by Xenophon
11. Athenian citizen: This rather unclear passage is probably to be taken with 3.9–10 and interpreted as part of Xenophon’s grand scheme to raise such a centrally deposited capital sum as eventually to provide every Athenian, rich or poor, with a daily allowance of three obols. The slaves would be as it were the working ingredient of this capital project, ensuring by their labour that the required surplus income of three obols per head was generated.
12. exporting them: Demosthenes accused his great rival and enemy Aeschines of having a father who was a branded slave and worked as public checker (dokimastes) in the Athenian mint. The accusation was of course false, but the public dokimastes would have been a familiar sight in the Athenian Agora and in Peiraeus (Ath. Pol., Rhodes, Commentary, pp. 574, 576). Xenophon here proposes to extend the branding system to his new, publicly owned mine-slaves.
13. their minds: Here Xenophon does seem to be indulging in special pleading, verging indeed on the utopian.
14. the Deceleian affair will verify: The Spartans occupied and garrisoned the Athenian deme of Deceleia from 413 to 404 (see especially Thucydides 7.27–8). Any reader old enough to remember slave prices as they were before the affair would have to have been at least 75. Specifically, the fiscal reference could be either to the farmed tax levied on the sale of slaves or to the two per cent payable in the Peiraeus on slaves as merchandise entering or leaving Attica or to both.
15. the silver: The silver was extracted from argentiferous lead by cupellation (see note 22 below); it no longer exists in its primitive state in workable quantities, and modern mining interest has been concerned primarily with the extraction of cadmium and manganese, although the ancient slagheaps have been to a lesser extent reworked for the lead.
16. restarted there: The extant records of the ten Poletai (‘Sellers’), the board of Athenian officials responsible for leasing the mining concessions (the state claimed ownership of all subsoil resources), would seem to confirm that after a long gap mining began again in earnest only in the 360s.
17. worry… itself demands: The implied fear is of servile insurrection, which actually is not known to have occurred at the Laureium mines until the very end of the second century B C. On the other hand, many thousands of mine-slaves took advantage of the Spartan occupation of Deceleia (see note 14 above) to run away (Thucydides 7.27.5). Contrast the known Helot insurrections (Agesilaus chapter 1 note 6 ); and for fear of slave violence more generally, see Hiero chapter 4 note 1.
18. the recent war: On the identification of this war (cf. 5.12) hangs the secure dating of the treatise; internal and external evidence conspires, if not quite to prove, at least to make it extremely probable that Xenophon was referring to the Social War (357–355; see Gauthier, Commentaire, pp. 4–6, and Introduction).
19. market rents: Here we have the original ‘peace dividend’; see further chapter 5 note 1. On ‘looking after the resident aliens’ see chapter 2 note 1.
20. the enemy: Xenophon’s suggestion that the Athenians should deploy the public slaves not only in the fleet but in the land army is remarkable enough; that he should apparently also advocate that they be ‘well-tende’, is even more so, since it was normally – and normatively – the case that slaves were required to ‘tend’ (therapeuein; a standard word for slave was therapon) their masters. Perhaps his idealized Spartanism has got the better of his judgement here.
21. besieged instead: Chastened by their humiliating experience during the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians of Xenophon’s day put a lot more effort into the land defence, both fixed and mobile, of the territory of Attica: see, with differing emphases and explanations, J. Ober, Fortress Attica (Brill, 1985), and M. Munn, The Defense of Attica (University of California Press, 1993).
22. kilns: The kilns were used for fusing the ore. There are fewer mentions of them in the extant mining-leases than of the ore-washeries, and only some of them were state property.
23. plots… about Athens: Xenophon’s choroi (‘plots’) are to be distinguished from the oikopeda (‘property’) of Memoirs of Socrates 2.6 (Penguin Conversations of Socrates). On land in Athens, see chapter 2 note 6.
24. effective: Obedience, discipline, military effectiveness: here is Xenophon’s holy trinity – or grail – as a didactic writer.
25. maintenance due to each of these tasks: Xenophon is apparently referring to some kind of ephebic training, though no comprehensive state-run programme is certainly attested before the mid-330s (see On Hunting chapter 2 note 1).
CHAPTER 5
1. Custodians of the Peace: Xenophon is here responding to the widespread longing among fourth-century Greeks for a ‘new world order’; unfortunately, that yearning advanced no further than the concept of a general or Common Peace, which in practice had to be imposed on the Greeks by an outside power (Persia) and was anyhow honoured more in the breach.
2. held to be: Xenophon’s choice of words (eudaimon, literally ‘well-favoured by the gods’) leaves it ambiguous whether he has chiefly in mind the city’s moral or its economic welfare. Possibly the former, since, as noted in the Introduction, after chapter 4 Xenophon reverts to being a moral-political theorist rather than a fiscal reformer.
3. sacred or secular. Strictly, the Greeks did not have our notion of the secular, only that of the more or less sacred; but although the Greek adjectives hiera and hosia can both mean ‘sacred’ in other contexts, here some such contrast as ‘sacred or secular’ is intended. Xenophon’s tolerance of sophists here is perhaps surprising, at any rate in contrast to the diatribe against them that we find in On Hunting 13. On works of quality, see also Hiero 1.11.
4. helping Greece: On Xenophon’s supposed ‘panhellenism’, see Agesilaus chapter 1 notes 10 and 32, and On Hunting chapter 1 note 16; on his anti-imperialism, see chapter 1 note 1 above. It is surprising to see him adopting here the Athenians’ fifth-century propaganda line in defence of their empire that their revolted allies and of course Sparta no less vigorously repudiated.
5. free will: This is a reference to the foundation of the Second Sea-League; see also chapter 1 note 1.
6. well served by Athens: Athens had been supportive of those Thebans who ejected the occupying Spartan garrison in 379/8 (see Agesilaus chapter 2 note 23); soon after, in the summer of 378, Thebes, despite being virtually landlocked, became one of the six founder-members of the Athenians’ naval alliance.
7. well treated by us: The defeat of Sparta by Thebes at Leuctra in 371 so disrupted the diplomatic concordat of 378 (see previous note) that in 369 Athens allied with Sparta against a newly hegemonic Thebes.
8. recovering our control: Xenophon’s ‘current situation of chaos in Greece’ echoes the concluding sentence of his A History of My Times (7.5.27), the terminal date of which was summer 362. The Greek word translated as ‘recovering our control’, anaktasthai, means literally ‘regain possession of’ – which seems hardly innocent of imperialist overtones, or compatible with ‘a complete end to war’ (5.10).
9. the Phocians: Some scholars have tried – misguidedly – to use this reference to date the treatise to 346, interpreting the ‘war’ of 4.40 and 5.12 as the so-called Third Sacred War of 356–346. The latter, in which the Athenians in fact allied with the Phocians against Philip of Macedon, was fought in part, but only in part, for the autonomy – or rather the control – of the sacred site of Delphi.
10. everyone’s prayers: The official ritual formulae of prayers in the Athenian Assembly (which met four times a month) included prayers for the ‘safety’ (soteria) of Athens.
11. projects of their own choice: Since Athens failed to keep the requisite records, it would in fact have been technically impossible for anyone to conduct the exercise Xenophon airily recommends with any mathematical precision. But this is anyhow mere rhetoric, dare one say mere sophistry, contradicted by the evidence of the eyes. True, ‘the war’ (that is, the Social War) had been financially devastating; but compare and contrast Athens’ situation in the previous century. The
Acropolis building programme of the fifth century, which was publicly paid for, was indeed significantly carried out during peacetime in the 440s and 430s when the funds were temporarily not needed to make war; but had Athens not devoted itself to war making in the previous thirty years, on the whole very successfully and lucratively, those funds would not have been there to be used in the first place.
12. support their cause: Cf. Memoirs of Socrates 2.6.27 (Penguin Conversations of Socrates), Cyropaedia 1.5.13 and Isocrates 8.138–9.
CHAPTER 6
1. doing things: Here speaks Xenophon the radical conservative, appealing to tradition (ta patria, literally ‘the things of the fathers’ or ‘the ancestral things’) under the banner of far-reaching innovation. In other words, trying to have his cake and eat it too.
2. the gods: Xenophon adopts the regular formula for a state’s consultation of Zeus at his oracular shrine at Dodona, and of his son Apollo at his at Delphi. Consultation of Delphi was almost second nature, for all Greek states; Dodona, however, was to find increasing favour with Athens in the period 350–320, as Delphi fell under the control of Macedon (see chapter 5 note 9).
3. the state: Xenophon typically ends, as he had begun (1.3), with the gods – but by comparison with some other treatises, for example the Cavalry Commander, the gods have been conspicuous here rather by their absence.
TEXTUAL NOTES
I have translated Marchant’s Oxford Classical Text, except at the following points.
HIERO THE TYRANT
2.14 Reading with Erbse.
6.6 Reading with Denniston.
11.2 The OCT reading is presumably a misprint for .
11.7 Reading instead of with Galliano.
11.13 There is a lacuna in the received text, which must have contained some such sentiment.
AGESILAUS
1.6 Reading instead of , with Richards: Agesilaus was over 40 years old.
1.19 Retaining the MSS reading .
2.17 Reading instead of , with Köppen ad Hellenica 4.4.19.
2.20 A sentence or two seems to be missing, perhaps describing Agesilaus’ decision to help the Achaeans and his arrival in Acarnania. However, the campaign is also covered in Xenophon’s Hellenica 4.6.
2.20 Retaining with the MSS.
2.22 Reading , Cartledge.
2.26 Reading with Marchant in the Loeb.
2.27 There is a short lacuna in the text, which probably contained something along these lines.
3.2 A short lacuna in the text probably contained something like this.
3.4 Retaining the MSS readings and
5.1 Reading and then with Athenaeus 613c.
6.4 Some text is missing. In his Life of Agesilaus, at 4.1, Plutarch paraphrases the sentence: ‘Xenophon says that Agesilaus’ obedience to his fatherland won him a great deal of power, enough to do as he pleased.’
11.14 Reading with Marchant in the Loeb.
HOW TO BE A GOOD CAVALRY COMMANDER
1.13 Reading with Delebecque.
1.24 Retaining with the MSS.
2.7 Reading with the MSS.
4.3 A short lacuna in the text must originally have contained a Greek word meaning something like this.
4.10 Reading with Delebecque.
5.10 Reading with Delebecque.
6.3 Reading with the MSS.
7.9 Reading instead of with Pierleoni.
7.14 There is a lacuna in the transmitted Greek text, which must originally have been filled with something like this.
8.3 Reading with Harrison.
8.14 Reading with Erbse.
8.23 Retaining the MSS reading .
9.5 Reading , Waterfield.
ON HORSEMANSHIP
1.9 Retaining the MSS reading .
1.13 Reading with MSS AO.
4.2 Retaining with the MSS; cf. Anderson in Journal of Hellenic Studies 80 (1960).
4.3 Reading with Marchant in the Loeb, and also omitting both the forthcoming lacunas marked in the OCT.
4.5 Reading , Waterfield.
5.5 Reading with Delebecque.
6.1 Omitting , added by Marchant in the OCT.
6.8 Reading instead of , with Pierleoni.
6.14 Adopting with some confidence Marchant’s hesitant conjecture .
7.1 Reading with Delebecque.
7.8 Reading with Hermann.
7.11 Reading with Stephanus.
7.11 Retaining with the MSS.
9.4 Omitting, with Cobet, the entirely superfluous sentence … .
9.8 Reading Waterfield.
10.2 Reading with Pollack.
10.10 Reading with Delebecque.
11.7 The comma after in the OCT is surely a misprint and should precede it.
11.9 Retaining the readings of MSS A B.
11.11 Retaining the clause found in the MSS but deleted by Schneider.
12.1 Reading with Erbse.
12.4 Retaining with the MSS.
12.7 Omitting with the MSS.
12.8 Retaining with the MSS.
ON HUNTING
1.8 Reading with Delebecque.
1.9 Retaining with the MSS.
1.11 There is a misprint in the OCT, which has no iota subscript on and should have a colon or a comma after this word, not a full stop.
1.17 Reading with some MSS.
2.1 Reading with Loewenklau.
2.1 Another misprint in the OCT: for .
2.7 Reading with Delebecque.
2.9 Reading with Delebecque.
3.1 Reading instead of with some MSS.
3.3 Reading with Delebecque.
3.5 Reading with Rühl.
4.1 Punctuating after with Pollux and the MSS.
4.3 Reading , Waterfield.
5.3 Reading , as conjectured by Marchant.
5.7 There is no need for the OCT’s inserted .
5.12 Reading instead of , with Delebecque.
5.15 Reading with Delebecque.
5.17 Reading instead of , with Delebecque.
5.30 Omitting Marchant’s addition, gleaned from Pollux.
6.6 A word or two has dropped out of the text – presumably something like .
6.8 Transposing to, as indicated below.
6.10 Reading instead of , with Delebecque.
6.10 Reading with MSS BM.
6.11 Taking in the transposed sentence from 6.8.
6.15 Reading with Pierleoni.
6.18 Reading instead of , with Delebecque.
6.20 Reading with the MSS.
6.21 Retaining with the MSS.
7.1 Reading , Waterfield.
7.9 Omitting Marchant’s unacknowledged addition in the OCT.
7.9 Reading (Delebecque) (Waterfield).
7.12 Omitting Gesner’s inserted .
8.2 Omitting Marchant’s inserted .
8.3–4 Reading with MS A, and therefore punctuating with a full stop after .
9.2 Reading , Waterfield.
9.4 Reading instead of with Delebecque.
10.2 Reading with MS A.
10.5 Reading with Schneider.
10.7 Reading (MSS) , (Delebecque).
10.12 Omitting before , Waterfield.
11.4 Reading , Waterfield.
12.5 Reading with the MSS.
12.11 Reading instead of , with the MSS.
12.17 Reading with Stobaeus.
13.10 Reading with Schneider.
13.11 Omitting the second , Cartledge.
WAYS AND MEANS
3.8 Reading with Bake.
4.37 Reading and moving to after , Waterfield.
4.51 Reading with the MSS.
4.52 Retaining with the MSS.
5.1 Retaining with the MSS.
5.2 Reading (Castalio) (Loewenklau)
INDEX
Abdera, 219
Academus, 203
Academy, 73, 75, 203
Acarnania, Acarnanians, 44, 45
Achaean mountains, 46
Achaeans, 46
Achilles, 129, 131
aconite, 156
Aegean Sea, 39, 181, 191, 222
Aeneas, 129, 131
Aeneas the Tactician, 204
Aenianians, 41, 45
Aeolians, 35, 42
Aeschines, 226
Aeschylus, 4, 213
Aetolians, 44
Africa, 201, 204
Agamemnon, 191
Agesilaus II, xi, xviii, 31–61, 94, 189, 203, 205, 207 Asian campaigns, 33–40
charm of, 54, 60
courage of, 43, 51, 57, 60, 198
endurance of, 50, 57, 60
haughtiness of, 54–5, 60
honesty of, 48–9, 55, 57, 59
humanity of, 36, 60
intelligence of, 41, 51–2, 55, 57, 60
lameness of, 198
lineage of, 33
loyalty of, 44, 51
obedience of, 39–40, 43, 47, 51, 53
in old age, 45–7, 61
panhellenism of, 53, 191
patriotism of, 34, 40, 46, 53–4, 57
piety of, 43, 47–8, 57, 58
self-control of, 49–51, 55, 60
simplicity of, 56, 60
tactics of, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45
trustworthiness of, 47–8
wounds of, 43, 51
Agesipolis, 190
Agis (royal eponym), 190
Agis II, xii, 33, 49, 201
agriculture, 19, 24, 27, 169–70, 174, 187, 188, 210, 225
Alcathous, 130, 213
Alcibiades, 5, 94, 189
Alexander the Great, xviii, 65, 186, 193, 209