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Updated: May 3, 2025
So it has come to pass that by the side of Xenophon's masterly "retreat of the Ten Thousand," of Cortes's burning his ships at Vera Cruz, and of Marlborough's bold march through the heart of Germany to the victory at Blenheim, stands Sherman's March to the Sea and his "Christmas Gift" of captured Savannah.
Already the door was creaking, giving, as the Legionaries now hardly more than a dozen in number began the first steps of their retreat, that should rank in history with that of Xenophon's historic Ten Thousand. The Greeks had all of God's outdoors for their maneuvers. These Legionaries had nothing but dark pits and runways, unexplored, in the bowels of a huge, fanatic city.
And, soon after, I procured Xenophon's 'Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many examples of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer.
I have already declared that the windows of my first-floor lodger are of such properties that they show you, in Xenophon's phrase, τὰ ὄντα τε ὡϛ ὄντα, και τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡϛ οὐκ ὄνγα. Now consider it from his side.
He soars high above prose, and even common poetry, which is poetry only because comprised in a certain number of feet; and he seems to me not so much endowed with the wit of a man, as inspired by a sort of Delphic oracle. Xenophon What shall I say of Xenophon's unaffected agreeableness, so unattainable by any imitation that the Graces themselves seem to have composed his language?
Could anything be more fascinating than the tale of Xenophon's prim yet most lovable young wife, or the glorious picture of the boy and girl lovers with which Xenophon closes his Symposium? My sense of a deprivation unnecessary and yet deliberate was as great in regard to Latin literature.
Then he explained to them, that, if they were only united and willing, they could form a compact body, and, under a leader of their own choosing, could beat a safe retreat toward the sea. Xenophon's advice pleased the Greeks. It was far better, they thought, to make the glorious attempt to return home, than basely to surrender their arms, and become the subjects of a foreign king.
And that is just the sting of the matter, that though the men I have named are not more blameless than yourself, they yet outdo you in the art of winning favour, though they know nothing of Xenophon's Cyrus or Agesilaus; from which kings, in the exercise of their great office, no one ever heard an irritable word.
It may, indeed, be considered hard luck for him that he stood between two such men, for they have necessarily damaged his reputation by comparison. Xenophon's portrait of Socrates is quite independent, and probably historically truer than that of Plato; but the sage lives for us in Plato, not in Xenophon.
Such are the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Anabasis, Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion in England, Caesar's Commentaries. 2. Reflective histories, where the author writes at a later point of time, on the basis of materials which he gathers up, but is not himself a partaker in the spirit of the age of which he treats. 3.
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