As the back cover of this latest addition to the renowned ‘Green and Yellow’ series informs the reader, this is the first commentary on a section of Xenophon's Anabasis in the English language in almost 100 years. Specifically, the commentary deals with Book 3, providing readers with a vastly updated analysis of the book's key historical, literary and linguistic features.
In a rather lengthy introduction (pp. 1–44) Huitink and Rood outline the historical context of Xenophon's account, the composition of the so-called Ten Thousand and details surrounding Xenophon's life as well as the genre, publication date, methods and purpose of the Anabasis. They also include two engaging sections on Xenophon's diction and style, in which they dissent from the view that Xenophon failed to employ a ‘pure’ Attic dialect; throughout the commentary the authors repeatedly stress that Xenophon's lexical choices are more complex than most scholars have previously allowed. The introduction also provides a brief examination of Anabasis 3's manuscript tradition as well as a useful appendix providing a chronological and topographical breakdown of the events that occur in this section of Xenophon's work.
As is customary with this series, the book comes equipped with the Greek text, which is then followed by a detailed commentary that covers a variety of linguistic, historical, cultural and political points. Unsurprisingly, Huitink and Rood make a wide suite of observations and suggestions concerning language that will be of considerable value to the book's student readership. For instance, readers learn that ἐξὸν … ὁρᾶν (3.2.26) is a concessive accusative absolute participle, which is commonly ‘used of feasible but rejected opportunities’ (p. 121), and that in the fixed phrase καὶ ὅς, ὅς acts as a form of the article (p. 176). The authors also elucidate several passages that display certain textual problems (e.g. 3.4.16–18, 3.5.3–4 etc.); in such cases they amply highlight issues with logic, structure etc., while also pointing out discrepancies between individual MSS. It is worth noting too that Huitink and Rood frequently refer readers to the newly published Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (Huitink being one of its authors), which only further bolsters this book's ambition to provide a fresh, up-to-date analysis of Anabasis 3's language and syntax.
Given the nature of Anabasis 3, a book in which the Greeks are at a point of deep aporia or perplexity (cf. the note on the ἀπορία-motif under 3.1.2) and Xenophon the character finally comes to the fore of Xenophon the author's account, it will come as no surprise that there is a repeated focus throughout the commentary on Xenophon the author's various attempts made to underscore Xenophon the character's fine credentials as a capable leader, not least through his frequent application of direct speech (at pp. 35–6 the authors show how Xenophon the character is a more varied and rhetorically sophisticated speaker than other speakers in Book 3). To take just one instance, Huitink and Rood provide detailed notes on a particularly memorable vignette, namely when Soteridas the Sicyonian lambasts Xenophon for riding on horseback while he and others march with exhaustion (3.4.47–9); Xenophon famously responds by dismounting his horse and marching with Soteridas’ shield as well as his own equipment. The soldiers’ subsequent abuse of Soteridas clearly reveals their ‘loyalty to Xenophon’ (p. 177), who thus emerges as an ‘effective leader of the rank and file’ (p. 175) in this decidedly charming episode.
There are also a number of valuable notes that will be of interest to readers concerned with how the Anabasis fits into the broader corpus of classical Greek historiography. For example, on the use of λέγεται (‘it is said’) at 3.4.11 Huitink and Rood demonstrate that the term does not imply unreliability, as readers of Herodotus and Thucydides might well intuit, but rather a sense of familiarity or even prestige. And on the question of how Xenophon as an author recounts the key role that he played as an individual in the narrative that he is responsible for narrating, Huitink and Rood make a number of sensible and informative observations, not least in their notes on Xenophon the character's memorable conversation with Socrates and appeal to the Delphic oracle at 3.1.4–10, a section in which, they observe, Xenophon is not presented in a uniformly positive manner (p. 74).
One of the volume's greatest achievements is its presentation of Xenophon's purposeful application of terminology that bespeaks a clear military register. These range from terms such as πλαίσιον (‘rectangular formation’, 3.2.36) and εὔζωνος (‘well-equipped’, 3.3.6) to ὀπισθοφύλακες (‘rearguard’, 3.3.7) and πάλαγξ (‘heavy infantry’, 3.3.11 – the authors noting that the use of the singular form of this word to describe the whole hoplite formation is first attested in Xenophon). That being said, as much as I do not doubt that Xenophon led the way in deploying a technical military register, sometimes Huitink and Rood's speculations are not testable against the evidence and should therefore remain at the point of conjecture. For example, they suggest that οὐρᾶς, used metaphorically to describe the rear of a marching army at 3.4.38, might be part of a technical military register. The metaphor, as the authors acknowledge, though frequent in Xenophon's corpus, is otherwise unattested until the time of Polybius; it remains unclear how far this term was part of a military jargon in the fourth century bce.
Huitink and Rood also indicate examples of Xenophon's vocabulary that are otherwise rare in Attic prose, such as ὀχήματος (‘foundation’, 3.2.19), τρισάσμενος (‘thrice-pleased, 3.2.24), and there is a widespread appreciation of Xenophon's application of terms that are not typical of the Attic dialect. For instance ἀλέξω (3.4.33), a verb otherwise attested in Attic just twice in tragedy (both times in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus), and μείων (3.4.34; Attic ἐλάττων, ἥττων), a Doric comparative that Xenophon makes wide use of in the Anabasis and the Cyropaedia.
The authors also look to unearth some of the book's intertextual connections. For instance, the reference to the Lotus Eaters at 3.2.25 leads to an interesting note on the potential connotations of said Odyssean allusion for Xenophon and his men, perhaps suggesting that the soldiers must resist yielding to the pleasures of foreign climes. There are also a few nods to Xenophon's potential allusions to passages from Herodotus (e.g. 3.1.4) and Thucydides (e.g. 3.1.2), though a full-scale consideration of the Anabasis’ intertextual connections with Xenophon's historiographical predecessors remains a desideratum. One does wonder too about the authors’ firm view that at 3.2.24 ‘Xenophon does not regard permanent settlement [of Persians lands] as a genuine alternative to returning to Greece’ (p. 119). After all, at 5.6.15–16 Xenophon the author relates that Xenophon the character contemplated the founding of a polis in the Pontus region (perhaps one of the reasons to explain his subsequent exile from Athens in the later 390s bce?). The volume has been well produced; there is only the occasional typographic error to be found (e.g. ‘not’ instead of ‘note’ on p. 188), but nothing that seriously diminishes the overall quality of the book.
This is a fine contribution to the ‘Green and Yellow’ series, and a valuable addition to the Anabasis’ growing bibliography. It wholly succeeds in its ambition to demonstrate the important contribution that Xenophon made to Greek historiography and will be no doubt prove essential reading for students and scholars alike.
