SOURCE: "The Active Life," in Xenophon the Athenian: The Problem of the Individual and the Society of the "Polis," State University of New York Press, 1977, pp. 76-98.

[In the following excerpt, Higgins delineates Xenophon's notion of the individual and his ideal relationship between individual and society; using the Agesilaos and Anabasis as examples, Higgins determines that "the claims of family and city regulate individual desire" and leadership, "if genuine, is not founded upon license but limit."]

The Spartan king Agesilaos was lame in one leg and walked with a limp. Xenophon's encomium in his honor, however, never mentions this, just as it passes over in silence the oracle against a limping monarchy current at his accession. Such reticence, which extends to the king's mental imperfections as well, suits the Agesilaos' thoroughly delicate nature. Here, by contrast with the more forthright Hellenika, physical flaws and flaws of character and policy are forgotten, criticism is eschewed, and every rhetorical device is fully employed to make deeds more illustrious which, if viewed impartially, might seem less worthy of praise. Xenophon in thus consciously improving his own historical record cannot be imagined to have expressed most completely in the encomium his own thoughts either about Agesilaos himself or about the kind of life Agesilaos pursued so energetically.

The Agesilaos is, moreover, the work of a friend acknowledging the very friendliness which so often animated the Spartan king. It was to Agesilaos that Xenophon owed his estate in Skillous, where he lived out so much of his exile from Athens; and it was with Agesilaos that a chance acquaintance, formed in Asia Minor, strengthened to an abiding bond which Xenophon must have appreciated all the more if, as is probable, his own city had already officially banished him. Xenophon's sense of gratitude was great; but it was a debt owed to his friend, not to his friend's city. As Agesilaos once told the Persian satrap Pharnabazos, friends from different cities will fight for their fatherlands against one another and even kill one another, if that is needed. So Xenophon admired Agesilaos the individual who was a Spartan, not Agesilaos the Spartan individual; and so in his old age, restored to his native home he came to write, upon the death of the king, words of praise which also illuminate those qualities of royal character on which he so often mediated.

It is Agesilaos' noble blood, fittingly enough, which Xenophon emphasizes first. He is, of course, following the standard procedure of an encomium when he begins with the Spartan king's lineage, but his treatment is more than perfunctory. For Xenophon wishes to make clear that his friend was not a man out of nowhere but that he was an individual who was part of a past and a past whose special lustre, though deserving of praise, was not an excuse for complacence but a model for action. Sparta's kings had always acted in the interests not of themselves but of their city, and never did they attempt to obtain greater powers (meizonōn ōrhekhthēsan) than they had received originally. The individual king, his family, and his polis form, in other words, a unit in which every member reinforces the other to the advantage of each and the detriment of none. In this way the city and the monarchy endured as the most stable polity in Greece, for stability was possible only through the absence of self-seeking ambition and the lust for more. Xenophon thus sees in Agesilaos a man defined by city and family, who is inevitably imbued with a sense of limit, the sense that his actions are directed by other than his own desires and aimed at something besides his own satisfaction. As Xenophon remarks later, nothing Agesilaos did failed to reveal that he was a lover of his city.

This sense of limit underlies all that Xenophon sees in his friend and unifies all the diversity of the king's deeds and virtues. Agesilaos never engages in wars of imperialist aggression. His campaigns in Asia Minor are undertaken to free the Greeks from the Persians; and his return home, highlighted by the battle of Koroneia, is seen as a loyal response to the orders of the Spartan government. In financial dealings he has a reputation for being not only fair but also absolutely uninterested in venal gain, for the prefers nobly to have less (meionektein) than unjustly to have more (pleon ekhein). The only thing he is content to have more of (pleonektōn) is not wealth or power, but hard work, while the charm which pervades his entire character is the manifestation of a contentment with the simple and an aversion from the excessive and extravagant. Agesilaos is a man who is constantly concerned to do exactly what is required of him, either as general, king, or servant of the gods. His trust-worthiness and fidelity to compacts further illustrate, therefore, his passion for the proper and particular. He does not mean as king "to monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks":

for though honor and power were his, and sovereignty in addition to these, … one did not see in him boastfulness but could have recognized, without seeking, a familial affection (to philostorgon) and desire to help friends.

This comparison of Agesilaos' rule to a family relationship is not an idle piece of warm praise. It reaffirms Xenophon's fundamental insight into Agesilaos' character, where the claims of family and city regulate individual desire. Agesilaos, in Xenophon's eyes, does not guide his actions according to a principle of self-aggrandizement but in the spirit of openness, trust, and mutual aid and protection which can prevail in the relationship of parent and child. The analogy is important, finally, because it makes clear just that insistence on simplicity, the avoidance of the grandly majestic, which paradoxically rendered the Spartan king's success so impressive. Because Agesilaos did not hold himself aloof, he was, as Xenophon remarks, longed after when he left Asia Minor not only as a good leader but also as a friend and father.

The sense of limit underlying Agesilaos' rule, its close and, as it were, familial rather than distant quality, also characterizes Agesilaos' justice. Always faithful to oaths sworn by the gods, he does not permit his victorious army to work injustice by violating his defeated foes' rights of sanctuary. By the same token, he does not allow captured enemies to be treated as men who are unjust but as men who are human beings. He is always glad when the just are rewarded more than the unjust, a thought befitting not only a moral man but also one who considers every action in terms of what it requires and not with a view to the gain it may bring at the expense of others. Indeed he regulates his life so carefully even in financial matters that "he was never compelled for money's sake to do anything unjust." But most important of all, and what Xenophon finds most praiseworthy about him, is his constancy of character when confronted with enormous wealth and power. Agesilaos does not embark on a personal quest for glory but continues to adhere to the commands of his city. His kingship is as great as it is because he is still king of himself. He returns to Greece showing clearly:

how he would not take the whole world in place of his fatherland, nor new friends in place of old, nor shameful and easy gains instead of noble and just ones, even if they involved dangers.

After the battle at Koroneia, Agesilaos reveals how he has chosen

instead of being the greatest man in Asia, at home to have the customary ways rule and to have them rule him.

Once again, therefore, the city, this time by its laws and decrees, even as it puts a check on the king's actions, enables him to realize all the more the true nature of his royalty.

It is this kind of royalty in limits which men might tend to dismiss as being unremunerative in power or wealth or as being downright shabby. Xenophon therefore consciously opposes to the frugal excellence of Agesilaos the sumptuous splendor of the Persian king in order to show up the latter as a sham and a mockery, as the mere appearance of monarchy and not its substance. Unlike Agesilaos, the Great King flees the cold and the hot, "through weakness of soul imitating the life not of good men but of the weakest animals." He hides himself from others and is difficult of access, as if to strengthen his claims to power, and although the Persian is always seen in the Agesilaos as an enslaver, there is a clear suggestion that the weak and effeminate eastern ruler is no less a slave than his own subjects, because he himself is in thrall to pleasure and to a bogus sense of his own might. The Spartan king, on the other hand, can endure all toils and is subject to no vainglory. He is a free man, whose characteristic deed in the encomium is to defeat the Persians and to bring freedom to the Greeks they sought to master. Ever the Socratic, Xenophon seeks in the Agesilaos to define "what is a king" and to suggest that royalty, if genuine, is not founded upon license but limit. The Persian, for all his appearance of power, is an alazōn, which is to say, an imposter who claims to be greater than he really is.

It thus gradually becomes clear that the Agesilaos is not concerned merely to preserve the memory of one man's deeds and virtues. While it is, of course, true that the events of Agesilaos' life explain in one way Xenophon's inclusion of his encounters with the Persians, it would nevertheless be an incomplete vision of the work which failed to see how it operates simultaneously on a level which transcends the simply chronological. Xenophon seems intent on trying to understand what lies behind an action when he remarks that Agesilaos' character will best become clear from his deeds, while his virtues, when examined, will reveal what inspired all that he did. Neither inner nor outer reality are by themselves sufficient for an understanding of the Spartan king; the two facets must be appreciated together. Xenophon is paying more than a personal debt or private homage in writing his encomium; for not only does he see in Agesilaos an individual embodiment of various abstractions like justice, piety, wisdom, and patriotism, but also an exemplar, a kind of standard according to which other men may direct their action no less than they do according to the demands of justice and fidelity:

The excellence of Agesilaos would seem to me to be a noble model (kalon … paradeigma) for those wishing to practice nobility.

The Agesilaos thus constantly operates on two levels, the chronological and the timeless, the literal and the emblematic.

In seeking to praise his friend, therefore, Xenophon has also managed to find what is praiseworthy in a life devoted to aretē and doxa, exploits of excellence and fame, and to find an inherent antagonism between this kind of heroism and the claims of the self, between true heroism and the heady trappings of power. In genuine nobility, as he sees it, there is something essentially Greek which the Persian can only ape but never achieve, if only because the Greek is free. Excellence to be real must be willed; and it is fitting that in Agesilaos' life Xenophon sees little that results from the domination of passion or chance. Luck does not make a man essentially better as a general or an economist even if it may win him an occasional fight or find him an occasional treasure. So too before describing Koroneia, Xenophon explicitly says he does not praise Agesilaos for being a man who engaged in a glorious but otherwise senseless battle against vastly superior numbers. The forces were, on the contrary, evenly matched; it was Agesilaos' planning and ability to command that merit honor, and anything else is foolishness.

It is also shortly after Koroneia, at Corinth, that Agesilaos expresses his sorrow over the fratricidal warfare of the Greeks, how the numbers of fallen could better have fought against the Persians. Though this remark and Xenophon's juxtaposing elsewhere the Greek and Persian monarchy might suggest a political slant, propaganda is not Xenophon's aim. He has in mind something larger and more noble. Xenophon the encomiast is interested in something more abiding than time's encomium; like a Socratic he praises what is eternally memorable, what will live forever. The Agesilaos does not urge men to an assault on Persia so much as it urges them, if bent on renown, to consider the self-mastery of the Spartan king. This alone can bring that lasting personal glory some might have thought possible only apart from the city, perhaps even outside Greece in Persia itself.

It may well be wondered what Agesilaos would have thought of his friend's tribute; he might barely have recognized himself. He was a man of deeds, not thoughts, and it is precisely in a "thoughtful" way that Xenophon chooses to assess him. It may be, after all, that the deception of an encomium, as apparent and expected as it is, can not fully conceal the difference between friend and friend, between one kind of aretē and another. Agesilaos idealized is the perfect man of affairs, but he is not necessarily the best man. For Xenophon does not suggest that his actions flow from first principles rigorously examined, nor does he ever allow to intrude the problem posed by obedience to the demands of a polis when those demands are unjust. He does not mean to denigrate Agesilaos' glory; indeed it is thanks to Xenophon that Agesilaos will always outshine the Persian. Yet Xenophon finds fidelity to the city and benefaction to others most fully realized not in a king of royal birth but in a man of lesser station, whose only exploit is to bear witness to the ancient laws of Athens and to reveal their subversion by others through his constant inquiries into the truth. Though sharing much in common with Agesilaos in Xenophon's mind, Socrates nevertheless stands apart from him because he is endowed with an understanding of heroic renown and patriotism which goes beyond the deceits of an encomium, however mild.

Like Agesilaos, Xenophon had personal knowledge of the Persians; but unlike the king, his encounter with them did not reveal his perfect citizenship or even necessarily his good sense. He reports in the Anabasis that he makes up his mind to serve with the younger Cyrus after a friend, Proxenos, has enticed him to join by promising that he can make Cyrus Xenophon's friend, the Cyrus whom Proxenos thinks "more important for himself than his fatherland." When Xenophon seeks Socrates' advice, his teacher cautions him about the dangers of offending his fellow Athenians, whom Cyrus has helped to defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

Yet when Xenophon inquires of the Oracle, the question he puts—how will things turn out best on the journey—shows that he is determined to go. He has little hesitation, and even Socrates can not break his resolve. Xenophon's account of the results of the decision, the Anabasis, may thus be taken as the most important of his non-Socratic works, since it shows the consequences of an imprudent personal rejection of Socrates and of the city which nurtured them both. As a resolute, vigorous, and headstrong young man he seeks out a life of adventure, away from the city, in the company of another friend, who is, as Xenophon makes clear, a student of the sophist Gorgias of Leontinoi, and eager "to do great things."

Cyrus is just the sort to appeal to such men. As his obituary reveals, he was an extravagant and dashing man who searched for the dangerous and grappled with it hand-to-hand. It is said to his credit that he was lavish with his wealth, sharing it liberally amongst others, who became his fast friends and who were encouraged to make more money on their own. Nor was he an unjust man, since he always rewarded those who did right and so further insured men's observance of what was proper. It is not surprising, therefore, that everyone who knew him considered him, of all the Persians after his great namesake, the most royal and most deserving of empire.

Yet his regal nature has a more chilling side. Those not won over to his justice and authority are punished with an extravagant severity which must have repelled as well as warned his Hellenic comrades as they saw people along the highways blind or lacking hands or feet. Open and friendly as Cyrus may be, his largesse never seems to rise above the aims of simple self-advancement. He is the center and the circumference, who is all and contains all but who never seems to win to himself men who think of more than money. Cyrus is the ultimate mercenary, and it is mercenaries he attracts to his service. Though most royal of Persians, he is not inevitably most royal of men. So enamoured of the material and its uses as he is, it is not surprising that he should yearn for the throne of another, that this prince, for all his apparent justice, can yet become a rebel and seek to take his own brother's life.

There is, then, in Cyrus a certain deceptiveness, beneath the swashbuckling bravery a designing aloofness. Not for nothing does he keep his truest thoughts to himself and effect a masterpiece of deceit by enlisting his army of Greeks and gaining men like Proxenos and the young Xenophon. They do not know where they are really going until they have gone too many stathmoi and parasangs to turn back. Geography has mastered them; demands for more money help ease their entrapment. Most of them, Xenophon says, did not join Cyrus out of poverty but because they were attracted by reports of Cyrus' excellence; they hoped to profit by his generosity and return home with riches, "hearing that the others with Cyrus were doing quite well for themselves." They saw the allure of aretē and did not think twice before succumbing to it. But allure was all it was, and for many it was fatal.

It is remarkable how much guile and how much deceitful speech occur in the narrative of the march to Kounaxa. Klearkhos, Cyrus' confidant, resorts to tears and protestations of devotion for his men in an effort to win their favor and to keep them on the campaign against Artaxerxes, although they should know him to be a rough and war-loving man who strikes his men unreasonably. Cyrus himself is an expert at cozening, of course. When two Greeks actually desert him, causing some of their forsaken comrades to wish them captured as cowards and some to pity them if apprehended, Cyrus proclaims his goodwill toward those who left, thereby increasing for himself the goodwill of those who remained. Yet earlier a Greek has realized that to leave Cyrus, even with his prior consent, is a risky business; for he can sink their transports with his triremes, and any guide he provides for a land march can well lead them to where there is no return.

A small incident in Babylonia, where Xenophon sees fit to recall an example of Persian discipline, should also have prompted doubts in more minds than it did about Cyrus as a commander, once all knew his purpose. One day some wagons become stuck in mud, halting the forward march, which has to proceed swiftly if Artaxerxes is to be taken by surprise and his defeat rendered easy. Cyrus and his best and wealthiest men investigate the situation, then Cyrus despatches some soldiers to remedy the problem. But Cyrus thinks they are working too slowly and "as in anger" (hōsper orgēi) he orders his companions, finery and all, to jump in the mud and help get the wagons out. There may be more than a little humor in the scene of these begrimed dandies sloshing in the mud, while Cyrus remains apart, ever the Persian prince. How different the action of Klearkhos the Greek general, who thinks nothing of getting down into the dirt with the men subordinate to him, or, later, of Xenophon who dismounts from his horse to walk like an infantry-man or is seen by his men half-naked in the cold, chopping wood. Cyrus at no time seems to mix with his men, to be available to them; never is he called, like the ideal commander of the Agesilaos, a father to them. He was not that kind of man; he did not fraternize, as Artaxerxes could affirm.

But the scene suggests more. When the Persian nobles rush off headlong to obey their leader, running as if they were in a race, Xenophon calls it an example of eutaxia. Does he mean that he admires their immediate response to the order, or is he perhaps being slightly sarcastic in calling their racing from all sides "good formation"? For it is precisely good formation that Cyrus' Persian troops lack at the crucial battle, Kounaxa, and the same impatience which causes Cyrus' angry command about the stuck wagons finally causes his undoing. When Artaxerxes does not appear to fight at the time Cyrus thinks he will, Cyrus becomes careless and marches with his defenses down and his troops in disarray (anatetaragmenori). When battle is finally joined, the scene in his army is one of utter confusion:

Then indeed there was much confusion; for the Greeks and everyone were thinking that the King would fall upon them straightway, when they were out of order.

Cyrus himself, as soon as he sees close up his long-awaited brother, cannot control himself, shouting out excitedly, "I see the man," and protected by only a few, he charges off against him. And there Cyrus and his retinue perish.

It is curious that in relating Cyrus' death Xenophon should pause to describe, in a narrative otherwise remarkably swift, the scimitar and other finery belonging to a loyal servant of the prince, who died with him. Xenophon leaves one final and lasting image of the wealth of the dashing and seemingly heroic Persian rebel and of the way he could use it to reward even a faithful attendant, let alone a noble. But at the same time Cyrus and his Persians have lost, their fine garb and gorgeous weaponry count for nothing. At Kounaxa a truth finally emerges from the preceding deceit; only the Greek mercenaries, unpaid but disciplined, achieve victory. Cyrus earlier admires them for their freedom and sees that it has nothing to do with money:

Be therefore men worthy of the freedom you possess and for which I count you fortunate. For know well that I would prefer freedom to all the things I own, many times over.

It is fitting, too, that Xenophon should close his obituary of Cyrus with the notice that Ariaios, a companion of Cyrus, flees the battle as soon as he sees the prince is dead. He and his force become thereafter minions of Artaxerxes, when before they had been "most loyal to Cyrus." Doubtless they reckon it is time to look for a new donor of gifts. Their action reveals that profound slavery to things from which not even the most royal Persian is free.

Kounaxa makes clear to the Greeks the value of their discipline and freedom, but they do not yet correctly apprehend the true nature of their situation. Appeals to them from Artaxerxes to surrender their arms only elicit in response gnomic truths such as "rule is the prerogative of those who conquer in battle" or "conquerors do not surrender." The deceit of earlier days has taken on a new character, as the Greeks now attempt to fool themselves, confident in their own excellence. When a Greek in Artaxerxes' employ, Phalinos, informs them of their real predicament, deep as they are in Persian territory, lost, without supplies, greatly outnumbered, he factually rebuts the mildly intellectual but totally pointless queries of Gorgias' student Proxenos about the workings of the King's mind. He also disappoints Klearkhos' hope that he, a Greek who knows the King, will advise the Greeks to disregard Artaxeres. One other interlocutor, an Athenian named Theopompos, perhaps voices best the heady heroism of the army, for which the emissary has only scorn. On arms and aretē) alone did the Greeks rely, and with them, Theopompos proclaims, they can fight for the possessions of the Persians. Phalinos laughs:

You seem like a philosopher, young man, and you speak not without charm. Yet know that you are a fool if you can imagine that your excellence could ever vanquish the might of the King.

Only gradually do the Greeks come to appreciate their situation and the need for sensible action. But even so, they express their understanding with a swagger; the King must be attacked, they insist to Klearkhos:

for he will not willingly desire us, having got back to Greece, to announce how we, the number that we are, conquered the King at his very doors and got away having made him a laughingstock.

Klearkhos knows the more sober realities yet seems incapable of developing a successful plan of withdrawal. In fact his position as commander is something he obtained only because no one else had any experience. As Xenophon shows in his character sketches, the Greek generals lack some essential qualities of leadership; and the misfortunes and uncertainty of the Greeks after Kounaxa are the result not only of their own bravado but also of the poor direction they received. None of the commanders can accurately assess the situation and get the force out, neither the naive Proxenos nor the unsubtle Klearkhos. The latter turns to the gods, hoping for answers better sought in deliberation. When a stranger, who turns out subsequently to have been suborned by the enemy, reveals some seemingly disastrous news, the Spartan is "thrown into terrible confusion" (etarakhthē sphodra) and becomes afraid. His last address to Tissaphernes is a masterpiece of quandary and pious doubletalk; at his poor wit's end he seeks support in bogus faith. In accepting the satrap's ominous invitation to a parley, he merely acquiesces to a greater master in deceit. For Tissaphernes' final speech to Klearkhos and the Greeks before the slaughter of the captains and arrest of the generals is irony perfected to vengeance; his passions to be trusted by them, he assures the Greeks, is what has kept him from destroying them.

Tissaphernes' assault upon the Greek commanders is considered and astute. It is only when deprived of so many leaders that the Greeks finally understand fully their predicament, going over in their minds the very things Phalinos and Klearkhos have told them before. But what impresses them most in their despair is the thought that they will never again look upon their fatherlands, parents, wives, and children. The very things they have so blithely left behind in the pursuit of adventure and fortune are now the very ones that will inspire them to acts of heroism which monetary reward could not induce. Now they begin to realize their nature as Greeks, and they expel from their midst anyone who dishonors his fatherland with counsels of submission. New leaders take over, Xenophon among them, elected, not appointed by fiat; and plans are discussed in assembly, not kept secret or delivered by generals from on high.

The army, in other words, discovers its hope in its freedom and begins to act in accord with it. At this time, too, deception begins to vanish; the inspiring speeches of Xenophon, designed to lift flagging spirits, are the first in the Anabasis, for all their rhetoric, to be free of mendacity or uncertainty. Though he may minimize the dangers confronting him and his fellows, he never lies; and once he has succeeded in giving them a sense of direction, persuasive haragues become less frequent and less long. Speech, once the vehicle of deceit, gives way to action, the quest for glory to the quest for the simple goal of home and homeland. A sense of direction has been achieved.

Xenophon considers the essential requirement of the retreat to be good leadership, and from the beginning he displays a concern that competent commanders be put in charge. His first act, even before addressing the despairing troops, is to rouse the surviving officers and to arrange for the replacement of those arrested or dead. As he tells them, nothing honorable or good can ever happen without a commander, especially in war. In good order (eutaxia) is salvation; lack of discipline has already destroyed many. When addressing the rank and file he urges them to be more orderly and obedient to their officers than they have been before. He shows himself from the first as a man confident in the success which structure and organization bring and consequently as a man devoted to preserving this ordered system.

Many have observed how the retreating army resembles a polls, and its operation lends itself to valuable sociological study. Nor can there be any doubt that its cohesiveness as a group aided it in its successful march to the sea. It is fascinating also to observe how different abilities are used: Cretans make good archers, and Rhodians good slingers. All work together for the common good under the guidance of commanders who can push forward no matter what, like the Spartan Kheirisophos, or who can quickly contrive stratagems to surmount special hindrances, like the Athenian Xenophon. It is, in fact, remarkable that Xenophon reports only one real falling out between him and the chief commander, for they were very dissimilar men.

But it is Xenophon himself who, more than any other, seems to embody the highest purpose of the force. Though only a rearguard officer, he gives the impression that he was everywhere. He is the man who keeps the army together in the snows of Armenia, who is always available to them for conversation day or night, who is called "father" and "benefactor." Above all he is the man who will not let them forget their goal like the men of Odysseus who ate the lotus.

But if Xenophon saves them from the Persians and the elements, he can not save them from themselves. Their joy at reaching the sea makes them forget that the sea was not their true goal. Thinking all their troubles are over, they celebrate games as though they have made a conquest. Kheirisophos is greeted joyously when he proposes to go to his friend, the Spartan admiral Anaxibios, for ships to carry the army back to their fatherland. One man from the rank and file, tired of walking and carrying, expresses the happy thoughts of all:

I yearn, now that I have finished with those toils, since we have reached the sea, to sail the rest of the way and stretched out like Odysseus to arrive in Greece.

Xenophon now confronts a folly (aphrosunē) which becomes more and more destructive to that very structure he has worked so hard to preserve. His first proposals about taking necessary precautions while they wait for Kheirisophos' return the men greet with a bored response that Xenophon captures in the dully repeated phrase edoxe kai tauta (motion passed), a sharp contrast to their joyous and enthusiastic reception of Kheirisophos shortly before. More and more the men look to their own private interests, and the army's discipline falls apart. On one occasion they are even surprised by an enemy and routed into a disorderly retreat, which only gives the foe added encouragement. This, as Xenophon quietly observes, had never happened before. Envoys and messengers are no longer immune from the physical assault of disgruntled individuals who act only on their own authority. The men have become like rabid dogs, and Xenophon's insistence on reason only makes him the object of their attacks. His fellow officers turn on him as well, as each vies with the other for supreme command. In search of popular favor, one of them tries to please his men by irresponsibly giving them everything they want.

The structure thus crumbles both at the top and the bottom; and the army antagonizes the local population, even attempting to take Greek cities by storm. Such brigandage costs them almost three thousand lives in the end. What is the cause? The divided army's reunion after Xenophon's group has helped another unit out of difficulty is suggestive. Then the men "were glad to see each other and welcomed each other like brothers." The Anabasis implies that only adversity is enough to keep these men together; without danger they go their own way. In fact even on the march to the sea some men were out to get an advantage over their comrades, as Xenophon reveals when justifying some disciplinary actions he took. The breakdown of the army is only the natural outcome of its own nature. It begins as a chance assemblage of men, with no strong ties of city or family among them. They are all out for profit, and this is apparent as soon as the men feel safe from mortal danger. It is a fitting conclusion that, far from returning home to Greece, these mercenaries once again march up-country against their old foe Tissaphernes. To have imagined they were a polis in any real sense was a delusion, and therefore the Anabasis does not so much present a record of the mutability of things as it does the tendency of all things to manifest finally their genuine selves.

What is truly remarkable, however, is Xenophon's reaction. Constantly trying to work against the disruption of the force, he is ever more on the defensive before it. He gets next to nothing as reward for his labors and yet seems convinced that he can make an enduring polity out of this clearly temporary grouping of men. He can even conceive, almost pathetically, of establishing a colony on a particularly favorable site, only to be jeered at by an army still insisting it wants to get to Greece. What he thinks is revealing:

he thought it would be a glorious thing to increase the territory and power of Greece if the men established a city. And it seemed to him it would be a great city as he thought over the number of the men and the people living in the Pontic area.

Xenophon still has a mind set on glorious exploit. Like the men's, his nature has not changed from the time he first joined Cyrus' expedition. Later on he can comment on how hard it will be when the actions of some deprive all of the praise and honor (epainou kai timēs) they thought to get in Greece and cause them to be considered the inferior of their countrymen. Not surprisingly when he is offered the post of supreme commander, he desires to accept, for he thinks of the greater honor he will have before his friends and the greater name he will have before the city; last of all he thinks he may be capable of doing some good for the army.

Xenophon is the victim of his own delusion. The army he helped form into a successfully functioning unit he misconstrues as something lasting that can bring him renown. In trying to keep it together he is attempting the impossible. It is even doubtful if he fully appreciates what a city is. In his calculations for his colony he only adds up the numbers who will inhabit it, all soldiers, while his eagerness to march with Cyrus in the first place seems to suggest that he considers his native city both as a place he can lightly leave and the place where his own glory may shine. There is no notion of the intricacies of civic justice and civic life. It all seems so easy. He has not yet learned to understand the lesson of Socrates, who stays in the city through radical democracy and radical oligarchy, trying always to be true to its ancient laws and seeking to discover and elucidate through conversation and reason what are the basic principles which give the polis life.

This is not to say, however, that Xenophon is no better than the men around him, that he is just some sort of glorified mercenary. His poverty proves that money did not ultimately matter; and, as he tells Seuthes, he considers no possession more honorable for a man, especially a leader, than excellence, justice, and nobility. The difficulty lies in his slowness to learn that the way in which he pursues these virtues is one of toil fraught with reversals. Although his defense of his actions before Seuthes and the army rings true, it reveals his failure to comprehend how the men could turn on him or Seuthes betray him. He sarcastically calls his fellow Greeks "most gifted with memory of everything" when he rails at their present ingratitude after all he has done for them; on another occasion he expresses surprise (thaumazō) that people seem only to remember the few harsh things he had to do and not the saving assistance he often rendered:

But it is an honorable thing, surely, and just and holy and more pleasant to remember the good things rather than the bad.

Only very gradually does the awareness grow in him that he cannot keep everything as perfect as he wants it and that his excellence does not insure permanence. He turns down the supreme command because he considers "that it is unclear to every man what the future will bring and therefore there is also a danger of losing the reputation one has already achieved." He begins to think more and more of leaving the army and returning home to Athens. But he is always drawn back to the army in its need, even though he gets nothing for his efforts:

Well, it is necessary, I suppose, for a man to expect everything when even I am now accused by you just when I imagine to myself that I have exerted the greatest zeal on your behalf.

The headstrong Xenophon who dropped everything to travel with Proxenos is not ignorant, let alone incompetent; he is merely too easily deceived, deceived about the nature and actions of others, deceived about his own nature and desires. He is his own worst enemy.

As a seer tells him, even if money is about to come Xenophon's way, some obstacle will always appear, not the least being the obstacle he is to himself.

Xenophon's personality dominates most of the Anabasis, so clearly any attempt to explain the work must be made in terms of this. It cannot be forgotten, furthermore, that the record of the Ten Thousand Xenophon preserves is very much his own view. As [Félix] Dürrbach pointed out in a classic study ["L'Apologie de Xénophon," Revue des Études Grecques, 1893], Diodoros' account makes no mention of Xenophon; and it is evident that Diodoros did not use the Anabasis as a source for events like Kounaxa. Since Xenophon published it under the pseudonym Themistogenes of Syracuse, he speaks of himself as a separate, different person, making it possible, as Plutarch long ago observed, to lend a greater air of verisimilitude to what he says about his own deeds. It looks as though Xenophon had an apologetic purpose in mind, therefore, when he undertook the composition; and this may be what prompted Ephoros, Diodoros' source, to avoid it as a reliable record of what occurred on the march up-country.

Most commentary on the Anabasis has, in fact, been concerned with its alleged Tendenz, seeking explanations outside the work for those which it ought to contain within itself. Why must Xenophon have necessarily had an immediately practical purpose in mind when writing the Anabasis or any other work? What was Xenophon writing an apology for? Was it a response to the account of the campaign written by one of his colleagues in command, Sophainetos? In the absence of significant portions of Sophainetos' work this must remain a gratuitous assumption. Was it to respond to the charges made against him by others of the expedition or even to charges made against the men themselves by hostile Greeks in Asia Minor or in the fatherland? This, too, is unconvincing, for even if the earliest conceivable publication date is accepted, it remains obscure why Xenophon, at his ease in Skillous, waited more than a decade to defend himself or his army. And even if it is assumed that he could have blown the dust off issues and events long past, why does he spend so much time in the Anabasis about so many things unrelated to apologia, like the character study of Cyrus, the different kinds of native dances, descriptions of foreign food and foreign customs, strategic devices like winter leggings, various kinds of bows, and ways to cut glare from the sunlit snow? What has apologia got to do with men chasing ostriches and wild donkeys or getting sick on honey? A work of defense, moreover, implies a certain method of operation by which evidence is sifted and selected for biased ends. Yet Xenophon seems free of such prejudice: he records both the folly and the heroism of the men prior to and after Kounaxa, he never displays partiality to one group over another, is content to call a man good or bad on his own personal merits, and, what is most important, his defenses of his own actions ultimately reveal his own folly.

To seek to explain the Anabasis in terms of a Tendenz is too narrow a view at best. The conflicts between Diodorus' source and Xenophon do not have to be explained by assuming that Xenophon had an ulterior motive which caused him to distort artfully what really happened. If Ephoros neglected Xenophon, it need not be the result of a superior historical understanding which led him to prefer Sophainetos, Ktesias, or whomever. Perhaps as a student of Isokrates he deliberately avoided the work of a known Socratic. Or perhaps Ephoros found another account more suitable for his purposes, not because it was more accurate but because it was more straightforward, lacking all those details which give point and life to Xenophon's narrative. For the reader of Diodoros, even bearing in mind Diodoros is only providing a summary for inclusion within a much larger and different framework, would hardly get the idea that the march of the Ten Thousand was anything more than a series of military and geographical obstacles overcome.

The Anabasis, to be sure, does record the actions of historical men in a definite time and place; but perhaps Xenophon never had historical precision uppermost in his mind as his chief aim. Thus even though he admits knowing Ktesias' account of Kounaxa, he does not follow it, despite the fact that Ktesias was closer to the center of action than Xenophon was. Xenophon is more concerned with the heroic action of Cyrus, to show that his death was the sort to be expected from a man of his kind, to show that this death was indicative of the man's whole life. By the same token Xenophon may err in the geography of the army's route, but this is less an indication of Xenophon's sloppiness or his failure to consult even his own diaries (if they ever existed) than it is another indication that he was interested in something else which need not, moreover, have had anything to do with apologia. He records the numbers of stathmoi and parasangs traversed by the army of Cyrus not just to give his book an air of authenticity but to suggest quietly the ever deepening ensnarement of the Greeks within Persian territory. When the retreating force comes across some ruined cities of the Persian past, once again Xenophon records this not so much because the army did in reality pass by them but because they testify to the weakness of the Persians from whom the army is fleeing; for the ancient Persians conquered none of these places by force of arms but only owing to chance acts of nature. Finally is it for accuracy's sake that Xenophon narrates how the Greeks, who thought they were home free once they had reached the sea, got sick on the local sweet, encountered in this region the most barbarian people they had ever seen, and found olives nonexistent amongst the regional produce? Doubtless all these things happened, or things like them; but within Xenophon's context they seem to have a resonance which transcends the purely reportorial, suggesting a truth about the army beyond its simple passage.

It would be better, therefore, to realize that the Anabasis, though dealing in a narrative and unfictionalized way with a historical event, is clearly one man's obviously idiosyncratic vision of that event, and that it was clearly meant to be understood as such. The Anabasis differs in its own angle of view from straightforward history, from the Hellenika, for example, just as the Agesilaos differs in its fashion. Most simply put, the Anabasis records a young man's journey away from home and the experiences he had while traveling. But Xenophon also sees something more to it, that the desire to be away from his city was the desire of a personality infatuated with heroic champions like Cyrus who did not always observe the duties of custom and law and that the very life of travel he embarked upon for the chance to display his own aretē became a snare and a delusion when he blindly tried to effect something permanent. In this ability to preserve a perfect tension between the concrete events of a journey and the suggestion of a larger dimension behind them, the Anabasis recalls its ultimate literary forebear, the Odyssey of Homer; and Xenophon's explicit allusions to that poem perhaps best indicate his understanding of the nature of his own literary endeavor.

Xenophon figures so much in the Anabasis, therefore, because it is about him and his life; it is avowedly, not deceitfully or apologetically, one-sided. But this prominence is also revealing, for it contrasts so markedly with Xenophon's retiring presence in most of his other works. It is in itself a further indication of that young spirit which went forth to seek its own fame and its own glory, which sought its own honor and failed to heed the voice of teacher or to respect the god.

The final remark of the Anabasis reports the arrival of Thibron and Xenophon's release from command, as the remnant of the Ten Thousand march against Tissaphernes. What is on the mind of these men who before have thought only of Greece? What must that man have been thinking who imagined he would return to his fatherland stretched out like Odysseus? Doubtless the promises of pay and the new prospects for fortune and adventure make them forget. Fools that they are, they lose their day of homecoming.

Xenophon's own fate is similar. Desire as he may to leave the army, the gods will not permit it. When eventually he returns to Greece, it is to a life in exile from Athens on an estate at Skillous. The god he tried to evade at Delphi has been vindicated. Even in his dream the night he rouses the army, he sees that there may be no escape:

but on the other hand, because the dream came from Zeus the Great King and because the fire seemed to blaze in a circle, he was afraid lest he be unable to get out of the King's territory, but should be closed in on all sides by obstacles.

How revealing it is, therefore, to find him so concerned at Skillous with the due observance of divine ritual and so aware of the danger of its neglect. Even more revealing, however, is the simplicity and quiet of his life there. Family, farming, the hunt, it all seems somehow far removed from the adventures of an earlier day. He seems to have come to a new understanding about the nature of philotimia, the love of glory and fame, to have reduced the scope of his past ambitions to a contentment with place and the stability of the definite which he could not find while addicted to travel.

How far removed, as well, this is from Isokrates' panhellenic propaganda, with which the Anabasis is frequently associated. It is even thought that Isokrates in his Panegyrikos quotes from Xenophon, although the alleged echo is only of a common word, not a passage, and the context and character of the remarks differ one from the other. There is no denying that the experience of the Ten Thousand soon became famous, and men of affairs both Greek and Persian often surmised what it boded for the future of barbarian and Hellenic conflict. By 380 it is hardly surprising that a rhetorical pundit could see in it a living witness to the superiority of a united Hellas over the effete East, a rallying cry to rouse his countrymen from internal strife to a foreign holy war. But Xenophon knew more about Persia than most of his contemporaries and was only too well aware that its power was not easily toppled. As he himself put it, an intelligent observer recognized that the King's empire was strong in the extent of its territory and the number of its people, and weak only if attack was swift. The Anabasis could not make more clear, either, how difficult leaving Persia could be and, more crucial still, how difficult and finally impossible it was to keep an army of Greeks united. It is not that Xenophon did not appreciate Persian weakness for what it was or that he did not harbor in his heart panhellenic hopes or desires. He may well have done so. But he seems to have known better than the vacuous nestorizings of Isokrates the difference between dream and reality.

For it is finally with this awareness that the Anabasis deals. Many have observed how misleading its title is; only the first book is a march up-country, the rest being a journey down to the sea. But perhaps the title itself indicates that literalism is a poor guide to the book's meaning and that misapprehension and deception are its recurring concerns. The Anabasis is not merely about a geographic ascent or the trick played by Cyrus on the Greeks. Rather it concerns the deeper deception many men play on themselves as they pursue what they think most important in life and what they think most gives it meaning, namely, philotimia, kingdom, power, and glory. Nothing better intimates a late date for the composition of the Anabasis than Xenophon's mature perception of this delusion, especially as it applies to himself, or the detachment with which he can examine his own actions as though he were writing about someone else, a certain "Xenophon" whom Themistogenes of Syracuse describes and who did not fully heed Socrates. But this also holds true for the Xenophon who lived at Skillous; for the life he led there was still deficient: it was not the life of a citizen of Athens. That is to say, the Anabasis may not have been possible until its author saw the contented peace of the estate shattered by Elean incursions, which compelled him to wander again. Perhaps he realized only when back in Athens, an exile no more, that only there could he genuinely pursue that quest to which Socrates might have continually invited him had he not foolishly gone after Cyrus: …

Not only for Cyrus' sake did Xenophon march
  up towards the Persians
 But in search of a road which led,up to
 Zeus.