Robert B. Strassler, editor --> reviewed by Alexander Nazaryan -->

Caught between the twin giants of Greek history, Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon can come off as a lesser figure. He lacks the whimsy of Herodotus, and, though he covered the Peloponnesian War, his own account of the protracted conflict between Sparta and Athens, the Hellenika, is eclipsed by the monumental work of Thucydides. Outside that dwindling tribe for whom the Loeb Classical Library is a holy canon of sorts, he is not widely known.

Xenophon’s most famous work is probably The Anabasis, which recounts how he, a native Athenian, joined a Spartan army in the service of Cyrus the Younger, who aimed to depose his brother Artaxerxes and claim the throne of Persia. But the Ten Thousand—as the Greeks...

 

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