John Dillery: Xenophon and the History of His Times
Xenophon and the History of His Times
Routledge | 1995-04-24 | ISBN 041509139X | Pages 352 | PDF | 2.51 MB
This book places the historical writing of Xenophon in the broader context of his entire corpus as well as of the intellectual climate of his day. Previously, studies of Xenophon have simply focused on the reliability of these texts for determining what happened in the Greek world from 411 to 362 B.C.
Xenophon and the History of his Times presents a more comprehensive analysis of the attitudes and methods which inform the Hellenica and the Anabasis. Xenophon is shown to be very much a man of his times, concerned with important issues ranging from panhellenism and utopia, to the role of the individual in shaping important events, to the part the divine plays in shaping human history. This discussion makes extensive use not only of Xenophon's entire corpus, but also works by a number of his contemporaries.
All those interested in the history of Greek intellectual life at the close of the fith and first half of the fourth centuries B.C., as well as the political and military history of this period, will find this study useful and stimulating.