Xenophon is Sad

The contrast between Thucydides and Xenophon, whose history picked up where Thucydides left off, is stark.

Xenophon has his own rather unenlightened criteria which he applies to military leaders

The presentation of Epameinondas in Xenophon is very remarkable, even in a work so unmethodically and capriciously written as the Hellenika.

What is usually offered turns out to be an uncritical collation from roughly the 6th to the 4th centuries, combining such things as jokes from Aristophanes, tedious moralising from Xenophon, and careless plunges into the quicksand of the Platonic dialogues

Xenophon, of course, was an enemy of democracy

The Peloponnesian War transcended even the genius who wrote about it, and the lesser chroniclers, such as Xenophon, Plutarch, and Diodoros, who rounded out the story.

His Hellenika begins at the point where Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War breaks off. This continuity, however, does not apply to the depth of the analysis, because Xenophon lacks the objectivity of his predecessor.

With his 'Hellenika', Xenophon intended to continue and imitate Thucydides, but in this he fell short.

Thucydides' work stops mid-sentence in winter 411/410 BC, but was intended to go as far as 404 BC. It was later completed by Theopompus and Cratippus.

In Xenophon we have to brand, not merely an unpardonable degree of weakness and passion, but sheer want of common honesty, a deliberate breach of the first moral laws of the historian's calling

Xenophon's history is worth nothing; it is untrue, written without care, and with perfect nonchalance

To pass from Thucydides to the Hellenika of Xenophon is a descent truly mournful

Xenophon's opinion of what is worthy of note may not, unfortunately, always coincide with our own.

Xenophon was rather limited in his sources of information, and not so assiduous in digging out accounts of events as was Thucydides.

Xenophon, whose intelligence could not rival that of either Plato or Socrates, is not a reliable source for Socrates' opinions.

Thucydides' successor, Xenophon, lacked his analytical mind