Xenophon - a Biography

Further Reading:

Owen recommends Oxford World Classics for affordable, accessible translations of Xenophon's works. Their edition of the Anabasis is titled 'The Expedition of Cyrus' and is translated by Robin Waterfield. There is also an edition of Xenophon's Memorabilia and Apology, subtitled 'Memories of Socrates', translated by Martin Hammond, and an edition of 'Estate Management' and 'Symposium' translated by Anthony Verity.

Penguin Classics has a great translation of Xenophon's Hellenica, also weirdly changing the title - search for 'A History of My Times' translated by Rex Warner. Their edition of the Anabasis is also inexplicably titled 'The Persian Expedition', also translated by Warner. Bear these multiple title changes in mind when shopping for books!

Episode Transcript:

So we're going to be talking about a historian today.

 Well, was he just a historian?

 Let's find out. Let's talk to one of our guest experts.

 Would you like to introduce yourself?

 Hi. Yeah. My name is Dr.

 Owen Rees, ancient historian and lecturer of Applied Humanities

 down at Birmingham Newman University.

 And we are getting stuck into, well, he's my favourite historian,

 but you are right in whether or not he's a historian at all.

 So we're talking about Xenophon of Athens, who wrote his Hellenica,

 his history of the Greek world, which sort of takes the story of Thucydides,

 the great writer of the Peloponnesian War, and sort of finishes his story.

 Thucydides famously doesn't complete his work and Xenophon's own history

 sort of picks it up with a sentence at the beginning of his book,

 which usually is when historians are saying, I am the great Xenophon

 and I'm amazing and this is everything I'm going to do.

 Aren't I brilliant? You will respect me.

 But his doesn't start like that at all.

 His very much starts like, and after these things, that's the first sentence.

 And after these things.

 So he's clearly continuing the work of Thucydides.

 We presume it's got to be Thucydides he's continuing.

 The sequel.

 Yeah, exactly.

 And then continues the history of what we understand as the Greek world,

 but I suppose more accurately, the political history of the Greek world

 up until three sixties, which sees the rise of Sparta, the fall of Sparta,

 the rise of Thebes, the defeat of Thebes, Mantenaea, and for Xenophon,

 the sort of watershed moment where the Greek world as he knew it,

 the status quo had ended.

 So that's the historian and the writer we're talking about, Xenophon.

 So when I was at uni, we did a lot of fifth century Athens.

 Yes. Of course you do.

 So we had a lot of Herodotus and a lot of Thucydides, not a lot of Xenophon,

 but I don't think that's particularly fair really, is he?

 Because he's just as good as the first two, right?

 As a historian.

 Oh, he's, he's, well, okay.

 Xenophon, Xenophon's an interesting character.

 So you are absolutely right.

 He is often underrepresented, underplayed.

 There was a, many moons ago, a Greek historian by the name

 of Roel Konijnendijk used to run a social media series of platforms

 called ‘Xenophon is sad.’

 And he would collect quotes from around scholarship and from around the internet of basically people saying things about Xenophon or ignoring Xenophon that would probably make Xenophon sad. So it's things like, you know, the history of the Greek world was given

 to us by the great historians, Herodotus and Thucydides.

 Which is missing a good 70, 80 years, which comes from Xenophon.

 I mean, the most famous example is the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who is describing Socrates.

 So Xenophon was one of Socrates' students, knew him very well.

 And our idea of who Socrates is comes from two main sources, two

 main accounts, which is the works of Plato, one of his students

 and the work of Xenophon. In the modern day, he's considered like the second rate philosopher.

 And Bertrand Russell famously described the issue of dealing with

 Xenophon's version of Socrates. So in his stories about Socrates, in his sort of philosophical

 writings about Socrates, and Bertrand Russell describes it as a stupid

 man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate.

 Oh, no wonder Xenophon is sad.

 Exactly.

 So it's just this idea that Xenophon is too stupid to have really understood what Socrates was saying.

 And so his presentation of Socrates must be wrong. And so this is the sort of the modern reception of poor Xenophon. But it does relate to what the ancient world thought of him.

 And the ancient world loved Xenophon. They loved his histories.

 They loved his politics, his political writings. They loved his philosophical work.

 They considered him a good philosopher. And in many ways, our ancient sources, like the Roman period, when they're reading him and writing about him and things like that, the Roman period,

 they consider him a philosopher first and the historian second.

 And in the modern day, we've kind of resurrected his reputation, but

 generally as a historian, rather than necessarily as a philosopher.

 But we are getting there. His philosophy is interesting.

 It's just not what Plato's is, basically.

 Okay. Full disclosure, I bloody hate Plato.

 Can't stand him.

 Cannot stand him. So Xenophon's philosophy is useful as a historian.

 Plato's philosophy is a bloody nightmare. What am I actually dealing with here?

 Like, what is this? What can I make of this beyond? This is what one very clever, rich man thought.

 So yeah, it is an interesting one. So no, I don't have a lot of time for the philosophers, except Xenophon.

 Good. We're on the same page already. This is excellent.

 So let's start with Xenophon's beginning.

 Where was he born? When was he born? What kind of family?

 We don't know, we don't know, probably knight class.

 So the second highest class in Athens.

 I say that a bit tongue in cheek. So the traditional time date of his birth is around 430 BC.

 But ultimately we don't know. So we don't have an exact date.

 We don't have an exact date. And that is based on supposition.

 That's based on us sort of drawing information about him from other

 sources and trying to piece it together. He later on writes a memoir called the Anabasis, which we'll probably get to later, and in it, part of the stories around the Anabasis, which is when he's a mercenary, part of a mercenary army, he's described by later sources as

 being like the sort of peak of his life.

 And it's what you think that means in terms of his age as to then try

 to work out when he was born. So there are, there's quite a range of dates given for his birth, but I

 think it's fair to say he's probably born around 430 ish. So he grew most importantly for us, doesn't really matter the exact date when he was born sometimes.

 But for now, what's important for us to note is that he grew

 up during the Peloponnesian war.

 Now he obviously writes political history.

 He writes a lot of military history and his entire perspective over

 things shaped by his upbringing. And he was brought up during the Peloponnesian war.

His father's deme, the sort of village or social group in which he

 was raised or potentially born in was outside of the city, so sort of

 countryside, but because of the Peloponnesian war, he most likely

 had to be brought into the city during Pericles, who's sort of

 one of the great leaders of democracy at that point in Athens.

 His plan was to bring everyone inside the city and protect the city

 and let the Spartans and the enemies of Athens sort of raid the

 countryside, but not really cause any problems.

 So Xenophon would have lived through all that as a young child and then

 growing up to be a teenager as well.

 So he would have seen the aftermath of the first peace in

 the four twenties, he would have seen the Sicilian disaster get

 reported coming back home, towards the end of the Peloponnesian

 war, he was probably starting to serve maybe in the cavalry.

 So he would have been part of some raids, things like that.

 He would have experienced those sort of things. He would have seen or witnessed or known people very close to the surrender of Athens in 404, the end of the Peloponnesian war.

 He'd have lived through all that as a young, impressionable Athenian male.

 He, as I said, he was wealthy. The best guess is that he was of the knightly class, the hippeis,

 which is not the uber wealthy, not the ones who are like Elon Musk

 In Athens, your sort of billionaire class. If you think of it like that - he's not that, but he is, he's well off. He's comfortable, you know,, they're generating a lot of income from

 farmland and things like that. But beyond that, anyone who says they know anything more about

 Xenophon is fudging some evidence.

 It's made complicated by the fact that Xenophon doesn't really

 talk about himself openly, which is ironic because he's a main character in his own book.

 Xenophon does a lot of his writing almost anonymously. He doesn't assign his name to being the author. So it's a really interesting dynamic of Xenophon generally, but,

 ultimately your guess is as good as mine.

 So if he doesn't talk about himself a lot, we've got no real way of

 working out whether growing up during this massive war kind of scarred

 him psychologically, or whether it, you know, he grew up thinking

 war's normal, this is just what we do.

 Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's an interesting one.

 There's no indication that he is particularly troubled by his experience

 of war, however, because he has such experience of war, both, within

 the Athenian army or possibly cavalry, and then as a mercenary, and

 then later on in life, he joins the sort of the retinue of the Spartans.

 So, he also gets into the Spartan military system and sees more

 battles and his histories, when you read his histories, and this is

 why as a historian I love him, when you read his histories, you notice

 that he offers a depth to his description of combat and more

 importantly, his, the experience of combat that no other source does.

 In this period, Herodotus does not at all the sense that, you

 know, it's just not really beyond, he's clearly relaying stories he

 has no real understanding of. Thucydides has a better understanding of combat.

 He himself was a commander, but again, he, he kind of writes

 with that standoffish way of explaining everything, so, it's

 not so much the experience of battle as it is what happened in

 that battle and why that battle ended the way it did, what sort

 of decisions were being made and tactically what was going on.

 Fascinating, I'm not having a go at it at all.

 Xenophon offers feet on the ground, eyes in the eyes of your

 enemy, that kind of perspective.

 And it's really interesting to read and to kind of get that feeling

 of how he most likely interpreted his experiences in combat - and so we get interesting accounts.

 So we get him describe psychological instability as a result of combat.

 We see him describe the raw emotions of combat.

 We see him describe pleasure in massacre.

 So actually enjoying slaughtering people, or that this is a good thing.

We also see he… one of my favorites is he's the first

 account that I've ever found in chronologically, who

 describes the freeze reaction of a human being when they're afraid.

 So fight, flight or freeze that kind of quintessential

 human reaction to threat.

He describes it in the battle of Cunaxa, which is in his

 So it's, it's part of this mercenary army and in it, an individual, just

 freezes in the battle line when a chariot is charging towards the battle

 line and everyone moves out of the way, except for this individual who

 just can't move and it's that, it's that psychological insight.

 It is that reality. It is that, I don't know how to describe it.

 It is the kid's gloves off. This is what happens.

 This is the humanity in combat. This is the reality of warfare.

 This is not pretty. It is not pleasant, but it is glorious.

 He does believe that. And as a result, it's just a fantastic writer for that perspective.

 If you're not looking for that perspective, I imagine he

 frustrates people quite a lot, but it's the perspective I come with.

 So yeah, you're absolutely right.

 So he brings that experience to what he's writing about, but no, we

 don't really get the impression that he's particularly, psychologically

 damaged or traumatized by what he writes about, but he is interested in

 emotional and psychological, or what we would consider psychological ramifications

 of war, which we don't often see in ancient sources.

 No, no, no, absolutely not.

 Because it ties, it sort of challenges perceptions of masculinity.

 It challenges perceptions of why people fight and that it's a glorious thing to do.

 One of the reasons I find Xenophon so fascinating is because

 he still finds that glory. He still finds that cultural assumptions about war.

 So it's not quite Siegfried Sassoon level war is utterly terrible, but he

 is at least, you know, at least he's talking about emotions, which is

 really, that's quite special, isn't it?

 Yeah, it is.

 It's, yeah, I could go on all day about how amazing he is as a source

 for this, because he is amazing.

 Like he even talks about seeing things in, not necessarily in combat

 itself, but on campaign that could have an effect on people.

 So there's one example in his Anabasis. So again, this campaign, the reason why I keep coming back to the Anabasis is because it's like the first memoir we have in the ancient world.

 So the idea that someone wrote down, they're in a two year period of their

 life, how they remember it, what happened and everything like that

 is just an amazing piece of evidence.

 So in many, many stories he tells, one of the stories is the Greek army is very

 much marching home, they're trying to get home, they lost the battle of

 Cunaxa, although the Greeks refused to accept that, they thought they won it.

 And then they're trying to march home.

 The Persians are very much annoying them, trying to kill them as they

 leave, but the Greeks are marching home and it's sort of a fighting

 retreat through Mesopotamia, so sort of what we think of as Iraq, and

 through into what we would consider sort of Syria, Armenia, and then a bit of Turkey as well.

 And there's a moment where they have to take a position of a sort of a fortified settlement and the people defending it realize that all hope

 is lost, they're going to lose.

 And the women and children start throwing or being thrown off a cliff.

 The idea being they would rather die than be captured.

 Because we all know what happens when women are captured...

 Because we all know what happens when you get captured by the Greeks.

 So there is a story, he tells a story of an individual trying to stop a woman

 from doing this and failing, and he doesn't really go into a lot of detail

 beyond that, but you always ask the question, why has he told this

 story, why has he put this in? And it is, you do wonder if this is him very much reflecting on everything that's going on here.

 And you know, so there is this sense of why would they be doing this?

 This is a horrible thing to see that, you know, we're actually

 trying to save these people from killing themselves.

 So it's just that kind of depth, those kind of angles on Greek warfare

 that don't often get talked about, the human element, both for combatants

 and in this example, for non-combatants as well.

 And it's interesting that Xenophon is noticing, and not only is he

 noticing, he thinks other people might want to know about it.

 And does he come to the conclusion that they're terrified because we

 are civilized, but to them, pretty brutal?

 If I remember rightly, he does very much understand why they're

 doing this, it doesn't ever stop them from doing it.

 That's, that's the important part.

 So always, always, always remember any source is built in its

 own web of moral understanding. And it is not ones we can share because it is culturally as

 well as personally dictated. So they can acknowledge that war has negatives and downsides,

 and it is scary. I mean, there's the, is it Pindar, the Greek poet, I think it

 is, who has the line about only men who have, it is only men who

 have not seen war that crave it.  

 And this is something Thucydides kind of mirrors as well.

 So there's a few sources in the Greek world who point this out.

 Like war is not a nice place to be, but it is where glory is found.

 So he's acknowledging that non-combatants can be terrified

 for genuine reasons, but it's not enough to stop him wanting the

 collateral damage if it's going to get him what it wants...

 And there is a level of pragmatism in Xenophon's work.

 And this is it. We're not supposed to like these people.

 If you're going into history, you're only reading about

 people you want to like.

 You're going to find any of them.

 You're not going to find one. That's not the point.

 So it's about trying to understand him, trying to understand

 his context as best we can. And the context of his work.

 We've, from a historical point of view, I'm not a classicist.

 I don't care about like the sort of the literary aspect of what's

 going on here in terms of like, whether it's good, whether it's timeless.

 Or I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in how can I use this as evidence as a historian?

 And so, you know, we need to understand those contexts,

 including his own context. And as I mentioned earlier, we know so little about him, which is

 ridiculous because he was so famous in the ancient world.

 But we know so little about him. That's actually very difficult.

 So often what we do as historians is we basically decide the

 Xenophon we want.

 So multifaceted, different to everybody.

 Precisely that. So to some people, he's an oligarchic lover.

 So he hates democracy, loves the Spartans.

 So we can trust everything he says about Sparta, but we can't

 trust anything he says about democracy. So you build this idea of that Xenophon.

 Another Xenophon is that, you know, he is no fool.

 He's wise, sort of clever, worldly. You know, he spent many years away from Greece.

 He has met, he's interacted with Persians, he's interacted

 with all these different cultures. So he knows what he's talking about, but in the same way that

 perhaps like a gristled old general of 40 years in the army, you know,

 understands a way of the world that perhaps we find uncomfortable,

 but doesn't mean it's wrong. You know, so then I build a different Xenophon.

 That's the Xenophon I want to talk about.

 So whenever you're dealing with Xenophon, you've always got to one,

 decide what Xenophon is that you think you're talking about.

 And two, if you're ever reading other people's descriptions of

 Xenophon, get to grips as fast as you can, who is this Xenophon

 that they've built, that they're talking about?

 So these are the pitfalls.

 These are the pitfalls of using him.

 These are the pitfalls of reading about him, but he is amazing.

 You just don't have to like him, but he is amazing.

 Fair enough! So we've been talking about his military service and talking about

 him going all the way to Persia. Why? Why is he going to Persia?

 How old is he at this point? Where is he in his career?

 He wants to suddenly go to Persia.

 His age?

 We just covered his age!

 The problems with his age.

 You know what I mean!

 Is he a silly young man?

 Is he, you know, he's a young veteran?

 He describes himself as a young man.

 He's probably in his twenties, probably no older than 30.

 Why has he gone?

 So, 404 BC, Athens has fallen.

 It's lost the Peloponnesian war, but the democracy has been

 removed and it has been replaced with the so-called 30 tyrants.

 So this is a small oligarchy put in place by the Spartans to run Athens.

 It runs for about a year before there is a democratic uprising

 against it, and then it's overthrown. In the aftermath of this, there was an amnesty.

 So if you supported the 30 tyrants, or if you fought on the side of

 the 30 tyrants during the civil war, there was an amnesty, you couldn't

 really be prosecuted for that because it was their way of going, we need

 to put a line under this and move on as a city, we need to move on.

 Now that didn't stop people from gossiping, as nothing ever does.

 So one of the groups that was identified as supporting the

 30 tyrants were the cavalry. So people wealthy enough to own horses and to serve in the cavalry.

 Now you'll remember that includes Xenophon.

 Now there's a whole debate as to whether or not Xenophon actually

 fought with the 30 tyrants or not. That doesn't matter.

 What matters in Athens is if you were part of the cavalry, you

 could be associated with the 30 tyrants.

 Add to that his teacher and mentor Socrates.

 Now Socrates at this point, a great philosopher of Athens, been around

 for decades at this point, but at the end of the Peloponnesian war

 and after the 30 tyrants, he was coming into a bit of a pickle because

 many of his former students had formed that tyranny.

 So he's suspicious!

 So he is now a suspicious character because everyone knew that he only

 really educated the rich, the elite in Athens, but now that rich and

 elite had shown their true colors is the idea.

 So Xenophon has a dual problem. One is association with the cavalry, two is association with Socrates.

 So he gets an opportunity offered to him by a friend from outside

 of Athens, who basically goes, there is a prince in Persia called Cyrus, Cyrus the Younger, who is basically putting together an army of mercenaries and he's trying to recruit the best mercenaries he can. "Do you want to join?" And Xenophon doesn't say yes.

 He does what every good student does. He goes and talks to his teacher Socrates.

 So he goes up to Socrates and goes, "I've been offered this opportunity.

 What do you think?"

 Socrates goes, "it might be a bit of an issue.

 You might end up getting associated with the Persians.

 You might get, this may not do good things for your reputation in

 Athens, you've got to think about this, but no matter what you do, you

 must talk to the God at Delphi Apollo.

 So go to the Oracle at Delphi and ask, ask them what you should do.

 Should you go or should you not?"

 Now Xenophon, good student, does as he's told.

 So he makes the journey to Delphi and about halfway up, he realizes,

 I want to go, I don't want Apollo to say no. So he changes his question.

 So he doesn't ask, "should I go or should I not go?"

 He asks, basically, "when I go, what sacrifices should I make before leaving?"

 And the Oracle at Delphi gives him an answer.

 "These are the sacrifices you should make." So off he goes back to Athens and goes up to Socrates and goes, "I asked. I have the blessing. I know what I need to do. I'm ready to go."

 Socrates, wise old man that he was, goes, "what did you ask?"

 He found a loophole!

 Xenophon tells him, and Socrates is unimpressed, but ultimately acknowledges

 that you have to do what the gods have now just told you. So you have found this loophole.

 You are wrong to have done that. This is not going to be good for you.

 However, you have to now do it because you've asked the gods and the

 gods are giving you an answer, follow through that answer.

 And it's worth mentioning, isn't it as well, that Socrates, I mean,

 we have this impression of this old bearded man talking nonsense

 and the agora all the time.

 All right, Aristophanes!

 I'll take it!

But it's worth mentioning that Socrates had military experience as well. So he wasn't giving nonsense advice, was he? He had experience.

 Yeah. The impression we have of Socrates as the old philosopher is very much him at the end of his life.

 It's the Socrates that Xenophon writes about and it's

 Socrates that Plato writes about the old Socrates, but Plato interestingly does talk about his earlier expeditions, his earlier, fun times.

 So, we know that he, he, we know that he fought in at least three major battles, during the Peloponnesian war, probably in his forties. So he wasn't a young man. So we know that we also know that he was well-regarded for his military performance in those battles.

Interestingly, two of those battles are like major defeats.

So he, he leaves defeats of the Athenian army with his reputation

 intact, so, which is not easy to do. The thing I always think too, when it comes to Socrates,

 Socrates famously gets killed. Like he is executed by the Athenian people for basically corrupting

 youth and for spreading impious thoughts and things like that.

 And they attack him from anything they can attack him for.

 So they accuse him of anything they can accuse him for.

 What no one ever accuses him of, ever, is cowardice, which is really

 unusual because in Athens, it's the sort of thing you accuse someone of.

 You ran away from a defeat. You left the battlefield when you shouldn't have.

 You, I saw you throw your shield away. These are the kinds of things you attack people with.

 And when Socrates is very much challenged with everything he's done wrong

 and is fighting for his life in a court of law, it never comes up.

 And so much so Socrates uses his military experience to build

 his own case of his defense. Not to say I'm great.

 Look at these things I did, but very much like I did at these

 battles, I am here to stand my ground. So he uses it. So again, you open yourself up to critique if you do that.

 Yeah. So it is interesting.

 So yeah, you're right. Socrates grizzled war veteran.

 That's how I like to describe him. Grizzled war veteran.

 And the advice he's given Xenophon is, he's no fool. He does know what he's talking about.

And also he has a good understanding of the Athenian situation as well.

 So when he's saying this may not turn out well for you in Athens, again, he's not pulling that from nothing. He's not just trying to convince his student not to leave.

 This, this is based on his understanding of everything, everything

 he sort of experienced.

 Am I right in thinking that one of these battles that Socrates was

 involved in during the Peloponnesian war, that Xenophon was there as well? And that they fought close by.

 Now there is a story. So this is the story that comes from later Roman writers because

 later Roman writers are rubbish. So there is a story, I think it's like Pliny and I think

 Diogenes writes about it as well, who wrote the biography of Xenophon.

 The only biography we have of Xenophon is from a writer

 called Diogenes Laertius, and in it, they describe him at the battle of

 Delium, which is in the 420s. Now Xenophon was probably born around the 430 mark.

 You can see where I'm going with this. The story they've probably got wrong is in the classical Greek sources. There is a story that Alcibiades fought alongside Socrates.

 Alcibiades, as I like to call him, super sexy Alcibiades, is, is how

 to best understand him, super sexy Alcibiades, everyone is infatuated with him.

 He's a beautiful young man. And then as he sort of grows older, he becomes this real demagogue.

 He can really manipulate the people with these beautiful words and

 his beautiful ways he's a, he's a super sexy guy, but he's also a turncoat, he's a coward.

 He's a traitor. His story is phenomenal. There's nothing quite like it in the classical Greek world.

 Anyway, as a young man, rich Athenian, he was a student of Socrates.

 Socrates is said to have been quite infatuated with him, and to

 have found him very pleasing to look at. So there is this sort of undercurrent to any story

 about Socrates and Alcibiades.

 Anyway, story goes that they were on the battle of, I think it's

 Delium, when Alcibiades, it's during the retreat, Alcibiades basically falls and he's protecting and Socrates very much helps him, and sort of stands firm and sort of gets him out.

 And that's the, the famous story that the Roman writers then

 for some reason decided Xenophon. We know it's a student.

 We know it's someone who spent time in Sparta. We know he's super sexy.

 Xenophon is described as a beautiful young man.

 Is he?

 Socrates had a, had a keen eye for pretty...

 Sexy men.

 Sexy men.

 He liked them.

 He liked to be around them.

I'm glad that me and Socrates have something in common.

 It is interesting because both, because Xenophon's description of

 Socrates is very much of one of self-restraint, right?

 That's the core message of Socrates from Xenophon, self-restraint, self-control.

 Whereas Plato's Socrates is very much self-knowledge. So more highfalutin, head in the clouds.

 Let's think about the world and existence and our place within it

 and all that kind of stuff. Whereas Xenophon is much more down to earth and it's

 about controlling one's desires. So it's interesting that he surrounds himself with pretty things.

 So if we hear the story about Xenophon and Socrates in a battle, it's

 some Roman who's not done his due diligence and there's written

 the wrong reference, right?

 Okay.

 If you learn nothing else, learn not to trust Roman writers.

So put two historians with ADHD in a room and see how long it

 takes them to grow off on a tangent…

 Where are we? Why is he going to Persia?

 Okay. So he's off to Persia. Basically he's either off to get out of Athens before he gets

 accused of things because of the atmosphere in Athens during this

 reconciliation, which is because of course this is the lead up.

 So 401 is when he's gone and he's joined the mercenary army,

 within the Greek contingent. So the Greek contingent are all the Greek mercenaries that

 basically Cyrus wanted, and they're famously called the 10,000.

 Even though there weren't 10,000 of them.

 How do we know?

 Because Xenophon literally counts them out. He tells us how many there are.

 So he's like, there's 700 from here. There's 400 from here.

 There's 800 from there. And you add them up and there's like 12,000 or something.

 It's not 10,000. So they're not even rounding up. They're rounding down.

 Why?

 That seems...

 12,000 sounds good!

 It does, doesn't it? But Xenophon doesn't call them that. He calls them the Cyreans.

 So the, the, the men of Cyrus, that's how he kind of refers to them or the people that fought with Cyrus. That's how he refers to them. So in his Hellenica, in his history of the Greek world, this mercenary army, spoiler alert, makes it back from Mesopotamia and is survives, and then gets used by the Spartans because it's basically a mercenary army at this point, very experienced, very grittled, know what they're doing and they appear in a battle, in the Greek world.

 And Xenophon refers to them as the men that fought with Cyrus.

 That's their name. So he doesn't use the 10,000. We use the 10,000.

 So they're there basically for Xenophon to get out of Athens, but

 also, like he's getting paid. There's money and there's hope.

 There was a draw here, which is that, cause you've got to remember,

 you know, we don't know what the repercussions of the Peloponnesian

 war has had on the family income of Xenophon, but it is possible there

 is a financial motive here, we don't know, but he joins the army and his

 memoir, the Anabasis is the two year period in which he is going into

 the Persian empire and then trying to march out of it to safety.

 So what does the word Anabasis mean?

 It literally means like march up land.

 Okay. So that gives you a clue which direction they're going in!

Or march inland might be sort of another way of translating it, but that's what it means.

 So it's, it's just there, march inland, up land. Like I said, that's all, that's all it is.

But it's… this is the idea. So it's the march. It's everything that's going on.

 So it has one major battle in it, which is the battle between Cyrus the Younger and his brother, the King Artaxerxes. So the battle for the Persian throne.

 Cyrus the Younger gets killed in battle and his army gets defeated. The Greeks, unfortunately, won their side of the battle. So they pushed the Persian back and chased after them.

 Like every good Greek does. They forget about the rest of the battle and they're worried about glory. So they charge after them. And then basically once they stopped, they kind of have a rest and a, you know, meal and they're like, oh, that was good. Well done team.

 And news then comes that Cyrus died and actually they've lost, but the Greeks refused to kind of acknowledge this because to them they've won. So there's then this kind of wrangling with the Persians, cause the Persians are like, give up your weapons and join us. And the Greeks are like, I don't really trust that.And then they're like, well, okay, fine. Leave! And the Greeks are like, no, I don't trust you're going to let us do that either. So it becomes like a fighting retreat. So the Greeks are trying to march up land back to the black sea to try and get out and the Persians are trying to basically either get rid of them or get rid of them, depending on how you interpret that phrase.

 Cause you don't want 12,000 armed men just wandering around - an experienced Greek army just marching around the Persian empire. ‘Cause if Prince Cyrus is dead, right.

 They're not getting paid by anyone at this point. So how are they feeding themselves?

 Yeah, really good question. They are taking what they want.

There are markets and things that they can interact with, but ultimately

 armies on the move, take what they want, take what they need.

 So there's a good reason to want the Greeks out of Persia: because they're a nuisance.

 They are precisely that they're exactly a nuisance. So that's kind of the story in a nutshell.

 Within the first couple of books of the Anabasis, Xenophon doesn't really appear.

Because he's just a hoplite. He's just another, or, you know, he's just another man in the ranks, and then there is a moment where the Greek commanders are tricked by the Persians to meet with them and basically negotiate what could happen so they can get out and they fell for it.

 And all the commanders were slaughtered or taken back to Persia and imprisoned.

 So, that left the Greeks very much like we have no commanders and we're in the middle of the Persian empire.

 Who don't want us here.

 Who don't want us here.

 Like what on earth do we do? And, it's interesting if you read the Anabasis, there's a lovely

 moment where Xenophon gives a biography to every single commander who

 is on his side, so he talks about them all and he talks about them in

 terms of their leadership. So it's very much like you've got the Spartan guy,

 a guy called Cleiarchus, who was hard lined, not very pleasant, not a

 nice man to be around, but definitely who you want to lead you in battle.

 Because he has that experience. He has that. Yeah.

 Oh, so very Spartan.

 Pretty Spartan. Yeah.

And then you've got other ones who are a bit cowardly or a bit manipulative or a bit, you know, so he goes to all the, you got bad bits, they got good bits, they got bad bits, or they just got bad bits. And then the kind of the narrative device here is the next page is when, Xenophon then steps up and offers to lead himself. So it's the… you gotta see it in terms of a

 storytelling device, it's very much, here are all the commanders.

 Here's what they're good at, here's what they're not good at.

 And here's what, you know, this is what a good commander could do,

 but doesn't do, and then came forth the great commander, Xenophon himself.

 It's an interesting thing. Cause, as I said, Xenophon doesn't actually describe himself as

 writing this in Anabasis, so he doesn't put his name to it. And in his, in his other writings, he actually assigns it to someone else.

 Oh, that's interesting.

 Right from Syracuse, someone we know, otherwise know nothing about.

 He says they wrote it.

A Nom de Plume...

 Yeah. And Plutarch, the Roman Greek record, Roman writer in the first century C.E. He was the one that called it out and went, no, he didn't. This is clearly Xenophon himself. And if you read, of course he is. Roman writers might be wrong, but Greek writers in the

 Roman period are always right. But no, in all seriousness, Plutarch's point here is, and he is right.

 If you read through, like Xenophon is clearly writing his own memoirs.

 It's clearly about him. Cause he just, he just knows everything Xenophon is thinking in the book.

And he starts talking about like these books, like the story I gave you of his meeting with Socrates, that comes from the Anabasis. So Xenophon feeds these personal anecdotes from his life in through

 the Anabasis, often entirely inconsequentially.

 So it becomes pretty obvious. How would anyone else know all of these tiny details from Xenophon's life if it isn't actually an autobiography?

 But it is interesting. Cause, cause we don't have every piece of evidence from the Greek world.

 I wish we did, but we don't.

 Actually, I don't wish we did.

 Could you imagine sifting through that?

 That'd be way too much.

 That'd be like, that'd be like modern history.

 That's ridiculous.

 We have more than we say.  We do have more than we say.

 It does seem that Xenophon probably wrote this Anabasis to answer

 criticisms about himself from other people who have written about this event.

 Okay.

 So who else is writing about it then?

 Other people from within the army. So they're all writing.

 But we don't, we don't have any of them. We, we don't have any of these existing.

 We don't know how many were written, but there's at least one Diodorus

 of Sicily mentions just in passing. And it's probable that Xenophon is at least in part, almost defending

 his character and defending his decision-making during the retreat.

 These other accounts, have they not survived because they were

 a bit crap in comparison, or have we just been unlucky?

 Oh, that's a really interesting question. I will extrapolate that we should ask why have all of Xenophon's work survived, because that's really the question, because ultimately, why does an account not survive, happenstance, survival bias, luck, interest. You know, we've got the titles of all the plays written by some of the great tragedians, you know, your Aeschylus, your Euripides,

 Sophocles, but we only have a small collection of them that survived today.

 It doesn't mean the others weren't good. And in many ways, they might well be better.

 We don't know. We haven't got them. So we don't know why Xenophon's survived then.

 But, with Xenophon, there might be an answer. And one of them is he's such a famous writer, like the ancient world was obsessed with Xenophon, they loved his work, even they loved to criticize it.

 So they criticize his Greek, they criticize his philosophy sometimes, but others are like, no, it's brilliant. It's amazing. So he clearly this kind of Marmite figure that you even love or hate.

 Probably true today as well.

 But one of the other reasons Xenophon has survived as long as he has, and

 because like I mentioned, the ancient world describes 15 titles of works he wrote.

 That's a lot!

 15 is quite a lot. He's a polymath. He's a great, he's a great man, a great writer, not a great individual,

 but a great writer. 15 works, we have all 15 titles on a list and we have today

 copies of every single one.

 Wow. Is there any other writer that we have that for?

 I can't think of one.

 That doesn't mean there's not, but I can't think of one unless you think

 like Herodotus, but he only wrote one.

 Yeah, he wrote one thing, that doesn't count.

 And to be honest, I've never looked it up. I've never looked up, did Herodotus ever write anything else?

 So I don't know if that's true, but you know, even Thucydides who wrote his one book isn't finished.

 Xenophon, we have everything he wrote in full, including a spurious one that we're pretty sure he didn't write.

 Which is?

 Constitution of the Athenians, the so-called Old Oligarch,

 if you've ever heard of it.

 Yeah, I've got PTSD from undergrad. Thank you for sparking that off.

 Yeah, all you need to know for this session is that he probably didn't write it.

 It used to be considered one of his works, but now it's usually people assume he didn't write it.

 But of course that's all based on who you think Xenophon is and

 what you decide about him before you make decisions. So one of the reasons people say he didn't write it is because stylistically, it's not as good as his other works, but he probably, if he did write it, he probably wrote it as a young man.

 Fair enough.

 So probably wouldn't be as good, would it? But generally speaking, it's assumed he didn't write it,

 but 15 is the list we have all 15. That is really unusual. Partly, some of his works are considered the first of its kind. So his Anabasis is the first memoir that we have. So the importance of that.

 The Anabasis was also considered a bit of a blueprint of what to do if you're going to invade Persia, or kind of an inspiration for it. It is said that Alexander the Great was inspired by the Anabasis,

 and the idea that he would read it and go, oh, look what just 10,000 Greek men could do.

 Imagine what my army could do, you know, that kind of idea.

His Hellenica was considered sort of on par and a continuation of Thucydides, so again, important.

 His Constitution of the Spartans, an understanding of Spartan culture, Spartan politics, important.

 His Cyropedia. So he wrote what is possibly one of the first pieces of historical

 fiction or historical romance in the ancient world. So it's basically a fictionalized story of Cyrus the Great, the creator of the Persian Empire, basically, and he uses it very much to sort of

 talk about good leadership and that sort of thing, but it is pretty much a fictional story of Cyrus the Great.

 And I mean, he's clearly spent time in the Persian Empire, so I'm

 assuming that he's got experience...

 So he's picking up these stories, he's picking up these traditions, he finds them interesting.

 And he's obviously intrigued by the idea of Cyrus's own sort of rise and what he learned along the way and all that sort of thing. Then you've got his Socratic works, which again, were

 considered really important. He was considered the practical philosopher.

 As opposed to Plato's high flying, high fluting, kind of high brow way of looking at philosophy.

 I often think of him as the drunk man in a pub who comes up and sits next to you and goes, come sit here and let me tell you about life. So his Socratic work, the philosophies are not really of

 Socrates himself, but of his learning from Socrates and what he's sort of done with it, his defense of Socrates, his implementation of what he took from Socrates, basically, very practical.

 So it's often linked to how to run a household. It's often linked to agriculture.

 It's linked to the relationship between a man and a wife. There's a section of his oikonomikos, his ‘economics’, so his basically how to run a household, which is often tongue in cheek referred to as how to train your wife.

 Okay...

 You get the idea.

 Cooling slightly on Xenophon...

 Yeah. I told you, you weren't supposed to like him! But anyway, so he did a symposium, a symposium with big drinking parties in Athens. And this is where supposedly they would be discussing like

 Homeric poetry and philosophy and all these highfalutin things, but really they're all getting pissed and looking at porn and watching pretty boys and girls do things. But having these highfalutin conversations. So he wrote something called his symposium, which is like

 a sort of one of his sort of lessons from Socrates, fictional or otherwise.

 And basically they go, there's a dialogue going on. And let's discuss things.

 Interestingly, Plato did a similar one. So he has his symposium where it goes on.

 Plato's symposium is, you know, it's all about the philosophy and it's all about the thinking.

 It's all about the clever repartee and how brilliant Socrates is.

 Xenophon is almost all about sex, desire, restraining that desire, if you can, and entertainment, what's

 going on in the room.  And it ends, one of my favorite endings to anything in a

 Greek source, it ends with a sex show, a live sex show. And all the unmarried men in the room stay, watch and think, I should get married. And all the married men get home, jump on the

 horses and go, I need to see my wife. So there's a real practical, humorous element to Xenophon's

 It's supposed to be funny as well. There's a surrogate nature to what's going on.

 It's playful. And actually a lot of what he's talking about is playfulness.

 Because Plato is not funny.

 Plato is the opposite of funny. Plato is not funny at all. Xenophon is funny.

 So if you're going to read any Greek philosophy and you don't want to, you know, die of boredom,

 maybe, maybe try Xenophon.

 But he also wrote my practical guides. So like, how to look after and train and use horses.

 Like how you hunt with dogs, just like practical guides. He did one on being a cavalry commander, like what cavalry commander should consider and should make sure they're good at.

 So, you know, he's got these very practical side to him as well. And this is always kind of people's interest, but there is another side to it, which is that Xenophon wrote in very simple Greek, very easy to read Greek. So there was also an educational element. So if you need to learn ancient Greek and you

 want to start somewhere, you would start with Xenophon.

 So we can kind of guess that he's writing for

 a wider audience than some of his peers then. That’s nice.

 Yeah, I think that's fair. It is nice. Forget everything else about him. That is nice.

 And so another possibility for his survival of all his works is because they're constantly being

 studied, not necessarily just for their content, but also for the Greek.

 So this simple Greek, is this one of the reasons that certain classicists have demoted

 him below other writers then? Because it's not lyrical and it's not posh

 and it's not elegant...

 It's ironic, isn't it? He was actually lauded in the ancient world for his use of simple Greek to express complicated things. So he was kind of lauded for his use of that language in that way.

 And then by about the 19th century, this went the other way. And it was very much, it's simple, it's basic, it's vulgar, it's not as clever. You know, we should be having to work really hard.

 If you ever have to suffer through reading Plato in Greek, it is horrendous. And if you ever have to suffer reading Thucydides in the Greek, it's horrific. And Xenophon just isn't. It is so much easier to work with.

 Which is why certain classicists don't rate him.

 Yeah. I think there's also something to be said for…

 I was taught Greek by a guy called John Taylor, who wrote the book, literally wrote the

 textbook on learning ancient Greek at school. He also edits the dictionaries and stuff like that.

 He's a big player in sort of teaching ancient Greek. And I always remember him talking about this.

 And he said, he always wondered if it was because 19th century scholars had to read

 Xenophon over and over again in like school. And they got sick of him. And so it's almost like that backlash of like, no, he's terrible. You made me do it for homework and I'm not doing it ever again.

 He's rubbish. So yeah, you do wonder if there's a bit of a bias against him from...

 Snobbery.

 Snobbery, basically.  What's important for us, Xenophon survives. All his work survives and that's unusual. But unfortunately, we can't really date them.

 Okay. I'm guessing he's not writing them as he's, you know, evacuating from Asia Minor.

 Yeah, precisely. So we don't know if he was working off notes. We don't know if he was working off

 just memory. We don't know. We don't know any of it. He gives clues within bits of work when

 he refers to things that we know happen later. So we know he probably was writing most

 of these after the fact, and quite a bit far after the fact. Probably when he's exiled from Athens,

 which happens in the 390s, he then spends a bit of time with the Spartans giving them a home up towards Elis and towards like Olympia. He's given a home there. So it might be there when he's in

 exile that he starts writing a lot of these, but we don't really know. We don't know the order he wrote them in.

 Do we know why he was exiled from Athens?

 Barely. Yeah, the ancient sources give a couple of possibilities, so we don't really know.

 What are the rumours?

 So the rumors is Socrates was right, and he shouldn't have gone to Persia.

 Right.

 Other rumor is it's to do with his relationship with Socrates, it's relationship to do with possibly the tyranny, and sort of a backlash of that. We don't really know. Another rumor is that it wasn't anything to do with any of that. It was to do with his relationship with Sparta.

 That was why he was exiled. 

What was his relationship with Sparta? Because he grew up in a city that was at war with Sparta

 for decades. So what is his relationship with them?

 So during his time as a mercenary, he gets, he works under various Spartan commanders. So he gets to know them quite a bit. And then by the end of their sort of excursion out of the Persian Empire, he ends up coming into the retinue of the Spartan King, Agesilaos II. So he hasn't even got back to Greece yet. Basically, they go back and continue military service in Asia Minor and what is now in modern Turkey. And he's in the retinue of Agesilaos II. It seems that Agesilaos, when he comes back to Greece

 to fight a battle, or a series of battles between the Spartans and a new alliance, which included Athens, against him, Agesilaos came back to Greece, fought the Athenians, the Thebans and various groups in battle and won.

 Xenophon seems to have been there on the Spartan side. Again, depending on what you want to make of Xenophon, you either think he may have fought in the battle or he might have just been there but not fought in it. There's no real clear cut answer to that question. But it seems to be after that, that he is exiled.

 So he's spent all this time with these Spartans in Persia. They've buried the hatchet because they've got a new common enemy. Is he just under the impression that actually he's got quite a lot as a

 Greek, he's got quite a lot in common with the Spartans after all, particularly in comparison with the Persians? Or is it just that Agesilaos is paying him? “Show me the money.”

 Show me the money. It's an interesting question. There's no answer to that

 question, basically. Any answer I give you is entirely supposition.

 Speculative, okay.

 I'm going to speculate.

 Yeah, go for it.

 I think he's an adventure seeker. It sounds like it, doesn't it? I think he's an adventure seeker

 and I think he knows the ramifications of what he's doing.

 But it's just irresistible.

 It's just irresistible. That's my impression. I very much doubt many people would agree with

 that, by the way. But that's my impression. So he then goes to Sparta. The reason why that's

 important is because Xenophon is arguably our very best source for Spartan culture and Spartan

 politics, because he spent time with the Spartan king. He spent time with the Spartan army.

 He spent time in and around Spartan land and was given a home, admittedly not in the sort of core of Sparta or i the sort of Laconia and Messenia, the lands of Sparta, but he is given a home under the control and protectorate of the Spartans. There are ancient history rumors. So within the ancient sources, there are rumors that his children went through the Spartan training system, the Agoge, but that's debated. But just this idea that he was that closely connected with the Spartans. So when he talks about Spartan politics, when he talks about the Spartan army, he obviously has his

 agendas, he has his interests, he has the things that he does tell us and doesn't tell us.

 And you've got to treat it with kid gloves as always. But if he says something that is contradicted by a later source, I am more likely to believe Xenophon.

 Okay. And did he personally know this king? Would he have been, you know, chatting with him or

 is he just seeing him from a distance?

  He seems to have personally known him and also, I mean, he wrote, one of the

 works that we have that survived with him is a eulogistic biography of Agesilaos II, which seems

 to have been circulated after Agesilaos II died, which is very much like how

 great Agesilaos was. 

So in writing this, was he thinking at the time, “I'm really cutting every tie with

 my home city doing this? I'm fully aware this is it.”

 No, not really, because ultimately his exile, like most Athenian exiles,

 they're not forever. And there is a suggestion that he did go back to

 Athens at some point. He never mentions it. He never mentions it.

 The story goes that he went from his place in and around Elis. He then ended up in

 Corinth, and according to most traditions, he died in Corinth. However, if you look at

 his final work, it's something called his Ways and Means, his final work, he seems to

 have returned to Athens at some point, because he has a good understanding

 of what's going on.

 He was never fully banished then, he was able to return at some point. Okay.

 That's interesting. Can we assume then that it's when he's living in the Peloponnese, this

 is when he's doing the bulk of his writing?

 Yeah. Yeah. I think this is pretty fair to say, but like I said, we don't really know the order in which

 he writes them. We don't really know exactly when he writes a lot of them.

 Like even scholars of his histories, his Hellenica, are pretty sure that the first two

 books of it were probably written at a completely different time to the rest of it.

 So it's something he obviously went back to and added to and edited, those processes as well.

 So even if we accept when he finished it, that doesn't tell us when he started writing

 it. So yeah, why am I telling you this? Really, this is just to understand the

 difficulty of making assumptions about him and his work, because we can't even securely

 date. He's writing during the fourth century, definitely. Pretty much definitely.

 I said that too confidently. I was like, no, no, he did. He was writing

 during the fourth century and he probably died in the 350s.

And what time does the Hellenica cover? We know it starts

 when Thucydides finishes [in 411.]

 Oh yeah, literally mid-sentence. That's where it starts. And it ends at 316, Battle of Mantinea.

 So he's talking about a time that he lived through, obviously, but he's also talking

 from the perspective of someone who knows Athenians, he knows Spartans. He's probably

 talked to Greeks of all kinds of cities during his mercenary days. That makes him

 quite an interesting source then, because he's got this multiple perspective built in.

 Yeah, it absolutely does. And I think this is sometimes where people want things

 from Xenophon that is probably unfair.

 What do they want?

 They want him to be a historian and a good one. I want him to be a source, which is not the same.

 So people sort of look to him and go, here, his judgment of this and the other

 or his use of evidence isn't very forthcoming or his assessment of this is skewed by his

 religious beliefs and things like that. Whereas as a historian of that period now,

 I'm like, good, I can use that. I can do things like that. I can get an understanding

 of what's going on. So something that often comes up is Xenophon seems to be a very pious man.

 OK, so he puts a lot in his stories for doing the right things towards the gods.

 So whether it be sacrifices or what have you. And also when things go wrong, he will sometimes say

 that's because of what has happened that has upset the gods, basically. Not all the time,

 but there are a couple of instances where it's like, this was sacrilegious behavior. They deserve what came to them as a result. That's what happened. So from a historian

 to a historian point of view, I'm like, this is this is useless supposition what you're talking about.

 But from an ancient historian today, reading that, what we can see is actually sort of how ingrained

 their religious belief systems were.

 And also his descriptions of it gives us insight into things that no other source talks about,

 such as religious activity on the march, religious activity when they come home

 from the march. So that kind of homecoming. OK, and it's Xenophon that describes it.

 Thucydides doesn't really describe it. Herodotus doesn't describe it. We wouldn't have it. It's him. He describes it because it mattered to him. He also describes things that can be problematic for historians

 because it contradicts everything else that we've been told about a particular thing. So the example for this is something I used to do a lot of work on during my former years which was on the the burial of the war dead in ancient Athens. So what do you do with the war dead in ancient Athens? Ancient Athens famously buried their dead in Athens itself. They gave it a public funeral.

 They brought the dead back. They repatriated their war dead. They're the first city, state,

 country, state of any description to do this in human history. Because it's a major undertaking.

 But the commitment, the financial, the manpower, it's a major undertaking. And this is the story we get. This is Thucydides describes it. No one questions it. It's all pretty hunky dory.

 That's what happened. They burn the bodies on the battlefield and they take them home.

 Xenophon describes them burying them on the battlefield. Well, burying them on campaign.

 He describes them burying them where they are. I think he's in Ephesus. So it's during a sort of

 a naval campaign in Asia Minor. And he describes the Athenian dead being buried and left there. So problematic is this simple sentence he writes... so problematic it is that some of the

 sort of great classicists who have studied him describe it as a slip of the pen.

 So he's just made a mistake.

 That's an odd mistake to make. I mean, yeah, he's there.

 He's a military commander. He knows what you do with the dead.

 OK, so people assume that he's wrong.

 Yeah, because it's easier. It's easier to assume he's wrong than to assume or to extrapolate

 that all the other evidence is lying to us. Whereas actually, if you start thinking about

 why would ancient Athenian writers present something about the burial of the war dead

 that's not true. And there is something to be said for cultural sensibilities. It is unacceptable culturally

 for them to believe that they're not all coming home. And the ritual of the funeral occurs.

 But of course, the remains are all in coffins. How do you know how many in it?

 I mean, we have got burials of Athenian warriors outside the city of Athens. We've got the Marathon tomb.

 Yeah, we've got the Marathon tomb, which is often considered the last time it happened.

 Oh, OK.

 And after that, so they use that as like, well, it definitely couldn't have happened before then.

 You know, when did Athens start doing this? Couldn't have happened before that.

 It must have happened after that. But ultimately, no, no, we haven't really got

 evidence of Athenians being buried outside of it. We haven't actually got a lot of evidence of them

 being buried in it either.

 I'm thinking purely logistically, trying to get a corpse back from somewhere fairly close.

 Is surely a hell of a lot easier than bringing one back from Asia Minor.

 Yeah. And you've also got to, you've got to also take into account one is difficult enough. Yeah, the Battle of Delium, where I told you the Socrates fought and the Romans get it all wrong

 and thinks Xenophon's there. The Athenians lost a thousand men. So when you're thinking logistics, you've got to think they've got to burn a thousand bodies.

 Needs a lot of wood…

 It does need a lot of wood. It needs hundreds of tons of wood.

 A lot.

 Yeah. It's something like, I used to, I had to do all this as research once. I can't remember what time it is. Something like 330 kilograms of wood to burn a single body.

 That's enormous amounts post battle where you're not near home territory.

And wood is scarce in the, in the Greek world. There's not loads of it. And then of course you've got

 to take into the logistics of space. So how much space does that amount of cremains, cremated human remains, how much space does that take up? How much does that weigh?

 Where are you going to get the pots from, the burial pots?

 Well, this is it. Because then you've got to take into the logistics of all the

 pots, which is unlikely. So the more we discuss logistics, the more sense Xenophon makes. Which actually, remember what I said about him, he's practical. Even his philosophy is practical.

 He's a practical individual. I don't think he's lying.

 No, it doesn't sound like it, does it?

 If there was a slip of the pen, the slip was, I shouldn't have said that. But Xenophon doesn't seem to care about that.

 Because he's practical.

 Because he's practical. Because it's reality. Cause that's what happens. That's how you deal with the bodies when you need to, because that is the human element of warfare, which is where we started.

 And he does not shy away from it.

 Is he talking about how many people were buried in Ephesus?

 No, just to round them aside. It's like they had a battle, they buried the dead and then they moved on.

 Because, yeah, if he brought them home, if he buries them, he just needs some shovels.

 Yeah.

 But if he brings them home,

 he needs wood, he needs...

 Well, and also you've got to go home.

 Yes. How, how did he get back? Did he march the whole way through?

 Did they sail? Cause marching is the long route. We know that [from the Persian Invasion].

 Marching is the long route. So actually this whole bit about Ephesus

 is a complete aside. It's to do with the Athenians. It's nothing to do with the mercenaries at all.

 So the mercenaries, they march all the way to the Black Sea. So they do take a long route. They take a long route through the mountains, through, he gives descriptions, like his is the earliest known written description of snow blindness. He describes snow blindness. He describes basically hypothermia. He describes, you know, struggling in the mountains.

 It's amazing.

 So you can start to see, can't you, why Alexander the Great is using it as a kind of how-to guide.

 Cause it's not just, we did glorious stuff here. He's, he's giving practical information about terrain and

 weather and seasons. Wow.

 This is a, this is Xenophon. This is where Xenophon is amazing.

 This is why anyone who puts Xenophon down should get in the

 bin as a source is just phenomenal and offers us insight that just no other source in this time period offers us.

 And is that because of his writing style or is it the

 Is he deliberately moving away from Thucydides' style to create his own

 style, or is he just, he can't resist adding these little details?

 That's a really interesting question. Partly it depends on when you think he wrote it.

So depending on when you think he wrote it will determine whether or not you think he was influenced by other history writers in the fourth century. Or whether they were influenced by him.

 So, all that really matters is that he does write a very different history to Thucydides.

He reinserts that human element, the religious element, to a much greater extent than Thucydides does. Whether or not he's purposely trying to create a new genre, whether or not he's tapping into a new genre, whether or not he's trying to emulate Thucydides, whether or not he's trying to improve Thucydides depends entirely on the Xenophon you're creating..

 So we can make our own [conclusions].

 Make your own judgments. And there is evidence for all of it.

 So we've spoken a lot about his travels through Persia and his continuation of the history of Greece after Thucydides ends. What about some of his deep cuts that you've mentioned?

 Tell me more about some of the more unusual texts that perhaps people haven't heard of.

 So, I mean, one of my favorites is hunting with dogs. It's a manual on, well, exactly what it sounds like,

 how to hunt with dogs.It's a brilliant source to understand dog training in

 to understand relationships with dogs, to understand, cause he goes

 into like how to ensure you're breeding the right males and females

 that you've got, how to sort of secure the bloodline of particularly strong hunting dogs, things like that. He also talks about what you and I might refer to as breed of dog.

They're not breeds of dogs in the technical sense, but they

 are types, the types of dogs. So he talks about the Laconian hound.

He talks about the Vulpine type dog.He's got like a whole list of different types of dogs and what

 you'd use them for is he's practical. So different types of dogs used for different types of hunting.

 So you, I mean, much like today. So like a, you know, when you look at a terrier type dog, that is, that was bred to hunt a particular type of prey, as opposed to like a wolf hound.

So Xenophon very much goes into those kinds of details, but also like how to kind of identify a dog being good for that task.

 So is he writing for fellow rich kids because hunting is a leisure activity or is he writing for people because hunting is a way to garnish your food from your farm because everyone's

 living pretty much hand to mouth?

 Oh, that kind of practical, yeah, that kind of practical element.

 I'd probably say it's more the former. There is an, there is a scholarly thread at the moment that suggests that a lot of these works are still about teaching people how to

 live a particular way or like a good way of life. So he is still trying to use the, these works to instruct people in his sort of deeper philosophical thoughts on life.So yeah, so if that's true, we've got to understand that there is also that kind of element to this as well.But ultimately, like I say, I prefer the practical side of what he does. It's for anyone who wants to hunt with dogs.

 So it's simpler language to make it accessible, but it is still slightly perhaps aspirational.

 To an extent.

 Yeah.

 Yeah. But to give you an idea of Bonkers stuff that you get from this, he gives a list of appropriate names for dogs. So if you ever sort of read anywhere about the Greeks used to

 call their dogs this, chances are that came from Xenophon.You know, it's things like you

 know, ‘loud barker’ or, you know, ‘good on the chase’, you know, things like this, but in Greek kind of gives those kind of sharp snappy names.He just gives a long list and it is a long list

 of good names you could give your dog.

 Have you ever named a dog after a name you found in Xenophon? Be honest.

 I have not named a dog after anything I've found in Xenophon.

 Is that your choice or your wife's choice?

 My wife would not allow that at all. But interestingly, it reminded me many moons ago.

 Speaking of my wife, I met her great aunt who had dogs and all her dogs were given names that began with the letter K. And it was because she was told that names that begin with the

 letter K, the sound you make is good for dog recall. So it's the idea that you would, you would use the name of a dog for specific tasks, so not necessarily because it reflects their name, but

 because they, it sort of helps them tune into you talking to them. So even, even today, this idea of using name and names being relevant to training dogs or relevant to your relationship with dogs beyond just, I want to call it Bob. I just find it interesting that that's also, present in Xenophon.

Arrian, I think it's Arrian, a much later writer who also wrote a book called Anabasis about Alexander the Great an his excursion into Persia, also wrote a book on hunting with dogs, which most of it is what Xenophon said, so he's a bit of a fan.

 Stalker!

 That's a tangent, Alexandra, and I apologize.

 That's fine. I knew there would be tangents. It's okay. So if we were to try and answer the question and you don't have to go with one, you can invent your own answer. Is he a philosopher?

 Is he a historian?

 …Yes.

 Okay. So it is possible to be both.

 Of course it is. It's absolutely ridiculous. So, the idea, I was, I was watching a small snippet of a

 historian, [Janina] Ramirez, who was talking about this - she's a medieval historian and she was talking about the death of the polymath, so the idea of someone who could be good at a few things, and universities have some sort of part in this, which is very much, especially British universities where you come in and you have to specialize, that's it. And if you want to do something outside of that specialism, it's all a bit murky and a bit weird and no one knows where you fit.

 So there's this real compartmentalization of subjects and disciplines. When I feel like we've projected this onto people like Xenophon. So Xenophon was a philosopher. Yes, he was.

 I mean, he was a highly influential philosopher. Like his, his philosophy and his, his Socrates influenced cynicism. So the cynics, the movement of the cynics, they influenced Stoicism.

 So, you know, this idea of self-restraint, this idea, you know, it's as much Xenophon they're drawing upon as much as anyone else. So he's very influential as a philosopher.

 He's just not Plato.

 So we can't put him in a box. That would be unfair and frankly, a bit lazy.

 It is lazy. I mean, to see him as a historian is to undermine all of his Socratic work or worse, to see his philosophy as somehow being our history. ‘Cause he's a historian.

 It's looking at his treaties on like, how do you look after horses? And like, you can't see it. You can't see that through a lens of, being just a historian or just a philosopher. You've got to blend all these things together. And it's important that we kind of see him for what he is. So he has a philosophical way of looking at the world. He has a way of thinking people should be acting and that influences

 the way he writes history, but he also wrote history. And he also wrote economic works and he also wrote public spending, work on public spending and public revenues and how Athens could perhaps do better and improve its income.So, you know, these kind of practical, like I keep mentioning

 those kind of practical elements as well. He is not the traditional polymath in terms of, you know,

 science is the art. So all these things that come together, he's not traditionally that, but

 having said that, he wrote historical fiction. So why can't we see him as that?

You know, he's bringing together all these different interests,

 all these different things, and what label you give him becomes immaterial.

What's important is the work itself and the context within him and that work. So this is why, you know, for anyone who's sort of engaging with ancient history. It's true of all sources, but especially Xenophon, you've got to keep an eye on when he's talking about where in his life he is and the sort of the dates and the ages of what's going on, because that adds those contexts for you, or at least allows you to kind of pick away at the context, as a result, and to be able to get more from it.

 And we've got to approach it with a broad mind knowing that he's not

 just trying to do one thing at any one time.

 Yeah, precisely that. And also with the knowledge that actually we probably don't know

 what he's trying to do. 

So for anyone who hasn't read any Xenophon yet, where do you think they should start?

 Anabasis. Definitely read the Anabasis. I think any ancient historian, anyone who wants to get into ancient history should read the Anabasis.

 The Anabasis in good translation is a rip-roaring read.

 So it's going to be fun as well. I was supervised many moons ago by a Athenian military historian, ancient Greek military historian called Jason Crowley and he used to refer to it as Bravo 2-0 of the ancient world. So it's this idea of, you know, stuck behind enemy lines. And it has that kind of intensity to it, throughout. It is a fantastic read. Don't read the Iliad, don't read Homer, read Xenophon's Anabasis. It is fantastic. And it's a brilliant place to start.

 And then Hellenica is number two?…

 Long, isn't it?

 It is a long read. I'm going to ask a question here. Should you read Hellenica before you read Thucydides or should you only read Hellenica after you've finished Thucydides?

 I mean, personally, I would read them as a continuation. So I would start Thucydides and then continue it on. A bit like when an author dies today and then they bring in another

 author to pick up the story, you know, stuff that at the beginning of the

 series, to move your way through. That would be my general advice on that.

 And people should read Thucydides anyway, right?

 Yeah, to be fair, Thucydides, again, in good translation is,

 it's an interesting read, but it's a bit like reading, oh, this might upset some people…

 It's a bit like reading Lord of the Rings.

 You know, when you get to like the two pages describing a door…

 Yeah, and then Tom Bombadil comes in and starts singing some bloody song for seven pages.

 Okay, that's great. Skip, skip that bit. So Thucydides, yeah, but I think that's true of all the histories.

 You know, you can sit and read them. They're kind of interesting, but if political history isn't your

 thing, you're going to find it hard going. If you're interested in just the kind of lives, the stories, the, 

 the reality of things going on, those kind of personal relationships,

 Xenophon's Anabasis, up there, that's probably one of, if not

 the best source for it.

 So with the Anabasis and the Hellenica, have you got any

 translations that you would recommend for people to go out?

 If they've not read them before and they really want a good

 translation, nice and accessible, what would you recommend?

 Yeah, because I know I love my Landmark editions because they have maps and annotations…

 I love Landmarks, but they're terribly translated.

 Are they?

 Well, that's not fair.

 Don't tell me that!

 They're old, they're quite old translations or sort of

 revised versions of it. So if you ever talk to like a specialist in Thucydides, for instance, they're always like, it's a brilliant edition. Find a better translation. Okay, but in the maps and the notes, fantastic.

 It's just so useful. And they have a Xenophon's Anabasis.

 They do. I own it.

 Yeah. So, I mean, that's a good place to end it because personally, a translation is, yeah.

 So translations are useful for various things. One of them is an accurate representation of the original

 text. That's one form of a good translation. Another form of a good translation is the feel of a text.

 You often find this when people translate poetry. So you get people like me, absolute heretics who give

 me a bit of Greek poetry and I will translate it as literally as possible so that I can get as much value of evidence from it as possible. What I won't do is really care about meter or rhythm or the

 feel of the piece. And that in many ways destroys the medium of what it is.

 So you go to, especially classicists, they're really good at translating and keeping that rhythm, that feel, that, the  kind of the soul of a piece. But often as a historian, I get frustrated and go, well, you've just

 changed the bloody translation of the word. That's not what that word means at all, but it's the same feel. I'll give you that, but it's important. The word they used is important.So the historian in me finds that frustrating. So you've got a translation of that, but other ones, like you were saying, like the Landmark series are brilliant, not necessarily because the translation is the best translation, but because the Anabasis, you go on this massive journey through the Persian empire, then out again, through places that you've never heard of, you want maps and you want accessible maps regularly.

 The other thing I like about the Landmark series is the essays at the back.

 So the short essays explaining Xenophon's world or, you know, the Persian empire or the military stuff that's going on or what it's like to be a mercenary or, you know, all these things.

 So it might answer some of the questions that you have as you're reading it. If you need the context, they give it to you. And then it mentions it in footnotes. So, you know, there's a footnote to something, you go to know more about what it's like to be a mercenary, go and look at page

 thing and it talks about it. So I do like the Landmark series for that, but you know,

 the Penguin series, I mean, if you want to go cheaper, I've always

 enjoyed the translations of the Penguin series to read. I've always found them very good.

The Oxford world, the Oxford classical series, again, easy to read, and if it's your first introduction, that's where you are. You want something that's easy to read, something that's engaging,

 something that you're not just going to get lost in and go, this is clearly beyond me or I don't understand anything that's going on. You don't want that. You want a resource or a translation that makes it feel engaging. So I'd recommend it. Xenophon is so hard to translate in a boring way, especially as an abacus, the anabacus is such an interesting book.

 I mean, people like me, we will have five different translations

 cause we collect them like, you know, psychopaths, but if you're

 going to have one, a Penguin or an Oxford world classics, good

 choice, if you, if you like the maps and God, I love a map. Landmarks are sexy.

 This is it.

 So, any of them really.And just start from there. You'd be amazed how readable even his really weird practical guides are and they're also short, which helps.But also, his biography of Agesilaos is a brilliant read.He's obviously slanted. He obviously likes the man and obviously relies on Spartan support for what, you know, him living where he is.So there's what we might refer to as biases inherent.

 But his account of Agesilaos is a great read. 

So I love the fact that he, he appears to have been writing accessibly for his own time. And he's really accessible now. Yeah, that's a sign of a good writer. I like, I don't know about his thoughts about, you know, women throwing themselves off cliffs or having sex parties. Maybe not, but accessibility.

 I'm all for it.

 Yeah.

 So why not give him his flowers for that. So one last question.

 If you had to sum up the one huge impact that Xenophon had on the

 whole world, what's the main thing that we can say, yeah, that's

 pretty, pretty cool.

 Ooh, blimey. I mean, ultimately there is a tradition in the ancient world

 that Thucydides was not well read. So people weren't reading his work until Xenophon did his.

 So there is, there is even a rumor that he might have been involved in the editing of it.

 We don't know if it's true. We don't know what that's based on, but if it is, it might well be

 Xenophon is responsible for our entire understanding of the ancient

 Greek world from about 450 to 350 BC. You won't find that in a book!

 So by making Thucydides cool, he has himself made history cool.

 There we go.

 He is the reason history is cool. There you go.

 How's that? 

I like that. What a perfect place to finish. That is pretty, that's awesome though, because as I say, you know, at my own undergrad, we barely read him. We read Constitution of the Athenians, which probably wasn't even him, but we never got as far as the fourth century because, you know, an

 undergrad only has so much time and so many things to teach. They're going to focus on the fifth century. Fourth century, I think, needs a bit more attention. And I'm so glad that you've come onto the show to give that period of time and this particular man a little bit more attention because by God,

 it sounds like he deserves it.

 Absolutely.

 I completely agree.

 Now thanks for inviting me on to talk about it.

 It's a pleasure.

 I'm sure we will be seeing you again soon!