Xenophon (In Greek Ξενοφῶν, ca. 431–355 BC), son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, was a soldier, mercenary and an admirer of Socrates and is known for his writings on the history of his own times, the sayings of Socrates, and the life of Greece.

Life and writings

It is estimated that Xenophon was born in 431 BC around Athens, Greece. Very little is known about his childhood and family. While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by Cyrus the Younger against his older brother, the emperor Artaxerxes II of Persia, in 401 BC. Xenophon says that he had asked the veteran Socrates for advice on whether to go with Cyrus, and that Socrates referred him to the divinely inspired Delphic oracle. Xenophon's query to the oracle, however, was not whether or not to accept Cyrus' invitation, but "to which of the gods he must pray and do sacrifice, so that he might best accomplish his intended journey and return in safety, with good fortune." So the oracle told him which gods to pray and sacrifice to. When Xenophon returned to Athens and told Socrates of the oracle's advice, Socrates chastised him for putting the wrong question to the oracle, but said, "Since, however, you did so put the question, you should do what the god enjoined."

 

 

Route of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand.

Xenophon’s historical account in the Anabasis is one of the first written accounts of an analysis of the character traits of a leader. It is an example of a type of leadership analysis that has come to be known as Great man theory.^{[citation needed]} In the Anabasis, Xenophon describes the character of the younger Cyrus, saying, "Of all the Persians who lived after Cyrus the Great, he was the most like a king and the most deserving of an empire."Chapter six describes the character traits of five defeated generals who were turned over to the enemy. The Greek general Clearchus is quoted as saying that "a soldier ought to be more frightened of his own commander than of the enemy."Meno—the eponymous character of Plato's dialogue—is described as a man whose dominant ambition was to become wealthy. Agias the Arcadian and Socrates the Achean are remembered for their courage and their consideration for friends.

Xenophon was later exiled from Athens, probably because he fought under the Spartan king Agesilaus against Athens at Coronea. (It is possible that he had already been exiled for his association with Cyrus, however.) The Spartans gave him property at Scillus, near Olympia in Elis, where he composed the Anabasis. However, because his son Gryllus fought and died for Athens at the Battle of Mantinea while Xenophon was still alive, Xenophon's banishment may have been revoked. Xenophon died in either Corinth or Athens. His date of death is uncertain; historians only know that he survived his patron Agesilaus, for whom he wrote an encomium.

Diogenes Laertius says Xenophon was sometimes known as the "Attic Muse" for the sweetness of his diction; very few poets wrote in the Attic dialect. Xenophon is often cited as being the original "horse whisperer", having advocated sympathetic horsemanship in his "On Horsemanship". He also reports that Xenophon had a young eromenos whom he loved and of whom he said: "Now I look upon Clinias with more pleasure than upon all the other beautiful things which are to be seen among men; and I would rather be blind as to all the rest of the world, than as to Clinias. And I am annoyed even with night and with sleep, because then I do not see him; but I am very grateful to the sun and to daylight, because they show Clinias to me."

Xenophon's standing as a political philosopher has been defended in recent times by Leo Strauss, who devoted a considerable part of his philosophic analysis to the works of Xenophon, returning to the high judgment of Xenophon as a thinker expressed by Shaftesbury, Wincklemann, and Machiavelli. Strauss's reading has been heavily criticized, notably by classicist Myles Burnyeat, as attempting to force Socrates into the mould of Strauss's own philosophical views.