Xenophon on the Thirty: Political Philosophy in the Hellenica

Abstract:Xenophon’s narrative of the Thirty occupies a place of special prominence in Xenophon’s Hellenica. It is a prologue to the failure of Spartan hegemony and the disordered state of the post-Peloponnesian War world, but it is also a paradigmatic account of a corrupt regime, serving to concentrate diverse trajectories of Xenophon’s political thought upon a single historical crux. This article consists of two parts. The first reviews the threads of Xenophon’s political thought independently of the Hellenica, focusing on Xenophon’s other works to demonstrate his general views. The second part explains how Xenophon puts all these ideas on stage through a retelling of the story of one of the most corrupt regimes in history.