Xenophon the historian was formed by the historiographical culture of his time and by his own history as pupil of Socrates, mercenary leader and political exile. These perspectives underpin a collection of essays that explores his sophisticated and occasionally idiosyncratic engagement with the past (both in historical narratives and elsewhere) and the strategies of later readers who harnessed his work to their own agendas. The wider world (Greek and non-Greek) also comes into view, both in the vivid and sometimes brutal experience of war among the Ten Thousand and in the political conflicts and socio-religious institutions and mores that framed his life-story. We discover a writer trying to make sense of that world, to evaluate what happens in it, to discern trends – and ultimately to inform the present with lessons from the past. The eighteen chapters illustrate the calibre and value of a writer at work when history was still a genre in development whose modes and expectations created opportunities more than constraints. The overarching aim of the volume is thus to illuminate what it meant to be a historian in such a period, and how and why Xenophon’s past-oriented thinking and writing mattered beyond his own lifetime.
