H.'s compact volume forms part of Bloomsbury Academic's Ancients in Action series, which seeks to provide overviews of Graeco-Roman authors that are both ‘short’ and ‘incisive’. It is the first introduction to Xenophon in English aimed at general readers since J.K. Anderson's in 1974, which was organised more as a biography than, as here, an introduction to the author's works. It therefore answers a real need, particularly given the academic rehabilitation Xenophon has enjoyed over the past three decades. H. is in an excellent position to synthesise the fruits of this scholarly renaissance as a co-organiser of important 2009 and 2021 conferences on Xenophon as well as co-author of the introductory survey in the indispensable volume drawn from the 2009 sessions (H. and C. Tuplin, Xenophon: Ethical Principles and Historical Enquiry [2012]).
The challenge in introducing Xenophon's works effectively is considerable. Not only is his output sprawling and heterogeneous, even if its intellectual agenda is surprisingly consistent, but the author is also a figure whose various spheres of activity require considerable and complex contextualisation. The general reader may be able to place Socrates and Sparta with some confidence, but key figures like Agesilaus, Critias and the Thirty, or which Cyrus of Persia is which may be mysterious even for many of today's Classics undergraduates.
Taking a cue from V. Gray's work (p. 12), H. orients her analysis around demonstrating the thematic links and recurrent dramatic patterns that cut across Xenophon's multi-generic output to form a coherent programme of pragmatic political virtues. The approach is particularly well suited to a volume striving to introduce Xenophon's output as a whole, rather than carving it up between historians, philosophers and political scientists. Wisely, given the constraints of space and the intended audience of neophytes, H. most often builds these insights from the explicit formulations of Xenophon's Socrates. For example, she deftly shows how the philosopher's theoretical discussions of a virtue like enkrateia and its practical advantages find illustration everywhere from hunting (Cynegeticus) to the encomium of Agesilaus’ command in Asia (pp. 84–94). In each realm the focus is ultimately on modelling for the reader constructive forms of civic participation informed by Socratic insights, thereby vindicating Xenophon's defence of Socrates as a teacher who improved rather than corrupted his followers.
By contrast, ‘darker’ readings that complicate or ironise the author's surface meaning as well as attempts to uncover bidirectional influence between Xenophon's portrait of Socrates and his own views are prudently acknowledged but passed over (pp. 11–13, 50). Instead, the author's complexity is seen to reside in how he articulates a philosophical whole across time, space and genres in ways that expand its didactic resonance. Throughout, H. draws helpful parallels between new material and works surveyed in previous chapters, especially the Cyropaedia. H. does, however, admit a ‘darker’ reading of Lac. Pol. 14, without labelling it as such, suggesting that this ‘palinode’ chapter prompts readers to search for systemic weaknesses latent in the laws of Lycurgus (pp. 71–3). Confusingly, she earlier dismisses any sinister implications for Cyrus’ educational system in the similarly pessimistic prolepsis with which the Cyropaedia concludes (pp. 29–30).
H.'s elegantly streamlined interpretation of Xenophon is in some important ways at odds with the sequencing of the book's chapters. After a biographical sketch, the first of these treats the author's historical works, beginning with a highly compressed account of the Hellenica's many political plot twists. This makes for difficult reading, even for one with a passing familiarity with the work or period. Much of the chapter ends up a whirlwind of indistinguishable tyrannical regimes in Greece and military expeditions of undefined historical significance across amorphous Persian realms. An effective contrast is H.'s approach to managing the sprawling action of the Cyropaedia, treated between the Hellenica and Anabasis. Here, she economically describes Cyrus as implementing Persian education on an imperial scale, rather than delving into the messy details of the king's fusion of Persian austerity with Median ceremonial or the scholarly controversy surrounding the attendant moral ambiguities.
The Socratic dialogues finally arrive in the second chapter. Afterwards there is an intervening survey of shorter treatises before the masterful fourth chapter explains the framework of what one might term the enlightened hedonism animating the various calls to virtue that readers have been continually encountering. On the one hand, this arrangement lets H. dispatch the areas least essential to her interpretation at the first opportunity, allowing a build-up of continually more relevant material that prepares the way for H.'s interpretative scheme. Although this progress will be clear to readers familiar with Xenophon's work, it risks losing the intended audience along the way.
The last chapter looks at Xenophon's reception, opting for a series of effective representative examples in lieu of a rushed overview. The focus here is on the Cyropaedia in Rome, late antiquity and Renaissance Europe, and then the Anabasis within the UK and US in more recent decades. The stimulating conclusion, which builds on an excellent earlier treatment of the Poroi (pp. 79–80), strikes a careful balance between crediting Xenophon for some surprisingly modern insights (e.g. the capacity of all human beings for virtue, regardless of sex or status; the knock-on effects of infrastructure spending) and clarifying the very different context in which these were applied (e.g. a welfare scheme, but undertaken for military ends and content to exploit slave labour). A missed opportunity in this vein was to set the proto-deistic arguments for ‘intelligent design’ that Xenophon's Socrates advances (Mem. 1.4, 4.3) against the author's conspicuous concern with traditional sacrifice and divination.
In general, the book is written in an accessible style that eschews jargon (p. 57 is the exception proving the rule). The production is excellent, aside from a few minor typos and some oddities in the ‘Further Reading’ section (e.g. The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika is included among studies of that work rather than the list of translations; Bodil Due's first name is treated as her last). The remarks above about the book's sequencing are meant chiefly to anticipate difficulties that its intended readership may encounter. They also reflect problems inherent in any compact introduction, which no author could avoid entirely. Accordingly, the book truly excels once H. turns to reading similar scenes from the Memorabilia and shorter treatises against each other, availing herself of their more atomised settings to perform close readings that are both rich and accessible. Like the Symposium's guests who, Socrates aside, wish either to marry or rush home to their wives after the party's concluding erotic pantomime (9.7), these chapters leave one eager to seek out and enjoy even the obscurest corners of Xenophon's corpus.
