Xenophon: Hellenika II.3.11-IV.2.8 0856686425, 9780856686429

Citation preview

Aris and Phillips Classical Texts

XENOPHON

Hellenika II.3.11–IV.2.8

Peter Krentz

Aris & Phillips is an imprint of Oxbow Books First published in the United Kingdom in 1995. Reprinted 2015 by OXBOW BOOKS 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW and in the United States by OXBOW BOOKS 908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083 © The author Peter Krentz Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-0-85668-642-9 A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing. For a complete list of Aris & Phillips titles, please contact: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNITED KINGDOM Oxbow Books Oxbow Books Telephone (800) 791-9354 Telephone (01865) 241249 Fax (610) 853-9146 Fax (01865) 794449 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] www.oxbowbooks.com www.casemateacademic.com/oxbow Oxbow Books is part of the Casemate Group

CONTENTS Preface

IV

Introduction Bibliography and Abbreviations

13

Text and Translation

22

1. Xenophon' s Life and Works 2. The Hellenika 3. Hellenika II.3.11-IV.2.8 4. Chronology of Events in II.3.11-IV.2.8 5. The Text Commentary

122

Maps and Plans

211

1. The Peiraieus 2. The New Bouleuterion 3. The Persian Presence in Western Asia Minor 4. Triphylia 5. The Sardis Campaign 6. Lokris, Phokis and Boiotia

Index

217

INTRODUCTION 1. Xenophon's Life and Works

"Xenophon was the son of Gryllos, an Athenian, from Erchia. He was modest and very handsome." With these words Diogenes Laertios, writing in the third century CE, began the sketch (2.48-59) that is our most important source for Xenophon's life apart from Xenophon's own writings. It leaves many questions unresolved, including the dates of Xenophon's birth and exile. Diogenes says Xenophon flourished in the fourth year of the ninety-fourth Olympiad, or 401/0, implying a birthdate of 441/0 (2.55; compare FGrHist 244 F 343). Some scholars take this tradition seriously (Falappone 1979), noting that it fits Xenophon's presence at Symp. I.I (dramatic date 422) and the story that Sokrates saved his life at the battle of Delion in 424 (Str. IX.2.7; Diog. Laert. 2.22). But at Anab. III.1.25 Xenophon represents himself arguing in 401 that he is not too young to replace Proxenos as general, which ought to make him younger than Proxenos, who was "about thirty" years old when he died (Anab. II.6.20; on Xenophon's comparative youth see also III.1.14). Therefore Xenophon was probably born between 430 and 425. About Xenophon's youth we can say that his family was wealthy, for he took his own horses with him to Asia Minor in 401 (Anab. IIl.3.19), and that he studied with Sokrates. More doubtful are the late stories that he also learned from Isokrates (Phot. Bihl. 486 b 36) and, while a prisoner at Thebes, from Prodikos (Philostr. Vit. Soph. 1.12). Some scholars have asserted that the details in the lfellenika show that Xenophon witnessed Thrasyllos' Ionian campaign in 410, the battle of Arginousai in 406, and the arrival of the news from Aigospotamoi in 405. But such arguments are inconclusive, and we cannot even be certain that Xenophon served in the cavalry during the oligarchy of the Thirty in 404/3, though it seems likely. In his Anabasis Xenophon tells how he became one of Kyros' "Ten Thousand" Greek mercenaries in 401, when Kyros revolted against his older brother, the Persian King; how, after Kyros' death, he became a general, replacing his friend Proxenos; how he helped lead the Greeks on their long march to the Black Sea; how he became their sole commander for a campaign with Seuthes in Thrace; and how he eventually brought the remnants of the mercenary force to the Spartan commander Thibron in 399. He probably remained in Asia Minor, campaigning under Thibron and Derkylidas. The "leader of the Kyreians" in Hell. III.2.7, who blames Thibron for the mercenaries' misbehavior, is probably Xenophon himself. He aiso probably married his wife, Philesia, during this period. Philesia gave birth to two sons, perhaps twins, Gryllos and Diodoros (Diog. Laert. 2.52).

INIRODUCTION

Xenophonjoined Agesilaos in Asia Minor, where he may have played a role in developing Agesilaos' new cavalry force (Hell. ill.4.15-17). He returned to Greece with the Spartan king in 394 (Anab. V.3.6). He must therefore have seen the battle of Koroneia, but it is uncertain whether he fought against Athens, as Plut. Ages. 18.2 says, for this is only Plutarch's interpretation of Anab. V.3.6. Xenophon implies that he was present out of friendship for Agesilaos rather than hostility for Athens, and twice states that Herippidas (not he himself) commanded the Kyreian unit (Hell. IV.2.4, 3.15-18; Ages. 2.10-11). Still, Plutarch need not be wrong. After the battle Xenophon accompanied Agesilaos to Sparta (Diog. Laert. 2.5152; Plut. Ages. 20). The Athenians had exiled Xenophon between 399 and 394, most likely after the outbreak of the Korinthian War in 395 made Xenophon's pro-Spartan and anti-Persian activities contrary to current Athenian interests (Tuplin 1987b; Green· 1994 hypothesizes that in 399 former oligarchs approached Xenophon about leading the Kyreians against Athens on behalf of former supporters of the "Thirty and that a "preemptive exile" resulted-but.exile might be instead a stimulant to lead an attack on Athens, which it certainly could not prevent). The Lakedaimonians rewarded him with an estate at Skillous, part of the territory Sparta had recently taken from Elis (Hell. ill.2.21-31; for the location of Skillous, see Pritchett 1989: 67 n. 151). Agesilaos also arranged for Xenophon's sons to be educated at Sparta (Plut. Ages. 20.2, Mor. 212B; Diog. Laert. 2.54 on the authority of Diokles), an honor that incidentally provided the Lakedaimonians with hostages to guarantee Xenophon's loyalty. AtAnab. V.3.7-13, Xenophon describes with evident fondness a portion of his Skillous estate that he purchased with money promised to Artemis of Ephesos (V.3.4): Xenophon purchased a site for Artemis where the god [Apollo] boo instructed. A river Selinous happened to run through the land; in Ephesos a river Selinous also runs past the temple of Artemis. Both rivers contain fish and shellfish. The land at Skillous also has hunting for all kinds of game. Xenophon built an altar and a temple from the sacred money and thereafter he used the tenth part of the land's produce for a sacrifice to Artemis. All the citizens and neighboring men and women participated in the festival. Artemis supplied those who stayed in tents with barley, bread, wine and desserts as well as a share of the animals sacrificed from the sacred herd and the animals killed in hunting. For Xenophon's and other citizens' sons, and any men who wished, went hunting for the festival. They caught boars, roes and stags both on the sacred ground and on Mount Pholoe. As one proceeds along the road from Sparta to Olympia the site is about twenty stadia [3.6 km.] from

2

INIRODUCTION

the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The sacred ground contains a meadow and wooded mountains, adequate for pigs and goats and oxen and horses, so that the animals of those who came to the festival had plenty to eat. Around the temple itself a grove of fruit trees was planted to produce whatever fruit was in season. The temple is a smaller version of the great temple in Ephesos, and the image resembles the one in Ephesos as much as a cypress statue can resemble one of gold. Next to the temple stands a pillar inscribed as follows: THIS LAND IS SACRED TO ARTEMIS. WHOEVER OWNS IT AND HARVESTS ITS PRODUCE IS TO SACRIFICE THE TENTH PART EVERY YEAR AND TO CARE FOR THE TEMPLE FROM THE REMAINDER. IF SOMEONE DOES NOT FULFILL THESE OBLIGATIONS, ARTEMIS WILL TAKE NOTICE. In this idyllic setting Xenophon began a productive literary career that continued until the 350s. Besides the Hellenika, he wrote: • • • • • •

•

Anabasis, a third-person account of the Ten Thousand in which Xenophon himself figures prominently; Kyrou Paideia, a historical novel that explores leadership by telling of the Persian King Kyros the Great; Agesilaos, an encomium in honor of the Spartan king who befriended Xenophon; Lakedaimonion Politeia, on the institutions that made Sparta great; Poroi, a discussion of how Athens could improve its financial situation; several technical treatises (Hipparchikos, or The Cavalry Commander; Peri Hippikes, or On Horsemanship; and Kynegetikos, or On Hunting); a number of Sokratic works. Apologia and Memorabilia defend Sokrates' conduct at his trial and his way of life. In Oikonomikos Sokrates and Ischomachos discuss household management, with parallels to city government. The Symposion begins with the claim that good men's less serious moments are worth recording, and the dinner party provides occasions for Sokrates to comment on such varied topics as gender, dancing as exercise and drinking. The Hieron, a dialogue between Hieron the tyrant of Syracuse and Simonides the wise poet on the subject of a tyrant's happiness, also counts as a Sokratic writing, though Sokrates does not appear.

Ancient critics saw Xenophon as a philosopher who also wrote history (Diog.

3

INTRODUCTION

Laert. 2.48). His philosophical interests, ethical rather than metaphysical or epistemological, are most obvious in his Sokratic works. But they resonate throughout all his writings, even those that seem most technical. One example: Kynegetikos is a primer on how to hunt, including such details as the number of threads to use for various nets and forty-seven appropriate names for hunting dogs. Yet it begins with a list of famous heroes who learned hunting from Cheiron, and ends with a discussion of the virtues to be gained from hunting. First among these benefits is physical conditioning, but Xenophon also claims that hunters are hard workers, pious, good to their parents and friends and useful to the whole city. He says that he wishes the treatise to be rather than to seem useful, so that it will stand unrefuted for all time (13.7). Readers can see a similar goal behind his other writings. Though Xenophon tried different literary forms, all of his works are in some measure didactic. The Spartan defeat at Leuktra in 371 meant Xenophon had to leave Skillous (Diog. Laert. 2.53). Though the Athenians rescinded his exile (Diog. Laert. 2.59 = Istros, FGrHist 334 F 32), there is no evidence that he returned to Athens, and Diogenes says that he settled at Korinth (2.53). He did, however, send his sons to join the Athenian cavalry. Gryllos died fighting at Mantineia in 362 (Diog. Laert. 2.54 = Ephoros, FGrHist 10 F 85; Paus. VIIl.11.6; at Hell. VII.5. 17 Xenophon says that "good men died," without naming his son). Countless encomiums written in Gryllos' honor, "in part to please his father" (Diog. Laert. 2.55 = Aristotle F 68 Rose), as well as Gryllos' presence on a painting of the battle in the Stoa Poikile (Paus. 1.3.4), attest the rehabilitation of Xenophon's reputation at Athens. Xenophon himself died sometime after 355, to which Poroi 5.9 refers, either at Korinth (Diog. Laert. 2.56, citing Demetrios Magnes and giving the erroneous date 360/59 on the authority of Stesikleides of Athens) or at Skillous (Paus.V.6.6, on the dubious authority of Eleians who claimed that their ancestors had pardoned Xenophon and allowed him to keep his estate, on which they were able to point out Xenophon's tomb). The discovery in 1940 of a portrait identified as "Xenophon" by an inscription has enabled the identification of a number of other portraits, all copied from a bronze original dated 335-30 (Minakaran-Hiesgen 1970).

2. The Hellenika The Hellenika spans almost half a century, from autumn 411 to summer 362. Xenophon wrote the latest datable passage (Vl.4.37) during Tisiphonos' rule in Thessaly, which began in 358 or 357 (Diod. XV.61, XVl.14.1) and ended in 353 (Diod. XVl.35). "Analysts" have identified two or three or four or five distinct sections, composed in chronological order or not. (Henry 1966 reviews these efforts caustically). The current majority view, however, is that while Xenophon drafted the

4

INTRODUCTION

"continuation" (I-II.3.10, the section that completes Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War) significantly earlier, he wrote the rest as a continuous whole in the 350s. Gray 1991 argues that Xenophon wrote the continuation in the 350s too, as a "bridging narrative." Whether or not she is correct-it seems odd that a bridging narrative would be written on the same scale as what follows--does not matter much, for in any case Xenophon had the opportunity to revise it when he finished the book. Xenophon's sources-about which he says nothing-remain unknowable. Most likely he relied exclusively on his eyes and ears. The single reference in the Hellenika to "all the historians" (syngrapheis, VII.2.1) does not show that he used other writers as sources, and he sure!¥ heard a good deal, in one way or another, before he put pen to papyrus. Nor can we know what he witnessed himself. An exception is the battle of Koroneia (IV.3.15-20), at which Xenophon was certainly present. He was equally certainly absent from the battle of the Nemea river (IV.2.16-23)-but could a reader unaware of Xenophon's biography tell the difference? Such is the difficulty of identifying events which Xenophon saw himself. Another example: It has been suggested that Xenophon was present when the news about the disaster at Leuktra reached Sparta during the gymnopaidiai festival (Vl.4.16). Yet Xenophon had probably attended this festival on previous occasions, as other foreigners had (note Mem. I.2.61), and he had probably seen (or heard of) Spartan reactions to bad news at other times (note IV.5.10). How confident can we be that he witnessed the scene in 371? What I think we can say is that Xenophon did not search out witnesses systematically, interrogate them carefully, and compare their stories rigorously to determine the truth. Xenophon had his own distinctive approach to history, better illumined by reading his other writings than by studying his predecessors. Since Breitenbach's germinal study in 1950, scholars have increasingly recognized that the Hellenika shows many typical Xenophontic concerns: justice, piety, power, tyranny, loyalty, friendship, the mutability of human affairs, the qualities of good commanders, and so on. In a revealing comment at V.1.4, after describing the goodwill Teleutias' men felt for their departing commander, Xenophon says: I know that I am not describing here any expenditure or danger or stratagem worth reporting; but, by Zeus, this seems to me worth consideration, what Teleutias did that made the men he commanded feel this way. For this is a human achievement more worth reporting than great wealth or dangers. Xenophon wrote history to instruct, but the Hellenika is more than propaganda for a 350s audience. Like the Kynegetikos, the Hellenika reveals timeless lessons ranging from the practical to the moral and ethical, and Xenophon selected his material accordingly. Sometimes he spells out a story's point. The fall of Mantinea, he says, taught men not to put a river through city walls (V.2.5). Most stories, however, cb

5

INIRODUCTION

not end with an explicitly stated lesson, though it is there for the observant. This is true on the broadest level as well. Several themes run throughout the work, uniting it to some degree, though it is not tightly knit. One is that injustice leads to failure. Persons or cities that try to rule by force fail: The list of failures includes the Athenians (see 1.7.1 n. on the Arginousai affair), the Thirty, Sparta, Jason, Euphron, and finally Thebes. Another is that it is good to forgive and forget. Xenophon provides both positive models (1.1.20, 3.19, 5.19, 11.2.20, 4.43, VI.3, 5.47, VIl.2.16) and negative examples (1.2.13, 7.34, 11.1.31-32, 2.3, 3.15, 111.1.9, IIl.2.21-23). A third is the role-at times the dominant role-of the divine. At the end of the Hellenika Xenophon says that the god determined the outcome of the battle of Mantineia (VIl.5.26). Divine agency appears in numerous other places (11.4.19, IV.4.12, Vll.2.21, 4.3, 32, 5.10, 13), most strikingly at Leuktra (VI.4.3), where the daimonion seemed to lead the Spartans toward their disastrous defeat because they broke a vow when they seized the Theban acropolis (V.4.1). Xenophon's interest in teaching raises the question of reliability, for he may have been tempted to "improve" a story to make a point. Unlike Thucydides, Xenophon makes no claim about his accuracy in the Hellenika-and even if he had we would still have to assess the claim's validity. Despite its specific historical setting the Symposion ought not be taken as an accurate narrative of a particular dinner party, though Xenophon begins by saying he was present (1.1); and the work in which he makes his most explicit claim to have researched his topic, the Kyrou Paideia (1.1.6), is a literary fiction. To judge the Hellenika's reliability we must assess it not only on its own (is it credible? does it follow storytellers' patterns that suggest unreliability? does it reveal bias?), but also in relation to other sources. For 1.3.11-IV.2.8, the most important other sources include orators, historians, a philosopher, and a biographer. While Demosthenes and Isokrates have an occasional relevant bit, forensic speeches by the contemporaries Andokides and Lysias provide some of the most riveting stories about the period. Lysias 12 Against Eratosthenes illustrates the difficulties of using speeches as historical evidence. Lysias charges Eratosthenes, a former member of the oligarchy of the Thirty, with the murder of Lysias' brother Polemarchos. Lysias' vivid story justifies the ancient critic Dionysios of Halikarnassos' opinion that Lysias was the best of the Attic orators at narrating the facts (Lys. 18). Lysias' narratives, says Dionysios, are so persuasive that they "smuggle convicton unnoticed past the listener's senses," and Dionysos applies to Lysias Homer's comment about Odysseus: "He spoke many falsehoods and made them sound true" (Odyssey 19.203). The Attic orators, speaking in competitive settings, always aimed at getting more votes than their opponents, not necessarily at telling the truth. Anything an orator says ought to have independent confirmation before it is believed whole-heartedly. Though Xenophon wrote the only contemporary narrative that survives intact, another detailed history survives on papyrus fragments found at Oxyrhynchos

6

INIRODUCTION

beginning in 1906. Now known as the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia (and the author as "P"), this work almost certainly dealt with the entire period 411-394 or 387. (An English translation is available in the 1988 Aris & Phillips edition by P. R. McKechnie and S. J. Kem.) The best surviving portions deal with the outbreak of the Korinthian war and the battle of Sardis in 396/5. Whoever P was-the most recent studies favor Kratippos (Shrimpton 1991: 183-95; Chambers 1993: xviiixxiv), but Theopompos remains a possible alternative-his apparently careful and contemporary work has to be taken seriously. It is all the more important because it became, through Ephoros, the major source behind the universal history written by Diodoros of Sicily in the first century BC. Not an original researcher, Diodoros did not even bother to compare available accounts. For mainland and Aegean affairs in this period he followed the fourth century historian Ephoros. Ephoros took an occasional detail from Xenophon, but depended primarily on the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia. Diodoros' stock has therefore risen considerably. He can never be dismissed-at least, not with any confidence-on the grounds that his information does not go back to a contemporary source. But neither can we be certain that his abbreviated, thirdhand narrative reproduces the original fairly. His accounts of the battles of Notion (XIIl.71.2-4) and Sardis (XIV.80), which can be compared to extant portions of the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia, show the kind of mistakes Ephoros-Diodoros can make. Dates are particularly untrustworthy, for Ephoros organized his material by subject (Ka'ta yevoc,)and Diodoros had difficulty putting it into his own annalistic form. The Hellenika Oxyrhynchia may also have been the source for the Athenaion Politeia, or Constitution of the Athenians, written by Aristotle or a member of his school in the third quarter of the fourth century BC. In addition to supplementing Xenophon on a number of points of detail, Aristotle provides an alternative chronology for the rule of the Thirty in 404/3. In the second century AD, Plutarch of Chaironeia composed his parallel Lives of famous Greeks and Romans. His Alkibiades, Lysandros, Agesilaos, and Pelopidas contain a great deal of information, but they are biographies, not history, and biographies of a peculiar sort. Plutarch was interested in showing character. As he explains in the first section of his Alexa,nder, little anecdotes or jokes often reveal more about a person's character than battles or sieges. The Lives therefore draw on Plutarch's wide reading in numerous authors of various sorts and varying reliability. In the Agesilaos alone Plutarch refers to thirteen writers, including a poet and a philosopher. Of the fourth-century historians, he cites Theopompos and Kallisthenes as well as Xenophon. But though we can name many of the authors he read, we often cannot identify the source for a particular story. Another problem for the modern historian is Plutarch's disinterest in strict chronology, though the Lives proceed chronologically for the most part. Current scholars disagree on Xenophon's trustworthiness. Anderson 1974b sees

7

iNTRODUCTTON

Xenophon as an honest reporter of what he knew, sometimes ill-informed but partial only due to circumstances that did not allow him to collect information freely. For Cawkwel! 1979, on the other hand, Xenophon was an unreliable, forgetful old man when he wrote the second part of the Hellenika. Gray 1989 finds him a storyteller who may fudge facts for the sake of story and moral point. These judgments are not as contradictory as they first appear. Xenophon might have been honest in the sense that he thought he was telling the truth. though he cared little for accuracy.

3. Hellenika

11.3.11-IV.2.8

The first part of the Hellenika (I-Il.3.10), beginning roughly where Thucydides ends, relates the fall of Athens. (See my 1989 edition in this series.) Initially the Athenians make progress against the Peloponnesian-Persian alliance. Under Alkibiades' leadership, they win victories at Abydos (411/10) and Kyzikos. (410) and are able to recover Byzantion, which controlled the entrance to the Black Sea, in 409. But they have less success in southern Asia Minor, due partly to limited financial resources. When the Persian King sent his son Kyros to the coast with orders to prosecute the war vigorously-and gave him more than a year's wages for the Peloponnesian fleet-the tide changed. The Lakedaimonian admiral Lysandros got along well with Kyros, and won a small victory at Notion in 406 that mattered mostly because it led to Alkibiades' second exile. Later in 406, after desperately "embarking everyone of military age, both slave and free" (I.6.24), the Athenians destroyed the Peloponnesian fleet under the leadership of Kallikratidas at Arginousai. But when the shipwrecked Athenian sailors were not recovered, the Athenian assembly, acting illegally, condemned the victorious generals to death. The virtual annihilation of Athens' war fleet followed in September of the next year (405) when Lysandros returned to iead a rebuilt Pe!oponnesian navy. He caught the poorly-led Athenians ships near the shore at Aigos Potamoi and captured almost all of them with barely a fight. At Athens the disaster was reported when the Paralos arrived vacp. 21 'tOU't(J)V OEyevoµevrov' mi:; E~OV'flO'f\1t0tElVautoii:; 0 'tt l3ouAOlVtO,7tOAAoui:; µEv lfx0pai:; £V£K{X fX.U'CC!) 1tpOQ"'TlK'.et aAAa Kat roi; 1tpo86-cn bµ&v 'Cel((X.1, 11µ&v81Mvm 'CTJV OtKTIV. lCfX.t'COt 'COO"OU'C