RETIREMENT AND LITERARY WORK 319 portant and the best written is undoubtedly his record of the Anabasis. It also seems to be one of the earliest, though some passages — such as v, 3. 9, where he refers to his past employments at Skillus — have been added much later. Autobiographical writing was almost un- known at the time; but the publication was partly forced on Xenophon by the misrepresentations of his action current in Athens, and perhaps especially by the record of the expedition already published by Sophainetus of Stymphalus. We read in Xenophon that Sophainetus was the oldest of the officers ; that he had once almost refused to obey Xenophon's command to cross a certain dangerous gully ; that he was fined ten minae for some failure in duty.^ That is Xenophon's account of him. No doubt his account of Xenophon required answering. But why did Xenophon publish his book under an as- sumed name, and refer to it himself in the Hellenica as the work of ' Themistogenes of Syracuse ' ? It is not a serious attempt at disguise. The whole style of writing shows that the ' Xenophon of Athens,' referred to in the third person, is really the writer of the book. The explanation suggests itself, that the ' pseudonymity ' was a technical precaution against possible avKo^avTia dictated by Xenophon's legal position. He was ariyio^ — an outr lawed exile. He was forbidden e<yetv koL ypd(f>eLv, 'to speak or write,' in the legal sense of the words, in Attica. He could hold no property. What was the position of a book written by such a man ? Was it liable to be burnt Hke those of Protagoras ? Or could the bookseller be proceeded against ? It may well have been prudent, for the sake of formal legality, to have the book passing under some safer name. ^ Anad. v. 3. I, 8. I ; vi. 5. 13.
