us.
C5.9-10. Xenophon can depict character splendidly: this is the crapulous
{orge} of the somewhat "hybristic" nature, seeing how the land lies,
_siccis luminibus_, the day after the premature revel. Theophrastus
couldn't better have depicted the irascible man. These earliest
portraits of character are, according to Xenophon's genius, all sketched
in the concrete, as it were. The character is not philosophised and then
illustrated by concrete instances after the manner of Theophrastus,
but we see the man moving before us and are made aware of his nature at
once.
C5.17. {kalos ka nomimos}, "in all honour, and according to the
law," almost a Xenophontine motto, and important in reference to the
"questionable" conduct on his part in exile--"questionable" from a
modern rather than an "antique" standard. [The chief reference is to
Xenophon's presence on the Spartan side at the battle of Coronea against
his native city of Athens. See _Sketch_, Works, Vol. I. pp. cxxiii. ff.]
C5.20. The "archic man" does not recognise the littleness of soul of
the inferior nature, he winks at it, and so disarms at once and triumphs
over savagery, and this not through cunning and pride, but a kind of
godlike imperturbable sympathy, as of a fearless man with a savage
hound. Still there is a good dash of diplomacy.
C5.21, fin. Pretty sentence. Xenophon's words: some of these are
prettily-sounding words, some are rare and choice and exquisite, some
are charged with feeling, you can't touch them with your finger-tips
without feeling an "affective" thrill. That is in part the _goeteia_,
the witchery, of his style.
C5.30-31. A brilliant stroke of diplomacy worthy of the archic man. This
{arkinoia} of the Hellene is the necessary sharp shrewdness of a brain,
which, however "affectively" developed, is at bottom highly organised
intellectually. H. S.[*] has it, all 'cute people and nations have it,
the Americans, e.g.--every proposition must, however else it presents
itself, be apprehended in its logical bearings: the result may be
logically damaging to the supporter of it, but does not necessarily
banish an affective sympathetic attitude on the part of the common-sense
antagonist, who is not bound, in other words, to be a sharp practitioner
because he sees clearly. Affection is the inspirer, intellect the
up-and-doing agent of the soul. The Hellenes and all 'cute people put
the agent to the fore in action, but if besides being 'cute they
ar
|