Forging Unity, Exporting Unrest: Xenophon and Isocrates on Stasis

Abstract

If it is not quite correct to say that the phenomenon of stasis – factional conflict within the polis, whether in the form of looming or actual violence – is central to Isocrates and Xenophon, it certainly plays a significant and recurrent role in their analyses of the ταραχή (“confusion”) consuming fourth-century Greece.1 Both authors had quite likely seen factional conflict firsthand during the reign of the Thirty, which became in the work of each a paradigmatic evil regime and was doubtless experienced as a contributing factor to the persecution of their shared mentor, Socrates.2 Moreover, as a leader of the Cyreans, Xenophon played a key role in what Isocrates understands as the first of many mercenary armies assembled in no small part from political exiles – for him the principal destabilizing side effect of continued factional conflict. Nevertheless, both writers employ standard analytical frameworks that understand stasis primarily as a byproduct of the struggle for hegemony between Sparta and Athens, turning their attention to it mainly as a subordinate element in advancing larger central themes: for Xenophon, a setting in which to stage model leadership able to unite communities of followers, including those divided by faction; for Isocrates, a dangerous byproduct of inter-polis warfare, whose causes and effects can be remedied only by a Panhellenic expedition against Persia. Curiously, although Xenophon lacks the larger programmatic framework into which Isocrates incorporates the problem of stasis, the predatory orientation of the latter’s proposed military crusade finds parallels in Xenophon’s equally