The descriptions of the men includes also analysis of their weaknesses. Clearchus' incomplete virtue was justice: he believed (quite rightly) that an undisciplined army was useless, and thus imposed strict punishments for violations of order. Yet he acted sometimes in anger, and this imperfection in his administration of justice caused him to feel regret afterwards. That is itself a sign of an internal commitment to the virtue of justice, that one can feel bad about failing to achieve it properly.
The best proof of the worth of an officer is the confidence of his men, who did not love Clearchus but had faith in his leadership. They took confidence in his courage and in the fact that he held their fellow soldiers to account, so that they could rely on the discipline of the army. Men forced into his service during the wars due to poverty or as punishment came to be disciplined soldiers and good fighting men.
Some other generals don't come off as well. Proxenus is described as having been motivated by a desire for personal greatness and glory, although also as always pursuing that greatness through fair means and not foul. Menon is described as motivated only by a desire for wealth, pursuing honors and friendships with the great only as means to the end of enriching himself.
Agias and Socrates, the two remaining generals -- young men of about thirty-five -- receive only a brief joint comment.
No one could speak slightingly of their courage in war, nor accuse them of lack of consideration for a friend.
That is far from the worst epigram to receive from a fellow soldier.
3 comments:
I read Clearchus as one who was willing to start wars for the sake of fighting ("persuaded his own city that the Thracians were injuring the Hellenes"), and Menon is depicted as almost cowardly (" the possessions of his foes were secure from his designs, since it was no easy task, he thought, to steal from people on their guard; but it was his particular good fortune to have discovered how easy it is to rob a friend in the midst of his security").
Menon definitely gets a very harsh epigram all the way around.
Clearchus, I might say that quality is another examination of an imperfect virtue from Xenophon's perspective. He's not a Christian -- no one is, this is hundreds of years before Christ -- and so he doesn't have any of the analysis that Christianity brings about turning the other cheek and peace being an intrinsically desirable quality (however: "I came not to send peace but a sword").
Rather, war is seen as an almost personified force ("War is all and Father of all," as Heraclitus put it; and Ares is not 'the god of war,' as we often are taught, but rather, "The God, War"). Having a relationship with it is like having a relationship with a person; Xenophon likens Clearchus' love and enjoyment of war as being like a man who loves women so much that he throws away his wealth on love affairs.
The courage that Clearchus demonstrates is the paradigmatic virtue in Ancient Greece, and it is characterized especially by bringing success in war. Clearchus' virtue of courage is heroic, but as his imperfection in pursuing justice nevertheless demonstrates his concern with justice, his excess in pursuing this virtue and love is a failure to attain the completeness of its height.
This is the generation before Aristotle, so we don't have his ethical model to employ, but a generation later he might have said that the true virtue of courage is between cowardice and the excesses of courage; and Clearchus missed that point of perfection a little on the excess side. This is Socrates' generation, though, and Socrates tended to think of the problem of incomplete virtue differently. It was actually kind of a mystery to him how someone could have the virtue, which he thought of as a sort of knowledge, and then not do it right.
Aristotle's solution was to state that virtue wasn't a kind of knowledge, but a kind of habit of character; and thus, you don't 'know' courage, you have trained yourself in it. If you didn't train quite right, you won't quite get the fullness of the thing.
By the way, I should mention in case it’s not obvious that Menon is also the title character of Plato’s Meno dialogue. Plato treats him differently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meno_(general)
The notes in my edition add that we don’t actually know that he was executed, which isn’t reported except by Xenophon as a rumor. Other sources don’t mention it. He had a family tie to the King of Persia on his father’s side, so he might have been spared beheading and given some lesser punishment.
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