Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/161

Rh supporters reverence the gods, practise warlike exercises, and observe obedience to their commanders?" Item, he was very trustworthy, and "paid such respect to what was divine, that even his enemies considered his oaths and compacts more to be relied on than friendship among themselves." Item, he was extremely moderate and self-controlled in eating, drinking, sleep, and all the pleasures of sense. He acted on the principle that "it becomes a prince to surpass private persons, not in effeminacy, but in endurance." Item, he was very brave in war, and very successful as a general; very patriotic and subordinate to the laws of his country; very affable and unostentatious as king; living plainly, being accessible to all, and as unlike as possible to the kings of Persia. He attained a great age in health and vigour, and "was borne to his eternal home" honoured and lamented by all. Such is the character of Agesilaus, as given by Xenophon in eleven chapters. It is a dull picture, conveying the notion rather of respectability than of greatness. Those who wish to see a portrait of the same man in brighter colours may refer to Plutarch's 'Lives.'

The 'Hiero,' another of Xenophon's minor works, is a neat little essay in the form of a dialogue, on the advantages, or otherwise, in the lot of a "tyrant,"—that is, an absolute monarch, whose rule has been founded on the overthrow of constitutional government. The history of the Second Empire in France tends to give a particular interest to this discussion, which Xenophon attributes to the courtly Greek poet Simonides and Hiero I., the tyrant of Syracuse. Many would like