XENIA XENOPHON. 



133 



along the deck from the sides of the vessel towards 

 the middle, whereon the crew may walk dry-footed, 

 while the water is conveyed through the grating to 

 the scuppers. The xebecs which the Algerines 

 used, carried from 300 to 450 men, two thirds of 

 whom were commonly soldiers. They had from 

 sixteen to twenty-four cannon. See a representa- 

 tion of a xebec in Plate 82. 



XENIA (from the Greek word Eemy) ; presents 

 which were given guests among the Greeks and 

 Romans. The Roman epigrammatist Martial in- 

 scribed the thirteenth book of his epigrams xenia. 

 They are a number of distichs dedicated to his 

 friends and patrons, and each contains praise or 

 blame under the head of some subject connected 

 with the table. Schiller's Musenalmanach for the 

 year 1797 (Tubingen) contained more than four 

 hundred distichs bearing the same name, and hav- 

 ing reference principally to the then existing state 

 of literature in Germany. They are ascribed to 

 Schiller and Gothe. 



XENOCRATES ; an ancient philosopher, born 

 in Chalcedon, and educated in the school of Plato, 

 whose friendship he gained. Though of a dull and 

 sluggish disposition, he supplied the defects of na- 

 ture by unwearied attention and industry. Plato 

 esteemed him much ; but his want of polished man- 

 ners often called forth his teacher's advice to sacri- 

 fice to the Graces. He travelled with Plato to 

 Sicily, and after his death went with his fellow 

 scholar Aristotle to Asia Minor, but soon returned. 

 He succeeded Spetisippus in the school of Plato, 

 about 339 years B. C. He was remarkable as a 

 disciplinarian, and required that his pupils should 

 be acquainted with mathematics before they carne 

 under his care. He even rejected some who had 

 not that qualification, saying that they had not yet 

 found the key of philosophy. He recommended 

 himself to his pupils not only by precepts, but more 

 powerfully by example. Alexander sent some of 

 his friends with fifty talents for the philosopher. 

 Not to offend the monarch, he accepted a small 

 sum, about the two hundredth part of one talent. 

 The courtesan Lais is said to have tried every art 

 in vain to triumph over the virtue of Xenocrates. 

 His integrity was so well known that, when he ap- 

 peared in the court as a witness, the judges dis- 

 pensed with his oath. He died in his eighty- 

 second or eighty-fourth year, after he had presided 

 in the academy for above twenty-five years. It is 

 said that he fell, in the night, with his- head into 

 a basin of water, and that he was suffocated. He 

 had written above sixty treatises on different sub- 

 jects, all now lost. 



He is to be distinguished from another Xenocrates, 

 surnamed the Physician, who lived in the time of 

 Tiberius or Nero, and of whose writings only one 

 work, on the use of aquatic animals as food, exists. 

 It gives a pretty complete idea of the knowledge 

 then existing of the natural history of fishes and 

 shell-fish. 



XENOPHANES; a Greek philosopher, cele- 

 brated as the founder of the Eleatic school. He 

 was a contemporary of Pythagoras and Anaximan- 

 der, and is said to have attained to the age of a 

 hundred years. Having been banished from his 

 native city, Colopho, he went to Sicily, and thence 

 to Graecia Magna. He settled, about 536 B. C., 

 at Elea; and hence his system, and the school 

 which he founded, derive their name. He did not 

 remain satisfied with the opinions of his predeces- 

 sors, in philosophy, but made new inquiries into the 



' nature of things. He attacked, in his silli, the my- 

 thological fables of the gods given by Homer and 

 Hesiod, and inclined to an ideal pantheism. His 

 chief doctrines are these: All Being is one, un- 

 changeable, and perfect- this Being is called God. 

 He is not to be represented under any human form ; 

 but all forms proceed from him, and he is able to do 

 every thing. The apparent variety of things is not 

 real. He is said to have maintained that every thing 

 originated from earth and water, and to have con- 

 sidered the moon an inhabited body. He denied 

 the possibility of predicting future events, and as- 

 serted that there is much more good than evil in 

 the world. In general, he complained of the un- 

 certainty of human knowledge. Of his poems, in 

 which he treated of philosophical and other sub 

 jects, we have only fragments contained in the 

 works of Athenaeus, Plutarch and others. The 

 fragments of his didactic poem nig< &u<ria; have been 

 collected in the Poesis philosophica of Stephanus ; 

 subsequently, and more completely, by Fiillebom 

 and recently by Brandis, German philologists. 



XENOPHON ; a celebrated historian and gen- 

 eral, was born at Athens, about 450 B. C. He 

 lived during a period in which the greatest political 

 and intellectual excitement existed at Athens, and 

 in which the most distinguished men, of whom he 

 was one, appeared on (he stage. Xenophon was a 

 favourite dasciple of the immortal teacher of wis- 

 dom, Socrates; and from his writings, especially 

 his Apology, and the Memorabilia of Socrates, we 

 learn the true spirit of the Socratic philosophy. 

 Xenophon was less a speculative than a practical 

 philosopher. He dedicated himself to that state in 

 which he was born, and fought, together with his 

 teacher, in the Peloponnesian war. When the Per- 

 sian prince, Cyrus the Younger (so called in contra- 

 distinction to the founder of the monarchy), contend- 

 ed with his elder brother Artaxerxes Mnemon for 

 the throne, the Lacedaemonians sent him auxiliaries, 

 among whom Xenophon served as a volunteer. 

 He became a favourite of Cyrus, who was defeated 

 and lost his life in the plains of Babylon. The 

 principal officers of the auxiliary army having been 

 likewise killed in battle, or taken prisoners by arti- 

 fice, and then put to death, Xenophon was selected 

 to command the Greek forces, 10,000 men strong. 

 They were in a most critical situation, in the midst 

 of a hostile country, above 2000 miles from home, 

 without cavalry, surrounded by enemies and innume- 

 rable difficulties ; but Xenophon was able to inspire 

 them with confidence, to repress insubordination, 

 and to lead them home to Greece. They marched 

 1155 parasangs, or 34,650 stadia, in 215 days. This 

 retreat is famous in the history of war. It has been 

 compared to various retreats in modern times; for 

 example, that of Moreau, in the south of Germany ; 

 but the circumstances are too different to admit of 

 any proper parallel being drawn. Xenophon him- 

 self has described this retreat, and, at the same 

 time, the whole expedition of the younger Cyrus, 

 in his Anabasis, which has been geographically il- 

 lustrated, particularly by James Rennell. That 

 Xenophon is actually the author of this work has 

 been proved by C. W. Kriiger (author of the Vit i 

 Xenophontis'), in his work De Authentia et Integri- 

 tate Anabaseos Xenophontece (Halle, 1824). The 

 expedition might have been forgotten, or, at least, 

 very imperfectly known, had not the Grecian gene- 

 ral been so excellent a writer. Xenophon after- 

 wards accompanied the Spartan king Agesilaus to 

 Asia, on his expedition against the Persians. He 



