Miss K. M. Steeves - Aug

3-1916.

PREFACE.

THIS Volume belongs to a series of books, now four in number, devoted to a presentation in English of various foreign literatures, ancient and modern. The primary design of the series is to enable persons born to the use of English speech and precluded from accomplishing a course of school and college training in the foreign languages in which the literatures concerned were originally written, to enjoy an advantage as nearly as possible equivalent through the medium of their native tongue.

These books are, none of them, histories of the literatures treated. They are those literatures themselves, in specimen, presented through translation, with accompaniment of such comment, historical, biographical, critical, and explanatory, as was judged necessary to make them, in the highest degree possible within very narrow limits, effectively known. They are, it is believed, somewhat different in purpose and in method from any other books existing.

The present volume is the result of selection and abridgment from two earlier volumes, each of about the same size with this, entitled, respectively, "Preparatory Greek Course. in English" and "College Greek Course in English." These fuller volumes are still kept in print for such readers as may desire to go a little more thoroughly into the study of Greek

literature.

second, as strikingly illustrative of the Greek spirit and char

acter.

Anabasis is a Greek word meaning literally "a march upward "—that is, from the sea. It may well enough be represented by the English word, made from Latin, "expedition." The book is an account of an expedition undertaken by a considerable body of Greeks into Central Asia, for the purpose, on the part of their employer, Cyrus, brother to the Persian king, of supporting, in connection with an army of Oriental soldiers, his rival pretensions to the Persian throne. The real destination of this expeditionary Greek force was concealed by Cyrus from all but one of his Greek generals, under the pretext of a different and less formidable object. When the two Persian brothers, king and pretender, finally met in the collision of arms, Cyrus was slain. This event, of course, at once ended the expedition, or anabasis proper. The Greeks now had it for their sole business to secure their own safety in withdrawing homeward from the enemy's country.

But where the real anabasis ends, there the highest interest of the book, misnamed “Anabasis " begins. For the main interest of the "Anabasis," as a narrative, lies rather in the retreat than in the advance. The reader follows, in a delightfully life-like and simple story, the fortunes of a force of somewhat more than ten thousand Greek mercenary soldiers, starting, with no resource but their arms, their skill, and their valor, from a point many hundreds of miles distant, and successfully making their way home through a region formidable to the adventurers, alike from its natural features and from its hostile populations.

The whole matter of the famous advance and retreat of the Ten Thousand derives grave secondary importance from the fact that it resulted in revealing to Greece the essential weakness and vulnerableness of the imposing Persian Empire. The indirect historical consequences were thus very momentous, of what was in itself a mere episode of history. Many

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considerations, therefore, conspire to render Xenophon's 'Anabasis" a work worthy of the attention that in all ages since it was written it has received.

Xenophon was born about 431 B.C., being thus not far from contemporary with the Hebrew prophet Malachi. He was one of the pupils of Socrates, less brilliant than his famous fellow-pupil, Plato, but no whit less loyal to their common master than he. Socrates, though this rests on doubtful authority, is said to have borne Xenophon off on his shoulders from a field of battle, in which, having been wounded, the young Athenian knight had fallen helpless from his horse. Xenophon joined the expedition of Cyrus as one adventuring on his own private account, he having at first no regular official relation with the army of the Greeks. Soon after the death of Cyrus at the battle of Cunax'a, five principal commanders of the Greeks having been treacherously put to death by the Persian general Tis'sa-pher'nes, Xenophon's presence of mind and practical wisdom, called out by the crisis in which the Greeks found themselves involved, immediately gave him a kind of leadership in the retreat, which he maintained until a prosperous issue was reached on the shores of Greece. Xenophon's opportunities were accordingly the best that could possibly be enjoyed, for knowing the facts which he undertook to relate. His own part in the transactions is given, not entirely without betrayal of self-consciousness, but on the whole with admirably well-bred modesty; and you. cannot resist the impression that the writer who writes so well, acquitted himself well also as a man of affairs. Xenophon was not, to be sure, a very great man, but it is not quite easy to see what good ground Macaulay could allege for suspecting, as he says he does, that he had "rather a weak head." Weaknesses he had, no doubt, and weaknesses they were of the head; for instance, he was superstitious, being a believer in dreams. He suffers, too, in comparison with Plato, as reporter of Socrates; but this simply means that he was not a

"

philosopher. He was, instead, a shrewd and enterprising practical man of affairs. At all events, “a rather weak head would hardly have been the qualification for the masterly conduct that Xenophon achieved, of the long, eventful, and on the whole remarkably prosperous, retreat of that highspirited, independent, almost mutinous horde of ten thousand mercenary Greek soldiers. More just, probably, is the estimate which Grote, the great historian of Greece, indicates of Xenophon, as "one in whom a full measure of soldierly strength and courage was combined with the education of an Athenian, a democrat, and a philosopher."

Xenophon retired in later life to a landed estate where, in the enjoyment of comfortable, if not elegant, leisure, he devoted himself to literary pursuits. He is supposed to have lived to ninety years of age. Diogenes Laer'tius has an interesting, though not wholly trustworthy, biography of Xenophon. Our readers should be advised that the skeptical spirit of literary criticism has not left the genuineness of the "Anabasis" unassailed. It has been gravely argued that Xenophon was not its real author. The Bible, it will be seen, is far from being the only sufferer at iconoclastic critical hands.

Xenophon's fame, notwithstanding his creditable part in this expedition, is that of an author rather than that of a soldier. Among his other chief works is the "Cy'ro-padi'a," purporting to be an account of Cyrus, surnamed the Elder, or the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. "Cyropædia" is another misnomer. It means literally the education of Cyrus. The book is really much more than an account of its subject's earlier years. It is, however, rather a romance than a history. Xenophon in it seems to aim at giving a description of the ideal civil society or state. It is written in the spirit of praise to despotism, as contrasted with democracy. This may seem singular in an Athenian, as was Xenophon; but the fact is, Xenophon was but an indifferent patriot-for, having in the course of his quest of

fortune attached himself to the Spartan monarchy, he came once openly to bear arms against his native country. It is possible to suppose that in the "Cyropædia" Xenophon meant to stimulate his countrymen by the ideal representation of manners better than their own. Such was probably the patriotic purpose of Tac'itus in his "Germania." We should thus relieve Xenophon's reputation somewhat. But the simple truth is that Greek patriotism has, through the cloquent commonplaces of orators, come to be popularly estimated as far more exemplary than in fact it was.

A less romantic work of Xenophon's is that known as the Memorabilia ("Things worthy to be remembered or recorded," namely, of Socrates). This will presently be spoken of, with brief exemplification by extracts. There are several other works from Xenophon's pen, with mention, however, of which it is hardly worth while here to trouble the reader. Without being in any sense a great, Xenophon was a meritorious and important, as well as interesting, writer.

The "Anabasis" is divided into " books," seven in number, each book being also divided into chapters. These divisions we shall not need here carefully to mark.

The book is, in large part, an itinerary—that is, a journal of halts and marches. Such a recital would, of course, be tedious, but for the incidents of disturbance within, of attack from without, of forays for food, of encounter with strange peoples, of observation of strange ways and habits, and for interspersed notices pertaining to the fauna and the flora of the regions traversed. There are some highly entertaining passages reporting the speeches of various personages, made on occasion perhaps of a popular tendency developing itself to resist the plans of the generals, and there are some very good characterizations of men that figured conspicuously in the expedition. The whole narrative is enlivened with the Greek spirit, now and again disporting itself in those plays of wit for which it is remarkable.