[108:1] This is stoutly denied by Holm, G. G. iii. 15, and 181 sq., who cites Breitenbach's Edition and Stern's researches in support of his opinion. He regards Xenophon as perfectly impartial to others throughout his Hellenica. Whether he was so to himself in the Anabasis is of course another question, which Holm has not touched. It may be perfectly true, as Holm insists, that not a single false statement has ever been proved against the author of the Hellenica, but does this demonstrate that he was impartial? It is in the selection, in the suppression, in the marshalling of his facts; it is in his perspective that disguised partiality seems to have been shown.
CHAPTER VI.
Political Theories and Experiments in the Fourth Century b.c.
Literary verdict of the Greeks against democracy.
§ 46. What may most properly make the modern historian pause and revise his judgment of the Athenian democracy, is the evident dislike which the most thoughtful classes, represented by these great historians, and by the professed pupils of Socrates, displayed to this form of society[110:1]. We are now so accustomed to histories written by modern Radicals, or by men who do not think out their politics, that we may perhaps be put off with the plea that the democracy which these authors and thinkers disliked and derided, and which some of them tried to overthrow, was a debased form of what had been established under Pericles, and that it was the accidental decay or the accidental abuses of democracy which disgusted them, whereas its genuine greatness
had been clearly manifested by the great century of progress which had now come sadly to a close.
Vacillation of modern critics.
Grote's estimate of Pericles