Xenophon's birth date is uncertain, but most scholars agree that he was born in
431 BC around Athens, Greece. Very little is known about his childhood and family. While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by
Cyrus the Younger against his older brother, the emperor
Artaxerxes II of
Persia, in
401 BC. Xenophon says that he had asked the veteran
Socrates for advice on whether to go with Cyrus, and that Socrates referred him to the divinely inspired
Delphic oracle. Xenophon's query to the
oracle, however, was not whether or not to accept Cyrus' invitation, but "to which of the gods he must pray and do sacrifice, so that he might best accomplish his intended journey and return in safety, with good fortune." So the oracle told him which gods to pray and sacrifice to. When Xenophon returned to
Athens and told Socrates of the oracle's advice,
Socrates chastised him for putting the wrong question to the oracle, but said, "Since, however you did so put the question, you should do what the
god enjoined."
In his advance against the
Persian king,
Cyrus the Younger used many Greek
mercenaries left unemployed by the cessation of the
Peloponnesian War. Cyrus fought
Artaxerxes II in the
Battle of Cunaxa. The Greeks were victorious in that battle, but Cyrus was killed. Shortly thereafter, the Greek general
Clearchus of
Sparta was invited to a peace conference, at which he was betrayed and executed. The
mercenaries, known as the
Ten Thousand, found themselves without leadership deep in hostile territory, near the heart of
Mesopotamia, which was far from the sea. They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north through hostile Persians,
Armenians, and
Kurds to
Trapezus on the coast of the
Black Sea. They then sailed westward back to
Greece. On the way back, they helped
Seuthes II make himself king of
Thrace. Xenophon's record of the entire expedition against the Persians and the journey home was titled
Anabasis ("The Expedition" or "The March Up Country"). It is worth noting that the
Anabasis was used as a field guide by
Alexander the Great during the early phases of his expedition into Persia.
Xenophon was later exiled from Athens, most likely because he fought under the Spartan king
Agesilaus II against Athens at
Coronea. (However, there may have been contributory causes, such as his support for Socrates, as well as the fact that he had taken service with the Persians.) The
Spartans gave him property at
Scillus, near
Olympia in Elis, where he composed the
Anabasis. However, because his son Gryllus fought and died for Athens at the
Battle of Mantinea while Xenophon was still alive, Xenophon's banishment may have been revoked. Xenophon died in either
Corinth or Athens. His date of death is uncertain; historians only know that he survived his patron
Agesilaus II, for whom he wrote an
encomium.
Diogenes Laertius says Xenophon was sometimes known as the "Attic Muse" for the sweetness of his diction; very few poets wrote in the
Attic dialect. Xenophon is often cited as being the original "
horse whisperer", having advocated sympathetic
horsemanship in his "
On Horsemanship". He also reports that Xenophon had a young
eromenos whom he
loved and of whom he said: "Now I look upon Clinias with more pleasure than upon all the other beautiful things which are to be seen among men; and I would rather be blind as to all the rest of the world, than as to
Clinias. And I am annoyed even with night and with sleep, because then I do not see him; but I am very grateful to the sun and to daylight, because they show Clinias to me."
Xenophon's standing as a political philosopher has been defended in recent times by
Leo Strauss, who devoted a considerable part of his philosophic analysis to the works of Xenophon, returning to the high judgment of Xenophon as a thinker expressed by
Shaftesbury, Winckelmann, and
Machiavelli. Strauss's reading has been heavily criticized, notably by classicist
Myles Burnyeat, as attempting to force Socrates into the mould of
Strauss's own philosophical views.
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