Xenophon

Greek historian, philosopher, mercenary soldier and writer (c. 430–354 BC), born in Attica into an aristocratic Athenian family, a direct disciple of Socrates in his youth and one of the few students who, unlike Plato, combined philosophical speculation with an intensely active military life. The most famous episode of his life was his participation in 401 BC as a Greek mercenary in the expedition of the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger to seize the throne from his brother — the Anabasis — a campaign that ended in failure with Cyrus's death at the Battle of Cunaxa, leaving the Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries, Xenophon among them, stranded deep in Persian territory without command or support, forced to undertake an epic retreat of thousands of kilometres through hostile land to the Black Sea coast, an episode he narrated with extraordinary storytelling skill in his eponymous work, the Anabasis, regarded as one of the most vivid and widely read military chronicles of all antiquity. Exiled from Athens for decades because of his collaboration with Sparta, a city he deeply admired for its social and military order, Xenophon wrote extensively across virtually every literary genre of his time: the Memorabilia, an apologetic defence of Socrates against the charges that led to his execution, offering, alongside Plato's dialogues, the most important testimony about the Athenian master, though in a version generally regarded as more pragmatic and philosophically less sophisticated than Plato's; the Cyropaedia, a semi-fictional biography of Cyrus the Great that functions both as a treatise on ideal leadership and as one of the earliest historical novels in Western literature; and several shorter works on household economy, horsemanship and military tactics. His direct, clear and pragmatic narrative style, far removed from Plato's speculative complexities, exerted a lasting influence as both a literary and pedagogical model throughout classical antiquity and the Renaissance.

18 works

• Agesilaus
• Anabasis
• Anabasis (ed. 2)
• Anabasis (ed. 3)
• Anabasis (I gr)
• Cyropaedia The Education of Cyrus
• Hellenica
• Hiero
• On Horsemanship
• On Revenues
• The Apology
• The Cavalry General
• The Economist
• The Memorabilia
• The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates
• The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians
• The Sportsman On Hunting, a Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus
• The Symposium