C3.12. Short sharp snap of argumentative style.
C3.19. The antithetic balance and word-jingle, with an exquisite, puristic, precise, and delicate lisp, as of one tasting the flavour of his words throughout.
C3.23. I think one sees how Xenophon built up his ideal structure on a basis of actual living facts. The actual diverts the creator of Cyrus from the ideal at times, as here. It is a slight declension in the character of Cyrus to lay down this law, "equestrian once, equestrian always." Xenophon has to account for the actual Persian horror of pedestrianism: Cyrus himself can dismount, and so can the Persian nobles with Cyrus the Younger, but still the rule is "never be seen walking;" and without the concluding paragraph the dramatic narrative that precedes would seem a little bit unfinished and pointless: with the explanation it floats, and we forgive "the archic man" his partiality to equestrianism, as later on we have to forgive him his Median get-up and artificiality generally, which again is contrary to the Xenophontine and the ideal Spartan spirit.
C4. Xenophon has this theory of mankind: some are fit to rule, the rest to be ruled. It is parallel to the Hellenic slavery theory. Some moderns, e.g. Carlyle (Ruskin perhaps) inherit it, and in lieu of Hellenic slavery we have a good many caste-distinction crotchets still left.
C4.13, fin. The first salaam, ominous of the advent of imperialism; the sun's rim visible, and a ray shot up to the zenith.
C5. Here the question forces itself in the midst of all this "ironic" waiting on the part of the Persians in Spartan durance for a future apotheosis of splendour and luxuriance,—what is the moral? "Hunger now and thirst, for ye shall be filled"—is that it? Well, anyhow it's parallel to the modern popular Christianity, reward-in-heaven theory, only on a less high level, but exactly the same logicality.
C5.6. A point, this reward to the catcher, and this rigid couvrefeu habit (cf. modern military law).
C5.8. A dramatic contrast, the Median Cyaxares who follows Pleasure, and the Persian Cyrus who follows Valour, vide Heracles' choice (Memorabilia, II. i. 21). This allegorising tendency is engrained in Xenophon: it is his view of life; one of the best things he got from Socrates, no doubt. Later (§ 12) the "ironic" suicidal self-assertion of Cyaxares is contrasted with the health-giving victorious self-repression of Cyrus.
C5.9-10. Xenophon can depict character splendidly: this is the crapulous {orge} of the somewhat "hybristic" nature, seeing how the land lies, siccis luminibus, the day after the premature revel. Theophrastus couldn't better have depicted the irascible man. These earliest portraits of character are, according to Xenophon's genius, all sketched in the concrete, as it were. The character is not philosophised and then illustrated by concrete instances after the manner of Theophrastus, but we see the man moving before us and are made aware of his nature at once.
C5.17. {kalos ka nomimos}, "in all honour, and according to the law," almost a Xenophontine motto, and important in reference to the "questionable" conduct on his part in exile—"questionable" from a modern rather than an "antique" standard. (The chief reference is to Xenophon's presence on the Spartan side at the battle of Coronea against his native city of Athens. See Sketch, Works, Vol. I. pp. cxxiii. ff.)