a. [f. Gr. Ξενοφῶν, -ῶντος Xenophon, name of an ancient Greek historian and biographer (c. 444–354 B.C.) + -EAN, -IAN.] Pertaining to, characteristic of, described by, or resembling (that of) Xenophon.
1593. G. Harvey, Pierce’s Super., Wks. (Grosart), II. 99. M. Thomas Blundeuil,… whose painefull, and skillfull bookes of Horsemanship, deserue also to be registred in the Catalogue of Xenophontian woorkes.
1834. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), III. 127. In all European services there is a class of officers who might not unaptly be termed Xenophontean; men … zealous to know the most that is possible, for the sake of acting under its guidance.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), I. 338. The Apology appears to combine the common characteristics both of the Xenophontean and Platonic Socrates.
So Xenophontic a.
1822. T. Mitchell, Aristoph., II. 27. What … authority the poet had for engaging his Socrates in these ridiculous speculations, it is now impossible to ascertain; but … the Platonic, and even the Xenophontic, Socrates is sometimes almost as absurd.
1864. Sala, in Daily Tel., 15 Aug., 5/6. Colonel Fremantle, in one of the most Xenophontic little books that has seen the light within these latter days, tells us [etc.].
1882. A. S. Walpole, Xenophon’s Anab., I. (1913), Intro. p. xii. A Greek of Xenophontic age could procure more with his drachma than can now be got with as much as five francs.
1904. Times, 27 Aug., 10/1. There is something bald and uninteresting in a mere Xenophontic record of the length of stages in a journey.
