SOCRATES AND ARISTODEMUS 351
most of his books in the quiet of a country life. The de- cree of banishment from Athens was revoked, and one of his sons died in battle fighting for that city, but he seems not to have cared to live again in his former home, and died in Corinth about 355 B. C.
The chief historical work of Xenophon, besides the Ana- basis, is the Hellenica, in which he continues the history of Greece from the point at which Thucydides left it to the battle of Mantinea in 362 b. c, in which his son Gryllus fell. This history, although valuable for the facts it gives, is told uninterestingly, and from a prejudiced point of view.
Besides these works and the Cyropaedia, — which is a historical romance, having Cyrus the Great as its hero, and intended to set forth the author's ideal of a state and a military leader, — Xenophon composed several political essays, an essay on hunting, on horsemanship, etc., — the earliest specimens of this branch of literature.
The following passages from the translation by H. G. Da- kyns are used by permission of the Macmillan Company.
SOCRATES AND ARISTODEMUS
From the Memorabilia, Book I. iv. §§ 7-19.
Socrates. Well, and doubtless you feel to have a spark of -nasdom yourself ?
Avistodemus. Put your questions, and I will an- swer.
Socrates. And yet you imagine that elsewhere no spark of wisdom is to be found? And that, too, when you know that you have in your body a tiny fragment only of the mighty earth, a little drop of the great waters, and of the other elements, vast in their extent, you got, I presume, a particle of each towards the compacting of your bodily frame? Mind alone,
