In Aristotle’s Politics, an interesting anecdote about Thales the Milesian is recounted. It seems that old Thales lived, like most philosophers, in poverty. To his neighbors, this indicated a life wasted. But one winter season, Thales took advantage of his long study of the nature of things and realized there would be a tremendous harvest of olives the coming year. So, taking what little money he had, he hired all the olive-presses in Miletus at low cost. When harvest-time came, demand for the presses jumped and Thales made a killing letting out the instruments at exorbitant rates. From this, Aristotle concludes, “He showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but that their ambition is of another sort.”
This story—one is tempted to call it a parable—is an instructive response to the common refrain that philosophers, with their heads in the clouds, have no practical bent. But more instructive still is the life of Xenophon the Athenian (430-354 B.C.). Xenophon is one of Socrates’ most famous students, responsible for presenting in his Memorabilia, Apology, Oeconomicus and Symposium, dialogues between his famous teacher and certain noble Athenians. But unlike his colleague Plato, Xenophon also wrote a famous history, a continuation of Thucydides' Peloponnesian War (Hellenica), character studies of great men (the Education of Cyrus), interpretations of the Athenian and Spartan constitutions and various treatises on hunting, horsemanship and happiness. He is unique in the history of Western thought: what one might call a philosopher-statesman.
Sadly, modernity, until very recently, found little reason to pay attention to Xenophon. Once studied and revered by men like Machiavelli and Alexander the Great, classicists and historians in the early 20th century somehow formed the notion he was a bit of a dullard. His writing, they noted, was too simple; his ideas lacked philosophic nuance. He was clearly, they thought, a poor pupil of Socrates. (Interestingly, the professoriate class never seemed to consider why men of Machiavelli’s and Alexander’s intelligence found Xenophon worth studying!) Today, and in large part to the renewed, respectful attention of political philosophers like Leo Strauss, however, Xenophon’s quiet grandeur and esoteric playfulness are slowly getting recognized anew.
Now, there are different approaches into Xenophon’s corpus, but I suggest starting with his Anabasis of Cyrus. The Anabasis (“Ascent”) is the story of ten thousand Greek soldiers who join forces with Cyrus the Younger to depose the sitting king of Persia, Cyrus’ brother Artaxerxes. By the end of Book I, however, Cyrus has been killed and the Greek soldiers, isolated in a foreign land, must fight their way home to safety. There is some hope for the band at the outset, but when the top Greek generals are murdered by the Persians, despair sets in. That is until a certain Xenophon steps forth. The rest of the six books are Xenophon’s as we read with delight how he successfully navigates the soldiers home. But a good story—and it’s a great one—is not the reason to start with the Anabasis. The reason to start with the Anabasis is for what it reveals about the relationship between philosophy and the political life, a relationship central to a deep understanding of Xenophon’s thought.
As a student of Socrates, Xenophon was familiar with the contention that the life of philosophy, i.e., a life devoted to contemplating the nature of things, is, in the hierarchy of lives, at the top. Of secondary importance, and perhaps even in conflict with the life of the philosophy, is the political life, a life dependent on honor. The Anabasis confounds this distinction, for it is a philosophic work masquerading as a third-person historical-biography by a man engaged in political (i.e., ruling) activity. These disjunctions, mirrored against its author's life, however, raise a few important questions. For instance, why would Xenophon, a student of Socrates (read: philosophy), abandon the life of the mind for uncertain political ends? Does Xenophon’s success reveal that political life is superior to the life of philosophy or is it dependent on it? Or perhaps philosophy and politics can be united in rare individuals? These turn out to be some of the questions that animate much of the Western canon, and for this reason alone the Anabasis is worth a lengthy visit.
But in the end, however, I think my friend Greg McBrayer—Xenophon translator extraordinaire and assistant professor of political science at Ashland University—sums up the Anabasis best:
Insofar as Xenophon was a student of the philosopher Socrates, the Anabasis shows the practical benefits of a philosophic education. Indeed, Xenophon seems to indicate his success depended on the education he received from Socrates. But I enjoy the book, above all, because it shows us that philosophers can be more than just pasty-faced wastrels!
*For an excellent translation, faithful to the original Greek, I suggest Wayne Ambler’s Anabasis of Cyrus (Cornell Press, 2008).
