The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

xenocratic (zenokratik) Chaste; continent; unimpressed
by wealth. Xenocrates (396–314 b.c.) was a
Greek phi los o pher who combined the ideas of
Pythagoras with those of his own teacher, Plato.
Xenocrates’ sense of personal virtue was so strong
that he was immune even to the temptations proffered
by the renowned courtesan Laïs, as alluded
to by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto: “Warmed
by such youthful beauty, the severe / Xenocrates
would not have more been chaste” (Orlando Furioso,
1532). She behaved with xenocractic indifference to all
the fi ne things that were paraded before her by her
wealthy admirers.
Xerxes (zerkseez) A powerful leader. <strong>The</strong> original
Xerxes I (c. 519–465 b.c.), king of Persia,
attacked Greece at the head of a vast army of more
than 2.5 million men, defeating his enemies at
<strong>The</strong>rmopylae (480) but subsequently having to
retreat after his fl eet was scattered at the Battle of
Salamis the same year and his army overcome at
Plataea in 479. He was eventually murdered by
Artabanus, the commander of his own bodyguards.
<strong>The</strong> name Xerxes is usually associated with military
and po liti cal leaders but may occasionally be applied
more widely, as in Herman Melville’s Moby- Dick
(1851), in which it was applied to a stallion: “He
was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses,
whose pastures in those days were only fenced by
the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies.” See also
esther.
X-Files <strong>The</strong> world of the paranormal. <strong>The</strong> allusion
is to the pop u lar U.S. tele vi sion series <strong>The</strong>
X-Files (1993–2002), which starred David Duchovny
and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Fox Mulder
and Dana Scully, investigators into incidents
of an apparently paranormal nature. All this talk of
lights in the sky and little green men is very X-Files,
don’t you think? See also men in black.
X-Files
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