Xenophon - Xenophon - A History of My Times

A HISTORY OF MY TIMES

ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE

XENOPHON was an Athenian country gentleman born in the early 420s B.C. He may have helped to publish Thucydides History and certainly wrote his own Hellenica, also known as A History of My Times, as a continuation of it. By his own (probably reliable) account he was a fine officer and outstanding leader, but his admiration for Sparta and devotion to Socrates, among other causes, led to his banishment. He was given an estate at Scillus, near Olympia, and settled down to enjoy the life of a landed aristocrat under Spartan protection, and it was during this period that he began to write histories, biographies, memoirs and specialist treatises. Events forced him to move to Corinth in 371, but he was allowed to return to Athens in 365, where he lived until his death in the late 350s.

REX WARNER was a Professor of the University of Connecticut from 1964 until his retirement in 1974. He was born in 1905 and went to Wadham College, Oxford, where he gained a first in Classical Moderations, and took a degree in English Literature. He taught in Egypt and England, and was Director of the British Institute, Athens, from 1945 to 1947. He wrote poems, novels and critical essays, worked on films and broadcasting, and translated many works, of which Xenophons History of my Times and The Persian Expedition, Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, and Plutarchs Lives (under the title Fall of the Roman Republic) and Moral Essays have been published in Penguin Classics. Rex Warner died in 1986.

GEORGE CAWKWELL is a Fellow Emeritus of University College, Oxford. He has specialized in the history of Greece from the sixth to the fourth century B.C.

XENOPHON

TRANSLATED BYREX
WARNER

With an Introduction

and Notes by

GEORGE CAWKWELL

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This translation first published 1966
Reprinted with new Introduction and Notes 1979
23

Translation Rex Warner, 1966
Introduction and Notes George Cawkwell, 1979
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ISBN: 978-0-14-192685-8

THE Fourth century B.C. is a fascinating period of Greek history. it began with Sparta triumphant over Athens and seemingly secure; it ended with all Greece subject to Macedon dramatic changes which are of special appeal to an age which has seen and fears yet to see similar reversals of power and fortune. No one who cares for liberty can contemplate with detachment the decline of the city-states of Greece before the national state of Macedon, and the rise of Philip II in the 350s and the 340s will always have prior claim on mens interest, but if one is properly to understand it one must understand also how in the first four decades of the century the city-states reached a balance of impotence. Sparta undone by Thebes ceased to be a world power and became a mere Peloponnesian wrangler. Thebes proved unequal to her great pretensions and prompted a resistance in Central Greece which she could not easily suppress. Athens, dreaming of and constantly scheming to recover her Fifth-Century empire, wasted her resources and her credit, and by the accession of Philip in 359 was approaching bankruptcy and general contempt. Thus the first four decades of the century ended in uncertainty and confusion in Greece, which must be understood if we are to understand the sequel. Nor is the period without interest for itself. If Philip had died young and Macedon had remained disunited and weak, the age of Lysander, Agesilaus and Epaminondas would still have had wide appeal.

Of these troubled decades Xenophons Hellenica (commonly translated The History of Greece, here less closely but more aptly A History of My Times) is the only surviving formal account. There are fragments of other histories and late epitomes; there are speeches and inscriptions; and the study of these has led to a sharp decline in Xenophons credit. All this will become evident and the reader must be warned at the outset that he will be seriously misled if he believes all he reads in the Hellenica and if he neglects to read between the lines. But it should also be stated that, although we would not be without knowledge of the period if the works of Xenophon had perished, it would hardly seem worth the knowing. For all its faults as history, A History of My Times closely studied is a most engaging work, which stimulates great interest in the period it covers.