XENOPHON 19 In the next place, a daily thoroughfare such as the Isthmus, must have been far more suitable for the collecting o'f historical evidence than Skillus, where the crowd came by only once in four years. And then his grown-up sons could find something more serious to do than hunting deer, boars, and hares in the glades of Elis. He may have known, too, that his chances of restoration to Athens were improving, and that he would do well to be within easy reach of friends in that city. Indeed we find that the rescinding of exile soon followed, and so he was able to send his two sons to do cavalry duty for Athens (and Sparta) against the Thebans. It is, indeed, likely that the young men were enrolled as Spartan vol- unteers. He himself must have kept very close to his literary work ; for in these closing years of his life he brought out or re-edited the " Anabasis ; " he discussed " Cavalry Tactics," he kept writing up contemporary history to the year 362 B.C., when the star of Thebes set with the death of Epaminondas ; he com- pleted his long and perhaps tedious historical novel, the "Education of Cyrus" (the elder), and lastly composed a curious and fanciful tract on the " Revenues of Athens." There is no evidence that he ever changed his'residence back to his native city, but that he often went there when no obstacle remained, from the neighboring Corinth, is most probable. An open sailing boat could carry him, with a fair wind, in a few hours. Though a very old man, he was, however, still active with his pen when we lose him. His promising remaining son disappears with him from the scene ; we hear of no descendants. The only offspring he has left us are his immortal works. The names of these have already been given, with the exception of the speech put into Socrates's mouth as his Defence, the tract on "The Horse," appendant to his " Cavalry Tactics," and his " Panegyric on Agesilaus." It remains to estimate their general features. Without controversy, he excelled all his great contemporaries in breadth of culture and experience, and in the variety of his interests. Philosophy, politics, war, husbandry, sport, travel, are all represented in his works. And upon all he has written with a clear- ness and a grace which earned for him the title of the " Attic Bee." But this breadth implies (as usual) a certain lack of depth, as is particularly obvious in his case, owing to the almost necessary comparison with his two mighty rivals Thu- cydides, in history, Plato, in philosophy. 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 indepen- dent, and probably historically truer than that of Plato ; but the sage lives for us in Plato, not in Xenophon. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, and the wars of Epaminondas were far more brilliant than the operations of the Peloponnesian War. Yet, to the scholar, a raid in Thucydides is more than a campaign in Xeno- phon. For neither is his style so pure as that of either of his rivals, nor is his en- thusiasm the same. We feel him always a polished man of the world never the rugged patriot, never the wrapt seer. He seems, too, to lack impartiality. He lavishes praise upon Agesilaus, a second-rate man, while he is curt and ill-tempered concerning Epaminondas, the real genius of the age. It is more than likely that he has colored his own part in the famous " Retreat," in glowing colors. His
