Xenophon on the Challenges of Leadership

Three of the most memorable episodes in the Hellenica involve leaders whom Xenophon is careful to portray as tyrants (as observed by, e.g., Higgins, Gray, Tuplin, Dillery, and Pownall 2004): Critias and the Thirty in Athens (2.3.11–2.4.43), Jason of Pherae (6.1.2–18 and 6.4.20–32), and Euphron of Sicyon (7.1.44–6 and 7.3.1–12).

In his autobiography, The Life of Henry Brulard, Stendhal (whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle) informs us: “My moral life has been instinctively spent paying close attention to five or six main ideas, and attempting to see the truth about them.” The same might be said of Xenophon, and one of Xenophon’s “main ideas” was to isolate and articulate the qualities of the ideal leader. Xenophon’s “theory” of leadership has, of course, been the subject of considerable scrutiny, most recently and most thoroughly by Vivienne Gray.

The ability to foresee and understand future developments was regarded by Greek historians as a particularly valuable quality in a politician or general, associated especially with the famous wartime leaders Themistocles and Pericles. Xenophon’s profound awareness of change over time and of the disjunctions that may be exposed between past and present, as between ideals and reality, pervade his literary oeuvre, including Anabasis, with its evocation of his later exile from Athens and idyllic times at Scillus (5.3.7).

Xenophon’s moralizing approach to leadership has often been grouped with his pervasive piety as evincing a deeply reactionary mentality (Breitenbach, Cawkwell). I will argue instead that it represents an innovative response to the increasingly professionalized conditions of warfare in the fourth century; one heavily informed by the author’s own battlefield experiences. This novel environment demanded dynamic generals capable of uniting complex armies that otherwise could easily fragment into specialized, mercenary and allied components (Parke).