The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
of necessary things were sold. And when he had answered him, he asked him
again where men were made good and virtuous. And as he did not know, he
said, “Follow me, then, and learn.” And from this time forth, Xenophon
became a follower of Socrates.
III. And he was the first person who took down conversations as they
occurred, and published them among men, calling them memorabilia. He was
also the first man who wrote a history of philosophers.
IV. And Aristippus, in the fourth book of his treatise on Ancient Luxury,
says that he loved Clinias; and that he said to him, “Now I look upon
Clinias with more pleasure than upon all the other beautiful things which
are to be seen among men; and I would rather be blind as to all the rest
of the world, than as to Clinias. And I am annoyed even with night and
with sleep, because then I do not see him; but I am very grateful to the
sun and to daylight, because they show Clinias to me.”
V. He became a friend of Cyrus in this manner. He had an acquaintance, by
name Proxenus, a Bœotian by birth, a pupil of Gorgias of Leontini, and a
friend of Cyrus. He being in Sardis, staying at the court of Cyrus, wrote
a letter to Athens to Xenophon, inviting him to come and be a friend of
Cyrus. And Xenophon showed the letter to Socrates, and asked his advice.
And Socrates bade him go to Delphi, and ask counsel of the God. And
Xenophon did so, and went to the God; but the question he put was, not
whether it was good for him to go to Cyrus or not, but how he should go;
for which Socrates blamed him, but still advised him to go. Accordingly
he went to Cyrus, and became no less dear to him than Proxenus. And all
the circumstances of the expedition and the retreat, he himself has
sufficiently related to us.
VI. But he was at enmity with Menon the Pharsalian, who was the commander
of the foreign troops at the time of the expedition; and amongst other
reproaches, he says that he was much addicted to the worst kind of
debauchery. And he reproaches a man of the name of Apollonides with
having his ears bored.
VII. But after the expedition, and the disasters which took place in
Pontus, and the violations of the truce by Seuthes, the king of the
Odrysæ, he came into Asia to Agesilaus, the king of Lacedæmon, bringing
with him the soldiers of Cyrus, to serve for pay; and he became a very
great friend of Agesilaus. And about the same time he was condemned to
banishment by the Athenians, on the charge of being a favourer of the
Lacedæmonians. And being in Ephesus, and having a sum of money in gold,
he gave half of it to Megabyzus, the priest of Diana, to keep for him
till his return; and if he never returned, then he was to expend it upon
a statue, and dedicate that to the Goddess; and with the other half he
sent offerings to Delphi. From thence he went with Agesilaus into Greece,
as Agesilaus was summoned to take part in the war against the Thebans.
And the Lacedæmonians made him a friend of their city.
VIII. After this he left Agesilaus and went to Scillus, which is a strong
place in the district of Elis, at no great distance from the city. And a
woman followed him, whose name was Philesia, as Demetrius the Magnesian
relates; and his sons, Gryllus and Diodorus, as Dinarchus states in the
action against Xenophon;[23] and they were also called Dioscuri. And
when Megabyzus came into the country, on the occasion of some public
assembly, he took back the money and bought a piece of ground, and
consecrated it to the Goddess; and a river named Selinus, which is the
same name as that of the river at Ephesus, flows through the land. And
there he continued hunting, and entertaining his friends, and writing
histories. But Dinarchus says that the Lacedæmonians gave him a house
and land. They say also that Philopides, the Spartan, sent him there, as
a present some slaves, who had been taken prisoners of war, natives of
Dardanus, and that he located them as he pleased. And that the Eleans,
having made an expedition against Scillus, took the place, as the
Lacedæmonians dawdled in coming to his assistance.
IX. But then his sons escaped privily to Lepreum, with a few servants;
and Xenophon himself fled to Elis before the place fell; and from thence
he went to Lepreum to his children, and from thence he escaped in safety
to Corinth, and settled in that city.
X. In the meantime, as the Athenians had passed a vote to go to the
assistance of the Lacedæmonians, he sent his sons to Athens, to join in
the expedition in aid of the Lacedæmonians; for they had been educated
in Sparta, as Diocles relates in his Lives of the Philosophers. Diodorus
returned safe back again, without having at all distinguished himself
in the battle. And he had a son who bore the same name as his brother
Gryllus. But Gryllus, serving in the cavalry, (and the battle took place
at Mantinea,) fought very gallantly, and was slain, as Ephorus tells us,
in his twenty-fifth book; Cephisodorus being the Captain of the cavalry,
and Hegesides the commander-in-chief. Epaminondas also fell in this
battle. And after the battle, they say that Xenophon offered sacrifice,
wearing a crown on his head; but when the news of the death of his son
arrived, he took off the crown; but after that, hearing that he had
fallen gloriously, he put the crown on again. And some say that he did
not even shed a tear, but said, “I knew that I was the father of a mortal
man.” And Aristotle says, that innumerable writers wrote panegyrics and
epitaphs upon Gryllus, partly out of a wish to gratify his father. And
Hermippus, in his Treatise on Theophrastus, says that Isocrates also
composed a panegyric on Gryllus. But Timon ridicules him in these words:—
A silly couplet, or e’en triplet of speeches,
Or longer series still, just such as Xenophon
Might write, or Meagre Æschines.
Such, then, was the life of Xenophon.
XI. And he flourished about the fourth year of the ninety-fourth
Olympiad; and he took part in the expedition of Cyrus, in the archonship
of Xenænetus, the year before the death of Socrates. And he died, as
Stesiclides the Athenian states in his List of Archons and Conquerors
at Olympia, in the first year of the hundred and fifth Olympiad, in the
archonship of Callidemides; in which year, Philip the son of Amyntas
began to reign over the Macedonians. And he died at Corinth, as Demetrius
the Magnesian says, being of a very advanced age.
XII. And he was a man of great distinction in all points, and very fond
of horses and of dogs, and a great tactician, as is manifest from his
writings. And he was a pious man, fond of sacrificing to the Gods, and a
great authority as to what was due to them, and a very ardent admirer and
imitator of Socrates.
XIII. He also wrote near forty books; though different critics divide
them differently. He wrote an account of the expedition of Cyrus, to each
book of which work he prefixed a summary, though he gave none of the
whole history. He also wrote the Cyropædia, and a history of Greece, and
Memorabilia of Socrates, and a treatise called the Banquet, and an essay
on Œconomy, and one on Horsemanship, and one on Breaking Dogs, and one on
Managing Horses, and a Defence of Socrates, and a Treatise on Revenues,
and one called Hiero, or the Tyrant, and one called Agesilaus; one on
the Constitution of the Athenians and Lacedæmonians, which, however,
Demetrius the Magnesian says is not the work of Xenophon. It is said,
also, that he secretly got possession of the books of Thucydides, which
were previously unknown, and himself published them.
XIV. He was also called the Attic Muse, because of the sweetness of
his diction, in respect of which he and Plato felt a spirit of rivalry
towards one another, as we shall relate further in our life of Plato. And
we ourselves have composed an epigram on him, which runs thus:—
Not only up to Babylon for Cyrus
Did Xenophon go, but now he’s mounted up
The path which leads to Jove’s eternal realms—
For he, recounting the great deeds of Greece,
Displays his noble genius, and he shows
The depth of wisdom of his master Socrates.
And another which ends thus:—
O Xenophon, if th’ ungrateful countrymen
Of Cranon and Cecrops, banished you,
Jealous of Cyrus’ favour which he show’d you,
Still hospitable Corinth, with glad heart,
Received you, and you lived there happily,
And so resolved to stay in that fair city.
XV. But I have found it stated in some places that he flourished about
the eighty-ninth Olympiad, at the same time as the rest of the disciples
of Socrates. And Ister says, that he was banished by a decree of Eubulus,
and that he was recalled by another decree proposed by the same person.
XVI. But there were seven people of the name of Xenophon. First of
all, this philosopher of ours; secondly, an Athenian, a brother of
Pythostratus, who wrote the poem called the Theseid, and who wrote
other works too, especially the lives of Epaminondas and Pelopidas; the
third was a physician of Cos; the fourth, a man who wrote a history of
Alcibiades; the fifth, was a writer who composed a book full of fabulous
prodigies; the sixth, a citizen of Paros, a sculptor; the seventh, a poet
of the Old Comedy.
LIFE OF ÆSCHINES.
I. Æschines was the son of Charinus, the sausage-maker, but, as some
writers say, of Lysanias; he was a citizen of Athens, of an industrious
disposition from his boyhood upwards, on which account he never quitted
Socrates.
II. And this induced Socrates to say, the only one who knows how to pay
us proper respect is the son of the sausage-seller. Idomeneus asserts,
that it was he who, in the prison, tried to persuade Socrates to make
his escape, and not Crito. But that Plato, as he was rather inclined to
favour Aristippus, attributed his advice to Crito.
III. And Æschines was calumniated on more than one occasion; and
especially by Menedemus of Eretria, who states that he appropriated many
dialogues of Socrates as his own, having procured them from Xanthippe.
And those of them which are called “headless,” are exceedingly slovenly
performances, showing nothing of the energy of Socrates. And Pisistratus,
of Ephesus, used to say, that they were not the work of Æschines. There
are seven of them, and most of them are stated by Persæus to be the work
of Pasiphon, of Eretria, and to have been inserted by him among the works
of Æschines. And he plagiarised from the Little Cyrus, and the Lesser
Hercules, of Antisthenes, and from the Alcibiades, and from the Dialogues
of the other philosophers. The Dialogues then of Æschines, which profess
to give an idea of the system of Socrates are, as I have said, seven in
number. First of all, the Miltiades, which is rather weak; the Callias,
the Axiochus, the Aspasia, the Alcibiades, the Telauges, and the Rhino.
And they say that he, being in want, went to Sicily, to Dionysius, and
was looked down upon by Plato, but supported by Aristippus, and that he
gave Dionysius some of his dialogues, and received presents for them.
IV. After that he came to Athens, and there he did not venture to
practise the trade of a sophist, as Plato and Aristippus were in high
reputation there. But he gave lectures for money, and wrote speeches
to be delivered in the courts of law for persons under prosecution. On
which account, Timon said of him, “The speeches of Æschines which do
not convince any one.” And they say that when he was in great straights
through poverty, Socrates advised him to borrow of himself, by deducting
some part of his expenditure in his food.
V. And even Aristippus suspected the genuineness of some of his
Dialogues; accordingly, they say that when he was reciting some of them
at Megara, he ridiculed him, and said to him, “Oh! you thief; where did