Politeia and the Past in Xenophon and Isocrates

Abstract

Both Xenophon and Isocrates use the past to analyse and comment on political problems of the present, and to provide authority for political programmes of the present and for the future, through connecting them to revered past figures and mythologies. For both, idealised versions of historical Greek communities provide a counterpoint to the disappointments and decline of present-day politics and politicians. Figures from the distant past become exemplars for political action in the present, and their achievements, and the political and social arrangements under which those achievements were completed, models for political reform. Xenophon and Isocrates draw on the wider Greek politeia tradition of writing about political and social customs, educational practices, and institutions, seen in both free-standing pamphlets, and sections embedded within longer historical, rhetorical and philosophical works.1 With the exception of Xenophon’s Lacedaimoniōn Politeia, both Xenophon and Isocrates embed politeia elements in larger works. Similarities in approach and argument between Isocrates and Xenophon have led many to treat them together as critics of Athenian democracy.2 Certainly both assert the exemplarity both of individuals and of politeiai, particularly in the form of the patrios politeia or “ancestral constitution”.3 They share a didactic approach, in which they anticipate that readers can learn from these models of collective and individual excellence and even imitate them. Vincent Azoulay has identified this as evidence of a new direction in Greek political thought; Frances Pownall has shown its similarity to the didacticism of fourth-century historiography.4 This chapter explores how both Xenophon and Isocrates manipulate civic foundation myths and the politeia form to produce exemplary models for political reform, and consequently how they manipulate chronology and exploit the temporal ambiguities of the distant past to create stable exemplars to contrast with the present. For each, an imaginary version of the past provides an ideal political environment, the imitation of which might provide restoration from decline;