The Good, the bad and the thoroughly disreputable: moral
sketches of of Clearchus, Proxenus and Meno in Xenephons Anabasis 2.6
Eheu! We find a remarkable turn of events for the Greek
mercenary force accompanying Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to overthrow his
brother Atarxerxes and seize the throne. After assembling at Sardis and making
their way through the citied plains and low hills of Phrygia (as described in
Book 1) the combined Greek and barbarian mercenary force do battle at Cunaxa.
It’s a very mixed result since although the Greek forces rout all
before them, Cyrus is killed in battle following a rash attempt to personally
kill Atarxerxes, rendering any victory hollow indeed.
The Greeks including our narrator Xenephon are now
leaderless, without allies, surrounded by hostile forces in a strange and
inhospitable land. During a truce meeting with the Persian forces set up by the
perfidious Tissaphernes, the Greek generals are seized and later executed.
Clearchus, the erstwhile leader of the expedition together with Proxenus and
Meno are given short moralistic obituaries in chapter 6. It is interesting to
look at how Xenephon holds them up to the glass of posterity and contrasts them
with each other and by implication his previous account of the death of Cyrus.
I looked at this chapter through the eyes of two translators, Edward Spelman
(d.1767) and Robin Waterfield (2005) to see how they dealt with Xenephon’s
Attic Greek – renowned for its lucidity and elegance. There is a similarity
between the two translators in that they are both independent scholars and
authors as opposed to institution attached academics. Spelman in particular
seemed disdainful of the universty education of his day. But there the
similarity ends, Spelman being a gentleman of leisure and of independent means
due to his inherited seat and wealth, Waterfield a modern professional writer
earning his living by his pen. Edward Gibbon the renowned historian thought
Spelman’s translations to be the finest available in the English language
at the time.
Here are the opening sentences of Book II Chapter 6, first
Spelman and then Waterfield.
'The generals, being
thus apprehended, were carried off to the king, by whose orders their heads
were cut off. One of them, Clearchus, was allowed by all that knew him to have
been a man both of a military genius, and one who delighted in war to the last
degree; for, as long as the Lacedaemonians were at war with the Athenians, he
continued in the service of his country; but after the peace he persuaded his
fellow-citizens that the Thracians oppressed the Greeks; and having prevailed
on the ephori, by some means or other, he set sail with a design to make war on
the Thracians, who inhabit above the Chersonesus and Perinthus.'
(Edward Spelman Expedition of Cyrus p.107, 1742)
'The Greek generals
who were captured as described were taken to the king and beheaded. One of
them, Clearchus, was universally held by those who knew him to have been not
just good at warfare, but absolutely devoted to it. For example, he stayed
around while the Spartans were at war with the Athenians, but after the peace
treaty he presuaded his fellow citizens that Greeks were suffering at Thracian
hands, and once he had managed to get his way with the ephors, he set sail to
make war on the Thracians who live beyond the Chersonese and Perinthus.'
(Robin Waterfield The Expedition of Cyrus p.50-51 Oxford
World's Classics 2005)
They are pretty close for translations seperated by hundreds
of years which is remarkable. Spelman seems to stick quite close to the grammar
of the Greek, for example where Clearchus is described in Waterfields
translation as 'not just good at warfare but absolutely devoted to it', Spelman
keeps the greek kai +adj -kai + adj
construction ( aner KAI polemikos KAI philopolemos..') using the expression
'both =noun phrase - and + noun phrase.
Spelmans translation shows how much emphasis was placed on acccuracy or
faithfulness to the original Greek. The result is that it sounds as though the
text has a starched collar but nevertheless runs quite well. It doesnt come
across as a literal translation but one where the underlying greek has a higher
visibility. Waterfield has put more work into readability for the modern reader
but skillfully making few if any sacrifices to the original sense. Its the
lexis, the choice and order of words that depart from the original.
This is further illustrated by Spelmans decision to stay
close to the Greek in the following line ' he persuaded his fellow citizens
that the Thracians oppressed (Greek : adikousi)
the Greeks, where Waterfield has coverted the tense to a past imperfect to
emphasize the ongoing oppression and thus a sense of urgency in his appeal to
the ephors, ' he persuaded his fellow citizens that the Greeks were suffering
at Thracian hands'. Its reads well to the modern eye but there is a resulting
slight remove from the Greek original text.
Xenephon had earlier given us a panegyric of Cyrus and the
recently killed barbarian would-be king is depicted in on the whole glowing terms.
Perhaps then these Greek mercenraries are held up by way of contrast, all the
more striking since for each of the Greek (ie non-barbarian) generals, their
good points are matched by bad and in the case of Proxenus and Meno the weight
is firmly on the bad side of the scales.
A generation ago it would surely have been unthinkable to
cast babarians in such a positive and contrasting light, but with Xenephon’s
work we are in a new era, that of the professional mercenary and one in which
age old loyalties to ones polis and Greek land have undergone
severe strain and rupture due the chaos of the Pelopponesian War (431-404 BCE)
Clearchus is an efficient general but a harsh one, feared
rather than loved by his men. This will set up a strong contrast when Xenephon
emerges later in the anabasis as leader of the 10,000. The moral elements of a
good leader are implied by his description of how the generals fall short of the
ideal or go against them completely. Proxenus seemed to be out for fame at any
cost and as a paying student of the sophist Gorgias of Leontini, Xenephon as a
follower and erstwhile protoge of Socrates, underlines this general as morally
challenged in his choice of instructor. As a result he is a general 'incapable
of inspiring respect or fear, and stood in greater awe of his men than they of
him' (Spelman 110). Menon is beyond the pale, as a man after riches, stooping
to perjury, falsehood and deceit to attain them. He seemed to regard affection
as foolish and would only feign such friendship as would enable him to deceive
another. Almost in the nature of a moral payoff Xenephon informs us that Menon
was not beheaded like the others but tortured for a year and then after much
agony killed as a common malefactor. Here again Spelman keeps close to the
Greek (poneros Greek: person of low
worth, evildoer). Waterfield extends the contrast with the other generals and
glosses this word as ' a man with no redeeming features' which seems to imply
that the Persians considered him of insufficient rank or status to merit a
swift and honorable decapitation.
Such is the fate of the generals leading to the crisis that
forms the real beginning of the march of the ten thousand.
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