Hellenica
1958
History written by someone who was there. Xenophon served as a mercenary, knew the generals personally, and was exiled for his political connections. His Hellenica picks up where Thucydides left off in 411 BC and follows Greece through fifty years of unbroken chaos: Athens falls to Sparta, Sparta falls to Thebes and its brilliant general Epaminondas, Persia manipulates everyone from the shadows. Greeks who united to repel Persia now spend decades fighting each other until they have nothing left. Xenophon is not a neutral chronicler. He admires certain leaders, distrusts others, and writes with the intimate knowledge of a man who marched through these campaigns and shared wine with the men who shaped them. The result is less a textbook account than a vivid, sometimes biased, always personal record of how the greatest military power in the classical world exhausted itself through endless civil war. For readers who want to understand the political realism, the shifting loyalties, and the human cost behind the decline of Greece.
Editions
X-Ray
“In my opinion, however, disasters such as these teach men this lesson with regard to anger: one ought not to punish even a slave in anger; for masters who have lost their tempers often do more harm to themselves than they inflict; but in dealing with enemies it is utterly and entirely wrong to launch an attack under the influence of anger and without deliberation.Anger does not look ahead, whereas deliberation is just as concerned with avoiding harm oneself as with inflicting it on the enemy.””
— Xenophon
“En consecuencia, en la Hélade hubo aún mayor indecisión y confusión después de la batalla que antes””
— Xenophon
“Mas los que comparecieron para la lucha ya no la iniciaron en la pista, sino entre la pista y el altar””
— Xenophon
