A history of classical Greek literature / by J.P. Mahaffy.

John Pentland Mahaffy

Date:: 1910

Credit: A history of classical Greek literature / by J.P. Mahaffy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

56/262 page 46

$Athens. We also hear, on Diogenes’ authority, that the Eleans invaded his estate, and drove him out, so that he spent his last days at Corinth. According to others, his sentence of banishment was rescinded on the proposal of Eubulus, and he revisited his native city, after a long lapse of chequered years. His death is placed by Diogenes (after Stesicleides) in 360 b.c. ; though if the tract on the Revenues be accepted as genuine, he must have lived till 356 at least, and this is thought the more probable theory. Yet I find it hard to reject so precise a notice as that of Diogenes.^ We know nothing more of his private affairs, except that his wife Philesia is said to have been brought home from Asia, An earlier wife, Soteira, is also mentioned as accompanying him to Aspasia’s house. Among the other Xenophons enumerated by Diogenes, it is curious to find one mentioned as the biographer of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the very men whom our author has passed over with unjust neglect. His personal beauty was much praised ; I am not aware that there is extant of him any authentic bust. In character he was a very typical Athenian, and though not pre-eminent when we think of Pericles or Thucydides, a far truer average specimen of his age than they. The very first point which strikes us is his religiousness, which is perpetually cropping up, but which, when closely examined, turns out to be mere prudence with regard to the gods, and not real piety. In his own account of the transactions at the close of the Retreat, and of the general affairs of his time as a historian, he shows far less honesty and singleness of mind than his sceptical pre- decessor. There are not wanting evidences of both selfish- ness and vanity in the man, in addition to the unfairness of mind which has robbed us of a contemporary portrait of Epaminondas, by one of the very few capable of estimating his military genius. But Xenophon is so intent on laud- ing Agesilaus and the Spartans, that he hides from us the real hero of his day. How far this one-sided manner of writing ' ii. 6. 56 '• KareffTpexl/e Se, Kadd (\>7)(Tiv 'Srr)(riK\eldr]s 6 ’Adrj/aios rij raiv dpxdvroov Kal ’OKvfxtrtoviKuu avaypa<pfj, erei vpdrcp rrjs ■nip.irrr}s koI (KaTOCTTTjs ’OXv/JLiridSos, M &pxot'ros KaWiSr/filSov, f(t>' ov Kal ^'iKiirirot i ’AuCvtov MaK(56pccv$

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