The Politics of Viewing in Xenophon's Historical Narratives

This book considers cultural identity and power relations in early fourth-century BCE Greece through a reading of Xenophon's historical narratives, the Hellenica, Anabasis and Cyropaedia. These texts depict conflicts between Greek states, conflicts between Greeks and non-Greeks, and relations between the elite individual and society. In all three texts, politically significant moments are imagined in visual terms. We witness spectacles of Spartan military victory, vistas of Asian landscape or displays of Persian imperial pomp, and historical protagonists are presented as spectators viewing and responding to events.

Through this visual form of narration, the reader is encouraged imaginatively to place themselves in the position of the historical protagonists. In viewing events from different perspectives, and therefore occupying multiple, often conflicting political positions, the reader not only experiences the problems faced by historical actors,…