se 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 completed 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 clearness 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--Thucydides, 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 independent, 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
Xenophon. For neither is his style so pure as that of either of his
rivals, nor is his enthusiasm the same. We feel him always a polished
man of the world--never the rugged patriot, never the rapt seer. He
seems, too, to lack impartiality. He lavishes prai