1. The most extreme condemnation I have come across is by H. J. Rose (A Handbook of Greek Literature, 4th edn (Methuen, 1951), pp. 305–9), who in the space of a few pages dismisses Xenophon in excessively severe terms: Xenophon has ‘a mind which it would be flattery to call second-rate’; the Cyropaedia is ‘one of the dullest writings in any tongue’; Ischomachus in The Estate-manager is ‘a prig of the first water’; as for Memoirs: ‘it is surprising how little is made of its fascinating subject’ and ‘the reader is very apt to find the four books much too long’.