Page:The works of Xenophon Vol III Part II.djvu/27

Rh text by the same (editorial) hand that wrote the prefatory chapter.

As to the date of the composition, I have nothing to add to what I have said in my first volume {Sketch of the Life of Xenophon^ p. Ixxiv. and note i ; ib, p. cxlv. and note i ). Capp. ii.-xi. may have been Xenophon's earliest work, composed perhaps (if I am right as regards the date of his birth) when he was aet. 18-20 in 413-41 1 B.C., and if so, it might even have been published (circulated in some way or other) as early as 403-401 B.C.; but as far as the TrapaiVeo-ts goes (i. 18, cyw yXv o^v irapaivio rots veots, k.t.A.. — a note resumed in xii. 14, epaxrOeh (5v lyw irafxiivta : and again, xiii. 9, ra pXv oZv twv (rourTiov TrapayycA/Aara irapaivQi vXdTT€(rOai : and finally, ib, 17, Tov<s v€ovs Tovs TTOiovvras a lyw TrapatvoJ), this, I take it, would be quite out of place on the lips of a young man, though seemly and natural enough on the part of an oldish man addressing younger people; and so, if for no other reason, I hold to the opinion that even if the treatise was a work of his youth the author rehandled it in his old age (362-354 B.C. drcay 2 I recollect that when, many years ago, I first read the Cynegeticus as a whole, I was much impressed with its vividness, its brightness, and its air of youthful fervour, and when I came to examine critical views later on, it seemed to me that Cobet (who, I think, rejects the m3rthological list of chapter i. as too absurd) said exactly the right thing as regards the body of the work. Apropos of the passage about the hare which William Blane takes as his motto (o(irw hk iirixo-f^ ^o'Tt rb dtipiov, k,t.., v. 32), "The animal is so pleasing that whoever sees it either trailed, or found, or pursued, or taken, forgets everything else that he is most attached to" [or rather "every other love," itriKdOoiT' tv et tov iptpr)], Cobet says, " C3megeticus ante reliquos omnes a Xenophonte scriptus est ; spirat enim fervorem quendam juvenilis animi OvfioeidoOs re Kal ifxoTiKoO et in iis quae amet et admiretur modum nullum servantis." It was interesting, too, to find that Roquette's examination of particles pointed in the same direction, but I eventually stuck at the hortatory, quasi-paedagogic tone, which seems to me that of an old man. Hence I finally settled down into my present persuasion. I cannot conclude this note without quoting one of the ablest Xenophontean scholars of recent times, Mr. Herbert Richards, where, in the Classical Review, x. 6, he says, in a notice of Holden's edition of the Oeconomicus, ' ' It is much to be wished that so excellent a Xenophontean scholar should edit more of the opera minora than the Oeconomicus and the Hiero. There is not Digitized by VjOOQIC