Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt:...Epaminondas is tried by a severe canon; for the chief contemporary witness remaining is one decidedly hostile. Even the philo-Laconian Xenophon finds neither misdeeds nor omissions to reveal in the capital enemy of Sparta--mentions him only to record what is honourable--and manifests the perverting bias mainly by suppressing or slurring over his triumphs. The man whose eloquence bearded Agesilaus at the congress immediately preceding the battle of Leuktra2--who in that battle stripped Sparta of her glory, and transferred the wreath to Thebes--who a few months afterwards, not only ravaged all the virgin territory of Laconia, but cut off the best half of it for the restitution of independent Messene, and erected the hostile Arcadian community of Megalopolis on its frontier--the author of these fatal disasters inspires to Xenophon such intolerable chagrin and antipathy, that in the two first he keeps back the name, and in the third, suppresses the. thing done. But in the last campaign, preceding the battle of Mantineia (whereby Sparta incurred no positive loss, and where the death of Epaminondas softened every predisposition against him), there was no such violent pressure upon thej fidelity of the historian. Accordingly, the concluding chapter of Xenophon's 'Hellenica' contains a panegyric,3 ample and unqualified, upon the military merits of the Theban general; upon his daring enterprise, his comprehensive foresight, his care to avoid unnecessary exposure of soldiers, his excellent discipline, his well-combined tactics, his fertility of aggressive resource in striking at the weak points of the enemy, who content themselves with following and parrying his blows (to use a simile of Demosthenes') like an unskilful pugilist, and only succeed in doing...