon insists--capital difference

between command over subordinates willing, and subordinates

unwilling.]

It is upon this last point that he lays more stress than upon any

other. To know how to command men--is the first of all accomplishments

in the mind of Xenophon. Ischomachus proclaims it as essential that

the superior shall not merely give orders to his subordinates, but

also see them executed, and set the example of personal active

watchfulness in every way. Xenophon aims at securing not simply

obedience, but cheerful and willing obedience--even attachment from

those who obey. "To exercise command over willing subjects"[29] (he

says) "is a good more than human, granted only to men truly

consummated in virtue of character essentially divine. To exercise

command over unwilling subjects, is a torment like that of Tantalus."

[Footnote 29: Xen. Oekon. xxi. 10-12. [Greek: ê)/thous

basilikou=--thei=on gene/sthai. Ou) ga\r pa/nu moi\ dokei= touti\ to\

a)gatho\n a)nthrô/pinon ei)=nai, a)lla\ thei=on, to\ _e)thelo/ntôn

a)/rchein_; saphô=s de\ di/dotai toi=s a)lêthinô=s sôphrosu/nê|

tetelesme/nois. To\ de\ a)ko/ntôn turannei=n dido/asin, ô(s e)moi\

dokei=, ou(\s a)\n ê(gô=ntai a)xi/ous ei)=nai bioteu/ein, ô(/sper o(

Ta/ntalos e)n a(/|dou le/getai]. Compare also iv. 19, xiii. 3-7.]

[Side-note: Probable circumstances generating these reflections in

Xenophon's mind.]

The sentence just transcribed (the last sentence in the Oekonomikus)

brings to our notice a central focus in Xenophon's mind, from whence

many of his most valuable speculations emanate. "What are the

conditions under which subordinates will cheerfully obey their

commanders?"--was a problem forced upon his thoughts by his own

personal experience, as well as by contemporary phenomena in Hellas.

He had been elected one of the generals of the Ten Thousand: a large

body of brave warriors from different cities, most of them unknown to

him personally, and inviting his authority only because they were in

extreme peril, and because no one else took the initiative.[30] He

discharged his duties admirably: and his ready eloquence was an

invaluable accomplishment, distinguishing him from all his colleagues.

Nevertheless when the army arrived at the Euxine, out of the reach of

urgent peril, he was made to feel sensibly the vexations of authority

resting upon such precarious basis, and perpetually traversed by

jealous rivals. Moreover, Xenophon, besides his own personal

experience, had witnessed violent political changes running

extensively through the cities of the Grecian world: first, at the

close of the Peloponnesian war--next, after the battle of Knidus--again,

under Lacedæmonian supremacy, after the peace of Antalkidas,

and the subsequent seizure of the citadel of Thebes--lastly, after the

Thebans had regained their freedom and humbled the Lacedæmonians by

the battle of Leuktra. To Xenophon--partly actor, partly

spectator--these political revolutions were matters of anxious interest;

especially as he ardently sympathised with Agesilaus, a political

partisan interested in most of them, either as conservative or

revolutionary.

[Footnote 30: The reader will find in my 'History of Greece,' ch. 70,

p. 103 seq., a narrative of the circumstances under which Xenophon

was first chosen to command, as well as his conduct afterwards.]

[Side-note: This text affords subjects for the Hieron and

Cyropædia--Name of Sokrates not suitable.]

We thus see, from the personal history of Xenophon, how his attention

came to be peculiarly turned to the difficulty of ensuring steady

obedience from subordinates, and to the conditions by which such

difficulty might be overcome. The sentence, above transcribed from the

Oekonomikus, embodies two texts upon which he has discoursed in two of

his most interesting compositions--Cyropædia and Hieron. In Cyropædia

he explains and exemplifies the divine gift of ruling over cheerful

subordinates: in Hieron, the torment of governing the disaffected and

refractory. For neither of these purposes would the name and person of

Sokrates have been suitable, exclusively connected as they were with

Athens. Accordingly Xenophon, having carried that respected name

through the Oekonomikus and Symposion, now dismisses it, yet retaining

still the familiar and colloquial manner which belonged to Sokrates.

The Epilogue, or concluding chapter, of the Cyropædia, must

unquestionably have been composed after 364 B.C.--in the last ten

years of Xenophon's life: the main body of it may perhaps have been

composed earlier.

[Side-note: Hieron--Persons of the dialogue--Simonides and Hieron.]

The Hieron gives no indication of date: but as a picture purely

Hellenic, it deserves precedence over the Cyropædia, and conveys to my

mind the impression of having been written earlier. It describes a

supposed conversation (probably suggested by current traditional

conversations, like that between Solon and Kroesus) between the poet

Simonides and Hieron the despot of Syracuse; who, shortly after the

Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes, had succeeded his brother Gelon

the former despot.[31] Both of them had been once private citizens, of

no remarkable consequence: but Gelon, an energetic and ambitious

military man, having raised himself to power in the service of

Hippokrates despot of Gela, had seized the sceptre on the death of his

master: after which he conquered Syracuse, and acquired a formidable

dominion, enjoyed after his death by his brother Hieron. This last was

a great patron of eminent poets--Pindar, Simonides, Æschylus,

Bacchylides: but he laboured under a painful internal complaint, and

appears to have been of an irritable and oppressive temper.[32]

[Footnote 31: Plato, Epistol. ii. p. 311 A. Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 16,

1391, a. 9; Cicero, Nat. Deo. i. 22, 60. How high was the opinion

entertained about Simonides as a poet, may be seen illustrated in a

passage of Aristophanes, Vespæ, 1362.]

[Footnote 32: See the first and second Pythian Odes of Pindar,

addressed to Hieron, especially Pyth. i. 55-61-90, with the Scholia

and Boeckh's Commentary. Pindar compliments Hieron upon having founded

his new city of Ætna--[Greek: theodma/tô| su\n e)leutheria|]. This does

not coincide with the view of Hieron's character taken by Xenophon;

but Pindar agrees with Xenophon in exhorting Hieron to make himself

popular by a liberal expenditure.]

[Side-note: Questions put to Hieron; view taken by Simonides. Answer

of Hieron.]

Simonides asks of Hieron, who had personally tried both the life of a

private citizen and that of a despot, which of the two he considered

preferable, in regard to pleasures and pains. Upon this subject, a

conversation of some length ensues, in which Hieron declares that the

life of a despot has much more pain, and much less pleasure, than that

of a private citizen under middling circumstances:[33] while Simonides

takes the contrary side, and insists in detail upon the superior means

of enjoyment, apparent at least, possessed by the despot. As each of

these means is successively brought forward, Hieron shews that however

the matter may appear to the spectator, the despot feels no greater

real happiness in his own bosom: while he suffers many pains and

privations, of which the spectator takes no account. As to the

pleasures of sight, the despot forfeits altogether the first and

greatest, because it is unsafe for him to visit the public festivals

and matches. In regard to hearing--many praises, and no reproach,

reach his ears: but then he knows that the praises are insincere--and

that reproach is unheard, only because speakers dare not express what

they really feel. The despot has finer cookery and richer unguents;

but others enjoy a modest banquet as much or more--while the scent of

the unguents pleases those who are near him more than himself.[34]

Then as to the pleasures of love, these do not exist, except where the

beloved person manifests spontaneous sympathy and return of

attachment. Now the despot can never extort such return by his power;

while even if it be granted freely, he cannot trust its sincerity and

is compelled even to be more on his guard, since successful

conspiracies against his life generally proceed from those who profess

attachment to him.[35] The private citizen on the contrary knows that

those who profess to love him, may be trusted, as having no motive for

falsehood.

[Footnote 33: Xenoph. Hier. i. 8. [Greek: eu)= i)/sthi, ô)= Simôni/dê,

o(/ti polu\ mei/ô eu)phrai/nontai oi( tu/rannoi tô=n metri/ôs

diago/ntôn i)diôtô=n, polu\ de\ plei/ô kai\ mei/zô lupou=ntai.]]

[Footnote 34: Xen. Hieron, i. 12-15-24.]

[Footnote 35: Xen. Hier. i. 26-38. [Greek: Tô=| tura/nnô| ou)/ pot'

e)sti\ pisteu=sai, ô(s philei=tai. Ai( e)piboulai\ e)x ou)de/nôn

ple/ones toi=s tura/nnois ei)si\n ê)\ a)po\ tô=n ma/lista philei=n

au)tou\s prospoiêsame/nôn].

This chapter affords remarkable illustration of Grecian manners,

especially in the-distinction drawn between [Greek: ta\ paidika\

a)phrodi/sia] and [Greek: ta\ teknopoia\ a)phrodi/sia].]

[Side-note: Misery of governing unwilling subjects declared by

Hieron.]

Still (contends Simonides) there are other pleasures greater than

those of sense. You despots possess the greatest abundance and variety

of possessions--the finest chariots and horses, the most splendid

arms, the finest palaces, ornaments, and furniture--the most brilliant

ornaments for your wives--the most intelligent and valuable servants.

You execute the greatest enterprises: you can do most to benefit your

friends, and hurt your enemies: you have all the proud consciousness

of superior might.[36]--Such is the opinion of the multitude (replies

Hieron), who are misled by appearances: but a wise man like you,

Simonides, ought to see the reality in the background, and to

recollect that happiness or unhappiness reside only in a man's

internal feelings. You cannot but know that a despot lives in

perpetual insecurity, both at home and abroad: that he must always go

armed himself, and have armed guards around him: that whether at war

or at peace, he is always alike in danger: that, while suspecting

every one as an enemy, he nevertheless knows that when he has put to

death the persons suspected, he has only weakened the power of the

city:[37] that he has no sincere friendship with any one: that he

cannot count even upon good faith, and must cause all his food to be

tasted by others, before he eats it: that whoever has slain a private

citizen, is shunned in Grecian cities as an abomination--while the

tyrannicide is everywhere honoured and recompensed: that there is no

safety for the despot even in his own family, many having been killed

by their nearest relatives:[38] that he is compelled to rely upon

mercenary foreign soldiers and liberated slaves, against the free

citizens who hate him: and that the hire of such inauspicious

protectors compels him to raise money, by despoiling individuals and

plundering temples:[39] that the best and most estimable citizens are

incurably hostile to him, while none but the worst will serve him for

pay: that he looks back with bitter sorrow to the pleasures and

confidential friendships which he enjoyed as a private man, but from

which he is altogether debarred as a despot.[40]

[Footnote 36: Xen. Hier. ii. 2.]

[Footnote 37: Xen. Hieron, ii. 5-17.]

[Footnote 38: Xenoph. Hieron, ii. 8, iii. 1, 5. Compare Xenophon,

Hellenic. iii. 1, 14.]

[Footnote 39: Xen. Hieron, iv. 7-11.]

[Footnote 40: Xen. Hieron, vi. 1-12.]

Nothing brings a man so near to the Gods (rejoins Simonides) as the

feeling of being honoured. Power and a brilliant position must be of

inestimable value, if they are worth purchasing at the price which you

describe.[41] Otherwise, why do you not throw up your sceptre? How

happens it that no despot has ever yet done this? To be honoured

(answers Hieron) is the greatest of earthly blessings, when a man

obtains honour from the spontaneous voice of freemen. But a despot

enjoys no such satisfaction. He lives like a criminal under sentence

of death by every one: and it is impossible for him to lay down his

power, because of the number of persons whom he has been obliged to

make his enemies. He can neither endure his present condition, nor yet

escape from it. The best thing he can do is to hang himself.[42]

[Footnote 41: Xen. Hieron, vii. 1-5.]

[Footnote 42: Xen. Hieron, vii. 5-13. [Greek: O( de\ tu/rannos, ô(s

u(po\ pa/ntôn a)nthrô/pôn katakekrime/nos di' a)diki/an

a)pothnê/skein--kai\ nu/kta kai\ ê(me/ran dia/gei. . . . A)ll' ei)/per

tô| a)/llô| lusitelei= a)pa/gxasthai, i)/sthi o(/ti tura/nnô| e)/gôge

eu(ri/skô ma/lista tou=to lusitelou=n poiê=sai. Mo/nô| ga\r au(tô=|

ou)/te e)/chein, ou)/te katathe/sthai ta\ kaka\ lusitelei=].

Solon in his poems makes the remark, that for the man who once usurps

the sceptre no retreat is possible. See my 'History of Greece,' chap.

xi. p. 132 seq.

The impressive contrast here drawn by Hieron (c. vi.) between his

condition as a despot and the past enjoyments of private life and

citizenship which he has lost, reminds one of the still more sorrowful

contrast in the Atys of Catullus, v. 58-70.]

[Side-note: Advice to Hieron by Simonides--that he should govern well,

and thus make himself beloved by his subjects.]

Simonides in reply, after sympathising with Hieron's despondency,

undertakes to console him by showing that such consequences do not

necessarily attend despotic rule. The despot's power is an instrument

available for good as well as for evil. By a proper employment of it,

he may not only avoid being hated, but may even make himself beloved,

beyond the measure attainable by any private citizen. Even kind words,

and petty courtesies, are welcomed far more eagerly when they come

from a powerful man than from an equal: moreover a showy and brilliant

exterior seldom fails to fascinate the spectator.[43] But besides

this, the despot may render to his city the most substantial and

important services. He may punish criminals and reward meritorious

men: the punishments he ought to inflict by the hands of others, while

he will administer the rewards in person--giving prizes for superior

excellence in every department, and thus endearing himself to all.[44]

Such prizes would provoke a salutary competition in the performance of

military duties, in choric exhibitions, in husbandry, commerce, and

public usefulness of every kind. Even the foreign mercenaries, though

usually odious, might be so handled and disciplined as to afford

defence against foreign danger,--to ensure for the citizens

undisturbed leisure in their own private affairs--to protect and

befriend the honest man, and to use force only against criminals.[45]

If thus employed, such mercenaries, instead of being hated, would be

welcome companions: and the despot himself may count, not only upon

security against attack, but upon the warmest gratitude and

attachment. The citizens will readily furnish contributions to him

when asked, and will regard him as their greatest benefactor. "You

will obtain in this way" (Simonides thus concludes his address to

Hieron), "the finest and most enviable of all acquisitions. You will

have your subjects obeying you willingly, and caring for you of their

own accord. You may travel safely wherever you please, and will be a

welcome visitor at all the crowded festivals. You will be happy,

without jealousy from any one."[46]

[Footnote 43: Xen. Hieron, viii. 2-7.]

[Footnote 44: Xen. Hieron, ix. 1-4.]

[Footnote 45: Xen. Hieron, x. 6-8.]

[Footnote 46: Xen. Hieron, xi. 10-12-15. [Greek: ka)\n tau=ta pa/nta

poiê=s, eu)= i)/sthi pa/ntôn tô=n a)nthrô/pois ka/lliston kai\

makariô/taton ktê=ma kektême/nos; eu)daimonô=n ga\r ou)

phthonêthê/sê|.]]

[Side-note: Probable experience had by Xenophon of the feelings at

Olympia against Dionysius.]

The dialogue of which I have given this short abstract, illustrates

what Xenophon calls the torment of Tantalus--the misery of a despot

who has to extort obedience from unwilling subjects:--especially if

the despot be one who has once known the comfort and security of

private life, under tolerably favourable circumstances. If we compare

this dialogue with the Platonic Gorgias, where we have seen a thesis

very analogous handled in respect to Archelaus,--we shall find Plato

soaring into a sublime ethical region of his own, measuring the

despot's happiness and misery by a standard peculiar to himself, and

making good what he admits to be a paradox by abundant eloquence

covering faulty dialectic: while Xenophon, herein following his

master, applies to human life the measure of a rational common sense,

talks about pleasures and pains which every one can feel to be such,

and points out how many of these pleasures the despot forfeits, how

many of these pains and privations he undergoes,--in spite of that

great power of doing hurt, and less power, though still considerable,

of doing good, which raises the envy of spectators. The Hieron gives

utterance to an interesting vein of sentiment, more common at Athens

than elsewhere in Greece; enforced by the conversation of Sokrates,

and serving as corrective protest against that unqualified worship of

power which prevailed in the ancient world no less than in the modern.

That the Syrakusan Hieron should be selected as an exemplifying name,

may be explained by the circumstance, that during thirty-eight years

of Xenophon's mature life (405-367 B.C.), Dionysius the elder was

despot of Syrakuse; a man of energy and ability, who had extinguished

the liberties of his native city, and acquired power and dominion

greater than that of any living Greek. Xenophon, resident at Skillus,

within a short distance from Olympia, had probably[47] seen the

splendid Thêory (or sacred legation of representative envoys)

installed in rich and ornamented tents, and the fine running horses

sent by Dionysius, at the ninety-ninth Olympic festival (384 B.C.):

but he probably also heard the execration with which the name of

Dionysius himself had been received by the spectators, and he would

feel that the despot could hardly shew himself there in person. There

were narratives in circulation about the interior life of

Dionysius,[48] analogous to those statements which Xenophon puts into

the mouth of Hieron. A predecessor of Dionysius as despot of

Syracuse[49] and also as patron of poets, was therefore a suitable

person to choose for illustrating the first part of Xenophon's

thesis--the countervailing pains and penalties which spoilt all the

value of power, if exercised over unwilling and repugnant subjects.[50]

[Footnote 47: Xenoph. Anab. v. 3, 11.]

[Footnote 48: See chap. 83, vol. xi. pp. 40-50, of my 'History of

Greece,' where this memorable scene at Olympia is described.]

[Footnote 49: Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 20, 57-63; De Officiis, ii. 7,

24-25.

"Multos timebit ille, quem multi timent."]

[Footnote 50: An anecdote is told about a visit of Xenophon to

Dionysius at Syracuse--whether the elder or the younger is not

specified--but the tenor of the anecdote points to the younger; if so

the visit must have been later than 367 B.C. (Athenæus x. 427).]

[Side-note: Xenophon could not have chosen a Grecian despot to

illustrate his theory of the happiness of governing willing subjects.]

But when Xenophon came to illustrate the second part of his thesis--the

possibility of exercising power in such manner as to render the

holder of it popular and beloved--it would have been scarcely possible

for him to lay the scene in any Grecian city. The repugnance of the

citizens of a Grecian city towards a despot who usurped power over

them, was incurable--however much the more ambitious individuals

subjects among them might have wished to obtain such power for

themselves: a repugnance as great among oligarchs as among

democrats--perhaps even greater. When we read the recommendations

addressed by Simonides, teaching Hieron how he might render himself

popular, we perceive at once that they are alike well intentioned and

ineffectual. Xenophon could neither find any real Grecian despot

corresponding to this portion of his illustrative purpose--nor could he

invent one with any shew of plausibility. He was forced to resort to

other countries and other habits different from those of Greece.

[Side-note: Cyropædia--blending of Spartan and Persian

customs--Xenophon's experience of Cyrus the Younger.]

To this necessity probably we owe the Cyropædia: a romance in which

Persian and Grecian experience are singularly blended, and both of

them so transformed as to suit the philosophical purpose of the

narrator. Xenophon had personally served and communicated with Cyrus

the younger: respecting whom also he had large means of information,

from his intimate friend Proxenus, as well as from the other Grecian

generals of the expedition. In the first book of the Anabasis, we find

this young prince depicted as an energetic and magnanimous character,

faithful to his word and generous in his friendships--inspiring strong

attachment in those around him, yet vigorous in administration and in

punishing criminals--not only courting the Greeks as useful for his

ambitious projects, but appreciating sincerely the superiority of

Hellenic character and freedom over Oriental servitude.[51] And in the

Oekonomikus, Cyrus is quoted as illustrating in his character the

true virtue of a commander; the test of which Xenophon declares to

be--That his subordinates follow him willingly, and stand by him to the

death.[52]

[Footnote 51: Xenoph. Anab. i. 9, also i. 7, 3, the address of Cyrus

to the Greek soldiers--[Greek: O(/pôs ou)=n e)/sesthe a)/ndres a)/xioi

tê=s e)leutheri/as ê(=s ke/ktêsthe, kai\ u(pe\r ê(=s u(ma=s

eu)daimoni/zô. Eu)= ga\r i)/ste, o(/ti te\n e)leutheri/an e(loi/mên

a)\n, a)nti\ ô(=n e)/chô pa/ntôn kai\ a)/llôn pollaplasi/ôn],

compared with i. 5, 16, where Cyrus gives his appreciation of the

Oriental portion of his army, and the remarkable description of the

trial of Orontes, i. 6.]

[Footnote 52: Xenoph. Oeconom. iv. 18-19. [Greek: Ku=ros, ei)

e)bi/ôsen, a)/ristos a)\n dokei= a)/rchôn gene/sthai--ê(gou=mai me/ga

tekmê/rion a)/rchontos a)retê=s ei)=nai, ô(=| a)\n e(ko/ntes

e(/pôntai, kai\ e)n toi=s deinoi=s parame/nein e)the/lôsin]. Compare

Anab. i. 9, 29-30.]

[Side-note: Portrait of Cyrus the Great--his education--Preface to the

Cyropædia.]

It is this character Hellenised, Sokratised, idealised--that Xenophon

paints into his glowing picture of Cyrus the founder of the Persian

monarchy, or the Cyropædia. He thus escapes the insuperable difficulty

arising from the position of a Grecian despot; who never could acquire

willing or loving obedience, because his possession of power was felt

by a majority of his subjects to be wrongful, violent, tainted. The

Cyrus of the Cyropædia begins as son of Kambyses, king or chief of

Persia, and grandson of Astyages, king of Media; recognised according

to established custom by all, as the person to whom they look for

orders. Xenophon furnishes him with a splendid outfit of heroic

qualities, suitable to this ascendant position: and represents the

foundation of the vast Persian empire, with the unshaken fidelity of

all the heterogeneous people composing it, as the reward of a

laborious life spent in the active display of such qualities. In his

interesting Preface to the Cyropædia, he presents this as the solution

of a problem which had greatly perplexed him. He had witnessed many

revolutions in the Grecian cities--subversions of democracies,

oligarchies, and despotisms: he had seen also private establishments,

some with numerous servants, some with few, yet scarcely any

house-master able to obtain hearty or continued obedience. But as to

herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, on the contrary, he had seen them

uniformly obedient; suffering the herdsman or shepherd to do what he

pleased with, them, and never once conspiring against him. The first

inference of Xenophon from these facts was, that man was by nature the

most difficult of all animals to govern.[53] But he became satisfied

that he was mistaken, when he reflected on the history of Cyrus; who

had acquired and maintained dominion over more men than had ever been

united under one empire, always obeying him cheerfully and

affectionately. This history proved to Xenophon that it was not

impossible, nor even difficult,[54] to rule mankind, provided a man

undertook it with scientific or artistic competence. Accordingly, he

proceeded to examine what Cyrus was in birth, disposition, and

education--and how he came to be so admirably accomplished in the

government of men.[55] The result is the Cyropædia. We must observe,

however, that his solution of the problem is one which does not meet

the full difficulties. These difficulties, as he states them, had been

suggested to him by his Hellenic experience: by the instability of

government in Grecian cities. But the solution which he provides

departs from Hellenic experience, and implies what Aristotle and

Hippokrates called the more yielding and servile disposition of

Asiatics:[56] for it postulates an hereditary chief of heroic or

divine lineage, such as was nowhere acknowledged in Greece, except at

Sparta--and there, only under restrictions which would have rendered

the case unfit for Xenophon's purpose. The heroic and regal lineage of

Cyrus was a condition not less essential to success than his

disposition and education:[57] and not merely his lineage, but also

the farther fact, that besides being constant in the duties of prayer

and sacrifice to the Gods, he was peculiarly favoured by them with

premonitory signs and warnings in all difficult emergencies.[58]

[Footnote 53: Xen. Cyrop. i. 1, 2.]

[Footnote 54: Xen. Cyrop. i. 1, 3. [Greek: e)k tou/tou dê\

ê)nagkazo/metha metanoei=n, mê\ ou)/te tô=n a)duna/tôn ou)/te tô=n

chalepô=n e)/rgôn ê(=| to\ a)nthrô/pôn a)/rchein, _ê)/n tis

e)pistame/nôs_ tou=to pra/ttê|.]]

[Footnote 55: Xen. Cyrop. i. 1, 3-8.]

[Footnote 56: Aristot. Politic. vii. 7, 1327, b. 25. [Greek: ta\ de\

peri\ tê\n A)si/an, dianoêtika\ me\n kai\ te\chnika\ tê\n psuchê/n,

a)/thuma de/; dio/per a)rcho/mena kai\ douleu/onta diatelei=].

Hippokrates, De Aere, Locis, et Aquis, c. 19-23.]

[Footnote 57: So it is stated by Xenophon himself, in the speech

addressed by Kroesus after his defeat and captivity to Cyrus, vii. 2,

24--[Greek: a)gnoô=n e)mauto\n o(/ti soi a)ntipolemei=n i(kano\s

ô(=|mên ei)=nai, prô=ton me\n e)k theô=n gegono/ti, e)/peita de\ dia\

basile/ôn pephuko/ti, e)/peita de\ e)k paido\s a)retê\n a)skou=nti;

tô=n d' e)mô=n progo/nôn a)kou/ô to\n prô=ton basileu/santa a)/ma te

basile/a kai\ e)leu/theron gene/sthai]. Cyrop. i. 2, 1: [Greek: tou=

Perseidô=n ge/nous], &c.]

[Footnote 58: See the remarkable words addressed by Cyrus, shortly

before his death, in sacrificing on the hill-top to [Greek: Zeu\s

Patrô=|os] and [Greek: Ê(/lios], Cyrop. viii. 7, 3.

The special communications of the Gods to Cyrus are insisted on by

Xenophon, like those made to Sokrates, and like the constant aid of

Athênê to Odysseus in Homer, Odyss. iii. 221:--

[Greek: Ou) ga\r pô i)/don ô(=de theou\s a)naphanda\ phileu=ntas

ô(s kei/nô| a)naphanda\ pari/stato Palla\s A)thê/nê.]]

[Side-note: Xenophon does not solve his own problem--The governing

aptitude and popularity of Cyrus come from nature, not from

education.]

The fundamental principle of Xenophon is, that to obtain hearty and

unshaken obedience is not difficult for a ruler, provided he possesses

the science or art of ruling. This is a principle expressly laid down

by Sokrates in the Xenophontic Memorabilia.[59] We have seen Plato

affirming in the Politikus[60] that this is the only true government,

though very few individuals are competent to it: Plato gives to it a

peculiar application in the Republic, and points out a philosophical

or dialectic tuition whereby he supposes that his Elders will acquire

the science or art of command. The Cyropædia presents to us an

illustrative example. Cyrus is a young prince who, from twenty-six

years of age to his dying day, is always ready with his initiative,

provident in calculation of consequences, and personally active in

enforcement: giving the right order at the right moment, with good

assignable reasons. As a military man, he is not only personally

forward, but peculiarly dexterous in the marshalling and management of

soldiers; like the Homeric Agamemnon[61]--

[Greek: A)mpho/teron, basileu/s t' a)gatho/s, kratero/s t'

ai)chmêtê/s].

But we must consider this aptitude for command as a spontaneous growth

in Cyrus--a portion of his divine constitution or of the golden

element in his nature (to speak in the phrase of the Platonic

Republic): for no means are pointed out whereby he acquired it, and

the Platonic Sokrates would have asked in vain, where teachers of it

were to be found. It is true that he is made to go through a rigorous

and long-continued training: but this training is common to him with

all the other Persian youths of good family, and is calculated to

teach obedience, not to communicate aptitude for command; while the

master of tactics, whose lessons he receives apart, is expressly

declared to have known little about the duties of a commander.[62]

Kambyses indeed (father of Cyrus) gives to his son valuable general

exhortations respecting the multiplicity of exigencies which press

upon a commander, and the constant watchfulness, precautions,

fertility of invention, required on his part to meet them. We read the

like in the conversations of Sokrates in the Memorabilia:[63] but

neither Kambyses nor Sokrates are teachers of the art of commanding.

For this art, Cyrus is assumed to possess a natural aptitude; like the

other elements of his dispositions--his warm sympathies, his frank and

engaging manners, his ardent emulation combined with perfect freedom

from jealousy, his courage, his love of learning, his willingness to

endure any amount of labour for the purpose of obtaining praise, &c.,

all which Xenophon represents as belonging to him by nature, together

with a very handsome person.[64]

[Footnote 59: Xenoph. Mem. iii. 9, 10-12.]

[Footnote 60: See what is said below about the Platonic Politikus,

chap. xxx.]

[Footnote 61: Cicero, when called upon in his province of Cilicia to

conduct warlike operations against the Parthians, as well as against

some refractory mountaineers, improved his military knowledge by

studying and commenting on the Cyropædia. Epist. ad Famil. ix. 25.

Compare the remarkable observation made by Cicero (Academic. Prior.

ii. init.) about the way in which Lucullus made up his deficiency of

military experience by reading military books.]

[Footnote 62: Xen. Cyrop. i. 6, 12-15.]

[Footnote 63: Compare Cyropæd. i. 6, with Memorab. iii. 1.]

[Footnote 64: Cyropæd. i. 2, 1. [Greek: _phu=nai_ de\ o( Ku=ros

le/getai], &c. i. 3, 1-2. [Greek: pa/ntôn tô=n ê(li/kôn diaphe/rôn

e)phai/neto . . . pai=s phu/sei philo/storgos], &c.]

[Side-note: Views of Xenophon about public and official training of

all citizens.]

The Cyropædia is a title not fairly representing the contents of the

work, which contains a more copious biography of the hero than any

which we read in Plutarch or Suetonius. But the education of Cyrus[65]

is the most remarkable part of it, in which the ethico-political

theory of Xenophon, generated by Sokratic refining criticism brought

to bear on the Spartan drill and discipline, is put forth. Professing

to describe the Persian polity, he in reality describes only the

Persian education; which is public, and prescribed by law, intended to

form the character of individuals so that they shall stand in no need

of coercive laws or penalties. Most cities leave the education of

youth to be conducted at the discretion of their parents, and think it

sufficient to enact and enforce laws forbidding, under penal sanction,

theft, murder, and various other acts enumerated as criminal. But

Xenophon (like Plato and Aristotle) disapproves of this system.[66]

His Persian polity places the citizen even from infancy under official

tuition, and aims at forming his first habits and character, as well

as at upholding them when formed, so that instead of having any

disposition of his own to commit such acts, he shall contract a

repugnance to them. He is kept under perpetual training, drill, and

active official employment throughout life, but the supervision is

most unremitting during boyhood and youth.

[Footnote 65: I have already observed that the phrase of Plato in

Legg. iii. p. 694 C may be considered as conveying his denial of the

assertion, that Cyrus had received a good education.]

[Footnote 66: Xenophon says the same about the scheme of Lykurgus at

Sparta, De Lac. Repub. c. 2.]

[Side-note: Details of (so-called) Persian education--Severe

discipline--Distribution of four ages.]

There are four categories of age:--boys, up to sixteen--young men or

ephêbi, from sixteen to twenty-six--mature men, as far as

fifty-one--above that age, elders. To each of these four classes there is

assigned a certain portion of the "free agora": _i.e._, the great

square of the city, where no buying or selling or vulgar occupation is

allowed--where the regal residence is situated, and none but dignified

functions, civil or military, are carried on. Here the boys and the

mature men assemble every day at sunrise, continue under drill, and

take their meals; while the young men even pass the night on guard

near the government house. Each of the four sections is commanded by

superintendents or officers: those superintending the boys are Elders,

who are employed in administering justice to the boys, and in teaching

them what justice is. They hold judicial trials of the boys for

various sorts of misconduct: for violence, theft, abusive words,

lying, and even for ingratitude. In cases of proved guilt, beating or

flogging is inflicted. The boys go there to learn justice (says

Xenophon), as boys in Hellas go to school to learn letters. Under this

discipline, and in learning the use of the bow and javelin besides,

they spend the time until sixteen years of age. They bring their food

with them from home (wheaten bread, with a condiment of kardamon, or

bruised seed of the nasturtium), together with a wooden cup to draw

water from the river: and they dine at public tables under the eye of

the teacher. The young men perform all the military and police duty

under the commands of the King and the Elders: moreover, they

accompany the King when he goes on a hunting expedition--which

accustoms them to fatigue and long abstinence, as well as to the

encounter of dangerous wild animals. The Elders do not take part in

these hunts, nor in any foreign military march, nor are they bound,

like the others, to daily attendance in the agora. They appoint all

officers, and try judicially the cases shown up by the

superintendents, or other accusers, of all youths or mature men who

have failed in the requirements of the public discipline. The gravest

derelictions they punish with death: where this is not called for,

they put the offender out of his class, so that he remains degraded

all his life.[67]

[Footnote 67: Xen. Cyrop. i. 2, 6-16. [Greek: kai\ ê)/n tis ê)\ e)n

e)phê/bois ê)\ e)n telei/ois a)ndra/sin e)lli/pê| ti tô=n nomi/môn,

phai/nousi me\n oi( phu/larchoi e(/kaston, kai\ tô=n a)/llôn o(

boulo/menos; oi( de\ gerai/teroi a)kou/santes e)kkri/nousin; o( de\

e)kkrithei\s a)/timos to\n loipo\n bi/on diatelei=.]]

[Side-note: Evidence of the good effect of this discipline--Hard and

dry condition of the body.]

This severe discipline is by law open to all Persians who choose to

attend and the honours of the state are attainable by all equally. But

in practice it is confined to a few: for neither boys nor men can

attend it continuously, except such as possess an independent

maintenance; nor is any one allowed to enter the regiment of youths or

mature men, unless he has previously gone through the discipline of

boyhood. The elders, by whom the higher functions are exercised, must

be persons who have passed without reproach through all the three

preceding stages: so that these offices, though legally open to all,

are in practice confined to a few--the small class of Homotimoi.[68]

[Footnote 68: Cyropæd. i. 2, 14-15.]

Such is Xenophon's conception of a perfect Polity. It consists in an

effective public discipline and drill, begun in early boyhood and

continued until old age. The evidence on which he specially insists to

prove its good results relates first to the body. The bodies of the

Persians become so dry and hard, that they neither spit, nor have

occasion to wipe their noses, nor are full of wind, nor are ever seen

to retire for the satisfaction of natural wants.[69] Besides this, the

discipline enforces complete habits of obedience, sobriety, justice,

endurance of pain and privation.

[Footnote 69: Cyrop. i. 2, 16.]

We may note here both the agreement, and the difference, between

Xenophon and Plato, as to the tests applied for measuring the goodness

of their respective disciplinarian schemes. In regard to the ethical

effects desirable (obedience, sobriety, &c.) both were agreed. But

while Plato (in Republic) dwells much besides upon the musical

training necessary, Xenophon omits this, and substitutes in its place

the working off of all the superfluous moisture of the body.[70]

[Footnote 70: See below, chap. xxxvii.]

[Side-note: Exemplary obedience of Cyrus to the public discipline--He

had learnt justice well--His award about the two coats--Lesson

inculcated upon him by the Justice-Master.]

Through the two youthful stages of this discipline Cyrus is

represented as having passed; undergoing all the fatigues as well as

the punishment (he is beaten or flogged by the superintendent[71])

with as much rigour as the rest, and even surpassing all his comrades

in endurance and exemplary obedience, not less than in the bow and the

javelin. In the lessons about justice he manifests such pre-eminence,

that he is appointed by the superintendent to administer justice to

other boys: and it is in this capacity that he is chastised for his

well-known decision, awarding the large coat to the great boy and the

little coat to the little boy, as being more convenient to both,[72]

though the proprietorship was opposite: the master impressing upon

him, as a general explanation, that the lawful or customary was the

Just.[73] Cyrus had been brought as a boy by his mother Mandanê to

visit her father, the Median king Astyages. The boy wins the affection

of Astyages and all around by his child-like frankness and

affectionate sympathy (admirably depicted in Xenophon): while he at

the same time resists the corruptions of a luxurious court, and

adheres to the simplicity of his Persian training. When Mandanê is

about to depart and to rejoin her husband Kambyses in Persis, she is

entreated by Astyages to allow Cyrus to remain with him. Cyrus himself

also desires to remain: but Mandanê hesitates to allow it: putting to

Cyrus, among other difficulties, the question--How will you learn

justice here, when the teachers of it are in Persis? To which Cyrus

replies--I am already well taught in justice: as you may see by the

fact, that my teacher made me a judge over other boys, and compelled

me to render account to him of all my proceedings.[74] Besides which,

if I am found wanting, my grandfather Astyages will make up the

deficient teaching. But (says Mandanê) justice is not the same here

under Astyages, as it is in Persis. Astyages has made himself master

of all the Medes: while among the Persians equality is accounted

justice. Your father Kambyses both performs all that the city directs,

and receives nothing more than what the city allows: the measure for

him is, not his own inclination, but the law. You must therefore be

cautious of staying here, lest you should bring back with you to

Persia habits of despotism, and of grasping at more than any one else,

contracted from your grandfather: for if you come back in this spirit,

you will assuredly be flogged to death. Never fear, mother (answered

Cyrus): my grandfather teaches every one round him to claim less than

his due--not more than his due: and he will teach me the same.[75]

[Footnote 71: Cyrop. i. 3, 17; i. 5, 4.]

[Footnote 72: Cyrop. i. 3, 17. This is an ingenious and apposite

illustration of the law of property.]

[Footnote 73: Cyrop. i. 3, 17. [Greek: e)/peita de\ e)/phê to\ me\n

no/mimon di/kaion ei)=nai; to\ de\ a)/nomon, bi/aion.]]

[Footnote 74: Cyropæd. i. 4, 2.]

[Footnote 75: Cyrop. i. 3, 17-18. [Greek: O(/pôs ou)=n mê\ a)polê=|

mastigou/menos, e)peida\n oi)/koi ê)=|s, a)\n para\ tou/tou mathô\n

ê(/kê|s a)nti\ tou= basilikou= to\ turanniko/n, e)n ô(=| e)sti to\

ple/on oi)/esthai chrê=nai pa/ntôn e)/chein.]]

[Side-note: Xenophon's conception of the Sokratic problems--He does

not recognise the Sokratic order of solution of those problems.]

The portion of the Cyropædia just cited deserves especial attention,

in reference to Xenophon as a companion and pupil of Sokrates. The

reader has been already familiarised throughout this work with the

questions habitually propounded and canvassed by Sokrates--What is

Justice, Temperance, Courage, &c.? Are these virtues teachable? If

they are so, where are the teachers of them to be found?--for he

professed to have looked in vain for any teachers.[76] I have farther

remarked that Sokrates required these questions to be debated in the

order here stated. That is--you must first know what Justice is,

before you can determine whether it be teachable or not--nay, before

you are in a position to affirm any thing at all about it, or to

declare any particular acts to be either just or unjust.[77]

[Footnote 76: Xenoph. Memor. i. 16, iv. 4, 5.]

[Footnote 77: See below, ch. xiii., ch. xxii, and ch. xxiii.]

Now Xenophon, in his description of the Persian official discipline,

provides a sufficient answer to the second question--Whether justice

is teachable--and where are the teachers thereof? It _is_ teachable:

there are official teachers appointed: and every boy passes through a

course of teaching prolonged for several years.--But Xenophon does not

at all recognise the Sokratic requirement, that the first question

shall be fully canvassed and satisfactorily answered, before the

second is approached. The first question is indeed answered in a

certain way--though the answer appears here only as an _obiter

dictum_, and is never submitted to any Elenchus at all. The master

explains--What is Justice?--by telling Cyrus, "That the lawful is

just, and that the lawless is violent". Now if we consider this as

preceptorial--as an admonition to the youthful Cyrus how he ought to

decide judicial cases--it is perfectly reasonable: "Let your decisions

be conformable to the law or custom of the country". But if we

consider it as a portion of philosophy or reasoned truth--as a

definition or rational explanation of Justice, advanced by a

respondent who is bound to defend it against the Sokratic

cross-examination--we shall find it altogether insufficient. Xenophon

himself tells us here, that Law or Custom is one thing among the

Medes, and the reverse among the Persians: accordingly an action which

is just in the one place will be unjust in the other. It is by

objections of this kind that Sokrates, both in Plato and Xenophon,

refutes explanations propounded by his respondents.[78]

[Footnote 78: Plato, Republ. v. p. 479 A. [Greek: tou/tôn tô=n pollô=n

kalô=n mô=n ti e)/stin, o( ou)k ai)schro\n phanê/setai? kai\ tô=n

dikai/ôn, o(\ ou)k a)/dikon? kai\ tô=n o(si/ôn, o(\ ou)k a)no/sion?]

Compare Republ. i. p. 331 C, and the conversation of So krates with

Euthydêmus in the Xenophontic Memorab. iv. 2, 18-19, and Cyropædia, i.

6, 27-34, about what is just and good morality towards enemies.

We read in Pascal, Pensées, i. 6, 8-9:--

"On ne voit presque rien de juste et d'injuste, qui ne change de

qualité en changeant de climat. Trois degrés d'élévation du pôle

renversent toute la jurisprudence. Un méridien décide de la verité: en

peu d'années de possession, les loix fondamentales changent: le droit

a ses époques. Plaisante justice, qu'une rivière ou une montagne

borne! Vérité au deçà des Pyrénées--erreur au delà!

"Ils confessent que la justice n'est pas dans les coutumes, mais

qu'elle reside dans les loix naturelles, connues en tout pays.

Certainement ils la soutiendraient opiniâtrement, si la témérité du

hasard qui a semé les loix humaines en avait rencontré au moins une

qui fut universelle: mais la plaisanterie est telle, que le caprice

des hommes s'est si bien diversifié, qu'il n'y en a point.

"Le larcin, l'inceste, le meurtre des enfans et des pères, tout a eu

sa place entre les actions vertueuses. Se peut-il rien de plus

plaisant, qu'un homme ait droit de me tuer parcequ'il demeure au-delà

de l'eau, et que son prince a querelle avec le mien, quoique je n'en

aie aucune avec lui?

"L'un dit que l'essence de la justice est l'autorité du législateur:

l'autre, la commodité du souverain: l'autre, la coutume présente--et

c'est le plus sûr. Rien, suivant la seule raison, n'est juste de soi:

tout branle avec le temps. La coutume fait toute l'équité, par cela

seul qu'elle est reçue: c'est le fondement mystique de son autorité.

Qui la ramène à son principe, l'anéantit."]

[Side-note: Definition given by Sokrates of Justice--Insufficient to

satisfy the exigencies of the Sokratic Elenchus.]

Though the explanation of Justice here given is altogether untenable,

yet we shall find it advanced by Sokrates himself as complete and

conclusive, in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, where he is conversing

with the Sophist Hippias. That Sophist is represented as at first

urging difficulties against it, but afterwards as concurring with

Sokrates: who enlarges upon the definition, and extols it as perfectly

satisfactory. If Sokrates really delivered this answer to Hippias, as

a general definition of Justice--we may learn from it how much greater

was his negative acuteness in overthrowing the definitions of others,

than his affirmative perspicacity in discovering unexceptionable

definitions of his own. This is the deficiency admitted by himself in

the Platonic Apology--lamented by friends like Kleitophon--arraigned

by opponents like Hippias and Thrasymachus. Xenophon, whose intellect

was practical rather than speculative, appears not to be aware of it.

He does not feel the depth and difficulty of the Sokratic problems,

even while he himself enunciates them. He does not appreciate all the

conditions of a good definition, capable of being maintained against

that formidable cross-examination (recounted by himself) whereby

Sokrates humbled the youth Euthydêmus: still less does he enter into

the spirit of that Sokratic order of precedence (declared in the

negative Platonic dialogues), in the study of philosophical

questions:--First define Justice, and find a definition of it such as

you can maintain against a cross-examining adversary before you

proceed either to affirm or deny any predicates concerning it. The

practical advice and reflexions of Xenophon are, for the most part,

judicious and penetrating. But he falls very short when he comes to

deal with philosophical theory:--with reasoned truth, and with the

Sokratic Elenchus as a test for discriminating such truth from the

false, the doubtful, or the not-proven.

[Side-note: Biography of Cyrus--constant military success earned by

suitable qualities--Variety of characters and situations.]

Cyrus is allowed by his mother to remain amidst the luxuries of the

Median court. It is a part of his admirable disposition that he

resists all its temptations,[79] and goes back to the hard fare and

discipline of the Persians with the same exemplary obedience as

before. He is appointed by the Elders to command the Persian

contingent which is sent to assist Kyaxares (son of Astyages), king of

Media; and he thus enters upon that active military career which is

described as occupying his whole life, until his conquest of Babylon,

and his subsequent organization of the great Persian empire. His

father Kambyses sends him forth with excellent exhortations, many of

which are almost in the same words as those which we read ascribed to

Sokrates in the Memorabilia. In the details of Cyrus's biography which

follow, the stamp of Sokratic influence is less marked, yet seldom

altogether wanting. The conversation of Sokrates had taught Xenophon

how to make the most of his own large experience and observation. His

biography of Cyrus represents a string of successive situations,

calling forth and displaying the aptitude of the hero for command. The

epical invention with which these situations are imagined--the variety

of characters introduced, Araspes, Abradates, Pantheia, Chrysantas,

Hystaspes, Gadatas, Gobryas, Tigranes, &c.--the dramatic propriety

with which each of these persons is animated as speaker, and made to

teach a lesson bearing on the predetermined conclusion--all these are

highly honourable to the Xenophontic genius, but all of them likewise

bespeak the Companion of Sokrates. Xenophon dwells, with evident

pleasure, on the details connected with the _rationale_ of military

proceedings: the wants and liabilities of soldiers, the advantages or

disadvantages of different weapons or different modes of marshalling,

the duties of the general as compared with those of the soldier, &c.

Cyrus is not merely always ready with his orders, but also competent

as a speaker to explain the propriety of what he orders.[80] We have

the truly Athenian idea, that persuasive speech is the precursor of

intelligent and energetic action: and that it is an attribute

essentially necessary for a general, for the purpose of informing,

appeasing, re-assuring, the minds of the soldiers.[81] This, as well

as other duties and functions of a military commander, we find laid

down generally in the conversations of Sokrates,[82] who conceives

these functions, in their most general aspect, as a branch of the

comprehensive art of guiding or governing men. What Sokrates thus

enunciates generally, is exemplified in detail throughout the life of

Cyrus.

[Footnote 79: Cyropæd. i. 5, 1.]

[Footnote 80: Cyropæd. v. 5, 46. [Greek: lektikô/tatos kai\

praktikô/tatos]. Compare the Memorabilia, iv. 6, 1-15.]

[Footnote 81: Memorab. iii. 3, 11; Hipparch. viii. 22; Cyropæd. vi. 2,

13. Compare the impressive portion of the funeral oration delivered by

Perikles in Thucydides, ii. 40.]

[Footnote 82: See the four first chapters of the third book of the

Xenophontic Memorabilia. The treatise of Xenophon called [Greek:

I(pparchiko\s] enumerates also the general duties required from a

commander of cavalry: among these, [Greek: pseudauto/moloi] are

mentioned (iv. 7). Now the employment, with effect, of a [Greek:

pseudauto/molos], is described with much detail in the Cyropædia. See

the case of Araspes (vi. 1, 37, vi. 3, 16).]

[Side-note: Generous and amiable qualities of Cyrus, Abradates and

Pantheia.]

Throughout all the Cyropædia, the heroic qualities and personal agency

of Cyrus are always in the foreground, working with unerring success

and determining every thing. He is moreover recommended to our

sympathies, not merely by the energy and judgment of a leader, but

also by the amiable qualities of a generous man--by the remarkable

combination of self-command with indulgence towards others--by

considerate lenity towards subdued enemies like Kroesus and the

Armenian prince--even by solicitude shown that the miseries of war

should fall altogether on the fighting men, and that the cultivators

of the land should be left unmolested by both parties.[83] Respecting

several other persons in the narrative, too--the Armenian Tigranes,

Gadatas, Gobryas, &c.--the adventures and scenes described are

touching: but the tale of Abradates and Pantheia transcends them all,

and is perhaps the most pathetic recital embodied in the works of

Hellenic antiquity.[84] In all these narratives the vein of sentiment

is neither Sokratic nor Platonic, but belongs to Xenophon himself.

[Footnote 83: Cyrop. iii. 1, 10-38, vii. 2, 9-29, v. 4, 26, vi. 1, 37.

[Greek: A)lla\ su\ me\n, ô)= Ku=re, kai\ tau=ta o(/moios ei)=,

pra=|o/s te kai\ suggnô/môn tô=n a)nthrôpi/nôn a(martêma/tôn].\

[Footnote 84: Cyrop. vii. 3.]

[Side-note: Scheme of government devised by Cyrus when his conquests

are completed--Oriental despotism, wisely arranged.]

This last remark may also be made respecting the concluding

proceedings of Cyrus, after he has thoroughly completed his conquests,

and when he establishes arrangements for governing them permanently.

The scheme of government which Xenophon imagines and introduces him as

organizing, is neither Sokratic nor Platonic, nor even Hellenic: it

would probably have been as little acceptable to his friend Agesilaus,

the marked "hater of Persia,"[85] as to any Athenian politician. It is

altogether an Oriental despotism, skilfully organized both for the

security of the despot and for enabling him to keep a vigorous hold on

subjects distant as well as near: such as the younger Cyrus might

possibly have attempted, if his brother Artaxerxes had been slain at

Kunaxa, instead of himself. "Eam conditionem esse imperandi, ut non

aliter ratio constet, quam si uni reddatur"[86]--is a maxim repugnant

to Hellenic ideas, and not likely to be rendered welcome even by the

regulations of detail with which Xenophon surrounds it; judicious as

these regulations are for their contemplated purpose. The amiable and

popular character which Cyrus has maintained from youth upwards, and

by means of which he has gained an uninterrupted series of victories,

is difficult to be reconciled with the insecurity, however imposing,

in which he dwells as Great King. When we find that he accounts it a

necessary precaution to surround himself with eunuchs, on the express

ground that they are despised by every one else and therefore likely

to be more faithful to their master--when we read also that in

consequence of the number of disaffected subjects, he is forced to

keep a guard composed of twenty thousand soldiers taken from poor

Persian mountaineers[87]--we find realised, in the case of the

triumphant Cyrus, much of that peril and insecurity which the despot

Hieron had so bitterly deplored in his conversation with Simonides.

However unsatisfactory the ideal of government may be, which Plato

lays out either in the Republic or the Leges--that which Xenophon sets

before us is not at all more acceptable, in spite of the splendid

individual portrait whereby he dazzles our imagination. Few Athenians

would have exchanged Athens either for Babylon under Cyrus, or for

Plato's Magnêtic colony in Krete.

[Footnote 85: Xenoph. Agesilaus, vii. 7. [Greek: ei) d' au)= kalo\n

kai\ _misope/rsên_ ei)=nai--e)xe/pleusen, o(/, ti du/naito kako\n;

poiê/sôn to\n ba/rbaron.]]

[Footnote 86: Tacit. Annal. i. 6.]

[Footnote 87: Xen. Cyrop. vii. 5, 58-70.]

[Side-note: Persian present reality--is described by Xenophon as

thoroughly depraved, in striking contrast to the establishment of

Cyrus.]

The Xenophontic government is thus noway admirable, even as an ideal.

But he himself presents it only as an ideal--or (which is the same

thing in the eyes of a present companion of Sokrates) as a

quasi-historical fact, belonging to the unknown and undetermined past.

When Xenophon talks of what the Persians _are now_, he presents us with

nothing but a shocking contrast to this ideal; nothing but vice,

corruption, degeneracy of every kind, exorbitant sensuality,

faithlessness and cowardice.[88] His picture of Persia is like that of

the of Platonic Kosmos, which we can read in the Timæus:[89] a

splendid Kosmos in its original plan and construction, but full of

defects and evil as it actually exists. The strength and excellence of

the Xenophontic orderly despotism dies with its heroic beginner. His

two sons (as Plato remarked) do not receive the same elaborate

training and discipline as himself: nor can they be restrained, even

by the impressive appeal which he makes to them on his death-bed, from

violent dissension among themselves, and misgovernment of every

kind.[90]

[Footnote 88: Cyrop. viii. 8.]

[Footnote 89: See below, ch. xxxviii.]

[Footnote 90: Cyropæd. viii. 7, 9-19: Plato, Legg. iii. p. 694 D.]

[Side-note: Xenophon has good experience of military and equestrian

proceedings--No experience of finance and commerce.]

Whatever we may think of the political ideal of Xenophon, his

Cyropædia is among the glories of the Sokratic family; as an excellent

specimen of the philosophical imagination, in carrying a general

doctrine into illustrative details--and of the epical imagination in

respect to varied characters and touching incident. In stringing

together instructive conversations, moreover, it displays the same art

which we trace in the Memorabilia, Oekonomikus, Hieron, &c., and which

is worthy of the attentive companion of Sokrates. Whenever Xenophon

talks about military affairs, horsemanship, agriculture,

house-management, &c., he is within the range of personal experience of

his own; and his recommendations, controlled as they thus are by known

realities, are for the most part instructive and valuable. Such is the

case not merely with the Cyropædia and Oekonomikus, but also in his

two short treatises, De Re Equestri and De Officio Magistri Equitum.

But we cannot say so much when he discusses plans of finance.

[Side-note: Discourse of Xenophon on Athenian finance and the

condition of Athens. His admiration of active commerce and variety of

pursuits.]

We read among his works a discourse composed after his sentence of

exile had been repealed, and when he was very old, seemingly not

earlier than 355 B.C.[91]--criticising the actual condition of Athens,

and proposing various measures for the improvement of the finances, as

well as for relief of the citizens from poverty. He begins this

discourse by a sentiment thoroughly Sokratic and Platonic, which would

serve almost as a continuation of the Cyropædia. The government of a

city will be measured by the character and ability of its leaders.[92]

He closes it by another sentiment equally Sokratic and Platonic;

advising that before his measures are adopted, special messengers

shall be sent to Delphi and Dodona; to ascertain whether the Gods

approve them--and if they approve, to which Gods they enjoin that the

initiatory sacrifices shall be offered.[93] But almost everything in

the discourse, between the first and last sentences, is in a vein not

at all Sokratic--in a vein, indeed, positively anti-Platonic and

anti-Spartan. We have already seen that wealth, gold and silver,

commerce, influx of strangers, &c., are discouraged as much as possible

by Plato, and by the theory (though evaded partially in practice) of

Sparta. Now it is precisely these objects which Xenophon, in the

treatise before us, does his utmost to foster and extend at Athens.

Nothing is here said about the vulgarising influence of trade as

compared with farming, which we read in the Oekonomikus: nor about the

ethical and pædagogic dictation which pervades so much of the

Cyropædia, and reigns paramount throughout the Platonic Republic and

Leges. Xenophon takes Athens as she stands, with great variety of

tastes, active occupation, and condition among the inhabitants: her

mild climate and productive territory, especially her veins of silver

and her fine marble: her importing and exporting merchants, her

central situation, as convenient entrepôt for commodities produced in

the most distant lands:[94] her skilful artisans and craftsmen: her

monied capitalists: and not these alone, but also the congregation and

affluence of fine artists, intellectual men, philosophers, Sophists,

poets, rhapsodes, actors, &c.: last, though not least, the temples

adorning her akropolis, and the dramatic representations exhibited at

her Dionysiac festivals, which afforded the highest captivation to eye

as well as ear, and attracted strangers from all quarters as

visitors.[95] Xenophon extols these charms of Athens with a warmth

which reminds us of the Periklean funeral oration in Thucydides.[96]

He no longer speaks like one whose heart and affections are with the

Spartan drill: still less does he speak like Plato--to whom (as we see

both by the Republic and the Leges) such artistic and poetical

exhibitions were abominations calling for censorial repression--and in

whose eyes gold, silver, commerce, abundant influx of strangers, &c.,

were dangerous enemies of all civic virtue.

[Footnote 91: Xenophon, [Greek: Po/roi--ê(\ peri\ Proso/dôn]. De

Vectigalibus. See Schneider's Proleg. to this treatise, pp. 138-140.]

[Footnote 92: De Vectig. i. 1. [Greek: e)gô\ me\n tou=to a)ei/ pote

nomi/zo, o(poi=oi/ tines a)\n oi( prosta/tai ô)=si, toiau/tas kai\

ta\s politei/as gi/gnesthai.]]

[Footnote 93: De Vect. vi. 2. Compare this with Anabas. iii. 1, 5,

where Sokrates reproves Xenophon for his evasive manner of putting a

question to the Delphian God. Xenophon here adopts the plenary manner

enjoined by Sokrates.]

[Footnote 94: De Vectig. c. i. 2-3.]

[Footnote 95: De Vect. v. 3-4. [Greek: Ti/ de\ oi( polue/laioi? ti/

de\ oi( polupro/batoi? ti/ de\ oi( gnô/mê| kai\ a)rguri/ô| duna/menoi

chrêmati/zesthai? Kai\ mê\n cheirote/chnai te kai\ sophistai\ kai\

philo/sophoi; oi( de\ poiêtai\, oi( de\ ta\ tou/tôn

metacheirizo/menoi, oi( de\ a)xiothea/tôn ê)\ a)xiakou/stôn i(erô=n

ê)\ o(si/ôn e)pithumou=ntes], &c.]

[Footnote 96: Thucydid. ii. 34-42; Plutarch, Periklês, c. 12. Compare

Xenophon, Republ. Athen. ii. 7, iii. 8.]

[Side-note: Recognised poverty among the citizens. Plan for

improvement.]

Yet while recognising all these charms and advantages, Xenophon finds

himself compelled to lament great poverty among the citizens; which

poverty (he says) is often urged by the leading men as an excuse for

unjust proceedings. Accordingly he comes forward with various

financial suggestions, by means of which he confidently anticipates

that every Athenian citizen may obtain a comfortable maintenance from

the public.[97]

[Footnote 97: De Vectig. iv. 33. [Greek: kai\ e)moi\ me\n dê\

ei)/rêtai, ô(s a)\n ê(gou=mai kataskeuasthei/sês tê=s po/leôs i(kanê\n

a)\n pa=sin A)thênai/ois trophê\n a)po\ koinou= gene/sthai.]]

[Side-note: Advantage of a large number of Metics. How these may be

encouraged.]

First, he dwells upon the great advantage of encouraging metics, or

foreigners resident at Athens, each of whom paid an annual capitation

tax to the treasury. There were already many such, not merely Greeks,

but Orientals also, Lydians, Phrygians, Syrians, &c.:[98] and by

judicious encouragement all expatriated men everywhere might be made

to prefer the agreeable residence at Athens, thus largely increasing

the annual amount of the tax. The metics ought (he says) to be

exempted from military service (which the citizens ought to perform

and might perform alone), but to be admitted to the honours of the

equestrian duty, whenever they were rich enough to afford it: and

farther, to be allowed the liberty of purchasing land and building

houses in the city. Moreover not merely resident metics, but also

foreign merchants who came as visitors, conducting an extensive

commerce--ought to be flattered by complimentary votes and occasional

hospitalities: while the curators of the harbour, whose function it

was to settle disputes among them, should receive prizes if they

adjudicated equitably and speedily.[99]

[Footnote: 98: De Vect. ii. 3-7.]

[Footnote: 99: De Vect. iii. 2-6.]

[Side-note: Proposal to raise by voluntary contributions a large sum

to be employed as capital by the city. Distribution of three oboli per

head per day to all the citizens.]

All this (Xenophon observes) will require only friendly and

considerate demonstrations. His farther schemes are more ambitious,

not to be effected without a large outlay. He proposes to raise an

ample fund for the purposes of the city, by voluntary contributions;

which he expects to obtain not merely from private Athenians and

metics, rich and in easy circumstances--but also from other cities,

and even from foreign despots, kings, satraps, &c. The tempting

inducement will be, that the names of all contributors with their

respecting contributions will be inscribed on public tablets, and

permanently commemorated as benefactors of the city.[100] Contributors

(he says) are found, for the outfit of a fleet, where they expect no

return: much more will they come forward here, where a good return

will accrue. The fund so raised will be employed under public

authority with the most profitable result, in many different ways. The

city will build docks and warehouses for bonding goods--houses near

the harbour to be let to merchants--merchant-vessels to be let out on

freight. But the largest profit will be obtained by working the silver

mines at Laureion in Attica. The city will purchase a number of

foreign slaves, and will employ them under the superintendence of old

free citizens who are past the age of labour, partly in working these

mines for public account, each of the ten tribes employing one tenth

part of the number--partly by letting them out to private mining

undertakers, at so much per diem for each slave: the slaves being

distinguished by a conspicuous public stamp, and the undertaker

binding himself under penalty always to restore the same number of

them as he received.[101] Such competition between the city and the

private mining undertakers will augment the total produce, and will be

no loss to either, but wholesome for both. The mines will absorb as

many workmen as are put into them: for in the production of silver

(Xenophon argues) there can never be any glut, as there is sometimes

in corn, wine, or oil. Silver is always in demand, and is not lessened

in value by increase of quantity. Every one is anxious to get it, and

has as much pleasure in hoarding it under ground as in actively

employing it.[102] The scheme, thus described, may (if found

necessary) be brought into operation by degrees, a certain number of

slaves being purchased annually until the full total is made up. From

these various financial projects, and especially from the fund thus

employed as capital under the management of the Senate, the largest

returns are expected. Amidst the general abundance which will ensue,

the religious festivals will be celebrated with increased splendour--the

temples will be repaired, the docks and walls will be put in

complete order--the priests, the Senate, the magistrates, the

horsemen, will receive the full stipends which the old custom of

Athens destined for them.[103] But besides all these, the object which

Xenophon has most at heart will be accomplished: the poor citizens

will be rescued from poverty. There will be a regular distribution

among all citizens, per head and equally. Three oboli, or half a

drachma, will be allotted daily to each, to poor and rich alike. For

the poor citizens, this will provide a comfortable subsistence,

without any contribution on their part: the poverty now prevailing

will thus be alleviated. The rich, like the poor, receive the daily

triobolon as a free gift: but if they even compute it as interest for

their investments, they will find that the rate of interest is full

and satisfactory, like the rate on bottomry. Three oboli per day

amount in the year of 360 days to 180 drachmæ: now if a rich man has

contributed ten minæ ( = 1000 drachmæ), he will thus receive interest

at the rate of 18 per cent. per annum: if another less rich citizen

has contributed one mina ( = 100 drachmæ), he will receive interest at

the rate of 180 per cent. per annum: more than he could realise in any

other investment.[104]

[Footnote 100: De Vect. iii. 11.]

[Footnote 101: De Vect. iv. 13-19.]

[Footnote 102: De Vect. iv. 4-7.]

[Footnote 103: De Vectig. vi. 1-2. [Greek: Kai\ o( me\n dê=mos

trophê=s eu)porê/sei, oi( de\ plou/sioi tê=s ei)s to\n po/lemon

dapa/nês a)pallagê/sontai, periousi/as de\ pollê=s genome/nês,

megaloprepe/steron me\n e)/ti ê(\ nu=n ta\s e(orta\s a)/xomen, i(era\

d' e)piskeua/somen, tei/chê de\ kai\ neô/ria a)northô/somen, i(ereu=si

de\ kai\ boulê=| kai\ a)rchai=s kai\ i(ppeu=si ta\ pa/tria

a)podô/somen--pô=s ou)k a)/xion ô(s ta/chista tou/tois e)gcheirei=n,

i(/na e)/ti e)ph' ê(mô=n e)pi/dômen tê\n po/lin met' a)sphalei/as

eu)daimonou=san?]

[Footnote 104: De Vectig. iii. 9-12.]

[Side-note: Purpose and principle of this distribution.]

Half a drachma, or three oboli, per day, was the highest rate of pay

ever received (the rate varied at different times) by the citizens as

Dikasts and Ekklesiasts, for attending in judicature or in assembly.

It is this amount of pay which Xenophon here proposes to ensure to

every citizen, without exception, out of the public treasury; which

(he calculates) would be enriched by his project so as easily to bear

such a disbursement. He relieves the poor citizens from poverty by

making them all pensioners on the public treasury, with or without

service rendered, or the pretence of service. He strains yet farther

the dangerous principle of the Theôrikon, without the same excuse as

can be shown for the Theôrikon itself on religious grounds.[105] If

such a proposition had been made by Kleon, Hyperbolus, Kleophon,

Agyrrhius, &c., it would have been dwelt upon by most historians of

Greece as an illustration of the cacoethes of democracy--to extract

money, somehow or other, from the rich, for the purpose of keeping the

poor in comfort. Not one of the democratical leaders, so far as we

know, ever ventured to propose so sweeping a measure: we have it here

from the pen of the oligarchical Xenophon.

[Footnote 105: Respecting the Theôrikon at Athens, see my 'History of

Greece,' ch. 88, pp. 492-498.]

[Side-note: Visionary anticipations of Xenophon, financial and

commercial.]

But we must of course discuss Xenophon's scheme as a whole: the

aggregate enlargement of revenue, from his various visionary new ways

and means, on one side--against the new mode and increased amount of

expenditure, on the other side. He would not have proposed such an

expenditure, if he had not thoroughly believed in the correctness of

his own anticipations, both as to the profits of the mining scheme,

and as to the increase of receipts from other sources: such as the

multiplication of tax-paying Metics, the rent paid by them for the new

houses to be built by the city, the increase of the harbour dues from

expanded foreign trade. But of these anticipations, even the least

unpromising are vague and uncertain: while the prospects of the mining

scheme appear thoroughly chimerical. Nothing is clear or certain

except the disbursement. We scarcely understand how Xenophon could

seriously have imagined, either that voluntary contributors could have

been found to subscribe the aggregate fund as he proposes--or that, if

subscribed, it could have yielded the prodigious return upon which he

reckons. We must, however, recollect that he had no familiarity with

finance, or with the conditions and liabilities of commerce, or with

the raising of money from voluntary contributors for any collective

purpose. He would not have indulged in similar fancies if the question

had been about getting together supplies for an army. Practical

Athenian financiers would probably say, in criticising his financial

project--what Heraldus[106] observes upon some views of his opponent

Salmasius, about the relations of capital and interest in

Attica--"Somnium est hominis harum rerum, etiam cum vigilat, nihil

scientis".[107] The financial management of Athens was doubtless

defective in many ways: but it would not have been improved in the

hands of Xenophon--any more than the administrative and judiciary

department of Athens would have become better under the severe regimen

of Plato.[108] The merits of the Sokratic companions--and great merits

they were--lay in the region of instructive theory.

[Footnote 106: This passage of Heraldus is cited by M. Boeckh in his

Public Economy of Athens, B. iv. ch. 21, p. 606, Eng. Trans. In that

chapter of M. Boeckh's work (pp. 600-610) some very instructive pages

will be found about the Xenophontic scheme here noticed.

I will however mention one or two points on which my understanding of

the scheme differs from his. He says (p. 605):--"The author supposes

that the profit upon this speculation would amount to three oboli per

day, so that the subscribers would obtain a very high per centage on

their shares. Xenophon supposes unequal contributions, according to

the different amounts of property, agreeable to the principles of a

property-tax, but an equal distribution of the receipts for the

purpose of favouring and aiding the poor. What Xenophon is speaking of

is an income annually arising upon each share, either equal to or

exceeding the interest of the loans on bottomry. Where, however, is

the security that the undertaking would produce three oboli a day to

each subscriber?"

I concur in most of what is here said; but M. Boeckh states the matter

too much as if the three oboli per diem were a real return arising

from the scheme, and payable to each shareholder upon each _share_ as

he calls it. This is an accident of the case, not the essential

feature. The poorest citizens--for whose benefit, more than for any

other object, the scheme is contrived--would not be shareholders at

all: they would be too poor to contribute anything, yet each of them

would receive his triobolon like the rest. Moreover, many citizens,

even though able to pay, might hold back, and decline to pay: yet

still each would receive as much. And again, the foreigners, kings,

satraps, &c., would be contributors, but would receive nothing at all.

The distribution of the triobolon would be made to citizens only.

Xenophon does indeed state the proportion of receipt to payments in

the cases of some rich contributors, as an auxiliary motive to

conciliate them. Bat we ought not to treat this receipt as if it were

a real return yielded by the public mining speculation, or as profit

actually brought in.

As I conceive the scheme, the daily triobolon, and the respective

contributions furnished, have no premeditated ratio, no essential

connection with each other. The daily payment of the triobolon to

every citizen indiscriminately, is a new and heavy burden which

Xenophon imposes upon the city. But this is only one among many other

burdens, as we may see by cap. 6. In order to augment the wealth of

the city, so as to defray these large expenses, he proposes several

new financial measures. Of these the most considerable was the public

mining speculation; but it did not stand alone. The financial scheme

of Xenophon, both as to receipts and as to expenditure, is more

general than M. Boeckh allows for.]

[Footnote 107: It is truly surprising to read in one of Hume's Essays

the following sentence. Essay XII. on Civil Liberty, p. 107 ed. of

Hume's Philosophical Works, 1825.

"The Athenians, though governed by a Republic, paid near two hundred

per cent for those sums of money which any emergence made it necessary

for them to borrow, as we learn from Xenophon."

In the note Hume quotes the following passage from this discourse, De

Vectigalibus:--[Greek: Ktê=sin de\ a)p' ou)deno\s a)\n ou(/tô kalê\n

ktê/sainto, ô(/sper a)ph' ou)= a)\n protele/sôsin ei)s tê\n

a)phormê/n. Oi( de/ ge plei=stoi A)thênai/ôn plei/ona lê/psontai kat'

e)niauto\n ê)\ o(/sa a)\n ei)sene/gkôsin. Oi( ga\r mna=n

protele/santes, e)ggu\s duoi=n mna=|n pro/sodon e)/xousi. O(\ dokei=

tô=n a)nthrôpi/nôn a)sphale/stato/n te kai\ poluchroniô/taton

ei)=nai].

Hume has been misled by dwelling upon one or two separate sentences.

If he had taken into consideration the whole discourse and its

declared scope, he would have seen that it affords no warrant for any

inference as to the rate of interest paid by the Athenian public when

they wanted to borrow. In Xenophon's scheme there is no fixed

proportion between what a contributor to the fund would pay and what

he would receive. The triobolon received is a fixed sum to each

citizen, whereas the contributions of _each_ would be different.

Moreover the foreigners and metics would contribute without receiving

anything, while the poor citizens would receive their triobolon per

head, without having contributed anything.]

[Footnote 108: Aristeides the Rhetor has some forcible remarks in

defending Rhetoric and the Athenian statesmen against the bitter

criticisms of Plato in the Gorgias: pointing out that Plato himself

had never made trial of the difficulty of governing any real community

of men, or of the necessities under which a statesman in actual

political life was placed (Orat. xlv. [Greek: Peri\ R(êtorikê=s], pp.

109-110, Dindorf).]

[Side-note: Xenophon exhorts his countrymen to maintain peace.]

Xenophon accompanies his financial scheme with a strong recommendation

to his countrymen that they should abstain from warlike enterprises

and maintain peace with every one. He expatiates on the manifest

advantages, nay, even on the necessity, of continued peace, under the

actual poverty of the city: for the purpose of recruiting the

exhausted means of the citizens, as well as of favouring his own new

projects for the improvement of finance and commerce. While he

especially deprecates any attempt on the part of Athens to regain by

force her lost headship over the Greeks, he at the same time holds out

hopes that this dignity would be spontaneously tendered to her, if,

besides abstaining from all violence, she conducted herself with a

liberal and conciliatory spirit towards all: if she did her best to

adjust differences among other cities, and to uphold the autonomy of

the Delphian temple.[109] As far as we can judge, such pacific

exhortations were at that time wise and politic. Athens had just then

concluded peace (355 B.C.) after the three years of ruinous and

unsuccessful war, called the Social War, carried on against her

revolted allies Chios, Kos, Rhodes, and Byzantium. To attempt the

recovery of empire by force was most mischievous. There was indeed one

purpose, for which she was called upon by a wise forecast to put forth

her strength--to check the aggrandisement of Philip in Macedonia. But

this was a distant purpose: and the necessity, though it became every

year more urgent, was not so prominently manifest[110] in 355 B.C. as

to affect the judgment of Xenophon. At that early day, Demosthenes

himself did not see the danger from Macedonia: his first Philippic was

delivered in 351 B.C., and even then his remonstrances, highly

creditable to his own forecast, made little impression on others. But

when we read the financial oration De Symmoriis we appreciate his

sound administrative and practical judgment; compared with the

benevolent dreams and ample public largess in which Xenophon here

indulges.[111]

[Footnote 109: Xenoph. De Vectig. v. 3-8.]

[Footnote 110: See my 'History of Greece,' ch. 86, p. 325 seq.

I agree with Boeckh, Public Econ. of Athens, ut suprà, p. 601, that

this pamphlet of Xenophon is probably to be referred to the close of

the Social War, about 355 B.C.]

[Footnote 111: Respecting the first Philippic, and the Oratio De

Symmoriis of Demosthenes, see my 'History of Greece,' ch. 87,

pp. 401-431.]

[Side-note: Difference of the latest compositions of Xenophon and

Plato, from their point of view in the earlier.]

We have seen that Plato died in 347 B.C., having reached the full age

of eighty: Xenophon must have attained the same age nearly, and may

perhaps have attained it completely--though we do not know the exact

year of his death. With both these two illustrious companions of

Sokrates, the point of view is considerably modified in their last

compositions as compared to their earlier. Xenophon shows the

alteration not less clearly than Plato, though in an opposite

direction. His discourse on the Athenian revenues differs quite as

much from the Anabasis, Cyropædia, and Oekonomikus--as the Leges and

Epinomis differ from any of Plato's earlier works. Whatever we may

think of the financial and commercial anticipations of Xenophon, his

pamphlet on the Athenian revenues betokens a warm sympathy for his

native city--a genuine appreciation of her individual freedom and her

many-sided intellectual activity--an earnest interest in her actual

career, and even in the extension of her commercial and manufacturing

wealth. In these respects it recommends itself to our feelings more

than the last Platonic production--Leges and Epinomis--composed nearly

at the same time, between 356-347 B.C. While Xenophon in old age,

becoming reconciled to his country, forgets his early passion for the

Spartan drill and discipline, perpetual, monotonous, unlettered--we

find in the senility of Plato a more cramping limitation of the

varieties of human agency--a stricter compression, even of individual

thought and speech, under the infallible official orthodoxy--a more

extensive use of the pædagogic rod and the censorial muzzle than he

had ever proposed before.

In thus taking an unwilling leave of the Sokratic family, represented

by these two venerable survivors--to both of whom the students of

Athenian letters and philosophy are so deeply indebted--I feel some

satisfaction in the belief, that both of them died, as they were born,

citizens of free Athens and of unconquered Hellas: and that neither of

them was preserved to an excessive old age, like their contemporary

Isokrates, to witness the extinction of Hellenic autonomy by the

battle of Chæroneia.[112]

[Footnote 112: Compare the touching passage in Tacitus's description

of the death of Agricola, c. 44-45.

"Festinatæ mortis grande solatium tulit, evasisse postremum illud

tempus," &c.]