Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/347

 HELLENICA AND MINOR WORKS 323 of Cyrus the Great, in which truth is subordinated to edification.^ The form is one followed by certain of the Sophists. Xenophon perhaps took it from Prodicus in preference to the usual Socratic expedient of an imaginary dialogue. The work was greatly admired in antiquity and in the last century. The style is more finished than in any of Xenophon's other works. The Oriental colour is well kept up. The incidents contain masses of striking tragic material, which only fail to be effective because modern taste insists on more working up than Xenophon will consent to give. The political ideal which forms the main object of the book, is happily described by Croiset as " a Versailles of Louis XIV. revised and corrected by Fenelon." It was actually intended — if we may trust the authority of the Latin grammarian, Aulus Gellius — as a counterblast to Plato's Republic ! Xenophon was an amateur in literature, as he was in war, in history, in philosophy, in politics, in field-sports. He was susceptible to every influence which did not morally offend him. His style is simple, but unevenly so. He sometimes indulges in a little fine writing ; the eulogy on Agesilaus tries to avoid hiatus, and shows the influence of Isocrates ; the speeches in his histories, and the whole conception of the Hellenica, show the in- fluence of Thucydides. The influence of Plato leads Xenophon into a system of imitation and correction which is almost absurd. His language has the same receptivity. It shows that colloquial and democratic absence of exclusiveness which excited the contempt of the Old Oligarch ; ^ it is affected by old - fashioned country 1 Contrast, e.g., the historical account of Cyrus's death in Hdt. i. 214, and the romantic one in Cyrop. viii. 7.
 * Rep. Ath. 2, 8.