This collection of papers comes from a conference held in Liverpool in 2009. Among the contributors are emerging as well as established Xenophontics, and the odd unexpected guest. It adds to a growing stock of major publications on Xenophon such as Tuplin (Xenophon and his World [2004]), Lane Fox (The Long March [2004]), Narcy and Tordesillas (Xénophon et Socrate [2008]), Gray (Xenophon [2010] and Xenophon's Mirror of Princes [2011]) and Flower (Xenophon's Anabasis [2012]). The title seems to represent the division of Xenophon's works into those that are significantly informed by his Socratic philosophy, and those that are deemed historical inquiry; so we have, on the one hand, Schepens on Xenophon's account in Hellenica of the mission of Timocrates to Greece before the outbreak of the Corinthian War and Brennan on the missing days in the march of Cyrus in Anabasis, and, on the other, Dorion on how Xenophon conceived of sophia as an ethical principle or Hau studying words coined with phron- for their ethical qualities. For the papers in between, the title offers roomy accommodation.

There is new information in the first three papers, on Xenophon's reception. Stadter shows how Plutarch appropriates passages from a range of the works to produce relevant messages for his own time; an instance is his rereading of Xenophon's account of Agesilaus. Humble brings new material to her investigation of how the reception of the praise of the laws of the Spartan Constitution in renaissance translators is dictated by their historical and personal contexts. Rood expands horizons in another of his characteristically elegant reflections, on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reception of Xenophon's account of his ‘delightful retreat’ at Scillus in Anabasis.

The re-assessment of established problems in Xenophon's historical works is found in Schepens and Brennan above, while Gish makes a more generous assessment of Xenophon's attitude to the Athenian democracy in the trial of the generals in Hellenica. Ferrario focuses on individuals in Xenophon's concept of historical agency, and brings an updated notion of the recreation of memory in Anabasis to the discussion, while Millender ranges widely over the question of Xenophon's attitude to Sparta and Spartans in the Anabasis. The re-assessment of problems in the Socratic works is represented by Stokes's examination of the relations of the three Socratic apologies and Waterfield's testing of the claim in the Defence that Socrates deliberately courted death once his trial began, providing a historical and social context that makes sense of it.

The volume offers valuable treatment of Xenophon's minor works, on which, in English at least, there is far less scholarship than on the major works. The three papers on Poroi nicely capture the main interests of that work, as well as doing justice to Xenophon as a thinker. Figueira, in a standout paper, counters Moses Finley's disregarding view of Xenophon's evidence for the ancient economy in Poroi and other works; he concludes that Xenophon may not have economic theory in the modern sense, but shows considerable sensitivity to economic phenomena. Schorn draws on Azoulay to show how Poroi reveals the theory of leadership found in Xenophon's other works: fiscal management is only one, albeit essential, function of leadership. Jansen emphasises how innovatively Xenophon pushes the boundaries between citizens and non-citizens in his treatment of slaves, foreigners and metics in the Poroi. This is supplemented by Baragwanath's exploration of his notion of slavish and free in the Socratic works, set within the discourse of wonder. L'Allier reads the final chapters of Xenophon's Cynegeticus as a counter-attack to criticism of his work for its sophistic tendencies; perhaps these would benefit from a definition that takes more account of the bare technical style of the bulk of the work. Pontier explores the clash of Greek and Persian culture in episodes involving the kiss, in Agesilaus, Xenophon's encomium of the Spartan King, another of the minor works; the kiss was dangerously erotic in Greece, but honourably ritualistic in Persia.

Many modern readers find that Xenophon's texts invite the reader to challenge their own surface meaning by introducing dissonance. Johnson, for instance, returns to the allegation of dissonance within Memorabilia 4.4 on Socrates' support for the law, which was first detected by Strauss, the father of such interpretations. Harman finds dissonance within Agesilaus, an apparent eulogy of that Spartan king, on the grounds that Xenophon's praise of Agesilaus for his wars against other Greeks is irreconcilable with the praise of his panhellenism. This opens up readings in which his invitations to the reader to visualise what he is describing for apparent praise can invite the opposite reaction. Xenophon's own view that Agesilaus was patriotically obeying the orders of his city to defend them against other Greeks is not considered here; nor are the values Xenophon praises and the reader response strategies he employs in his other works. The editors note my criticism of such approaches in their introduction, commenting for instance that Danzig's paper will please me because it denies the problematising of Cyrus' philanthropy in Cyropaedia. This disarms me somewhat, but I certainly did find Danzig convincing. Another reading of Cyropaedia, which credits Xenophon with the character of the scholar writing about him, is found in the energetic piece by Henderson on Cyropaedia, in which he reveals, as the editor says, ‘Xenophon at play, a masterly narrator stimulating audience inquisition through spoudaiogelastic dissonance’.

The introduction champions subtle approaches also by reading Xenophon's works as ‘Socratic historiography’, which it defines as creating ‘a bounded historical space to be contemplated, for the lessons it has to teach, in some detachment from reality’. Xenophon creates this space to defend the ultimate failure of Socrates in the Socratic works, but the desire for a ‘perpetuated paradigm’ leads to a species of history writing that recognises and defends the failure of the paradigm in other works as well – often in subtle ways (p. 23) – though there are major exceptions to this (p. 28). There are echoes here of how Higgins read Xenophon (Xenophon the Athenian [1977]), a tradition which also influences Tamiolaki's paper on the image of the imperfect leader. The claim is that we should read Xenophon for the same unspoken implications as in a tragic text (p. 33); but the rhetorical nature of many of Xenophon's texts, with prefaces stating their intention to praise, makes them very different from tragedy. And though the introduction makes an issue of my views, its promotion of open readings of specific passages does not take account of my discussions of them, such as why the ‘palinodes’ to Cyropaedia and the Spartan Constitution should be read as rhetorical strategies designed to reinforce the praise in the body of the text rather than to question it (Gray, Mirror, Chapter 8), or how the trial of Sphodrias is one of a group of patterned trial narratives within Xenophon's works, which prevent us from reading it as condemnation of Agesilaus' part in it (Gray, Mirror, Chapter 4). Still, the volume overall gives a good impression of how Xenophon is read these days, adding to the growing stock of recent publications on Xenophon mentioned above. It could have been shorter, though, without real loss of substance: I counted 166 footnotes in one paper.