The Life, Adventures, and Philosophy of Xenophon, General and Student of Socrates

What can we learn by reflecting on the Life, Adventures, and
Philosophy of Xenophon, who was both a general and a student
of Socrates?
Why do many modern scholars ignore Xenophon’s philosophical
works, while ancient and medieval scholars admired them?
Did Xenophon’s philosophical writings influence Stoic
philosophy?
Why did the Athenians drive Xenophon into exile?
What was Xenophon’s relationship with Socrates and Plato? Why
did he write his own version of several Platonic dialogues?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video.
Feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint script we
uploaded to SlideShare.

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Xenophon was born around 430 BC in Athens to an aristocratic family. One of his
works was Estate Manager, and he was an excellent horseman, he likely rode
between the family estates with his father, quite likely they also hunted for meat
and sport. The Peloponnesian Wars ended around 413 BC, he must have fought in
these wars, as his writings hint that he had battle experience, as all aristocratic
citizens were expected to fight.
Was Xenophon a warrior, a historian, or a philosopher? Xenophon is one of the rare
ancient authors whose entire corpus of major works have survived, putting him in
the company of Plato and St Augustine, he was highly regarded among ancient and
medieval scholars, though hyper-critical modern scholars tend to deprecate him. He
was a student of Socrates and wrote several works featuring Socrates, including a
fascinating collections of his Stoic-like sayings in the Memorabilia.

One ancient historian, Diogenes of Laertius, in
his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, prominently
mentions Xenophon in his short life of
Socrates, he said that Xenophon declared that
Socrates was only interested in ethics. “Among
those who succeeded Socrates were called
Socratics, the leaders were Plato, Xenophon,
and Antisthenes.” Antisthenes was the first of
the Cynic philosophers who influenced Zeno
and the Greek Stoic philosophers. His short
biography of Xenophon immediately follows
that of Socrates in Book 2, though this may
also be due to his desire to dedicate Book 3
solely to Plato.

Diogenese also lists four other philosophers who were influential
students of Socrates, the writings of three of the four exist in
fragments, if at all. The fourth is Aristippus, founder of the
Cyrenaic school of philosophy, known as ethical hedonism, which
was similar to the Epicurean school that developed later, perhaps
they influenced them. Though the teachings of Aristippus were
rejected by other students of Socrates, you can argue that not
only Platonic thought, but that also Stoic and Epicurean thought
can be traced back to Socrates. Plato may have been the superior
philosopher among Socrates’ students, but he was not the only
philosopher, and was not the only voice heeded by the Greeks.

Socrates Address, by Louis Joseph Lebrun, 1867

There is another link between Xenophon and the Cynic
philosophers, who greatly influenced the Greek Stoic
philosophers. According to Diogenes of Laertius, in his
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Zeno, the founder of Greek
Stoicism, found himself in Athens after being shipwrecked.
He heard a bookseller reading aloud the second book of
Xenophon’s Memorabilia, the sayings of Socrates, “and
Zeno was so pleased that he asked where such men could
be found.

At that very moment Crates,” a Cynic philosopher,
“happened to be walking past. Pointing him out, the
bookseller said, ‘Follow him.’ From then on, he studied
with Crates, proving himself suited for philosophy, though
he was bashful about adopting Cynic shamelessness.”
Crates was a student of the famous Cynic Diogenes of
Sinope, who was in turn a student of Antisthenes, a
leading student of Socrates.

Ancient and modern scholars credit Zeno as the father of Stoicism, with a
capital “S”. But Zeno was influenced by the warrior culture he lived in,
illustrated by the Iliad, a world where instead of looking forward to
retirement, citizens worried whether a hostile invader would defeat and
plunder their city-state, execute all military age men, and enslave the
women and children. In this climate, the very concept of a conscientious
objector would be simply absurd. Stoics taught that life was cruel and
unfair, we cannot complain, but rather endure our sufferings without
bitterness, conquering calamities with virtue. We argue that stoic
philosophy, with a small “s”, is the default philosophy of the ancient
world, and that Platonic philosophy also reflected the tendencies of a
warrior culture.

https://youtu.be/DpmuhZJUJn0
https://youtu.be/7lI2ZQ50wRc
https://youtu.be/bGHHD7XTvr0
https://youtu.be/ynIx-AVI2f8

The historian Robin Waterfield speculates
that Xenophon, as a young student in
Athens, “learned that the gods valued
dutifulness towards one’s community,
hospitality towards strangers, respect for
elders and care for parents, kindness
towards friends and reasonable hostility
towards enemies, and that they would
punish criminals and humble the proud. The
cardinal virtues of Geek men were personal
integrity, self-restraint, or knowing one’s
place in society, piety towards one’s human
and superhuman superiors, shrewdness and
courage.” “Xenophon’s Socrates became the
model sage for the Stoics.”
Statue of Xenophon, by Hugo Haerdtl,
Austrian Parliament building

According to Robin Waterfield,
Xenophon believed that “a truly
good person who has earned the
epithet ‘good and beautiful,’ a
compound word in Greek,” must
be “self-sufficient, to be free
rather than in servile dependence
on others for one’s livelihood,
self-esteem, actions, feelings and
opinions.”

Many of these moral qualities were found in Homer’s
Iliad and Odyssey, and other Greek works such as
Works and Days by Hesiod.

Lysander outside the walls of Athens
Alcibades being taught by Socrates, by François-André Vincent, 1776
Xenophon’s History of Peloponnesian Wars

Modern scholars view Xenophon as an indispensable
ancient historian rather than as a philosopher.
Unfortunately, the masterful Greek historian
Thucydides abruptly ends his history of the
Peloponnesian Wars in the last phase of the war mid-
sentence in mid-chapter. Xenophon begins his
History of My Times with the words, “after these
times,” picking up where Thucydides left off.

Why did Athens lose the Peloponnesian Wars? In chess there is a saying
that the winner is he who commits the next to last mistake. One fatal
mistake the Athenian democracy made was when its generals won a
major naval battle, but many Athenian sailors drowned in a sudden storm
after the battle, and their bodies were never recovered. The Athenian
Assembly then executed many of these generals for this outrage, they
were enraged because in ancient Greek religion, souls of bodies not
respectfully buried were doomed to wander the earth, eternally barred
from Hades. The inexperienced generals replacing them were as timid as
they were incompetent, the Spartans caught their triremes unguarded on
the beaches. They destroyed the triremes and massacred the Athenian
rowers. later forcing the hapless city of Athens to surrender.

Sea storm with
shipwrecks, by
Joseph Vernet,
1770

After the end of the Peloponnesian Wars Lysander, the victorious Spartan
general, set up an oligarchy of Thirty Tyrants to replace the radical
democracy of Athens. Since Xenophon was both an eyewitness to these
events and an aristocrat, he was able to provide a detailed account of
these intrigues. This period has been compared to the bloody episode of
the French Revolution. The Thirty Tyrants, led by Critias, a former student
of Socrates, started a campaign of terror, executing many of their
democratic enemies, and then executing their fellow aristocrats simply so
they could seize their property.
Civil war erupted and the tyrants were overthrown, and Sparta declined
to intervene, unwilling to support this bloody hubris. Xenophon likewise
condemned the Thirty Tyrants.

Lysander outside the walls of Athens

https://youtu.be/rrcwdHyvIEg
Robin Waterfield wrote: “the brutality of the oligarchs
alienated him as thoroughly as the inefficiency of the
democracy: ideologically, he had no home in Athens, and that
is why he seized the opportunity for adventure in the east.”

Socratic Dialogues by Xenophon and Plato

You cannot understand the Platonic dialogues if you do not understand the history
of the Peloponnesian Wars, many of the major dialogues either reference historical
figures in this conflict, or they offer commentary on the war.
Xenophon wrote his own version of the Platonic dialogues on the Trial and
Execution of Socrates, and the Symposium, the dinner party with speeches on the
nature of love. When we reflected on the two dialogues, we read Xenophon’s
account first, in part because Stoic philosophy is easier to understand than Platonic
philosophy, and perhaps it is more historically accurate. Xenophon assuredly read
Plato’s dialogues before he wrote his own version, he is not interested in rebutting
Plato’s dialogues, but rather he simply wants to publish his own perspective on
these dialogues. Xenophon and stoicism emphasize ethics more affirmatively than
does Platonism, Stoicism is more concerned with the question: How can we live a
godly life?

Death of
Socrates,
by Jacques-
Lavis David,
1787

Many of the students of Socrates were aristocrats
who were wary of the radical democracy of Athens,
where demagogues often followed the popular
opinion of mob rule, and many were admirers of the
Spartan system of government. Socrates’ reputation
was further damaged by the fact that the chief
tyrant, Critias, was a student of Socrates, as was
Alcibiades, whom many unfairly blamed for Athens
losing the Peloponnesian Wars.

The two dialogues on the Symposium, or dinner or
drinking party, in both Plato and Socrates, have Socrates
delivering the last speech on love, and the Platonic version
of the speech is more memorable. Both Symposiums are
set in the time preceding the Thirty Tyrants, long before
the end of the Peloponnesian Wars, since Alcibiades
crashes the party in the Platonic version. The guest list
differs in the two dialogues, but both guest lists include
both future Tyrants and also victims who were executed
during the time of the Thirty Tyrants.

Pederasty, or men-boy love, was part of Greek culture, though
many fathers, such as Lycon in Xenophon’s Symposium, were
protective of their young sons, and were not open to older men
flirting with their children. Although Plato’s Socrates is more
tolerant of pederasty than was Xenophon, he prefers the divine
love of philosophy. When Alcibiades crashes the Platonic
Symposium dinner party, he proclaims how Socrates many years
earlier had rejected his advances, how Socrates only loved him as
a student, teaching him virtue and the divine love of philosophy,
earning the respect of his wayward student.

(We will record a video summarizing the Platonic
dialogues on love and pondering the question of
homosexuality and pederasty, or men-boy love, in
ancient Greece.)

We became aware how many in the ancient world respected
Xenophon when studying the works of St Justin Martyr. Justin
said he did not approve of stoic teaching, but he did not say why,
perhaps he was only familiar with the Greek Stoics, who were
known for their libertine attitudes, according to Diogenes.
Perhaps Justin was not aware of the writings of Epictetus, who
preceded Justin by a decade or two. But Justin was impressed by
the stoic writings of Xenophon, retelling the story of how the
Greek hero Hercules was asked to choose between the virtues
and temptations of Lady Virtue and Lady Vice, we compared
Justin’s retelling to the original by Xenophon.

Xenophon Becomes a Student of Socrates
How did Xenophon become a student of
Socrates? Diogenes of Laertius says that
“Xenophon was modest and extraordinarily
handsome. Socrates met him in a narrow lane,
extended his staff and blocked his path, inquiring
where each kind of food was being sold,” he was
likely testing his courtesy. He then asked,
“’Where do men become good and honorable?’
Xenophon was perplexed, and Socrates said,
‘Follow me, then, and learn.’ From then on, he
was a student of Socrates.”
Detail, Xenophon and Socrates, Raphael

We are reminded how Jesus recruited
the disciples when he said, “Come,
follow me.” Perhaps this was a common
refrain for philosophers in the ancient
world. In the ancient world, philosophy
was primarily concerned with virtue, or
how to live a godly life.
Robin Waterfield commented that
“Xenophon was quick to learn from
Socrates the ideal of self-sufficiency
built on self-discipline, not least because
he could readily harmonize this concept
of virtue with the Spartan values he was
more and more coming to admire.”
Calling of Peter and Andrew, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1311

The younger son of King Darius III, Cyrus the Younger,
generously funded the Spartan’s efforts to win the
Peloponnesian Wars. After the war, after the affair of
the Thirty Tyrants, and after the death of his father
the king, he asked Sparta to supply mercenary troops
in his efforts to seize the throne from his brother,
now crowned as King Artaxerxes. Xenophon was
asked to join this endeavor, but he first asked
Socrates for his input.

Xenophon remembers that
“Socrates thought that
friendship with Cyrus” might
be unwise, as the Athenian
officials “believed that Cyrus
wholeheartedly supported
the Spartans against the
Athenians” in the last phase
of the Peloponnesian Wars,
where Athens was defeated.
“Socrates advised Xenophon
to go to Delphi and consult
the god about whether or
not he should go.” Encounter between Cyrus the Younger, Achaemenid, Persian satrap,
and Spartan Lysander, by Francesco Antonio Grue, 1600's

Instead, “Xenophon asked Apollo which
of the gods should receive his sacrifices
and prayers to ensure that the journey
he had in mind would go honorably and
well, and to guarantee a safe return
after a successfully completed endeavor,
and in his response, Apollo named the
gods to whom he should sacrifice.”
Socrates was not pleased that Xenophon
changed the question posed to the gods
but did give him his blessing.

What was Xenophon’s attitude towards seers who sought the
blessings of the gods before a battle? It was common practice for
a seer to slaughter a sacrificial animal before an important battle
to see if the entrails revealed whether the gods would send a
good omen. Xenophon, if he received a bad omen before a
battle, would order the slaughter of another animal, then
another one, then another one, until the gods gave him a good
omen. Xenophon would delay the battle for a day or two if there
were repeated bad omens, but he preferred to ask for success in
battle rather than timidly ask the gods if he should act.

Priestess of Delphi
(1891) by John
Collier, showing
the Pythia sitting
on a tripod with
vapor rising from a
crack in the earth
beneath her
View of Delphi
with Sacrificial
Procession by
Claude Lorrain,
late 1600’s
Divination of
entrails of
slaughtered
animal

Retreat of the Ten Thousand at the Battle of Cunaxa, by Jean-Adrien Guignet, Louvre, 1854
Greeks Win the Battle, But Patron Cyrus Dies

Cyrus deceived the Greek troops; he did not tell them
the real purpose of their endeavor until they were so
deep in Persian territory that they could not return to
Greece. They marched for months from the west
coast of Asia Minor, today’s Turkey, to do battle near
the desert city of Babylon. The Ten Thousand Greek
mercenaries dominated the battlefield; as the sun
set, they thought they were on the winning side.

Route of
Xenophon
and the Ten
Thousand
(red) in the
Achaemenid
Empire. The
satrapy of
Cyrus the
Younger is
delineated in
green.

Generations later, Alexander the Great would win the
key battles when he and his bodyguard charged and
spooked the opposing Persian King Darius III, who
fled. But in this battle, when Cyrus the Younger and
his bodyguards charged his brother King Artaxerxes’
contingent, although Artaxerxes was wounded, the
wound Cyrus suffered was more serious, and he died
on the battlefield. Often history is determined by
chance and luck.

Alexander the Great, victorious over Darius at the battle of Gaugamela, by Jacques Courtois, late 1600's

Xenophon Encourages and Leads the Army

These victorious Greeks were stuck in the middle of Persia,
thousands of miles from home, with no supplies since their
baggage train had been looted. The Persians feared to attack
these formidable warriors, they were escorted North by the
Persian forces of Tissaphernes, Persian satrap and former friend
of Alcibiades, heading for the Greek colonies on the shores of the
Black Sea. One night the Athenian commander foolishly agreed to
attend a Persian banquet with other Greek generals and
commanders, plus two-hundred other troops who were going to
buy supplies from the Persians.

These Greeks were ambushed, some were
slaughtered immediately, others were slaughtered
later. The Greeks were despondent, but Xenophon
rallied them, reminding them how greatly the
Persians feared Greek hoplite warriors, reminding
them how often they defeated the Persians in battle,
urging them to elect new generals and commanders
to replace those who were lost to treachery, winning
the role of the leading general unanimously.

https://youtu.be/DBG3JvyLP1E
Robin Waterfield says it best: “Readers of the Expedition of Cyrus see
Xenophon mature in the course of the expedition, as he discovered,
with the pleasure that always accompanies the emergence of
competence, his native courage and capacity for command.”

Not only did he inspire his men, but Xenophon also
adapted the typical hoplite battle tactics to the
unique challenges posed by a constant retreat, facing
foes in mountain passes, as they headed for home.

Finally, when
they reached
a mountain
pass from
which they
spied the
Black Sea,
they rejoiced,
hugging each
other,
shouting
ecstatically:
“Thalassa!
Thalassa! The
Sea! The Sea!” "The Sea! The Sea!” by Bernard Granville Baker, 1901

Xenophon: Qualities of a Successful Leader
Cyrus the Great Hunting Wild Boar by Claude
Audran the Younger, Palace of Versailles

We recommend that you read Xenophon’s biography of the founder of
the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great, before you read the Anabasis, or the
adventures of the Ten Thousand, where Cyrus the Younger, many
generations later, failed to usurp the Persian throne. The ancient Greek
historian Thucydides proclaims that the speeches of the great men in his
history were either their words recorded by posterity or were the words
they ought to have said. Xenophon’s biography of Cyrus the Great
included many sayings, and most of the sayings reflected Xenophon’s
stoic teachings. Xenophon was fond of hunting and horsemanship, as was
Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great. Xenophon viewed Cyrus the Great as the
ideal king, and he opined that perhaps Cyrus the Younger would have
lived up to these ideals had he survived the battle triumphant.

Although Xenophon does include some moral lessons
in his Anabasis, many of the leadership lessons he
learned when leading the Ten Thousand out of Persia
while fighting the Persian forces are repeated in the
many moral sayings in his biography of Cyrus the
Great, or the Cyropaedia.

Robin Waterfield summarizes the moral
maxims from many of the works of
Xenophon: “Successful rulers, in Xenophon’s
opinion, know how to care for the interests of
their subjects better than the subjects
themselves; they lead by example, with
aristocratic self-confidence, showing flexibility
and imagination,” seeking the “common good
and safety of their subjects, and strong
enough to stand up to aggression and
wrongdoing. Such a leader is immediately
attractive to his subjects, who respect and
honor him, and willingly obey him.” Statue of Xenophon at the Austrian Parliament

Robin Waterfield continues,
“Willing obedience is best, but in
emergencies,” “compulsion or
emulation or a sense of shame or
duty” may be necessary. “The
vertical virtue of obedience” is
achieved by “instilling discipline in
subordinates, and the horizontal
virtue is being able to work with
others. This raises morale,” which
is key to “military success.”
Xenophon, LIFE magazine

Robin Waterfield continues, But
“deficient leaders lack the determination
and strength of moral certainty. They fail
to find the proper balance between
coercion and the instilling of willing
loyalty; they are too swayed by personal
motivations; they do not tell men off
when they are making mistakes but buy
them off with rash promises they cause
division in the army; and they ignore the
omens sent by the gods.”

Xenophon Returns to Sparta and Retires

By the end of their adventures, the forces of the Ten Thousand Greeks were
whittled down to over eight thousand who survived their travels and travails of their
adventures as they traveled along the shores of the Black Sea. The booty and
plunder that Xenophon acquired as commander of the Greek forces made him a
wealthy man. When they arrived near where they started on the coast, most of the
Ten Thousand joined the Spartan forces facing the Persian satraps in Ionia.
However, Xenophon was exiled by Athens, and his estates had been seized. In the
words of Robin Waterfield, “the final straw for the Athenians would have been
Xenophon’s return from Asia with the Spartan king Agesilaus and his presence, if
not his actual participation, on the Spartan side at the battle of Coronea in 394 BC,
where the Spartans and their allies beat the army of a confederacy that included
Athens.”

Athenian cavalryman Dexileos fighting a
Peloponnesian hoplite in the Corinthian War.

In gratitude for his years of service, Sparta granted
him freedom of the city of Sparta, and settled him on
an ample estate with ample slaves near Scillus, which
is near Olympia in the western Peloponnese. Here he
settled down and raised his two sons, Diodorus and
Gryllus. Likely his sons participated in the military
training all Spartan youths participated in, though he
likely ensured that tutors provided them with the
liberal education he received as a young Athenian.

https://youtu.be/_hYwZsxmC3s
Quotes from Plutarch,
Herodotus, Thucydides,
and Xenophon

His estate at Scillus was seized after the Thebans
defeated the Spartans in 371 BC, freeing the captive
helot serfs, permanently weakening the Spartan
state. Diogenes suggests that he moved to Corinth,
where he died. As alliances shifted, Athens and
Spartans were either allies or enemies. A decade
later in 360 BC his exile from Athens was revoked.
Both his sons served in the Athenian cavalry.

Death of Epaminondas, by
Franciszek Smuglewicz, 1797

After Gryllus died, Diogenes
tells the story that “Xenophon
was offering a sacrifice, with a
garland on his head, when the
news came of his son’s death.
On hearing the news, he took
the garland off, but when he
was told that his son had died
nobly in battle, he put it back
on again.”
Sacrifice of a pig in ancient Greece, by Epidromos
Painter, collections of the Louvre, 510–500's BC

Lasting Effects of Xenophon’s Anabasis

What did the Greeks learn from the Anabasis of
Xenophon? If a Greek mercenary army could
fight its way through the heart of the Persian
Empire, through territories of mountain tribes
that had formerly decimated Persian forces,
forging their way through to the friendly shores
of the Black Sea, this meant that the Persian
Empire was weak and ripe for the taking.

Soon the Spartan King Agesilaus would invade Persia, though he
was not successful. But several generations later, King Phillip II of
Macedon, after defeating and uniting the Greek mainland,
planned to invade the Persian Empire before his assassination.
But Alexander the Great would realize his father’s ambitions,
conquering Persia, using the tactics originally employed by
Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great, and also conquering part of the
Indian subcontinent, stopped only by the mutiny of his army, who
were homesick for Macedonia. It was no coincidence that the
Roman historian Arrian would also title his history of these
conquests of Alexander the Great, the Anabasis of Alexander.

Meeting between
Spartan King
Agesilaus (left) and
Pharnabazus II in
395 BC, Agesilaus
leaves the
Hellespontine
Phrygia.

A history of the ancient world, Alexander the Great is at the left, 190

We like to keep in mind when main characters lived
and died. We know that Aristotle was a student of
Plato, Aristotle was quite young while Plato was quite
mature, and that Plato and Xenophon lived at
roughly the same time. We also know that Aristotle
was the royal tutor for Alexander the Great. We can
see that Alexander died roughly seventy years after
Xenophon, so they were roughly two or three
generations apart.

Xenophon
430-354 BC
Plato
425-347 BC
Aristotle
384-322 BC
Alexander
the Great
356-323 BC

Alexander the Great may have slept with a copy of
the Iliad under his pillow, but during the day he
assuredly studied Xenophon’s Anabasis and
Cyropaedia, the biography of Cyrus the Great.

Robin Waterfield composed fresh, readable translations of many
Greek and Roman classics. We used Robin Waterfield’s book,
Xenophon’s Retreat, Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden
Age, to discover additional insights into the life of Xenophon. His
bibliography has descriptions of the major sources he used for his
book. His footnotes only include references to the works of the
ancient sources, but not the modern sources, you need to search
through the books in the bibliography for his modern sources.
After this video, we will release a video on his additional insights
into the Xenophon’s Anabasis and other events in the history of
the Greco-Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.

Why didn’t Plutarch include Xenophon in his Lives of Eminent Greeks? In one of his
lives, he does reflect on the life of King Artaxerxes, who triumphed over Cyrus the
Younger. Plutarch did treasure Xenophon as a source for his other lives, crediting
him often, but maybe since Xenophon’s major military achievement was surviving a
defeat and thousand-plus mile retreat, his achievements did not immediately
impact Greek history.
We also plan videos on the life of King Agesilaus using his life written by both
Xenophon and Plutarch. Scholars have noted that Xenophon was not the unbiased
historian when describing the moral character of the generals he served under, but
he would have likely appreciated a modern stoic maxim. The modern moral stoic
maxim that perhaps he would not have agreed with is the after five rule, that after
five, and on the weekends, the wife is always right, which is fine for modern
households, but would not have been in line with Athenian norms. But Xenophon
would have definitely affirmed the corollary, the before five rule: that before five,
the boss is always right. Always view those around us in the best light possible,

We will also reflect on the wars that were fought
after Greece recovered somewhat from the wreckage
of the Peloponnesian Wars that are described in
Xenophon’s The History of My Times. These wars
weakened the Greeks sufficiently to permit King
Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great
to later conquer all of Greece.

Since all our videos on ancient Greek history use
many of the same sources, we have a video on Book
Reviews of ancient Greek history.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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