Xenophon, by continuing to hold command under Agesilaus, was in the position of bearing arms against his country. He accompanied Agesilaus in his invasion of northern Greece, and was present with him at the bloody battle of Coroneia (B.C. 394), where the Athenians and their Theban allies were vanquished. For this he was treated as the enemy of his country, and a decree of banishment was passed against him.
The Lacedæmonians, however, did not fail to provide him with a home. They allotted him a residence at Scillus,[1] a village about two miles from Olympia, where the great games were held every fifth year. This circumstance alone must have made the situation agreeable to a man like Xenophon. It was as if a yeoman of sporting tendencies were to receive a present of a farm at Epsom. And the Olympic games were something more than equal to the "Derby;" for they implied a periodical meeting (under terms of truce if it was war-time) of all the great wits and intellects, and all the leading characters, both literary and political, from the different states of Greece. There was excellent hunting in the neighbourhood of Scillus;—not fox-hunting on horseback, but hunting of the boar and the antelope on foot with spears, and of the hare with dogs and nets. In this congenial spot Xenophon settled down, probably in the forty-second year of his age, after his few years' campaigning, to a life of literature and field-sports. "He spent his time henceforth," says his biographer, "in hunting, and
- ↑ The description of his residence at Scillus is given by Xenophon himself (Anabasis, v. 3).
