Xenophon

Xenophon was an ancient Greek soldier, historian, and Socratic writer whose works in Attic prose are among the principal surviving sources for fourth-century BC Greek history. He was born around 430 BC in the Athenian deme of Erchia, into a well-off equestrian family, and he died around 354 BC, probably at Corinth. As a young man he attached himself to Socrates and was among the circle whose recollections of the philosopher have come down to us.

His most-famous adventure began in 401 BC, when he joined the Greek mercenary force recruited by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger to overthrow his elder brother, the Great King Artaxerxes II. After Cyrus was killed at the Battle of Cunaxa near Babylon, Xenophon was elected one of the generals of the stranded ten thousand Greek mercenaries and led their march north through Armenia to the Black Sea coast at Trapezus. His Anabasis, written years later, narrates that march and remains one of the foundational texts of Western military memoir.

His return to Greek lands placed him in the service of the Spartan king Agesilaus II, with whom he fought on the Spartan side at the Battle of Coronea in 394 BC against an alliance that included his native Athens. He was banished from Athens in consequence and given an estate at Scillus in the western Peloponnese by the Spartans, where he lived for some twenty years, raising his sons, hunting, and writing.

His written corpus extends well beyond the Anabasis. The Hellenica continues Greek history from the point at which Thucydides' account breaks off in 411 BC down to 362 BC; the Cyropaedia is a partly fictional life of Cyrus the Great; the Memorabilia, Apology, and Symposium preserve his portrait of Socrates; and shorter works treat horsemanship, hunting, household management, and the Spartan constitution. He returned to Athens late in life after the banishment was lifted.

His name Xenophon is the Greek Xenophōn, combining xenos meaning "stranger" or "guest" and phōnē meaning "voice," so something like "foreign-sounding voice." He carried the name from birth and signed his works with it.