§ 45. For in me the suspicion that Xenophon may have been guilty of strong self-partiality in the _Anabasis_ was first awakened by the reflection that his later works show the strongest partiality for his patron, and the most niggardly estimate of the real master of them all, the Theban Epaminondas. If instead of spending his talents in glorifying the Spartan king--a respectable and no doubt able but ordinary personage, he had undertaken with his good special knowledge to give us a true account of the military performances of Epaminondas, then indeed he would have earned no ordinary share of gratitude from all students of the world's greatness. He was in the rare position of being a contemporary, a specialist, standing before the greatest man of the age, and capable of both understanding his work and explaining it to us with literary perfection; yet his _Hellenica_ is generally regarded as a work tending to diminish the achievements of the Theban hero[108:1]. Happily we have here means to correct him, and to redress the balance which he has not held with justice. Shall we believe that when he had no one to contradict him, and his own merits to discuss, he is likely to have been more strictly impartial? [Sidenote: Yet Xenophon is deservedly popular.] Xenophon will never cease to be a popular figure, and most deservedly; for he added to the full education of an Athenian citizen in general intelligence, in politics, and in art, the special training given by the conversations of Socrates, and the tincture of occasional abstract thinking. But this was only a part of his education. He learned knowledge of the world and of war by travel and exciting campaigns, and completed his admirable and various training by a close intimacy with the best and most aristocratic Spartan life, together with that devotion to field-sports which is so far more gentlemanly and improving than training for athletics. In the whole range of Greek literature he appears the most cultivated of authors, in his external life he combines everything which we desire in the modern gentleman, though his superficiality of judgment and lesser gifts place him far below Thucydides, or even Polybius. FOOTNOTES: