as suitable to the occasion. Xenophon, no doubt, followed this plan in writing his 'Anabasis' and he may have allotted to himself a rather more prominent and favourable position on some occasions than others would have assigned him. Thus far his writing may have been a sort of Dichtung und Wahrheit; but there is every reason to believe that the truth greatly preponderated. Xenophon, of course, had his prejudices, and he was a versatile Greek of rather superficial character; but, on the whole, he was manly and well-intentioned, and to consider falsehood as being a prominent characteristic of his nature seems to us to be unjust and unfounded.
Before taking leave of him we must say a word about his style, which this volume has not been able to represent, except in so far as it has enabled the reader occasionally to notice the homely raciness of his expressions. Several instances of this occur in the exact translation given above (page 62) of a long passage from the 'Anabasis.' Colloquial vigour is the eloquence of Xenophon. For the rest he is pure, simple, and lucid. The Greek language had been perfected in Xenophon's youth by sophists and rhetoricians—by the Greek orators with Pericles at their head, and by the great historian Thucydides. Xenophon used the language, thus developed, as an instrument of which he was perfectly master. In his best works he writes as if he did not think about style at all, but simply aimed at saying, in a plain manner, what he had to say. His taste and cultivation gave an unstudied refinement to his diction; and his freedom from all
