Xenophon (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Xenophon

There is none of the ancient Greek authors whose personality stands more clearly before us than that of Xenophon. We owe this entirely to his own writings, for external notices of him are meagre and untrust worthy. But the historian of the expedition of Cyrus, the recorder of the conversations of Socrates, and the varied essayist on such a lot of topics of ancient Greek life, was one of those writers who, in depicting other things, give at the same time a portrait of themselves. His chief work is the account of a military expedition in which he was himself engaged, and in which he in the end played a very prominent and leading part. SO it follows only naturally that five-sevenths of this work are almost pure autobiography. We have thus from Xenophon’s own hand a minute and living pie A. 0. Vol. Viii. Ature of himself and his actions for more than a year and a half, all the way through probably the most interesting episodes of military history. We have from himself also an indication of his subsequent mode of life in his coun try residence, when he had settled down into a landed proprietor, and had exchanged the sword for the pen. And all his writings, though perfectly artistic, are so naive, communicative, and at the same time so con sistent in tone, that we will have no doubt that they reflect his real character. They seem to bring the man himself, with his habits and ways of thinking, his principles, prejudices, and supers bitions, vividly before us. But except for what can be derived from these sources, we have scarcely any information about the life of Xenophon. There is a biography of him writ ten by Diogenes Laertius at the end of the second century a.d. But, like the rest of the Lives of Diogenes, this can be a mere debris of anecdotes and tradi tions and no assertion which it contains can be ac cepted without criticism.

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