Xenophon, Isocrates and the Achaemenid Empire: History, Pedagogy and the Persian Solution to Greek Problems

Abstract

Among surviving fourth century Athenian authors Xenophon and Isocrates stand out as the ones interested in Persia.1 Their degree of investment differs, and by one way of reckoning that of Isocrates is not actually very large across his whole surviving corpus (nor is Xenophon’s uniformly spread over his output), but Persia was part of what defined the environment of late classical Athens (and Greece) and any exercise in comparing and contrasting Isocrates and Xenophon must engage with the Persian dimension.