This article aims to shed new light on the character of political history as written by Xenophon, by exploring the first two Books of the Hellenika, which, it is argued, implicity correct Thucydides’ judgment that the regime of the Five Thousand in Athens was the best Athenian regime during his lifetime. Thucydides and Xenophon thus appear to disagree about the best regime, a theme central to classical political philosophy. But when we consider Thucydides’ praise of this regime in light of (...) Xenophon’s Socratic defence of traditional political authorities, we see that the two treatments complement each other. Xenophon’s endorsement of a regime rooted in traditional authorities protects the Socratic way of life, while Thucydides’ praise of a non-conventional regime endorses those conditions that make such a life possible. (shrink)

A testament to the richness of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War is that it has been studied for centuries with great profit by scholars of various stripes. Since the nineteenth century students of historiography have found in his narrative and methodological statements the principles by which Greeks of the fifth century BCE collected, recorded, and arranged material for their accounts of the ancient world. During the twentieth century international relations scholars, focusing on some of the more famous speeches of (...) the work's Athenians and the unsentimental tone of the author's narrative, saw in Thucydides an early advocate of realpolitik. And Thucydides's detailed accounts of political and diplomatic... (shrink)