Pod Insights Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean Ancient History 101 by Alexandra Sills, a Memory Collective Podcast About this episode This is an episode of the brand new ancient history podcast, Ancient History 101, by Alexandra Sills! Featuring Owen Rees who introduces the ancient Greek historian, Xenophon. Subscribe to Ancient History 101 wherever you get your podcasts or learn more www.ancienthistory101.org. Pre-order Liv's Odyssey adaptation (!!!), The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand).
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript 15,789 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Liv Albert? Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/grouptrip.
1:05 Speaker 01 Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv. Except, I'm not actually your host today, and technically, this isn't Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And that is because today, I am bringing you an episode of the brand new podcast, Ancient History 101. It is hosted by Alexandra Sills, who you will all know as my favorite gladiatrix, AKA, the woman who comes on and tells me all the things about gladiators, and also, the same delightful one who shared everything about the Olympics. Oh, this gross and weird. And now Alexandra is here with a new podcast, having conversations with experts and academics regarding the ancient
1:48 Speaker 01 world, coming at it from a beginner's point of view, and an attempt to kind of be able to cover almost the basics of an entire topic in one episode. We're really excited for this. Alexandra's been working on it for like, a couple of years, honestly. It's been sort of in the works, and then paused, and all of these different things, but it's finally here. And today's episode is the second episode of their catalog. You can scroll on over to Ancient History I almost said fangirl. It's not Ancient History 101, to listen to the other first episode. There are two available now, I believe, or will be within a day or two, in honor of the Ides of March, And so, sit back. This episode we're going to share today is with none other than Owen
2:32 Speaker 01 Rees, who is another fan favorite of this podcast, so you're going to love it. Make sure you subscribe to Ancient History 101 wherever you get your podcasts. And stay tuned, because the Memory Collective has more news to come.
3:15 Speaker 02 Welcome to Ancient History 101, the show that gives you everything you want and need to know about the worlds of ancient Greece, Rome, their friends, and their enemies. I'm your host, Alexandra Sills. Today, we're going to be digging into the biography of an ancient writer, because I've always been of the opinion that before you read a word of what they've written, you should probably get to know the writer a little bit themselves beforehand. Because everything about their life, their experiences, and their identity affects what they've written, right? So we should get to know them. And that's what we're going to be doing today. Xenophon's life reads like an adventure novel, so I have asked one of my favorite people in the world to come on to the show and talk to us about everything Xenophon. You're really going to like it.
4:20 Speaker 02 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 yourselves?
4:30 Speaker 03 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,
5:13 Speaker 03 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 going to be Thucydides he's continuing.
5:35 Speaker 02 The sequel.
5:36 Speaker 03 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 360s, which sees the rise of Sparta, the fall of Sparta, the rise of Thebes, the defeat of Thebes, Mantena, 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.
6:09 Speaker 02 So when I was at uni, we did a lot of 5th century Athens.
6:13 Speaker 03 Yes.
6:14 Speaker 02 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 it? Because he's just as good as the first two, right, as a historian?
6:27 Speaker 03 Oh, he's, well, okay. Xenophon's an interesting character. So you are absolutely right. He is often underrepresented, underplayed. There is a, many moons ago, a Greek historian by the name of Rulukan Einadyke, used to run a social media series of platforms called Xenophon is Sad.
6:49 Speaker 03 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
7:34 Speaker 03 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.
7:43 Speaker 02 Right.
7:44 Speaker 03 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."
8:02 Speaker 02 Oh, no wonder Xenophon is sad.
8:04 Speaker 03 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
8:18 Speaker 02 Right.
8:19 Speaker 03 of 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 a 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 that his philosophy is interesting, it's just not what Plato's is basically.
9:00 Speaker 02 Right, okay. Full disclosure, I bloody hate Plato. So this is.
9:05 Speaker 03 Can't stand him, cannot stand him. So Xenophon's, Xenophon's philosophy is useful as a historian. Plato's philosophy is 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? Um, so yeah, it is an interesting one. So no, I don't have a lot of time for the philosophers, except Xenophon.
9:28 Speaker 02 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?
9:39 Speaker 03 We don't know. We don't know. Probably knight class, so the second highest class in Athens. Um, I say that a bit tongue in cheek. So the traditional time, uh, date of his birth is around 430 B.C. But ultimately, we don't know.
9:57 Speaker 02 So we don't have an exact date?
9:58 Speaker 03 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.
10:09 Speaker 03 He later on writes a memoir called The Anabasis, which we'll probably get to later. Um, 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 trying to work out when he was born. So there are, there's quite a, a range of dates given for his birth, but I think it's fair to say he's probably born around 430 ish.
10:38 Speaker 02 Okay.
10:40 Speaker 03 So he grew, most importantly for us, doesn't really matter the exact date when he was born sometimes. Um, but for now, what's important for us to note is that he grew up during the Peloponnesian War.
10:52 Speaker 02 Right.
10:52 Speaker 03 Now, he obviously writes political history. He writes a lot of military history and his entire perspective of everything is shaped by his upbringing. And he was brought up during the Peloponnesian War. Um, his father's dean, the sort of village or social group in which he was raised or potentially born in, was outside of the city.
11:12 Speaker 03 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 live 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 420s. He would have seen the Sicilian disaster get reported coming back home.
11:49 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
11:50 Speaker 03 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 hippies, which is not the uber wealthy, not the ones who are like Elon Musk-esque in Athens, your sort of billionaire class, if you think of it like that.
12:31 Speaker 03 He's not that, but he is, he's well off, he's comfortable, you know, they're generating a lot of income from farm, farmland and things like that. But beyond that, anyone who says they know anything more about Xenophon is fudging some evidence.
12:46 Speaker 02 Ah, okay.
12:47 Speaker 03 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.
13:09 Speaker 02 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.
13:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, it's 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 insight 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.
14:08 Speaker 03 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, and he says that there are emotions going on. It's just not really beyond, he's clearly relaying stories he has no real understanding of.
14:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:28 Speaker 03 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, and what sort of decisions were being made? And tactically, what was going on? Fascinating, I'm not having a go at it at all. But Xenophon offers feet on the ground, eyes in the eyes of your enemy, that kind of perspective. And it's 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 we get him describe psychological instability as a result of combat.
15:12 Speaker 02 Wow.
15:12 Speaker 03 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. Um, we also see he, um, one of my favorites is he's the first account that I've ever found, uh, 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. Um, he describes it in the Battle of Canaxa, which is in his analysis. So it's as part of this mercenary army and in it, an individual, um, just freezes in the battle line when a chariot is charging towards the battle line and everyone moves out of the
15:55 Speaker 03 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, um, I don't know how to describe it. It is the kid's gloves off. This is what's 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.
16:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:18 Speaker 03 And as a result, he'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 from. 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, um, psychologically damaged or traumatized by what he writes about. But he is interested in those emotional and psychological, or what we would consider psychological ramifications of war.
16:47 Speaker 02 Which we don't often see in ancient sources.
16:50 Speaker 03 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.
17:12 Speaker 02 So he's not quite, you know, 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?
17:26 Speaker 03 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, 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 it, and on many, many stories he tells,
18:07 Speaker 03 one of the stories is the Greek army is very much marching home. They're trying to get home. They lost the Battle of Canaxa, 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 then 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 realise that all hope is lost, they're going to lose.
18:49 Speaker 03 And the women and children start throwing or being thrown off a cliff, the idea being they would rather die than be captured.
18:58 Speaker 02 Because we all know what happens when women are captured.
19:00 Speaker 03 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, they're actually trying to save these people from killing themselves. So it's just that kind of that 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.
19:46 Speaker 02 And does he come to the conclusion that they're terrified because we are civilized, but to them, pretty brutal?
19:55 Speaker 03 If I remember rightly, he does very much understand why they're doing this. It doesn't ever stop him from doing it.
20:01 Speaker 02 Right. That's, that's the important part.
20:04 Speaker 03 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.
20:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:34 Speaker 03 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.
20:47 Speaker 02 Okay, 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, if it's going to get him.
21:00 Speaker 03 If, if he gets what he 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.
21:12 Speaker 02 Are you going to find any of them?
21:13 Speaker 03 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, the sort of the literary aspect of what's going on here in terms of like, whether it's good, whether it's timeless. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in how can I use this as evidence?
21:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:39 Speaker 03 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.
21:59 Speaker 02 So multifaceted.
22:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:01 Speaker 02 Different to everybody.
22:02 Speaker 03 Precisely that. So to some people, he's a, he's a, 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, 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 grizzled 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.
22:45 Speaker 03 You know, so then I build a different xenophon. And 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 it 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?
23:06 Speaker 02 So these are the pitfalls.
23:07 Speaker 03 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.
23:17 Speaker 02 Fair enough.
23:19 Speaker 02 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, his career?
23:30 Speaker 03 Age.
23:30 Speaker 02 Wants to suddenly go to Persia.
23:32 Speaker 03 His age? We just covered his age, the problems with his age.
23:35 Speaker 02 You know what I mean? Is he a silly young man? Is he, you know, is he a veteran?
23:40 Speaker 03 He describes himself as a young man. He's probably in his twenties, no, probably no older than thirty. Why is he gone? So 404 B.C. Athens has fallen, has lost the Peloponnesian War, but the democracy has been removed and it has been replaced with the so-called Thirty Tyrants. So this is a small oligarchy put in place by the Spartans to run Athens.
24:05 Speaker 03 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 Thirty Tyrants, or if you fought on the side of the Thirty 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 Thirty Tyrants were the cavalry. So people wealthy enough to own horses and to serve in the cavalry. Now, you'll remember, that includes Xenophon.
24:50 Speaker 03 Now, there's a whole debate as to whether or not Xenophon actually fought with the Thirty 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 Thirty Tyrants.
25:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
25:04 Speaker 03 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 Thirty Tyrants, he was coming into a bit of a pickle. Because many of his former students had formed that tyranny.
25:28 Speaker 02 So he's suspicious.
25:30 Speaker 03 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, his association with the cavalry. Two, his 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 goes and, well, every good student does, he goes and talks to his teacher Socrates.
26:15 Speaker 03 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 realises, 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?
27:00 Speaker 03 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?
27:27 Speaker 02 He found a loophole.
27:29 Speaker 03 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 were 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 have given you an answer, follow through that answer.
27:53 Speaker 02 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 in the Agro all the time.
28:02 Speaker 03 All right, Aristophanes.
28:05 Speaker 02 I'll take it.
28:08 Speaker 02 But it's worth mentioning that Socrates had military experience as well. So he wasn't giving nonsense advice, was he? He had experience.
28:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, the 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 the 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, we know that he fought in at least three major battles during the Peloponnesian War.
28:45 Speaker 02 Right.
28:46 Speaker 03 Probably in his 40s, 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.
29:00 Speaker 02 Okay.
29:01 Speaker 03 So he leaves defeats of the Athenian army with his reputation intact, so which is not easy to do.
29:09 Liv Albert? This episode is brought to you by Quince. You know the drill. Quince makes elevated, everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and premium stretch denim. I have been speaking into a microphone about Quince for a while now and I have no complaints. I have a bunch of their stuff. I've got a couple cute sweaters that, I mean, it's nearing sweater season, so those will be back in the rotation anytime now. And I have this leather bag that I absolutely love. It's like this braided leather and I use it like basically every day. Because that's the thing, they have really great basics, like they have really great
29:54 Liv Albert? things that you can wear with so many other things. Just the options are endless. And as the weather gets colder, like all the sweaters in my closet, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves to beautiful 14 karat gold jewels. Jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. And of course, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And if we haven't learned anything in the last 10 years, isn't it just getting rid of the middlemen? You know, making things more affordable. So find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince.
30:38 Liv Albert? Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was me. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.
31:00 Speaker 03 The thing I always think to when it comes to Socrates. Socrates famously gets killed. Like he is executed by the Athenian people.
31:10 Speaker 03 For basically corrupting the youth and for spreading impious thoughts and things like that. And they attack him for 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 Caradus.
31:27 Speaker 03 Which is really unusual. Cause 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 kind 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. So it is interesting. So yeah, you're right. Socrates, grizzled war veteran.
32:12 Speaker 03 That's how I like to describe him. Grizzled war veteran. And so, yeah, the advice he's given Xenophon, 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.
32:41 Speaker 02 Am I right in thinking that one of these battles that Socrates was involved in during the Permanecian War, that Xenophon was there as well? And that they fought close by?
32:51 Speaker 03 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.
33:20 Speaker 02 Okay.
33:21 Speaker 03 Now Xenophon was probably born around the 430 mark. You can see where I'm going with this.
33:26 Speaker 02 I can.
33:28 Speaker 03 The story they've probably got wrong is in the classical Greek sources, there is a story that Alcibiades fought alongside Socrates. So Alcibiades, as I like to call him, super sexy Alcibiades, is, how to best understand him?
33:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:49 Speaker 03 He's 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 his 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, his story's 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.
34:31 Speaker 03 Anyway, story goes that they were on the Battle of, I think it's Delium, when Alcibiades, it's during their treaty, 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, decide is Xenophon.
34:53 Speaker 02 Aha, okay, we know it's a student, we know it's somebody who spent time in Sparta.
34:58 Speaker 03 We know he's super sexy.
35:02 Speaker 03 Xenophon is described as a beautiful young man.
35:05 Speaker 02 Is he?
35:06 Speaker 03 Yeah. Socrates had a, had a keen eye for pretty.
35:11 Speaker 02 Sexy men.
35:12 Speaker 03 Sexy men. He liked them. He liked to be around them.
35:14 Speaker 02 I'm glad that me and Socrates have something in common.
35:21 Speaker 03 Which is interesting. It is interesting because both, because Xenophon's description of Socrates, sorry, is very much of one of self restraint. That's the core message of Socrates and Xenophon, self restraint, self control.
35:37 Speaker 03 Whereas Plato's Socrates is very much self knowledge.
35:41 Speaker 02 Right.
35:41 Speaker 03 So more high faluting, 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.
35:58 Speaker 02 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 has written the wrong reference. Right, okay.
36:07 Speaker 03 If you learn nothing else, learn not to trust Roman writers.
36:12 Speaker 02 Controversial. Okay, so put two historians with ADHD in a room and see how long it takes them to go off on a tangent. Why is he going to Persia?
36:24 Speaker 03 Okay, so he's off to Persia. Basically, he's either off to get out of Athens.
36:30 Speaker 03 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.
36:54 Speaker 03 Even though there weren't 10,000 of them.
36:56 Speaker 02 How do we know?
36:58 Speaker 03 Uh, because, uh, Xenophon literally counts them out. Where 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. Uh, and you add them up and there's like 12,000 or something. It's, it's not 10,000.
37:12 Speaker 02 So they're not even rounding up?
37:14 Speaker 03 No.
37:16 Speaker 02 They're rounding down. Why? That seems, okay. 12,000 sounds good.
37:22 Speaker 03 It does, does it? But Xenophon doesn't call them that. He calls them the Cyrians, 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, um, this mercenary army, spoiler alert, makes it back from Mesopotamia and is, survives. Um, and then gets used by the Spartans, because it's basically a mercenary army at this point. Very experienced, very gristled, know what they're doing. And they appear in a battle, uh, in the Greek world. And Xenophon refers to them as the men that fought with Cyrus. That's their name.
38:02 Speaker 02 So he doesn't use the 10,000. We use the 10,000.
38:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:06 Speaker 02 Right.
38:06 Speaker 03 So, um, why were they there? Okay, yeah, that's why they're there. So they're there basically. For Xenophon to get out of Athens, but also, like, he's getting paid.
38:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay.
38:20 Speaker 03 There's money and there's hope. Yeah, there was a draw here. Uh, which is that, because you've got to remember, uh, you know, we don't know what the repercussions of the Peloponnesian War has had on the family income of Xenophon.
38:32 Speaker 02 Right.
38:33 Speaker 03 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.
38:48 Speaker 02 So what does the word Anabasis mean?
38:51 Speaker 03 Oh, it literally means like march upland.
38:54 Speaker 02 Okay, so that gives you a clue which direction they're going in.
38:57 Speaker 03 Uh, or march inland might be sort of another way of translating it, but that's what it means. So it's, it's just their march inland, upland. That's it. That's all, that's all it, that's all it is. Um, but it's, uh, this is the idea. So it's the march. It, 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.
39:23 Speaker 03 So the battle for the Persian throne.
39:25 Speaker 02 Okay.
39:27 Speaker 03 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. And so they charge after them and then basically, once they stop, they kind of have a rest and a, you know, a meal. And they're like, oh, that was good. Well done, team. And news then comes that Cyrus died and actually they've lost.
39:56 Speaker 02 Oh.
39:56 Speaker 03 But the Greeks refuse to kind of acknowledge this because to them they've won.
40:01 Speaker 02 Okay.
40:02 Speaker 03 So there's then this kind of wrangling with the Persians because 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. You're gonna let us do that either. So it becomes like a fighting retreat.
40:22 Speaker 02 Okay.
40:23 Speaker 03 So the Greeks are trying to march upland, back to the Black Sea to try and get out.
40:29 Speaker 03 And the Persians are trying to basically either get rid of them or get rid of them. Depending on how you interpret that phrase.
40:38 Speaker 02 Because you don't want 12,000 armed men just wandering around your territory.
40:41 Speaker 03 A, a experienced Greek army just marching around the Persian Empire.
40:48 Speaker 02 Because if, if Prince Cyrus is dead, right, they're not getting paid by anyone at this point. So how are they feeding themselves?
40:55 Speaker 03 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.
41:06 Speaker 02 So there's a good reason to want the Greeks out of Persia because they're a nuisance.
41:10 Speaker 03 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.
41:23 Speaker 02 Right.
41:24 Speaker 03 Because he's just a, like a hopla, he's, he's just another, or, you know, he's just another man in the ranks.
41:30 Speaker 02 Okay.
41:30 Speaker 03 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.
41:50 Speaker 03 So that left the Greeks very much like, we have no commanders and we're in the middle of the Persian Empire.
41:56 Speaker 02 Who don't want us here.
41:57 Speaker 03 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 died.
42:09 Speaker 02 Oh.
42:10 Speaker 03 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, you've got the Spartan guy, a guy called Clearchus, 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. So very Spartan.
42:28 Speaker 02 Pretty Spartan, yeah.
42:31 Speaker 03 And then you've got other ones who are a bit cowardly or a bit manipulative or a bit, you know, so he goes through all the, you know, they've got good bits, they've got bad bits, they've got good bits, they've got bad bits, or they've 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've got to, you've got to 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.
43:05 Speaker 02 Me.
43:06 Speaker 03 Xenophon himself, yeah.
43:09 Speaker 03 It's an interesting thing because, as I said, Xenophon doesn't actually describe himself as writing this anabasis. So he doesn't put his name to it. And in his, in his other writings, he actually assigns it to someone else.
43:24 Speaker 02 Oh, that's interesting.
43:26 Speaker 03 By from Syracuse, someone we know, otherwise know nothing about. He says they wrote it.
43:33 Speaker 02 None de Plume.
43:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, and Plutarch, the Roman, Greek, Greek Roman writer in the first century CE, he was the one that called it out and went, no, he didn't. This is clearly Xenophon himself. And if you read the anabasis.
43:48 Speaker 02 Plutarch, right?
43:49 Speaker 03 Of course he is. Roman writers might be wrong, but Greek writers in the Roman period are always right.
43:56 Speaker 03 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, because he just knows everything Xenophon's thinking in the book. And he starts talking about like this, looks like the story I gave you of his meeting with Socrates. That comes from the anabasis.
44:16 Speaker 02 Okay.
44:17 Speaker 03 So Xenophon feeds these personal anecdotes from his life in, through the anabasis, often entirely inconsequently.
44:29 Speaker 02 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?
44:38 Speaker 03 But it is interesting, because we don't have every piece of evidence from the Greek world. I wish we did, but we don't. Actually, no, I don't wish we did. Could you imagine sifting through that?
44:46 Speaker 02 There'd be too much.
44:47 Speaker 03 There'd be way too much. That'd be like, that'd be like modern history. That's ridiculous.
44:50 Speaker 02 Oh, no, I mean, I know we complain that we don't have a lot, but I'd rather have two.
44:55 Speaker 03 We have more than we say.
44:56 Speaker 02 Everything.
44:57 Speaker 03 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.
45:07 Speaker 02 Okay, so who else is writing about it then?
45:10 Speaker 03 Other people from within the army.
45:12 Speaker 02 So they're all writing memoirs?
45:14 Speaker 03 We don't, we don't have any of them. We don't have any of these existing. We don't know how many were written, but there's at least one that Diaderus 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.
45:33 Speaker 02 These other accounts, have they not survived because they were a bit crap in comparison? Or have we just been unlucky?
45:41 Speaker 03 Oh, that's a really interesting question. I will extrapolate that we should ask, why have all of Xenophon's work survived?
45:49 Speaker 03 Because that's really the question. Because ultimately, why does an account not survive? Happenedstance, survival bias, luck, interest. You know, we've got the titles of all the plays written by some of the great tragedians, you know, Eastphus, 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.
46:14 Speaker 02 Okay. So we don't know why Xenophon's survived then.
46:18 Speaker 03 Xenophon's? 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's clearly this kind of Marmite figure that you either love or hate.
46:40 Speaker 02 Right.
46:41 Speaker 03 Probably true today as well. But one of the other reasons Xenophon has survived as long as he has and as well as he has, because like I mentioned, the ancient world describes 15 titles of works he wrote.
46:53 Speaker 02 That's a lot.
46:54 Speaker 03 Fifteen's 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.
47:02 Speaker 03 Fifteen works. We have all 15 titles on a list. And we have today copies of every single one of them.
47:11 Speaker 02 Wow. Is there any other writer that we have that for?
47:15 Speaker 03 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.
47:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, he wrote one thing, that doesn't count.
47:25 Speaker 03 Yeah. And to be honest, I've never looked it up. I never, 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.
47:38 Speaker 03 Xenophon, we have everything he wrote in full. Including a spurious one that we're pretty sure he didn't write.
47:47 Speaker 02 Which is?
47:48 Speaker 03 Constitution of the Athenians, the so-called old oligarch, if you've ever heard of it.
47:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've got PTSD from undergrad. Thank you for sparking that off.
47:58 Speaker 03 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.
48:25 Speaker 02 Fair enough.
48:26 Speaker 03 So probably wouldn't be as good, would it?
48:30 Speaker 02 No, I guess not.
48:32 Speaker 03 But generally speaking, it's assumed he didn't write it. But 15 is the list. We have all 15. That is really unusual.
48:40 Speaker 03 Partly, some of his works are considered the first of its kind.
48:45 Speaker 03 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.
49:03 Speaker 03 You know, 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, Understanding of Spartan Culture, Spartan Politics, important. His Cyropedia, so he wrote what is possibly one of the first pieces of historical fiction.
49:35 Speaker 03 Or historical romance.
49:39 Speaker 02 Okay.
49:40 Speaker 03 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.
49:57 Speaker 02 Okay, and I mean, he's clearly spent time in the Persian Empire, so I'm assuming he's got.
50:03 Speaker 03 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 learnt 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.
50:20 Speaker 03 As opposed to Plato's high-flying, high-flooding, kind of highbrow 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, you know, not really of Socrates himself, but of his learning from Socrates. And what he's sort of done with it, his defence 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.
51:01 Speaker 03 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.
51:13 Speaker 02 Okay, okay.
51:15 Speaker 03 You get the idea.
51:17 Speaker 02 Cooling slightly on xenophon, slightly.
51:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, I told you, you weren't supposed to like him.
51:22 Speaker 02 I mean.
51:25 Speaker 03 But anyway, so he did a symposium, so symposium with these 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, basically. But having these highfalutin conversations. So he wrote something called his symposium, which was like a sort of one of his sort of lessons from Socrates, fictional or otherwise. And basically, there's a dialogue going on and it's to discuss things. Interestingly, Plato did a similar one. So he has his symposium where it goes on.
52:05 Speaker 03 Plato's symposium is, you know, it's all about the philosophy, it's all about the thinking, it's all about the clever repartee and how brilliant Socrates is. Xenophon's is almost all about sex, desire.
52:20 Speaker 03 Restraining that desire if you can. And entertainment, what's going on in the room?
52:25 Speaker 02 Okay.
52:26 Speaker 03 Um, and it ends, one of my favourite 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 Supremacy. It's supposed to be funny.
52:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:55 Speaker 03 As well. There's a such lyrical nature to what's going on. It's playful. And actually, a lot of what he's talking about is playfulness.
53:02 Speaker 02 Because Plato is not funny. Plato is the opposite of funny.
53:05 Speaker 03 Funny. Plato is not funny at all. Xenophon is funny.
53:10 Speaker 02 So if you're gonna read any Greek philosophy and you don't want to, you know, die of boredom, maybe.
53:16 Speaker 03 Maybe it's Xenophon.
53:17 Speaker 02 Start with Xenophon.
53:18 Speaker 03 But he also wrote like practical guides. So like, uh, how to look after and train and use horses.
53:27 Speaker 03 Like how you hunt with dogs, just like practical guides. Um, he did one on being a cavalry commander, like what a cavalry commander should consider and should make sure they're good at. Um, so, you know, he's got these very practical side to him as well. And this is always kind of pique people's interest. But there is another side to it, which is that Xenophon wrote in very simple Greek, very easy to read Greek.
53:55 Speaker 03 So there is also an educational element. So if you need to learn ancient Greek and you want to start somewhere,
54:03 Speaker 03 you would start with Xenophon.
54:05 Speaker 02 So we can kind of guess that he's writing for a wider audience than some of his peers then?
54:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
54:11 Speaker 02 That's nice.
54:12 Speaker 03 I think that's fair. It is nice. Forget everything else about him. That is nice. Um, 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.
54:27 Speaker 02 So this, 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.
54:39 Speaker 03 Yep.
54:39 Speaker 02 And it's not elegant.
54:41 Speaker 03 It's ironic, isn't it? And he was actually lauded in the ancient world for his use of his, 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, it's, it's, it's not as clever. You know, we, we should be having to work really hard. If you ever have to suffer through reading Plato in Greek is, is horrendous. And if you ever have to suffer reading Thucydides in the Greek, it's, it's, it's horrific. And Xenophon just isn't. It is so much easier to work with.
55:26 Speaker 02 Which is why certain classicists don't rate him.
55:28 Speaker 03 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 like edits the dictionaries and stuff like that. So 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.
56:10 Speaker 03 So yeah, you do wonder if there's a bit of a bias against him from
56:14 Speaker 02 Snobbery.
56:15 Speaker 03 Snobbery, basically, yeah. So Xenophon, but that's irrelevant. What's important for us, Xenophon survives. All his work survives and that's unusual.
56:26 Speaker 03 But unfortunately, we can't really date them.
56:30 Speaker 02 Okay, I'm guessing he's not writing them as he's, you know, evacuating from Asia Minor.
56:36 Speaker 03 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. Um, he gives clues within bits of work when he refers to things that we know happened later.
56:51 Speaker 02 Right.
56:51 Speaker 03 So we know he probably was writing most of these after the fact.
56:54 Speaker 02 Sure.
56:55 Speaker 03 And quite a bit far after the fact. Um, probably when he's exiled from Athens. Um, which happens in the three nineties. Um, he then spends a bit of time with the Spartans and the Spartans give him a home up towards Ellis and towards like Olympia.
57:11 Speaker 02 Okay.
57:11 Speaker 03 Um, he's given a home there. So it might be there when he's in exile that he starts writing a lot of these. Uh, but we don't really know. We don't know the order he wrote them in.
57:21 Speaker 02 Do we know why he was exiled from Athens?
57:24 Speaker 03 Barely. Uh.
57:25 Speaker 02 Really?
57:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, the ancient sources give a couple of possibilities. So we don't really know. Uh, we just know he did.
57:33 Speaker 02 Rumors.
57:34 Speaker 03 So the rumors is Socrates was right and he shouldn't have gone to Persia.
57:39 Speaker 02 Right.
57:40 Speaker 03 Um, other rumor is it's to do with his relationship with Socrates. It's relationship to do with the possibility of tyranny. Um, and sort of a backlash of that. Uh, we don't really know. Another rumor is that he, he, um, it was he, it wasn't anything to do with any of that. It was to do with his relationship with Sparta.
57:58 Speaker 02 Okay.
57:59 Speaker 03 That was why he was exiled.
58:00 Speaker 02 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?
58:10 Speaker 03 So during his time as a mercenary, he gets, uh, 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, um, he ends up coming into the retinue of the Spartan king, Aggezaleos the second.
58:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
58:32 Speaker 03 So it hasn't even got back to Greece yet. Basically, they go back and continue military service in Asia Minor and what is now modern Turkey. Um, and he's in the retinue of Aggezaleos the second. It seems that Aggezaleos, when he comes back to Greece to fight a battle or a series of battles, um, between the Spartans and a new alliance, which included Athens.
58:56 Speaker 03 Against him, Agathelaus 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.
59:10 Speaker 02 Okay.
59:11 Speaker 03 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.
59:19 Speaker 02 Right.
59:20 Speaker 03 There's no real clear cut answer to that question. But it seems to be after that that he is exiled.
59:27 Speaker 02 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 Agathelaus is paying him?
59:50 Speaker 02 Show me the money.
59:52 Speaker 03 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. So I'm going to speculate.
1:00:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, go for it.
1:00:02 Speaker 03 I think he's an adventure seeker.
1:00:05 Speaker 02 It sounds like it, doesn't it?
1:00:07 Speaker 03 I think he's an adventure seeker and I think he knows the ramifications of what he's doing.
1:00:12 Speaker 02 But it's just irresistible.
1:00:15 Speaker 03 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 of him.
1:00:23 Speaker 02 Fair enough.
1:00:24 Speaker 03 So he then goes to Sparta. The reason why that's important is because Xenophon is arguably our very best source for Spartan culture.
1:00:34 Speaker 02 Interesting.
1:00:34 Speaker 03 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 in the sort of Laconia and Messenia, the lands of Sparta, but he is given a home under the
1:00:55 Speaker 03 control and protectorate of the Spartans. There are ancient history rumours, so within the ancient sources, there are rumours that his children went through the Spartan training system, the Agoge.
1:01:07 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:01:08 Speaker 03 But that's debated. But, you know, 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's gloves as always. But if he says something that is contradicted by a later source, I am more likely to believe xenophon.
1:01:34 Speaker 02 Okay. And did he personally know this king? Would he have been chatting with him or is he just seeing him from a distance?
1:01:41 Speaker 03 No, no, no, he seems to have personally known him. And also, I mean, he wrote, one of the works that we have that survives him is a eulogistic biography of Agelos II, which seems to have been circulated after Agelos II died.
1:01:59 Speaker 03 Which is very much like how great Agelos was.
1:02:02 Speaker 02 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.
1:02:13 Speaker 03 No, not really, because ultimately, his exile, like most Athenian exiles, they're not forever.
1:02:19 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:02:20 Speaker 03 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 Ellis. He then ended up in Corinth. And according to most traditions, he died in Corinth. However, if you look at his
1:02:41 Speaker 03 final work, there'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.
1:02:53 Speaker 02 He was never fully banished then, he was able to return at some point. Okay, that's interesting.
1:03:02 Speaker 02 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?
1:03:08 Speaker 03 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, you know, 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.
1:03:32 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 So it's something he obviously went back to and added to and and that, you know, editing processes as well. So even if we accept when he finished it, that doesn't tell us when he started writing it. Um, uh, so yeah, the, the, why am I telling you this? Really, this is just to understand the difficulty of making assumptions about him and his work. Cause we can't even securely date. He's writing during the fourth century. Definitely. Pretty much definitely. I said, I said that too confidently, Alexander. No, no, he did. He, he was writing during the fourth century and he probably died in the three 50s.
1:04:10 Speaker 02 Okay. And what, what time does the Hellenica cover? We know it, it starts when Hesidides finishes.
1:04:17 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, yeah. Literally mid-sentence. Uh, that's where it starts. And, uh, it ends 316, Battle of Mantena.
1:04:25 Speaker 02 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.
1:04:42 Speaker 03 Hmm.
1:04:43 Speaker 02 That makes him quite an interesting source then, because he's got this multiple perspective.
1:04:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:04:49 Speaker 02 Built in.
1:04:50 Speaker 03 Yeah. Um, it absolutely does. And I think this is sometimes where people want things from Xenophon. That is probably unfair.
1:05:03 Speaker 02 What do they want?
1:05:04 Speaker 03 They want him to be a historian and a good one. I want him to be a source, which is not the same. So, um, people sort of looked at him and go, you know, his judgment of this, that and the other, or his use of evidence, uh, isn't very, uh, forthcoming. Or, um, you know, 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, I could, I can use that. I can do things like that. I can get an understanding of what's going on. Um, so something that often comes up is, um, Xenophon seems to be a very pious man.
1:05:43 Speaker 03 Okay, so he puts a lot of store 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 behaviour, they deserve what came to them as a result. That's what happened.
1:06:15 Speaker 03 So, you know, from a historian to a historian point of view, I'm like, this is useless supposition, what are you 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. 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.
1:06:53 Speaker 03 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 had to do a lot of work on during my former years, which was on the burial of the war dead in ancient Athens. 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.
1:07:37 Speaker 03 Because it's a major undertaking. The commitment, the financial, the manpower, it's a major undertaking.
1:07:45 Speaker 03 And this is the story we get. 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.
1:08:04 Speaker 03 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.
1:08:20 Speaker 03 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.
1:08:34 Speaker 03 So like, he's, he's just made a mistake. You know, that's, that's an odd mistake to make.
1:08:40 Speaker 02 I mean, yeah, he's there.
1:08:43 Speaker 03 He's a military commander. He knows what you do with the dead.
1:08:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:49 Speaker 02 Okay, so people assume that he's wrong.
1:08:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, because it's easier. It's easier to assume he's wrong than to assume or to, to extrapolate that all the other evidence is lying to us.
1:09:04 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:09:05 Speaker 03 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?
1:09:16 Speaker 03 And there is something to be said for cultural sensibilities.
1:09:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:21 Speaker 03 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, the remains are all in coffins.
1:09:33 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:09:34 Speaker 03 How do you know how many are in it?
1:09:38 Speaker 02 I mean, we have got burials of Athenian warriors outside the city of Athens. We've got the Marathon Tomb.
1:09:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, we've got the Marathon Tomb, which is often considered the last time it happened.
1:09:50 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
1:09:52 Speaker 03 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 then. It must have happened after then. 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.
1:10:11 Speaker 02 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.
1:10:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. And you've also got to, you've got to also take into account, one is difficult enough. At the Battle of Delium, where I told you Socrates fought and the Romans get it all wrong and think Xenophon's there.
1:10:39 Speaker 03 The Athenians lost a thousand men.
1:10:43 Speaker 02 Right.
1:10:44 Speaker 03 So when you're thinking logistics, you've got to think they've got to burn a thousand bodies.
1:10:49 Speaker 02 Needs a lot of wood.
1:10:50 Speaker 03 It does need a lot of wood. It needs hundreds of tonnes of wood.
1:10:54 Speaker 02 A lot.
1:10:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's something like, um, I used, 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.
1:11:06 Speaker 02 That's enormous amounts post battle where you're not near home territory.
1:11:12 Speaker 03 Yeah. And wood is scarce in the, in the Greek world. There's not loads of it.
1:11:18 Speaker 03 And then of course you've got to take into the logistics of space. So how much space does that amount of cremains, so cremated human remains, how much space does that take up? How much does that weigh? How much do you then?
1:11:29 Speaker 02 Where are you going to get the pots from, the burial pots?
1:11:32 Speaker 03 Well, this is it. Cause then you've got to take into the logistics of all the pots, which is unlikely.
1:11:38 Speaker 02 So the more we discuss logistics, the more sense Xenophon makes.
1:11:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:11:46 Speaker 03 Which actually, when I 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.
1:11:54 Speaker 02 No, it doesn't sound like it, does it?
1:11:56 Speaker 03 If there was a slip of the pen, the slip was, I shouldn't have said that.
1:12:01 Speaker 02 Right.
1:12:01 Speaker 03 But Xenophon doesn't seem to care about that.
1:12:04 Speaker 02 Cause he's practical.
1:12:05 Speaker 03 Cause 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, he, he does not shy away from it.
1:12:20 Speaker 02 Is he talking about how many people were buried in Ephesus?
1:12:23 Speaker 03 No, just a random aside. It's like, uh, they, uh, they had a battle, they buried the dead and then they moved on.
1:12:32 Speaker 02 Because, yeah, if he brought them home, if he buries them, he just needs some shovels.
1:12:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:12:38 Speaker 02 But if he brings them home, he needs wood, he needs.
1:12:42 Speaker 03 Well, and also, you've got to go home.
1:12:45 Speaker 02 Yes. How, how did he get back? Did he march the whole way through? Did they sail? Because marching is the long route, we know that.
1:12:53 Speaker 03 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, it's nothing to do with the mercenaries at all.
1:13:01 Speaker 02 Oh, right.
1:13:02 Speaker 03 So the mercenaries, they march all the way to the Black Sea.
1:13:07 Speaker 02 Okay, so they do take a long route.
1:13:09 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, they take a long route, through the mountains, through. He, he gives descriptions, like, his is the earliest known written description of snow blindness. He describes.
1:13:20 Speaker 02 Really?
1:13:22 Speaker 03 He describes, basically, hypothermia. He describes, you know, struggling in the mountains. It, it, it's amazing.
1:13:32 Speaker 02 So you can start to see, can't you, why Alexander the Great is using it as a kind of how to guide?
1:13:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:13:38 Speaker 02 Because it's not just weird, glorious stuff here. He's, he's giving practical information about terrain and weather and seasons.
1:13:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:13:46 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:13:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is, this is xenophon. This is why xenophon's amazing. This is why anyone who puts xenophon down should get in the bin. As a source, he's just phenomenal. And offers insight that just no other source in this time period offers us.
1:14:03 Speaker 02 Okay. And is that because of his writing style or is it the personality? Is, 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?
1:14:20 Speaker 03 That's a really interesting question.
1:14:22 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:14:24 Speaker 03 Partly, it depends on when you think he wrote it.
1:14:27 Speaker 02 Ah, yes.
1:14:30 Speaker 03 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.
1:14:38 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:14:38 Speaker 03 Or whether they were influenced by him.
1:14:42 Speaker 02 Right. So, okay.
1:14:45 Speaker 03 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.
1:15:03 Speaker 03 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.
1:15:17 Speaker 02 Aha, okay. So we can make our own little conclusions.
1:15:22 Speaker 03 And there is evidence for all of it, so.
1:15:26 Speaker 02 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.
1:15:44 Speaker 03 So, I mean, one of my favourites is Hunting with Dogs.
1:15:49 Speaker 03 It's a, it's a, it's a manual on, well, exactly what it sounds like, how to hunt with dogs.
1:15:55 Speaker 03 It's a brilliant source to understand dog training in the ancient Greek world, to understand relationships with dogs, to understand, because 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.
1:16:15 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
1:16:16 Speaker 03 He also talks about what you and I might refer to as breed of dog.
1:16:20 Speaker 02 Right.
1:16:21 Speaker 03 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 Volpine type dog. He's got like a whole list of different types of dogs and what you'd use them for, because he's practical.
1:16:39 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:16:40 Speaker 03 So, different types of dogs used for different types of hunting.
1:16:44 Speaker 03 So you, I mean, much like today, so like, 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 wolfhound. So Xenophon very much goes into those kind of details, but also like how to kind of identify a dog being good for that task.
1:17:04 Speaker 02 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 out of half.
1:17:19 Speaker 03 Oh, that kind of practice, yeah, that kind of practical element. I'd probably say it's more the former. There isn't, 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.
1:17:45 Speaker 03 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.
1:18:00 Speaker 02 So it's simpler language to make it accessible, but it is still slightly perhaps aspirational.
1:18:07 Speaker 03 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.
1:18:22 Speaker 03 So if you ever sort of read anywhere about, the Greeks used to call their dogs this, chances are that came from Xenophon.
1:18:32 Speaker 03 And, you know, it's, it's, 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. But yeah, he just gives a long list and it is a long list of good names you could give your dog. Okay.
1:18:51 Speaker 02 Have you ever named a dog after a name you found in Xenophon? Be honest.
1:18:55 Speaker 03 I have not named a dog after anything I've named.
1:18:57 Speaker 02 Is that your choice or your wife's choice?
1:18:59 Speaker 03 My wife would not allow that at all.
1:19:04 Speaker 02 I knew it.
1:19:06 Speaker 03 But interestingly, it reminded me, many moons ago, I met, 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.
1:19:24 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
1:19:25 Speaker 03 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 names, names being relevant to training dogs or relevant to your relationship with dogs beyond just, I want to call it Bob. You know, it's, I just find it interesting that that's also present in Xenophon. Arian, I think it's Arian, who, a much later writer, who also wrote a book called Anabasis, about Alexander the Great, and his excursion into Persia, also wrote a book on hunting with dogs,
1:20:10 Speaker 03 in which most of it is what Xenophon said. So he's got a bit of a fan.
1:20:17 Speaker 02 Stalker. Okay.
1:20:21 Speaker 03 Let's buy the buy. That's a tangent, Isaac's wrote, I apologize.
1:20:24 Speaker 02 That's fine.
1:20:27 Speaker 02 I was aware that there would be tangents. It's okay.
1:20:32 Speaker 02 So if we were to try and answer the question,
1:20:37 Speaker 02 and you don't have to go with one, you can invent your own answer. Is he a philosopher? Is he a historian?
1:20:46 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:20:48 Speaker 02 Okay, so it is possible to do both.
1:20:50 Speaker 03 Of course it is. It's absolutely ridiculous. So
1:20:54 Speaker 03 the idea, I was, I was watching a small snippet of a historian, Ramirez, was right, who was talking about this. And she was, 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 specialise.
1:21:20 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:21:20 Speaker 03 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 compartmentalisation of subjects and disciplines. And I feel like we've projected this on to people like Xenophon. So Xenophon was a philosopher. Yes, he was. I mean, he was a highly influential philosopher. Like, his philosophy and 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.
1:22:02 Speaker 02 So we can't put him in a box. That would be unfair and frankly, a bit lazy.
1:22:06 Speaker 03 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, because he's a historian. It's a looking at his treatises 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
1:22:48 Speaker 03 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, he's not the traditional polymath, in terms of, you know, the sciences, the arts, 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.
1:23:33 Speaker 03 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 the context. As a result, and to be able to get more from it.
1:23:53 Speaker 02 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.
1:23:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, precisely that. And also with the knowledge that actually we probably don't know what he's trying to do.
1:24:05 Speaker 02 So for anyone who hasn't read any Xenophon yet, where do you think they should start?
1:24:10 Speaker 03 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.
1:24:25 Speaker 02 Okay, so it's going to be fun as well as.
1:24:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:24:28 Speaker 02 Right, okay.
1:24:28 Speaker 03 It is, I used to, I was lectured, 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 two zero 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.
1:25:01 Speaker 02 Okay, and then Hellenica is number two?
1:25:05 Speaker 03 Ah, it's long, isn't it?
1:25:08 Speaker 02 It is.
1:25:08 Speaker 03 It's a long read.
1:25:10 Speaker 02 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?
1:25:22 Speaker 03 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.
1:25:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:32 Speaker 03 The story.
1:25:33 Speaker 02 It's gonna make more sense.
1:25:34 Speaker 03 Start at the beginning of the series to motivate through. So yeah, that would be my general advice on that.
1:25:39 Speaker 02 And people should read Thucydides anyway, right?
1:25:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, to be fair, Thucydides, again, in good translation is, it's an interesting read. But it's a bit like reading, 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.
1:25:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then Tom Bombadil comes in and starts singing some bloody song for seven pages.
1:26:03 Speaker 03 Okay, that's great, skip, skip that bit.
1:26:07 Speaker 03 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 gonna 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.
1:26:31 Speaker 02 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?
1:26:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:26:44 Speaker 02 Cause I know I love my landmark editions because they have maps and analysis.
1:26:47 Speaker 03 I love landmark, but they're terribly translated.
1:26:50 Speaker 02 Are they?
1:26:52 Speaker 03 Well, that's not fair.
1:26:53 Speaker 02 Don't tell me that.
1:26:53 Speaker 03 They're old, they're quite old translations or, 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.
1:27:07 Speaker 02 Okay, but the maps and the notes, fantastic.
1:27:10 Speaker 03 It's just so useful. And they have a Xenophon's Anabasis.
1:27:14 Speaker 02 They do, I own it.
1:27:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, so I mean, that's a good place to edit 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.
1:27:43 Speaker 03 Um.
1:27:45 Speaker 03 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.
1:27:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:54 Speaker 03 What I won't do is really care about meter or rhythm.
1:27:57 Speaker 02 Right.
1:27:58 Speaker 03 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, uh, the kind of the soul of a piece.
1:28:17 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:28:17 Speaker 03 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. Um, so the historian in me finds that frustrating. So you've got translations 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 a massive journey through the Persian Empire then out again, through places that you've never heard of.
1:28:48 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:28:49 Speaker 03 You want maps.
1:28:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:51 Speaker 03 And you want accessible maps regularly. The other thing I like about the landmark series is the essays at the back.
1:28:59 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:28:59 Speaker 03 So the short essays explaining, um, 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.
1:29:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, if you need the context, they give it to you.
1:29:16 Speaker 03 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.
1:29:23 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:29:24 Speaker 03 Thing, it talks about it. So I do like the landmark series for that. But, uh, 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. Um, the Oxford world, the Oxford classical series, um, again, easy to read. And if it's your first introduction, that's where you want. 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, um, yeah, I'd recommend, Xenophon is so hard to translate in a boring way, especially as an.
1:30:04 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:30:05 Speaker 03 The Anabasis is such an interesting book.
1:30:08 Speaker 02 So if you find a boring translation of Xenophon, it's because someone is, right, okay.
1:30:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, don't, don't, don't email me telling me I found one. Because I don't care. I'm not reading it.
1:30:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, people like me, we will have five different translations because 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.
1:30:39 Speaker 03 This is it. This is it. So, uh, yeah, any of them really. And just, uh, start from there. Um, you'd be amazed how readable even his really weird practical guides are.
1:30:53 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:30:54 Speaker 03 And they're also short, which helps. Um, but also like his biography of Geselhaus 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 Geselhaus is a great read.
1:31:15 Speaker 02 So I love the fact that he, he appears to have been writing accessibly for his own time and he's really accessible now.
1:31:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:31:24 Speaker 02 That's a sign of a good writer. I like.
1:31:27 Speaker 03 I'd agree.
1:31:29 Speaker 02 I like, I don't know about his thoughts about, you know, women throwing themselves off cliffs or having sex parties. Maybe not, but, um, accessibility, I'm all for it.
1:31:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:31:40 Speaker 02 So.
1:31:40 Speaker 03 Why not?
1:31:41 Speaker 02 Got to 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?
1:32:02 Speaker 03 Oh 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.
1:32:17 Speaker 03 Did his.
1:32:18 Speaker 02 Right.
1:32:19 Speaker 03 So there is, there is even a rumor that he might have been involved in the editing of it.
1:32:25 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:32:26 Speaker 03 We don't know if it's true.
1:32:29 Speaker 03 We don't know what that's based on. But if it is, it might well be that Xenophon is responsible for our entire understanding of the ancient Greek world from about 450 to 350 B.C.
1:32:47 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:32:48 Speaker 03 You won't find that in a book.
1:32:50 Speaker 02 So by making Thucydides cool, he has himself made history cool.
1:32:58 Speaker 03 There we go. He is the reason history is cool. There you go. How's that?
1:33:02 Speaker 02 I like that. What a perfect place to finish.
1:33:10 Speaker 02 That, that is pretty, that's awesome though, because as I say, you know, my 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, so many things to teach. They're gonna focus on the fifth century. Fourth century, I think, needs a bit more attention and I'm so glad that you've come on to 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.
1:33:46 Speaker 03 Absolutely. I completely agree. Now, thanks for inviting me on to talk about it.
1:33:50 Speaker 02 It's a pleasure. I'm sure we will be seeing you again soon.
1:34:19 Speaker 02 Now, I don't know about you, but I have a brand-new appreciation of all things Xenophon. If you want to know more about Xenophon, you can head to our website, ancienthistory101.org, where we have compiled some further reading links, some supplementary material, and you can learn more about Owen Rees and his work. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do let us know. And if you're not subscribed yet, why not click that button? We have new episodes every Wednesday. See you next week for more Ancient History 101.
1:35:24 Speaker 04 Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess, with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.
1:35:42 Speaker 05 The much-awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.
1:35:55 Speaker 04 And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favourite spicy scenes from across the series.
1:36:09 Speaker 05 Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait! Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.
Previous Conversations: Get In the Dragon Wagon, We’re Going Shopping, Women in Euripides w/ Dr. Alecto Hardwick Next Liv Reads Homer: The Odyssey (A Modern Translation!) Book 4 Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated