Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​For indeed they had been educated right there in Sparta, as Diocles says in his Lives of the Philosophers. Now Diodorus, having accomplished nothing notable, came back safe from the battle, and a son was born to him named after his brother. But Gryllus, stationed with the cavalry—the battle being that around Mantinea—died fighting valiantly, as Ephorus says in his twenty-fifth book; Cephisodorus being hipparch, and Hegesileos commanding as general. In this battle Epaminondas also fell. At that very time, they say, Xenophon was offering sacrifice with a garland on his head; but when the death was announced to him, he took off the garland; then, upon learning that his son had died nobly, he put the garland back on again.

​Some say that he did not even weep, but said: "I knew that I had begotten a mortal." Aristotle says that countless authors composed encomia and epitaphs for Gryllus, partly to gratify his father. Moreover, Hermippus in his work On Theophrastus also says that Isocrates wrote an encomium on Gryllus. But Timon mocks him in these lines: "Or a weak pair of speeches, or a triad, or even beyond, such as Xenophon, or the not unpersuasive force of Aeschines to write...." And such was his life. He flourished about the fourth year of the ninety-fourth Olympiad, and went inland with Cyrus in the archonship of Xenaenetus, one year before the death of Socrates.

​He died, as Ctesicleides the Athenian says in his List of Archons and Olympic Victors, in the first year of the hundred and fifth Olympiad, in the archonship of Callidemides, in whose time Philip, the son of Amyntas, became king of the Macedonians. And he died in Corinth, as Demetrius of Magnesia says, being already evidently quite advanced in years; a man who in other respects proved himself worthy, and indeed a lover of horses, a lover of hunting, and skilled in tactics, as is plain from his writings; pious too, fond of sacrificing, capable of discerning sacrificial victims, and a close imitator of Socrates. He composed about forty books, though different people divide them differently:

​the Anabasis, for each book of which he composed a preface, though not for the work as a whole; and the Education of Cyrus, and the Hellenica, and the Memorabilia; the Symposium, and the Oeconomicus, and On Horsemanship, and the Cynegeticus, and the Hipparchicus; the Apology of Socrates, and Ways and Means, and Hiero, or the Tyrant; the Agesilaus, and the Constitution of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, which Demetrius of Magnesia says is not by Xenophon. It is also said that, although he was in a position to appropriate Thucydides' books which were hidden away, he himself brought them to fame. He was also called the "Attic Muse" because of the sweetness of his expression; whence it was that he and Plato were jealous of one another, as we shall state in the chapter on Plato.

​There are also epigrams of ours upon him, which run in this fashion: "Not alone to the Persians did Xenophon march on account of Cyrus, but seeking an ascent that might lead to the dwelling of Zeus; for by displaying the Hellenic deeds of his own culture, he brought to mind how fair was the wisdom of Socrates." Another, on how he died: "Even if the citizens of Cranaus and Cecrops condemned you, Xenophon, to exile for the sake of your friend Cyrus, yet hospitable Corinth received you, in which taking your delight you were thus well pleased; and there you resolved to remain."

​I have found elsewhere that he flourished about the eighty-ninth Olympiad along with the other Socratics; and Istrus says that he went into exile under a decree of Eubulus, and returned under a decree of the same man. There have been seven persons named Xenophon: the first is this man himself; the second an Athenian, brother of Pythostratus who wrote the Theseid, who wrote among other things a Life of Epaminondas and Pelopidas; the third a physician of Cos; the fourth one who wrote a history of Hannibal; the fifth one who dealt in fabulous tales of wonder; the sixth of Paros, a sculptor; the seventh a poet of the Old Comedy.