62/68 12) the "ironic" suicidal self-assertion of Cyaxares is contrasted with the health-giving victorious self-repression of Cyrus. 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. |