Hellenica
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 620 passages
Cite this work
- APAXenophon. (n.d.). Hellenica. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/hellenica
- MLAXenophon. "Hellenica." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/hellenica.
- ChicagoXenophon. Hellenica. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/hellenica.
What it is about
The continuation of Thucydides' history: Xenophon takes up the account of the Peloponnesian War exactly where the other left it and carries it down to 362 BC.
Context and history
It begins with an 'and after this' that joins literally onto Thucydides' broken-off sentence. That is at once its merit and its trap: it invites one to read it as the same book, and it is not. Xenophon writes more plainly and less analytically, and above all he writes as what he was — an Athenian admirer of Sparta, a pupil of Socrates, a mercenary, an exile from his own city — so that he is silent about or brief on things that do not suit him: the founding of the Theban league and the part played by Epaminondas come off short. It is the main source we have for these years, and must be used in that knowledge. The 'Anabasis', where Xenophon is the better writer, is also in the corpus.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though there is doubt about some of these) is: Work Number of books The Anabasis 7 The Hellenica 7 The Cyropaedia 8 The Memorabilia 4 The Symposium 1 The Economist 1 On Horsemanship 1 The Sportsman 1 The Cavalry General 1 The Apology 1 On Revenues 1 The Hiero 1 The Agesilaus 1 The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians 2 Text in brackets "{}" is my transliteration of Greek text into English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The diacritical marks have been lost. HELLENICA BOOK I I B.C. 411. To follow the order of events (1). A few days later Thymochares arrived from Athens← Back to Xenophon