Xenophon: Ethical principle and historical enquiry

University of Liverpool8 - 11 July 2009
Kindly supported by The British Academy

Among classical authors Xenophon’s output is uniquely marked by his life experience and the range of its engagement with the important historical themes of his era: indeed it plays a special role in defining our sense of the post-Athenian-Empire world. His formative experiences and comparative deracination gave him an outlook not limited by the mental boundaries of the classic Greek polis. The result was a distinctive but intellectually and morally consistent response to the histoire événementielle of his times and to the underlying issue of ethical but effective leadership, and an oeuvre that is a remarkable witness to the intellectual and cultural environment of mid- to late-Classical Greece.
Three decades of scholarship have established the general truth of these claims, but a number of important tasks remain. We note two in particular. First, we need to find the right way to describe a voice that is neither simply ironic nor simply ingenuous, to demonstrate its presence throughout his disparate oeuvre and to show that it articulates a serious, principled and rational, if also optimistic, response to the problems of fourth-century Greece. Secondly, we need to stress and celebrate the extent to which his work is informed by an engagement with history. Xenophon is concerned with effective action in the here-and-now, but his characteristic investigative and expository strategy is discourse about the past. Much of the history is fictive –sitting awkwardly (for modern taste) between truth and falsehood – but he is driven by a basic belief that understanding how the world is and should be involves contemplating how it has been. The cross-oeuvre ramifications of this historical mentality are still not fully appreciated.
It is the aim of the conference to advance these tasks The project builds on the success of the 1999 World of Xenophon conference and reflects a Liverpool research profile in which the interaction of ancient historiography with broader cultural and intellectual issues is a major general theme and three individual scholars have a primary research interest in Xenophon and his late Classical world. By contrast with recent meetings devoted to particular aspects of Xenophon’s output, this conference reinstates the aim of addressing as much of that output as possible. This is done in the belief that intensive face-to-face discussion of numerous individual studies of ethical, political, economic, literary, ethnographic, historical and historiographical issues is the best way to identify and articulate the cross-oeuvre connections and consistencies that are needed to crystallize a more accurate picture of Xenophon’s mind-set and its significance for historians of classical Greece. It is crucial that all papers will be pre-circulated and the formal sessions entirely devoted to discussion, maximizing the academic value of the gathering and allowing us to include new research from a very large number of scholars. That few were participants in the 1999 meeting is also a vital fact: the project’s aims will be addressed by a fresh cross-section of Xenophon-watchers and this offers an excellent chance of genuinely new and important results.

For further information, please contact the conference organizers:
Dr Fiona Hobden (f.hobden@liv.ac.uk)
Dr Graham Oliver (gjoliver@liv.ac.uk)
Prof Christopher Tuplin (c.j.tuplin@liv.ac.uk)


http://www.liv.ac.uk/sace/events/confer/xenophon/index.htm