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A review by spacestationtrustfund
A History of My Times by Xenophon, Xenophon
3.0
Have you ever played that hand-slapping game where you try to get your hand on top of your friend's hand and they try to get their hand on top of your hand and you try to get your hand on top of their hand and Sparta conquers Athens and then Athens and Thebes band together to defeat Sparta and then the Theban general Epaminondas conquers Athens once again as well as Sparta and meanwhile Persia, I mean your third friend, is in the background switching sides periodically based on who's winning and who's losing? Yeah, that's this book. Politics!
Xenophon's Hellenika (Ἑλληνικά) is a bit of a letdown after Thucydides. Some scholars believe that Xenophon was not, unlike Thucydides, writing with the intention of a vast audience, but rather recording a personal memoir for himself and perhaps his close friends. Hellenika begins in 411 BCE, directly following where Thucydides ended, with the words μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα (after these...). Besides filling in further events for a more complete picture of the war and its aftermath, Xenophon also provides a different perspective on Athenian democracy and the back-and-forth between Athens and Sparta, the latter being with whom his loyalties had lain (although Athenian by birth, Xenophon wrote Hellenika in his retirement villa in Sparta). The chronology of Hellenika ends in 362 BCE, the year of the Battle of Mantineia.
Although the word ἑλληνικά refers broadly to any writing about Greeks (Ἕλλην, Greek + ῐκός, of or pertaining to), in modern terminology the word is typically used to refer to Xenophon's writing, as it is the most complete extant Hellenika. Most English translations use the title "Hellenika" (or "Hellenica"), but Rex Warner's translation took a less literal approach, presumably to distinguish it from other ἑλληνῐκᾰ́. Broadly speaking, I've found little with which to take issue in Warner's translation. My personal favourite aspect of this edition (Penguin Classics) was the notes by George Cawkwell, who also wrote the introduction. Prof. Cawkwell discusses in his introduction the various flaws and other problematic* elements in Xenophon's work, and the footnotes were carefully curated to point out many of these mistakes, omissions, and errors.
*Original definition.
Xenophon's Hellenika (Ἑλληνικά) is a bit of a letdown after Thucydides. Some scholars believe that Xenophon was not, unlike Thucydides, writing with the intention of a vast audience, but rather recording a personal memoir for himself and perhaps his close friends. Hellenika begins in 411 BCE, directly following where Thucydides ended, with the words μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα (after these...). Besides filling in further events for a more complete picture of the war and its aftermath, Xenophon also provides a different perspective on Athenian democracy and the back-and-forth between Athens and Sparta, the latter being with whom his loyalties had lain (although Athenian by birth, Xenophon wrote Hellenika in his retirement villa in Sparta). The chronology of Hellenika ends in 362 BCE, the year of the Battle of Mantineia.
Although the word ἑλληνικά refers broadly to any writing about Greeks (Ἕλλην, Greek + ῐκός, of or pertaining to), in modern terminology the word is typically used to refer to Xenophon's writing, as it is the most complete extant Hellenika. Most English translations use the title "Hellenika" (or "Hellenica"), but Rex Warner's translation took a less literal approach, presumably to distinguish it from other ἑλληνῐκᾰ́. Broadly speaking, I've found little with which to take issue in Warner's translation. My personal favourite aspect of this edition (Penguin Classics) was the notes by George Cawkwell, who also wrote the introduction. Prof. Cawkwell discusses in his introduction the various flaws and other problematic* elements in Xenophon's work, and the footnotes were carefully curated to point out many of these mistakes, omissions, and errors.
*Original definition.