C1.46-48. The archic man's dealings by those of his subjects who are apt to rule, the men of high thoughts and ambitions, with whom he must come into constant personal contact. With them the spiritual dominance alone will do. They shall be made to love him rather than themselves. (The only thing just here that jars is a sort of Machiavellian self-consciousness, resented in the archic man).
C1.46. A cumbrous disjointed sentence, but the thought of it is clear enough. Even Xenophon's style breaks down when he tries to say in a breath more than he naturally can. Is it a sign of senility, or half-thought-out ideas, or what?
C2.2, fin. Does Xenophon feel the bathos of this, or is hdg. wrong and there is no bathos? It may be said that the sacramental and spiritual side is not in abeyance. Xenophon has to account for the "common board" and he has the Spartan Lycurgan "common board" to encourage him, so that imaginatively he provides this royal being with a sumptuous table at which thousands will share alike.
C2.3. How far was this a custom among Hellenes? It reveals a curious state of society, real or imaginary; but I suppose that at Rome in imperial days (cf. panem et circenses) the theory of meat and drink largesses being the best would hold.
C2.4, fin. The last remark is so silly (?) I am almost disposed to follow Lincke and admit interpolation. Yet on the whole I think it is the voice of the old man explaining in his Vicar-of-Wakefield style, to his admiring auditors, wife, children, and grandsons, I fancy, and slaves, the raison d'être of Persian dinner-largesse customs.
C2.6. Qy.: What was Xenophon's manner of composing? The style here is loose, like that of a man talking. Perhaps he lectured and the amanuensis took down what he said.
C2.8. Ineptitudes. One does somewhat sniff an editor here, I think, but I am not sure. There's a similar touch of ineptitude (senility, perhaps) in the Memorabilia, ad fin. On the other hand I can imagine Xenophon purring over this side of Orientalism quite naturally.
C2.12. This slipshod style, how accounted for? The most puzzling thing of all is the sort of mental confusion between Cyrus and the king in general.
C2.15-16. Thoroughly Xenophontine and Ruskinian and eternal.
C2.24. Here is the germ of benefit societies and clubs and insurances and hospitals. Xenophon probably learns it all from Ctesias, and others of the sort. Cyrus provides doctors and instruments and medicines and diet, in fact, all the requisites of a hospital, in his palace. Nor does he forget to be grateful to the doctors who cured the sick. (Ctesias, the Greek physician to the Persian king. See Anabasis, I. viii. Works, Vol. I. p. 108.)