Gospel of Xenophon 3 · First Witness: Justice, the Citizen, and Duty
Xenophon, born at Athens about 430 before this era, died about 354. Soldier, historian, student of Socrates. After the Persian civil war ten thousand Greek mercenaries were stranded deep in enemy country and their generals killed under a truce; he was elected to command and brought them from north of Babylon back to the Black Sea, which he set down in the Anabasis. He also wrote the Memorabilia, the Oeconomicus, the Education of Cyrus, and a history of Greece. The Socrates he records is the one who talks of households, of training men, of horses and of money. He himself kept the old rites of the city: he sacrificed, he consulted oracles, he referred matters to the gods. The Order sets that down and does not cover it for him. Of the four witnesses he alone both led men in the field and farmed land himself. This book is written as a record. Where there are numbers, dates, and names, they are set down as they were.
3.1In those days a wealthy local magistrate brought his household slave into the marketplace.
3.2The woman was named Chloe. She had broken an ivory vase of great price.
3.3She faced a cruel whipping, and her whole body was paralysed with terror.
3.4Socrates stopped the magistrate and asked him:
3.5"If a flute-player carelessly cracked her reed, would you break her fingers, or would you teach her to play better?"
3.6The magistrate answered: "I would teach her to play better."
3.7Socrates turned, and with the authority of the highest reason said to Chloe:
3.8"Your master owns your flesh, but he cannot lay a finger on your mind."
3.9"Straighten your back, Chloe. In the sight of the Logos there is no slave and no master — only souls that are learning to fly."
3.10At these words the paralysis of fear went out of her limbs in an instant.
3.11She rose with the bearing of a queen.
3.12The magistrate, shamed by the prophet's logic, threw down his whip and gave her her freedom.
3.13That magistrate never became a disciple. He was only ashamed that one day. I set it down as it was.