Witness — the source, profiled; every claim below carries its ground or says it has none

Xenophon of Athens

c. 430 – c. 354 BCE · life dates approximate · 2 works served · 89 episodes · 195,408 words receipt — the witness cards

The tradition's numbers wobble by decades — Diogenes Laertius floruits him twice, in different Olympiads, and keeps both. The march with Cyrus (401) is the fixed point; birth and death are inference around it.

Who he was — as the tradition carries it; the grounds are named

The record's biographer gives him father, city, and deme — the fullest ancient life any author on this shelf receives.

Xenophon, the son of Gryllus, was a citizen of Athens and belonged to the deme Erchia D.L. 2.46-48 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V) · Diogenes Laertius

The exile is fact with paperwork: banished and recalled by decrees of the same man.

Istrus affirms that he was banished by a decree of Eubulus and recalled by a decree of the same man. D.L. 2.58-60 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V) · Diogenes Laertius

The vantage — what he could know, and from where

An Athenian knight who marched into Persia as neither general, nor officer, nor private — a friend's guest — and came out leading the Ten Thousand. Exiled from Athens for his Spartan friendships, he wrote the Greek world from an estate in the Peloponnese, hearing it from the Spartan side of the aisle.

He enters his own war story in the third person, halfway through, rank stated as none.

Now there was in that host a certain man, an Athenian, Xenophon, who had accompanied Cyrus, neither as a general, nor as an officer, nor yet as a private soldier, but simply on the invitation of an old friend, Proxenus. Xen. An. 3.1 Anabasis · Xenophon

The Spartans housed their Athenian: Scillus is where the tradition sits him down to write.

He then left Agesilaus and made his way to Scillus, a place in the territory of Elis not far from the city. D.L. 2.50-52 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V) · Diogenes Laertius

His method, in his own words — verbatim from the served record; every quote linked to its episode

His program is a splice: no proem, no name, no claim — the Hellenica opens inside Thucydides' unfinished year.

To follow the order of events. A few days later Thymochares arrived from Athens with a few ships, when another sea fight between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians at once took place, in which the former, under the command of Agesandridas, gained the victory. Xen. Hell. 1.1 Hellenica · Xenophon

And it closes the same way it opened — the pen handed forward, the ending left to another.

At this point I lay aside my pen: the sequel of the story may haply commend itself to another. Xen. Hell. 7.5 Hellenica · Xenophon

For the march that made him famous, his Hellenica cites 'Themistogenes of Syracuse' — a name antiquity has read as Xenophon's own mask. The pointing is his; the unmasking is the tradition's, and the shelf serves only the pointing.

The particulars of the expedition are to be found in the pages of the Syracusan Themistogenes, who describes the mustering of the armament, and the advance of Cyrus at the head of his troops; and then the battle, and death of Cyrus himself, and the consequent retreat of the Hellenes while effecting their escape to the sea. Xen. Hell. 3.1 Hellenica · Xenophon

What survives, what is lost — the shelf's own shape, stated plainly

Some forty books survive under his name; this shelf serves the two histories — the Hellenica and the Anabasis. The biographer's catalogue, itself served, stands as the map of the rest.

Forty-odd books, per the biographer's served catalogue — histories, Socratic dialogues, manuals; the house serves the two histories.

He wrote some forty books in all, though the division into books is not always the same D.L. 2.56-58 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V) · Diogenes Laertius

How the record has read him — the reception's words, never the house's verdict

The ancient verdict was stylistic: the Attic Muse.

By the sweetness of his narrative he earned the name of the Attic Muse. D.L. 2.56-58 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume I (Books I-V) · Diogenes Laertius

As a reader of predecessors: where Ctesias attacked Herodotus, Xenophon imitated him — the commentary catches the borrowing.

the virulence of Ctesias’ mendacious attack. On the other hand, Xenophon pays H. the compliment of imitating his phrases. How & Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, vol. I (1912), p. 37 cited, never reprinted — the apparatus shelf

The tradition's charge sheet against him — the Spartan leanings, the convenient silences — is older than modern criticism, but the served record has not yet put it in evidence. The Hellenica tells the liberation of Thebes without Pelopidas; the house stages that omission, with receipts, at /event/liberation-of-thebes-379. The fuller ancient indictment is not yet in evidence on this shelf.

His shelf in the house — the served works; every edition credited

The deeds he witnesses — curated events his works attest; the accounts face each other in each room

battle of Aegospotami — 405 BCE fall of Athens — 404 BCE battle of Cunaxa — 401 BCE liberation of Thebes — 379 BCE battle of Leuctra — 371 BCE

Inside the record

the record itself

He also stands inside the record — named by the other witnesses. Xenophon, the figure.

The record here: 166 works · 12,119 episodes served · profiles carry claims, claims carry grounds — episode, page, or an honest open

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