Mytilenean debate, and the attention paid is revealing of Xenophon’s
interest and approval (was he there?), even if the consequences are
minimal.
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Procles’ eloquence again proves effective at the beginning of Book 7,
in a debate over leadership of the Athenian–Spartan alliance, though the result is joint command – a sign of the weakened position of both states (X. Hell. 7.1.1–14). Thebes once more attacks target cities in the Peloponnese, with mixed results in Corinth and Arcadia (X. Hell. 7.1.15–
32). We saw how the Thebans tried to court Athens by praising its empire just after it had fallen (X. Hell. 3.5.8–15). In Book 7 the Thebans and Pelopidas make an inept attempt to build their own power base ( he ̄ gemonia; see Sterling 2004: 453–62, esp. 456–8). They first court the Persian king to gain favor over Athens and Sparta, and then they require potential
allies to swear an oath, which all cities refuse (X. Hell. 7.1.40). When Epaminondas, their one competent leader, starts to gather Achaean
support, fellow Thebans distrust him and scuttle the one point of progress.
The Thebans are shown to be simply inept at establishing an extensive
hegemony, and even at recognizing excellent leadership. Epaminondas
brings Sicyon to the Theban side (X. Hell. 7.1.41–6), but the city of Phlius stays bravely loyal to Sparta and, with Athens’ help, repels the Thebans and their Argive and Arcadian allies (X. Hell. 7.2.1–15). The Phliasian narrative glows with the historian’s approval of the city’s valor and values generally (X. Hell. 7.2.16–23). The seesaw Arcadian–Elean War erupts with Sparta aiding Elis, until, at the 104th Olympics in 364
bc, the Eleans attack the Argives. The latter (with dubious authority) have usurped the organization of the Games, which results in an unprecedented and unholy armed battle in the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia
(X. Hell. 7.4.28–32). Factional tactics lead up suspensefully, with a near siege of Sparta by Epaminondas (X. Hell. 7.5.8–14), to the great battle of Mantinea in 362 bc. In the event, Epaminondas’ strategy is impeccable,
but his luck is against him: “either the divinity was responsible, or no one can withstand desperate men,” Xenophon concludes (X. Hell. 7.5.12).
The Thebans thought that victory would make up for all prior mistakes,
while his death would be a glorious end; “such are the thoughts of
ambitious men,” says the historian (X. Hell. 7.5.19).
The aspirations of the man who led the troops and inspired the state
here represent the people’s ambitions as well. The work ends after
Mantinea, without a neat rounding off, and, appropriately after an indecisive battle, with insight into the complexity of the human motives of a leader and with the waning of Thebes’ imperial aspirations. Xenophon
eloquently breaks off – “Perhaps someone else will be concerned with
what happens after this” (X. Hell. 7.5.27) – handing the torch to another, as Thucydides did to him. “There are no heroes in the Hellenica – or none that last for very long,” opines one scholar, adding: “The search for
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power [by states] is a common feature … So is the failure to secure it … It is the fundamental aim to become or return to being ‘the greatest’ … that causes the trouble and will lead to no good, however efficient one is”
(Tuplin 1993: 165–6). Without the closure of the Anabasis or other works’ focus on a single war, why did Xenophon write Hellenica? Some say that it defends Sparta, or indicts Thebes, or endorses a joint rule by Sparta and Athens; but no single thesis accounts for the whole content.
Rather, one may argue, the reason was the challenge laid down by
Herodotus and Thucydides, their chronicles of power, and the human
elements in its quest. Yet without restraint Xenophon also put his own
imprint on the narrative. He completed the narrative of Thucydides and, like his compatriot, undertook to chronicle similar great conflicts of his time in the wake of a great war. He could have told a different, more
unified narrative, of how liberty abided for each city‐state and no single imperial power held sway. But a dramatic arc was not falsely imposed, and history was rather drawn as a series of episodes and as a reflection of character and of the shifting of power. The work conveys the presence,
and often the absence, of Xenophon’s prized virtues: civic devotion,
moral integrity, leadership, and piety (Hobden and Tuplin 2012).
Conclusions
Xenophon’s two major historical works present different paradigms of
conflicts and shifting power. While the Anabasis can be seen to focus more directly on issues of leadership and divine providence in a neatly unified narrative, the Hellenica witnesses the fluctuation of hegemony among major Greek states (and Persia) in a veritable multisided chess
game, with the dissolution of Athens, the rise, dominance, and decline of Sparta, and the new power of Thebes. Rule is managed in turn by key
leaders – Agesilaus, Jason, Epaminondas, and others.
Xenophon’s representation of power reflects the new realities of the
ever shifting hegemony in the fourth century, the absence of “super-
powers” like those operating during the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.
But the analysis of power is also supplemented by the more focal role of divine intervention. We witness, for example, the powerlessness of those who fail to pick up the dead and dying after the battle of Arginusae, an event attributed to divine fate:
Do not, men of Athens … act like men who are beaten and unfortunate,
nor, in the face of heaven’s visitation, show yourselves unreasonable by
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giving a verdict of treachery instead of helplessness [ adunamias], since they found themselves unable on account of the storm to do what they had been ordered to do. (X. Hell. 1.7.33)
Such is the view of Euryptolemus, ending a speech designed to evoke
understanding for those on trial for leaving their dead behind. Both
historical works therefore pick up from predecessors the subject matter and the treatment of human agents who seek hegemony, but weave into
them the explicit praise of traditional Greek values and a constant reminder of the role of divinity behind the scenes – a reminder characteristic of Xenophon and reminiscent of Herodotus.
Bibliography
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Cartledge, P. 2009. “Appendix F: The Spartan Army (and the Battle of
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Cawkwell G. 1979. “Introduction.” In R. Warner, ed. and trans.,
Xenophon: A History of My Times, 7–48. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics.
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Flower, M. 2012. Xenophon’s Anabasis or the Expedition of Cyrus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Krafft, P. 1967. “Vier Beispielen des Xenophontischen in Xenophons
Hellenica.” Rheinisches Museum 110: 103–50.
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5
History and Rhetoric in Fourth‐Century
Historians
The vigorous and volatile period following the Peloponnesian War and
prior to the advent of Alexander the Great was a fertile era for an evolution in the approaches to history and for a multiplication of writers.
Hundreds of them are listed in Felix Jacoby’s fundamental collection of the fragments of Greek historians (with commentary), started in 1923,
and in its twenty‐first‐century version, updated with English transla-
tions – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker ( FGrHist) and Brill’s New Jacoby ( BNJ), respectively. In the Greek world the shifting nature of political power between Sparta, Thebes, Athens, and other Greek
cities – states often manipulated by Persia and broadly mapped by
Xenophon – provided fertile ground for chroniclers who took one side or the other in the telling. We regret the fact that few survived beyond the tantalizing glimpses in Jacoby – texts preserved mostly by later historians who used them as sources, but also indirect testimonials culled from references in other authors and partial texts preserved on papyri in Egypt.
Yet the paucity of texts is not evidence of their inferiority to Xenophon; they were favored by later rhetorical stylists involved in the revival of Attic Greek. Ancient references suggest that Theopompus and Ephorus shared
the rank of Xenophon. The genres included local chronicles continued
from the classical period, biography, and ethnography. In addition to the broadening cultural perspectives and flowering of styles, the fourth
century bc – the century of these authors – is usually also characterized by its increasing moralization (overt value judgments of persons), and by its close connections to ever more refined rhetorical methods. Rhetoric
shaped the style and form of historiography, but the content followed its own paths of refinement. Of course moralizing and rhetoric were present Greek Historiography, First Edition. Thomas F. Scanlon.
© 2015 Thomas F. Scanlon. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
HistoRy and RHetoRiC in FouRtH‐CentuRy HistoRians
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since the advent of historical writing, indeed intrinsic to Greek literature since Homer. What makes this period different are the shifting forms of moral assessment and of rhetorical strategies.
History and Representation
Herodotus and Thucydides were, as we have seen, keenly interested in
exploring the motives of historical agents; they were more oblique in
representing them, perhaps influenced by contemporary drama and, to an
extent, by epic and lyric modes of character portrayal. The late fifth and the fourth century saw the rich elaboration and adoption of two literary and cultural developments, namely philosophy in the wake of Socrates
and rhetoric after the Sophists. Space does not permit an adequate analysis of these genres, but some brief comments will remind us of the need to see historical writing in its intellectual context. We should first say that, although there are no extant fourth‐century theoretical discussions of any length regarding history as a genre, Aristotle’s often quoted dictum, from chapter 9 of his Poetics, is the closest we get to theory:
Poetry is both more philosophical and more serious than history, since poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars. A “universal” comprises the kind of speech or action which belongs by probability or necessity to a certain kind of character … A “particular,” by contrast, is (for example) what Alcibiades did or experienced. (Arist. Po. 9, 1451b6–12, Halliwell 1987) Aristotle, writing sometime between the 360s and the 320s, presents an
extreme contrast (perhaps deliberately exaggerated to make his point)
between genres – a contrast that ancient historians themselves would have disputed, since those authors likely felt that their narratives had broader philosophical importance and applicability to readers’ lives. But Aristotle’s point is that Greek poetry, and especially tragedy, represents fictional persons and events (mostly, excepting Aeschylus’ Persians and a few others), and the value of tragedy is the contribution of unity to actions and words related to a poet’s chosen subject and themes. Poetic unity (and its
philosophical quality) comes from presenting actions and speeches
according to likely or necessary actions of characters, actions based on characters’ probable behavior or on universal and necessary laws of human nature. The valuing of poetry above history, Aristotle implies, rests on poetry’s ability to convey universal truths and wisdom. We note the
obvious contradiction to this claim in Thucydides’ claim for the future
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utility of his work as a “possession forever” ( kte ̄ ma es aei, Th. 1.22.4).
There is in addition a paradox in a philosopher promoting truth through the medium of fictional representation; accordingly Plato (c. 429–347
bc), Aristotle’s teacher, famously criticized poetry as an unreliable representation of reality and poets as fabricators of the appearance of knowing the truth (Books 3 and 10 of the Republic).
Regarding Plato, we have no explicit discussion of historical writing
and its place in a philosophical scheme or in the ideal state. We know that, in the Republic, Plat
o favors telling a “noble lie, a fiction in the interests of moral truth that transcends the bounds of factual accuracy” to maintain the order of the state (Pownall 2004: 48). Yet we might only speculate
that his use of historical exempla, such as in the funeral oration in the Menexenus, reflects his view that, for histories displaying bias, “the patriotic lie is unacceptable, because it flatters people rather than making them better; distortion of history [the noble lie] is permitted only when it is morally useful” (Pownall 2004: 63). Thus Plato would seem to favor a
moralizing history, perhaps that of Xenophon or Thucydides, which
requires the reader to see beneath the surface, to question the overt
meaning. We cite Plato with caution, since the use of history in oratory is notoriously biased for the sake of making a special point, and here the message in Menexenus seems parodic, wrapped in the enigma of multiple personae: the text of Plato, which records the voice of Socrates, who
recites a speech supposedly written by Aspasia for Pericles – all composed a half‐century or so after the event. The message: though history and
rhetoric are powerful devices for suasion, you must scrutinize the content of patriotic discourse. Yet Plato’s view of using prose for moral edification remains true, and he is more likely to accept history than poetry to accomplish this aim. Much of Plato’s writing, after all, is conveyed through the dramatized historical figure of Socrates.
Also contradicting the Aristotelian denial of mime ̄ sis in historical texts are, of course, not only Thucydides, but most ancient Greek historians
themselves, who are not simply chroniclers of dry fact. They give shape to events that evidence thematic unity and a consistent interest in human
nature and character as well as in typical political and military behavior.
Aristotle’s dictum, then, seems not to reflect a view typical of the fourth century so much as one that serves his interests in poetic representation, mime ̄ sis – the notion at the core of his work on poetry (Halliwell 1987: 70–3 and 171–6). Aristotle’s Poetics was written in the wake of Xenophon and others discussed below (Ephorus, Cratippus, and the author of the
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