Book 2, letter 20: To Xenophon on Gratitude

Book 2, letter 20

To Xenophon; on Gratitude

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Dear Xenophon,

I've been thinking about work, and duty and discipline and I've been wanting to write to you again about your book, Cyropaedia. There's some stuff in the early chapters about the raising of boys I wanted to talk about. You describe it as the Persian method of education, though it is generally considered that you are really describing a weird mix of Athenian and Spartan culture. Let's not forget that your book is a sort of political/philosophical/military/romantic-fantasy novel.

However, there are many cultural principles you describe that seem relevant today, and with Gratitude being a modern buzzword among meditation and mindfulness teachers, I found this little gem interesting for the alternative perspective.

“The culprit convicted of refusing to repay a debt of kindness when it was fully in his power meets with severe chastisement. The reason (being) that the ungrateful man is the most likely to forget his duty to the gods, to his parents, to his fatherland, and his friends. Shamelessness, they hold, treads close on the heels of ingratitude, and thus ingratitude is the ringleader and chief instigator to every kind of baseness.”

I don't expect that my society will start legal proceedings against the ungrateful, but it makes me want to consider to whom I owe a debt of kindness.

My Family. My children, my mother and father and my three sisters.

My brothers, none of whom I am related to by blood.

The lady who runs the local second hand book store, and who has helped me source most of the ancient books I am studying. The family who employs me in my work as gardener. My bandmates. My students. My friends. My readers.

You, Xenophon.

It's nice being able to write to you. I feel like I can speak quite openly, use common language. You seem easy to relate to.

Perhaps it's because you're a storyteller, and a soldier. Like my dad.

Thank you Xenophon.

With Gratitude and Love

Morgan.

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PS. I've listened to an audio recording of your book “On Horsemanship', and it's fabulous. I'm not even all that interested in horses and I've listened to it twice. I'm going to visit my book dealer soon and ask for a copy of your Hellenica, since I need to read the end of the story of the Peloponnesian War. I've been powerfully moved by Thucydides and I need to know how the war ends. I know that Plutarch wrote about it, but that was hundreds of years later, so I want to get your version of the story.

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PPS. I've just learned that Socrates never wrote anything down, so knowing you, Xenophon, is a way of knowing your teacher. I will have to look into Socrates' other students.

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PPPS. (Weeks later...I still haven't sent the letter) It is midnight, there is wine in my blood and my brother is singing a sea shanty, a melody from a familiar foreign land. Sing it again I cry, and he plays again, joy in his voice and in his heart as he calls out the chorus again, again...I sail around the shrivelled barrel of your skull again.

                                      My brother in music:  Lord Stompy

I have been thinking about your journey Xenophon, across Asia with your ten thousand soldiers. Those campfires, like stars glimmering upon the mountains. What songs and stories your men must have shared, what lamentations, what proud declamations of bravery. I remember the dances you described, but tonight, somehow my imagination strains to hear the songs you sang with those men with whom you shared the common bonds of loyalty.

In my mind I can see them singing. I can see their gestures as they tell stories and recite legends, gathered around campfires in the mountains of Turkey. The stars above them telling stories too.

I cannot actually hear them, though I can imagine that I do.