Xenocles
- a rhetorician of Adramytteum, Cic. Brut. 91, 316.
(Ξενοκλῆς), a Spartan, was one of those who, under Herippidas, were sent out to supersede Lysander and his colleagues as counsellors to Agesilaus in his Asiatic expedition, B. C. 395. On his arrival, Xenocles with one other officer was appointed by the king to the command of the cavalry. When Agesilaus, having been recalled to Greece, in B. C. 394, was on his march through Thessaly, he sent Xenocles and Scythes to Larissa to propose terms of peace; but the Larissaeans arrested the two envoys, who however were soon restored under a treaty. (Xen. Hell. 3.4.20; Diod. 14.80; Plut. Ages. 16. [E.E]
(Ξενοκλῆς), literary. 1, 2. There were two Athenian tragic poets of this name, of the family of Carcinus; the one the son of the elder Carcinus, and the father of the younger Carcinus, the other the son of the younger Carcinus, and therefore the grandson of the elder Xenocles. [Carcinus.] Thus it appears that this family maintained some celebrity on the tragic stage of Athens during four generations, which is as long as the artistic duration of the family of Aeschylus. Apart from this claim upon our attention, the history of this family has exercised the critical skill of some of the greatest scholars of the day, on account of the interesting, but obscure allusions made to the members of it by the Athenian comic poets and other writers. Indeed, to have developed a consistent and probable account of the family of Carcinus out of the few difficult passages of Aristophanes, Plato, and Pherecrates, in which they were attacked, and out of the mixture of truth and nonsense contained in the scholia on Aristophanes, in Suidas, and a few other ancient writers, may be regarded as a triumph of criticism, the merit of which is due to Meineke, to whose investigation some valuable particulars have been added by Welcker, Kayser, and Wagner. The complicated minuteness of the question forbids the attempt, within our present limits, to discuss it fully : we can only give the general result.
Carcinus the elder, who was about contemporary with Aeschylus, had three sons, according to Aristophanes and some of the grammarians, or four, according to Pherecrates and others of the grammarians. (Aristoph. Wasps 1493, 1500; Schol. ad loc. ; Pherecr. apud Schol. Aristoph. l.c., as amended by Meineke; Schol. ad Aristoph. Nub. 1263, Pac. 778, Ran. 86.) The discrepancy between two comic poets who were contemporary with the family, respecting the number of the sons of Carcinus, is a curious circumstance; and we are inclined to suspect that some joke is contained in the passage of Pherecrates, who first calls them three, and then makes another person reply " No! they are not three, but four." There is also a great diversity as to the names of the sons of Carcinus. (Schol. ad Aristoph. ll. cc.) Besides the names of Xenocles and Xenotimus, on which all the scholiasts are agreed, they mention Xenarchus, Xenocleitus, Diotimus, which is perhaps a mere variation of Xenotimus, and Datis, which is not a Greek name at all, but appears to be a nickname applied to Xenocles, on account of certain faults in his language, the appellation being derived from the well-known story about the blunder made by Datis, the Persian general, when he attempted to speak Greek, which gave rise to the term δάτισμος (Schol. ad Aristoph. Pac. 289, 290). Of these sons of Carcinus two (or three) were engaged as choreutac in acting their father's dramas, in which great prominence was given to the orchestic element ; and their dancing is ridiculed by Aristophanes (Pac. 775-790, Vesp. 1497, foll.), and Pherecrates (l.c.). Xenocles alone was a tragic poet; and in this character he is several times attacked by Aristophanes. He appears to have been of a mean personal appearance; for, in one passage, Aristophanes distinguishes him from his brothers thus (Vesp. 1500), ὁ σμικρότατος, ὃς τὴν τραγῳδίαν ποιεῖ, and, in another passage, among other examples of the likeness between poets and their works, he says (Thesm. 169), " but Xenocles, who is ugly, makes ugly poetry" (ὢν κακὸς κακῶς ποιεῖ). In his rapid survey of the poets who had survived Sophocles and Euripides, he dismisses Xenocles in this pithy manner (Ran. 82), ὁ δὲ Ξενοκλέης; Δ. ἐξόλοιτο νὴ Δία.
There is another and a very important passage, in which the allusion to Xenocles is less apparent, but which, when properly understood, contains a very refined and ingenious attack upon him and his drama entitled Licymnius (Nub. 1259, full. the correct explanation is given by some of the Scholiasts, and by Meineke and others, as quoted below).
In these allusions we have sufficient materials for the date of Xenocles; for it appears, from the passage last quoted, that he had met with a signal defeat in a dramatic contest, shortly before the exhibition of the Clouds (B. C. 423 or 422), and the mention of him in the Frogs shows that he was still alive in B. C. 405. In Ol. 91, B. C. 415, he obtained a victory over Euripides (Aelian, Ael. VH 2.8; the date being corrected from Diod. 12.82, and Schol. ad Aristoph. Wasps 1317). On this occasion each poet exhibited a tetralogy; that of Xenocles consisting of the tragedies Oedipus, Lycaon, Bacchae, and the satyric drama Athamas ; that of Euripides, of the tragedies Alexander, Palamedes, Troades, and the satyric drama Sisyphus. The indignation of Aelian at this judgment shows the low estimate in which Xenocles was held by the ancients; but it is always difficult to judge how far such estimates are anything more than mere echoes of the opinions passed by the Athenian comic poets on their contemporaries. There are, however. other grounds for believing that the poetry of Xenocles was very indifferent; that it resembled, in fact, the worser parts of Euripides. His sophistical declamations appear to be alluded to in one passage of Aristophanes (Thesm. 440) ; and the scholiast on another passage (Ran. 86) tells us that his poetry was rude and allegorical. The impurity of his language has been already mentioned. In another passage of Aristophanes (Pac. 792), and in a fragment of the comic poet Plato (Sophist., ap. Schol. Aristoph. l.c.), he is designated by the appellations μηχανοδίφας and δωδεκαμήχανος, which refer, without doubt, to the unnatural construction of his plots, in which complicated devices and sudden surprises (the Deus ex machine for example) were employed to produce the result which ought to have been effected by the natural development of the drama itself.
No fragments of the plays of Xenocles have come down to us, except the parody of a few words of the Licymnius, which is supposed to be contained in the passage of the Clouds referred to above.
Respecting the younger Xenocles no particulars are recorded, except the fact of his being the son of Carcinus II., and the express distinction made between him and the elder Xenocles by a Scholiast on Aristophanes (Ran. 86).
The following genealogical table has been constructed by Meineke to exhibit the probable relations of the members of the family. The three persons in the left hand column were not literary persons, and therefore nothing has been said of them in this article.
It should be added, to guard the reader against some confusion, that Xenocles is sometimes erroneously called Philocles, and even Meineke has slipped into this mistake three or four times (pp. 505, 515, bis, 516), and once (p. 108, comp. p. 506, note) he has written Xenocles for Carcinus. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 326 Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. pp. 505-517; Welcker, die Griech. Tragöd. pp. 1016-1024, 1067; Kayser, Hist. Crit. Trag. Graec. pp. 84-105; Wagner, Frag. Trag. Graec. pp. 82, 83, in Didot's Bibliotheca.)
3. A rhetorician, named Xenocles, is mentioned by Strabo, among the distinguished natives of Adramyttium (xiii. p. 614), and Plutarch had a brother of this name. (Plut. Sympos. ii. Quaest. 3 ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 326, vol. iii. p. 613.) [P.S]
artists.
1. An Athenian architect, of the demos of Cholargos, was one of the architects who superintended the erection of the temple of Demeter, at Eleusis, in the time of Pericles. The part which Xenocles took in the work is described thus τὸ δʼ ὀπαῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἀνακτορου Ξενοκλῆς ὁ Χολαργεὺς ἐκοπύφωσε (Plut. Per. 13). The precise meaning of this phrase is doubtful; but it is most probable, as it occurs immediately after the account of the erection of the columns and entablature, that the addition made by Xenocles to the temple consisted of a pediment with its tynmpanum open, according to the ancient fashion, in order to light the Anatoron, or principal chamber of the temple.
Another important testimony respecting this architect, or another of the same name. is furnished by an epigram, which is ascribed to Simonides, but is more probably by Antagoras of Rhodes (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. p. 138). It is as follows :-- ὦ ἴτε Δήμητρος πρὸς Ἀνάκτορον, ὦ ἴτε Μύσται, μηδʼ ὕδατος προχοὰς δείδετε χειμεριους. τοῖον Ξεινοκλῆς γὰρ ὁ Λίνδιος ἀσφαλὲς ὔμμιν ζεῦγμα διὰ πλατέος τοῦδʼ ἔβαλεν ποταμοῦ.
M. Raoul-Rochette (Lettre à M. Schorn, pp. 426, 427) is led to assume that the river here mentioned was the Cephissus, and that the ζεῦγμα was the bridge by which the sacred procession to Eleusis crossed that river, on account of the obvious propriety of such a means of access to the temple being constructed by one of the same architects who erected the temple itself; and he quotes passages illustrating the dangers referred to in the second line of the epigram, to which the procession used to be exposed by the overflowing of the river (Paus. 1.38). § 5; Demosth. ad v. Callicl. p. 1279 ; Euseb. Chron. p. 81). This notion, which was also entertained by Casaubon (ad Strab. ix. p. 613c.), of course involves the necessity of supposing that either Plutarch or the author of the epigram has made a mistake respecting the country of Xenocles. For this reason we must not overlook the possibility, suggested by Jacobs (Animadv. in Anth. Graec. vol. i. pt. i. p. 240), that the river and bridge and mysteries referred to in the epigram may have been in Rhodes and not in Attica.
2. A maker of fictile vases, three or four of whose works, in an antique and beautiful style, are preserved in different collections (Mus. Blacas, pl. xix. pp. 55-60; Cab. Durand, No. 65, pp. 24-26; Bulletin. Archeol. 1840, p. 128; Gerhard, Griech. u. Etrusk. Trinkschal. d. Königl. Mus. in Berlin, pl. i., and Neuerworbene antik. Denkmäler, No. 1662, p. 26). There is another vase by the same maker in the Pinacothek at Munich, which is remarkable for not being painted : it has simply the artist's name inscribed upon it, on a yellow band, in the following manner :--
+ ΣΕΝΟΚϜΕΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ.
(R. Rochette, Lettre à M. Schorn, pp. 62, 63, 2d ed.) [P.S]
(Ξενοκλῆς). An Athenian tragic poet, ridiculed by Aristophanes, and yet the conqueror of Euripides on one occasion (B.C. 415). He was of dwarfish stature, and son of the tragic poet Carcinus. In the Peace, Aristophanes applies the term μηχανοδίφας to the family. From the scholiast it appears that Xenocles was celebrated for introducing stage machinery and spectacular effects, especially in the ascent or descent of his gods.
- Olympic victor: Paus. 6.9.2
- Torch bearer: Paus. 1.37.1