Notes

C1.6. Oriental in feeling; situation well realised. Hellenic = Oriental, also in part perhaps. Also, we know the Oriental through the medium of Greek to a great extent (cf. Greek Testament, and earlier still LXX.).

C1.8, init. Cf. Joseph and his brethren for this hardening of his heart.

C1.11. Hellenic political ethics = modern in this matter, apart from modern theory of nationalism, i.e. right of nations to exist free.

C1.12. Quite after the manner of an advocate in a Greek law-court, but also Oriental (cf. David and Nathan the seer).

C1.24. Fear of exile; autobiographical touch? Is anything passing through the mind of Xenophon? I dare say there is. [Xenophon was banished from his native city of Athens because of his friendship with Sparta and with Cyrus the Younger. See Works, Vol. I. p. xcix.]

C1.33, fin. 3000 talents. Something under £750,000.

C1.35. Cyrus drives home the conscience of indebtedness à la Portia v. Shylock. N.B.—Humorous also and an Oriental tinge.

C1.38. One can’t help thinking of Socrates and the people of Athens here. If so, this is a quasi-apology for the Athenian bons pères de famille who condemned Socrates. Beautiful story of the sophist teacher’s last injunction to Tigranes.

C1.40–41. What smiles after tears! Like a sunny day succeeding clouds and blackness. A pretty story this, of the wife of Tigranes. Xenophon’s women: this one, Pantheia, Croesus’ wife, the wife of Ischomachus (Economist), the daughter of Gobryas.

C2.12. Archaeologically interesting. N.B.—Humanity towards wounded, Hellenic. Xenophon’s own strategy in the Anabasis is probably the prototype.

C2.15. For Hellenic and Xenophontine religiousness. The incalculableness of human life: God fulfils himself in many unforeseen ways. N.B.—Irony also of the situation, since Cyrus doesn’t intend the Armenian to triumph over the Chaldaean in the way he anticipates.

C2.20. Note how Socratically it is made to work itself out.

C3. Cyrus, the Archic Man, the “born ruler,” is also the diplomatic man (cf., no doubt, Gladstone), a diplomacy based on organic economic sense and friendly-naturedness.

C3.10. Xenophon’s theory of fraternity in action, all petty jealousies brushed aside.

[C3.11. The “captains-of-twelve” and the “captains-of-six” are the same officers as those called elsewhere “captains-of-ten” and “captains-of-five” (cf. above Bk. II. C2.21 note). The titles vary because sometimes the officers themselves are included in the squads and sometimes not.]

C3.19. Nice touch, quoting his father as an authority.

C3.40. With garlands, like the Spartans. Was it conceivably a Persian custom too?

C3.44. Assyrian’s speech; not a bad one, though platitudinous. Xenophon’s dramatic form is shown in the intellectual and emotional side of his characters, rather than by the diction in their mouths, is it not?

C3.51–52. Most important for Xenophon, Educationalist. Cyrus on the powerlessness of a speech to create valour in the soul of the untrained: there must be a physical, moral, and spiritual training there beforehand. The speech is in Xenophon’s best earnest rhetorical style.

C3.57. The march into battle, vide Milton. A beautiful bit of word-painting.

C3.58. Cf. the Prussian army singing a hymn [in 1870].