pérez martín inmaculada the reception of xenophon in byzantium the macedonian period.pdf

8/13/2019 Prez Martn Inmaculada The Reception of Xenophon in Byzantium The Macedonian Period.pdf

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Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies53 (2013) 812855

2013 Inmaculada Prez Martn

The Reception of Xenophon inByzantium: The Macedonian Period

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Maximus of Tyre 16.5 HE STUDYof the reception of an author in Byzantiumcan shed light on particular periods of Byzantineculture, the nature of some of its own texts,1 and the

constitution of the corpus of classical authors that has comedown to us.2 Accordingly, the Byzantine study of Xenophon3 will be treated here as an element of Macedonian culture,sharing some of its features and marked by its politics.

The subject can be addressed on different levels, the first and

most traditional being the search for echoes of Xenophon inByzantine writers. Nevertheless, in the case of a textbookauthor such as Xenophon, omnipresent in glossaries andcollections of proverbs, his presence in Byzantine texts is un-

1 A. Kaldellis, Classical Scholarship in Twelfth-Century Byzantium, inC. Barber and D. Jenkins (eds.), Medieval Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics (Leiden/Boston 2009) 143, esp. 5, points out the absence of studieson Byzantine classical scholarship as a cultural problem in its own right.The present study is a way of approaching this from the viewpoint of theancient text.

2 A. Kaldellis, The Byzantine Role in the Making of the Corpus of Clas-sical Greek Historiography: A Preliminary Investigation, JHS 132 (2012)7185.

3 Previous contributions include K. Mnscher, Xenophon in der griechisch-rmischen Literatur (Leipzig 1920); on the Byzantine side, R. Scott, The Clas-sical Tradition in Byzantine Historiography, in M. Mullett and R. Scott(eds.), Byzantium and the Classical Tradition (Birmingham 1981) 6174.

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INMACULADA PREZ MARTN 813


questionable and unexciting. For the same reason, looking fortraces of Xenophon is a risky operation and of questionablevalidity: the vocabulary and expressions supposedly derivedfrom him are rarely entirely his, and parallels easily extend tocontemporary rhetorical works, especially Isocrates.4

Second, Xenophons reception can also be evaluated in

terms of genre. All his works seem to have been preserved andthey show he was a prolific author in many genres. His dia-logues ( Memorabilia, Apologia ) were extensively read the genreof dialogue had many imitators in Byzantium5 whereas hisdidactic treatises seem to have had little impact. This gap isdifficult to understand, especially as Byzantium could easilyand profitably have assimilated the knowledge contained in thelatter works, as happened in the Renaissance. Somehow, theseworks failed to reach their potential readers, men like Kekau-menos in the eleventh century who remained on the margins ofthe culture of the capital, isolated on their provincial prop-erties, like the ancient Athenian himself.6 By contrast, theinfluence of the Agesilaus and the much more widely read

4 D. R. Reinsch, Zur Edieren von Texten: ber Zitate, in Proceedings21st Internat. Congr. Byzantine Studies I (Hampshire/Burlington 2006) 299309,esp. 300301, offers examples of supposed quotes from ancient authors inByzantine texts. I.! ev! enko, Re-reading Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in J. Shepard and S. Franklin (eds.), Byzantine Diplomacy (Hampshire/Brookfield1992) 167195, referring to Moravcsiks edition of De administrando imperio, warned jokingly about the shadow of erudition which can be cast on a textby a critical apparatus unduly laden with classical reminiscences.

5 Xenophons dialogues circulated much less than Platos. It would not beuntil the fourteenth century that Theodoros Metochites (G. Mller, Miscel-lanea philosophica et historica[Leipzig 1821] 149155) set down in writing his

reflections on the Memorabilia. Av. Cameron is preparing the first full-lengthstudy of dialogue in Byzantium.6 Ch. Rouech, The Literary Background of Kekaumenos, in C.

Holmes and J. Waring (eds.), Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond (Leiden/Boston 2002) 111138. Only Xenophonspolitical treatises Hiero and Poroi were copied in Constantinople in the tenthcentury, as far as the survivingMSS. indicate (Vat. gr. 1335). There was noleading figure to recover and circulate them from a position of authority.


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814 THE RECEPTION OF XENOPHON IN BYZANTIUM


Cyropaedia as paradigms of encomium has been recognizedsince antiquity.7 As for the Hellenica, we now have onlymanuscripts from the Palaiologan period, in which that textusually follows Thucydides,8 but middle Byzantium knew of itsexistence, not only because Xenophon was repeatedly men-tioned in ancient and late antique sources as the author of

Athenian historiography along with other Attic authors,9

butalso because of his presence in glossaries and grammars.Byzantine writers could have taken from the Hellenica militaryinformation or moral examples,10 but they did not. That it ispreserved in only a few copies and that its protagonists weregenerally unknown shows that its circulation in Byzantium waslimited and that Byzantine chroniclers and historians neithersaw it as a role model nor felt particularly curious about thehistory of the Greek cities.11 The privileged place that the History of the Peloponnesian War and the Hellenica occupy inour canon is not the same as that which they occupied in that ofmiddle Byzantium. The same applies to a work as idiosyncratic

7 D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson, Menander Rhetor(Oxford/New York1981)XV and 117. Elsewhere, Menander (p. 345) puts forward as a modelof the description of a peninsula the one that Xenophon made of Attica in Poroi, and, concerning the acts of war that should adorn thebasilikos logos (p.373), says that$:( 9$33; 9(1; '$./ 6*221(%"


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as the Anabasis, to which modern writers and artists have turnedtime and time again in order to explore the consequences ofarmed conflict,12 but which had far less influence in Byzantiumthan theCyropaedia.

Third, we can focus on the reception of Xenophon as a char-acter and conclude from his presence in collections of maxims

and apophthegmata as well as in ancient and Byzantine biogra-phies such as the Lexicon of Photios and theSouda that he wasknown to the average reader, albeit not entirely accurately. Hewas known as Socratic Xenophon, which can be explainednot so much as a way of distinguishing him from Xenophon ofEphesus but as a synopsis of the expression that theSouda usesfor him (s.vv.L1M33$/ and !"#$% ): GN4#(.$/, %)3+6$%$/ OP71(')7+/ (Athenian, a Socratic philosopher).1. Xenophon in the Chronicle of Georgios Synkellos

We do not know how many manuscripts of Xenophon werepreserved or were accessible in seventh- and eighth-centuryConstantinople, and we have no record that his works wereread in the decades after the reign of Herakleios,13 but theywere no doubt there, waiting to win back the interest ofreaders. The partial and hasty relocation of books caused bythe Arab conquest of the Middle East would not have favoredthe survival of ancient historiography, for when the time cameto pack up and get as far away as possible, Christian texts wereprobably preferred. From the movements of books that tookplace beforeA .D. 800, only one known example concernshistoriography: the sources used by Georgios Synkellos to

12 E.g., by reporters in the American Civil War: see T. Rood, American

Anabasis: Xenophon and the Idea of America from the Mexican War to Iraq(London2010).13 Chorikios of Gaza and Theophylaktos Simokattes had certainly read

Xenophon: E. de Vries-van der Velden, Exempla aus der griechischenGeschichte in Byzanz, in C. Sode and S. Takcs (eds.), Novum millennium.Studies on Byzantine History and Culture Dedicated to Paul Speck(Aldershot 2001)425438, esp. 427428; M. Whitby,The Emperor Maurice and his Historian:Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare (Oxford 1988) 353.


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compose hisChronicle, which, according to the interpretationadvocated by Mango and now widely accepted, formed part ofthe materials he handed over to Theophanes before his death(814), so that the latter could finish the work.14

The Chronicle of Synkellos, theShort History of PatriarchNikephoros, and the Parastaseis Syntomai Chronikai are the three

works that led Ihor!ev

!

enko to seek the beginnings of Byzan-tine humanism in the search for the past,15 and it is reasonableto relate this interest in history to the cultural recovery thatmarked the end of the eighth century, led by a brilliant gen-eration of ecclesiastical and imperial officials trained during thefirst Iconoclasm. But an interest in the past does not mean aninterest in reading classical historiography. At the beginning ofhis work, the first great Byzantine chronicle and written as acontinuation of that of Synkellos, Theophanes mentions thegreat number of sources read by Synkellos in order to composehis work;16 indeed, the number of pagan Greek historians inSynkellos book is remarkable.17 But no scholar of his sourcesbelieves that he knew all those authors at first hand. OnlyWilliam Adler, in his recent English translation of Synkellos,has argued in favor of extensive reading by the chronicler, whomight have read Dexippos, Porphyry, Diodoros Siculus, andAgathias directly.18

14 The Syriac origin of some of the chronicles used by Synkellos suggeststhat he had brought them from Palestine (where he had been a monk inHagios Chariton, Souka) to Constantinople after 784: C. Mango, GreekCulture in Palestine after the Arab Conquest, in G. Cavallo et al. (eds.),Scritture, libri e testi nelle aree provinciali di Bisanzio(Spoleto 1991) 149160.

15 I. ! ev! enko, The Search for the Past in Byzantium around the Year800 , DOP 46 (1992) 279293.

16 Theoph. 3 de Boor:9$33$M/ '" Q1$#$215%$*/ 7(D K6'$1)$215%$*/ R#(2#$S/ 7(D R71)H&/ '$M'$*/ 8)"1"*#465"#$/.

17 W. Adler,Time Immemorial. Archaic History and its Sources in Christian Chro-nography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus(Washington 1989) 132172,on the sources of Synkellos.

18 W. Adler and P. Tuffin,The Chronography of George Synkellos(Oxford/New York 2002) lxi and lxv.


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Synkellos mentions Xenophon specifically the Anabasis twice. The first time is in a long paragraph that follows aquotation from EusebiusChronicle about the eleventh king ofthe Persians, Artaxerxes.19 He gives a hasty and inaccuratesummary of the Anabasis (but not of the Persian civil war) forwhich we have found no intermediate sources beyond the

original text itself. Such a summary was unlikely to be found inEusebius, nor is it to be found in the short biography ofXenophon in Diogenes Laertios (2.4859), which gives onlybrief details about the expedition. For his part, Diodoros(14.1937), despite recounting in some detail the Expedition ofthe Ten Thousand, does not mention the patronymic of Arta-xerxes, nor the Thracian king Seuthes. Mosshammers editionof Synkellos points to Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus as asource: in the paragraph devoted to the civil war betweenArtaxerxes and Cyrus the Younger, Justin mentions the par-ticipation of Spartan mercenaries on the side of Cyrus, andhow they returned home after his death.20 But unlike Synkellos,

19 306.25307.11 Mosshammer: -9D '$< G1'(TU1T$* '$< =#V$#$/ W


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Justin does not mention the journey of the Ten Thousand, northe fact that Xenophon took part in it and later recounted thestory. Therefore, Synkellos likely used Xenophon directly.

Synkellos second mention of Xenophon, a little later in thechronicle, is part of a collection of reports. This is a doublemention, of which the first part (310.3) is taken from theChron-

icle of Eusebius:WM1$* CU16$* R#5H(6)/, o# K6'$1". !"#$% d L1M33$*.21 The second part (about the Persian civil war:310.1113), suggests that Cyrus led the Greek army fromGreece:7(D W


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omission could be that these works were school-texts, read byPhotios and his brother Tarasios in their youth. Moreover, theabsence of theCyropaedia and Anabasis may also be explained bya desire to avoid overlapping narratives, as Ktesias was theauthor chosen by Photios to provide information about Persianhistory (cod. 72, dedicated to that topic, is a proper prcis).

Ktesias was a direct competitor of Xenophon in narrating theexploits of Cyrus the Elder, and he was literally his opponentwhen the armies of Cyrus the Younger and Artaxerxes met inCunaxa (401B.C.), as he was on the side of Artaxerxes, whosewounds he dressed. Photios introduces the comparison withXenophon, but he does not set out the points of disagreementbetween the two historians.24

Works of history receive special mention in Photios ded-icatory letter to Tarasios, as if they were a special group ofreadings (I 12 Henry): It will not be difficult, if you so wish,to regroup on the one hand those (codices) of a historicalnature and on the other those belonging to this or any otherissue. Moreover, the examination to which Hgg has sub- jected the hagiographical codices proves that the search forinformation about the past was the main reason why Photiosread saints lives, especially of preeminent ecclesiastical fig-ures.25 Photios, like Constantine VII later, was aware of thelack of information about the recent history of the empire, andhis interest in history was not limited to the Roman past. Forexample, he devoted a separate codex (66) to theShort History ofthe patriarch Nikephoros.26

24 Cod. 72 (36a):%46D 8, (a'X# ' 93")+#P# s K6'$1". (Y'+9'4#

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25 T. Hgg, Photius as a Reader of Hagiography: Selection and Crit-icism, DOP 53 (1999) 4358.

26 Pace A. Markopoulos, Roman Antiquarianism: Aspects of the RomanPast in the Middle Byzantine Period, in Proceedings I 277298, esp. 283,who reduces Photios interest in history to a discreet approach to Roman


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The Bibliotheke contains some interesting notes on Xenophon,albeit of dubious historicity. In the extensive cod. 243 onHimerios, Xenophon illustrates the effect that even a few wordscan have on the spirit: conversations with Socrates gave himthe strength to fight.27 This sort of information usually comesfrom collections of anecdotes such as those used by Diogenes

Laertios, and gnomological collections that fancifully madeXenophon into a comrade-in-arms of Socrates.28 Anotherpiece of biographical information is found in cod. 260 onIsocrates, that Xenophon, Theopompos, and Ephoros werestudents (R71$('(A ) of Isocrates,29 who encouraged them towrite history by assigning topics according to their skills andpreferences. The inclusion of Xenophon among Isocratesdisciples was not found by Photios in Ps.-Plutarch30 orDiogenes Laertios, nor do the other sources mentioned byPhotios (Caecilius of Caleacte and Dionysios of Halikarnassos)provide this piece of information. Nevertheless, Schamp hasconvincingly suggested that the inclusion of Xenophon could

___history. N. G. Wilson,Scholars of Byzantium2 (London/Cambridge [Mass.]1996) 100101, has seen in the Bibliotheke a particular interest in the Orient;A. Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature, 650850 (Athens 1999) 1415,has added to this bias a concern for the nature of imperial power.

27 Bibl. 372b:f '" !"#$% -6'1('"M"'$ 7(D 2;1 7(D 8+1* "'; OP-715'4# !"#$% w#"27". In this case the information came from Himerios(16) and was not supplied by Photios.

28 See below on the gnomologia.29 Bibl . 486b:2"2+#(6) 8, (Y'$< R71$('(D 7(D !"#$% d L1M33$* 7(D

@"+9$9$/ d x.$/ 7(D y%$1$/ d W*(.$/ , $:/ 7(D '(./ K6'$1)7(./ 6*221(-%(./ 91$Y'1U_('$ Q1V6(6N(), 91X/ '`# z756'$* %M6)# R#(3+2P/ 7(D ';/

a9$NU6")/ 'J/ K6'$1A(/ (Y'$./ 8)(#")5"#$/. F. Gisinger, Xenophon , RE 18A (1967) 15692052, esp. 1573, gives no credence to Photios in-formation, while A. Roquette, Xenophontis vita (Kaliningrad 1884) 15, and E.Delebecque, Essai sur la vie de Xnophon (Paris 1957) 362363, simply mentionit.

30 Vitae decem oratorum 837C: -(NV'"*6" 8 (Y'^ 7(D @"+9$9$/ d x.$/ 7(D y%$1$/ d W*(.$/ 7(D G67349)584/ d '; '1(2?8$M"#( 6*2215_(/ 7(D @"$8U7'4/ d E(643A'4/ d ';/ '1(2?8A(/ v6'"1$# 215_(/ .


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have originated from cod. 176 on Theopompos, where Isocra-tes school reappears with a wording that might imply the in-clusion of Xenophon as the author of a Hellenica.31

For modern students of the Bibliotheke, the most valuableelements of the text (besides the careful summary of so muchreading) are the comparison of sources and Photios own judg-

ments on the veracity of each witness, reflecting his rigorousapproach to their works. The Bibliotheke sparked interest, atleast among students and colleagues, in many works that hadlong ceased to be read, and of which they would now discovernew virtues.32 These works were not necessarily those thatcarried the most weight in the Bibliotheke, as shown by the longcodex of Ktesias, whose history did not survive the catastropheof 1204 and was not read by Palaiologan scholars. But theimpetus given to the circulation of texts has to be kept in per-spective. It was not so much that the Bibliotheke was considereda guide for reading based on the circulation of the work during

31 Bibl. 121a:7(D ';/ K6'$1)7;/ 8, a9$NU6")/ 'X# 8)8567(3$# (Y'$./ 91$H(3".#, ';/ ,# {#P ' Q1+#P# |%+1?, @"$9+9? 8, ';/ "'; @$*7*8A84# I334#)75/ : Schamp, Les Vies191192. Henry, Bibl.VIII 44n.5, explains the inclusion of Xenophon as a gloss introduced into the textof Ps.-Plutarch or of Photios.

32 Patriarch Nikolaos I, one of Photios pupils, sent the emperor RomanosI Lekapenos a consolatory letter ( Ep. 152) on the death of his wife Theodora(922), in which he includes a brief anthology of examples of similar losses.Somewhat absurdly, the examples refer to the attitude of parents to the lossof their children, which was not the point. Nikolaos avoids any mention ofthe prophet David, since Romanos already knew him, but he does putforward as an example of acceptance the Roman general Aemilius, who losttwo sons. R. J. H. Jenkins and L. G. Westerink, Nicholas I, Patriarch of Con-

stantinople, Letters (Washington 1973), indicate that the source is Plutarch, Aem.Paul. 35, but Nikolaos, who points out that this Roman lived before theChristian era, adds a famous aphorism, sometimes attributed to Periklesand sometimes to Xenophon: when he learned of the death of his son, heuttered the phrase I knew that I had begotten him mortal (quoted byDiog. Laert. 2.48.5, Plut.Consol. ad Apoll. 119A ). This gives the impressionthat Nikolaos had not read Plutarch, or at least did not take the informationdirectly from theVitae.


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its authors lifetime (which was private and limited), but thatPhotios, an aristocratic and well-connected official even beforehe was placed on the patriarchal throne by the Caesar Bardas,had an influential audience consisting of other imperial andecclesiastical officials, augmented by his disciples and followers,among whom were members of the imperial family and the

emperor himself.3. Xenophon at the court of Leo VI: Arethas and Leo ChoirosphaktesAccording to theVita Basilii , Basil I liked listening to histori-

cal narratives, political advice, moral teachings, and patristicand spiritual admonitions and counselings, and examined thelives and habits of generals and emperors, and how they man-aged their affairs and led their battles, in order to learn fromthem.33 Such statements usually provoke scepticism, and somehave expressed the view that in this passage Constantine VIIwas reflecting his own interest in history onto the figure of hisgrandfather.34 Still, Photios influence at the Macedonian courthad brought new life to the study of the past.35

33 I. ! ev! enko, Chronographiae quae Theophanis continuati nomine fertur liber quoVita Basilii Imperatoris amplectitur(Berlin/New York 2011) 72.614.

34 P. J. Alexander, Secular Biography at Byzantium , Speculum 15 (1940)194209, esp. 195.

35 On the influence of Photios at the court see Th. Antonopoulou,The Homilies of the Emperor Leo VI (Leiden/New York 1997) 272. The oldest sur-viving Byzantine historical codex (Wake 5, Christ Church, Oxford, with thechronicles of Synkellos, Nikephoros, and Theophanes) may date from thistime: N. G. Wilson, A Manuscript of Theophanes in Oxford, DOP 26(1972) 357360, and Mediaeval Greek Bookhands (Cambridge [Mass.] 1973) no.17. In hisVita of the empress Theophano, Nikephoros Gregoras alludes tothe cultural activity sponsored in the palace by Leo VI and his wife: E.Kurtz, Zwei griechische Texte ber die Hl. Theophano, Mmoires de lAca-dmie impriale des sciences de St.-PtersbourgVIII 3.2 (1898) 2545, at 40.2730.This can give rise to the suspicion that Gregoras was transposing thesituation of fourteenth-century Constantinople to the Macedonian era. Thecolophon at the end of Marc. gr. 538 (a Catena on Job) says that theMS.was copied in 905-9D 'J/ N"$6*#"12V'$* H(6)3"A(/ nU$#'$/ 7(D G3"T5#-81$*, which may imply that it was also commissioned at the court. Thesame can be observed in the Bodleian PlatoClarke 39, copied by John the


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One of the most significant ways by which Photios couldleave his mark on the court was by tutoring the children of theemperor.36 We have evidence that Leo VI studied militaryworks and history as one of his duties.37 Markopoulos haspointed out the influence of theCyropaedia on Leo VIs funeraloration for his father,38 and we know that the emperor pos-

sessed a manuscript of the Anabasis, since a copy of it from 1320survives (Par. gr. 1640), also containing theCyropaedia.39 On f.123v, between the end ofCyropaedia(f. 123) and the beginningof Anabasis(f. 124), the copyist has included a poem in iambicmeter addressed to Leo VI.40 This suggests that a codex of the ___Calligrapher on commission by Arethas in 895,H(6)3"A(/ nU$#'$/ '$< %)3$Q1A6'$* *K$< k(6)3"A$* '$< R") #}6'$*.

36 We know thanks to Theoph. Cont. 276277 that Photios was Leo VIsteacher, though Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature 54, does not takethis at face value. Symeon Logothetes 133.1 (ed. Wahlgren) confirms thatPhotios was the teacher of Leos brother Stephanos.

37 This was the recommendation of the Parenetic Chapters, a mirror ofprinces, supposedly addressed by Basil to his son Leo, and possibly com-posed by Photios in 880883: A. Markopoulos, Autour des Chapitresparntiques de Basile Ier, in !"#"$%& . Mlanges offerts Hlne Ahrweiler (Paris 1998) 469479, esp. 471.

38 A. Markopoulos, G9$64")g6")/ 6'+# nU$#'( Obc '+# O$%+, in'( )* * +,- ./ - ,-0 1*+2*3).*0 45673* I (Athens 1994) 193201,esp. 195197; M. Vinson, Rhetoric and Writing Strategies in the NinthCentury, in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Rhetoric in Byzantium(Aldershot 2003) 922, at1718, on the basis of the comparison of Basil and Herakles, has insistedthat the model followed by Leo is that of theepitaphios logos of Menander. P.Magdalino, The Non-Juridical Legislation of the Emperor Leo VI, in Sp.Troianos (ed.), Analecta Atheniensia ad ius byzantinum spectantia I (Athens 1998)169182, has drawn attention to Justinians legislation as a model for Leos

Novellae. On the use of ancient statuary in palace decoration, P. Magdalino,The Bath of Leo the Wise and the Macedonian Renaissance Revisited, DOP 42 (1988) 97118, esp. 113.

39 P. Ghin et al., Les manuscrits grecs dats des XIII e et XIV e sicles conservsdans les bibliothques publiques de FranceI (Turnhout 2005) 5153, nr. 19, pl.4649. A. Markopoulos, in'( )* * 197, believes that the original codex ofXenophon would have contained both works.

40 The poem has been republished and studied by A. Markopoulos, in


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Anabasis, the original of that copied in 1320, was presented orgiven to the emperor.41 The content and position of the poemlead us to believe that the gift included a copy of the Anabasis alone, and not of theCyropaedia. The copyists of Par. gr. 1640possibly transcribed two independent codices, each containinga different work. The dedicatory poem begins:

$Y8U# ') '"19#X# p/ 9(3()+/ ')/ 3+2$/ 53)6'( "6'X/ G'')7J/ "Y23P''A(/ 0QP# '" 3( 91;# '`# R3VN")(# 93U$# 7(D lP21(%$


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$Y7 "YNS/ 02#P 9J( '`# %)3(1QA(#; 20 N*X# 2;1 (Y'X/ -9#UP# 7(D 9)71A(# 6%MlP# '" 9$33; 7(D 8)m''P# R67+9P/ d1(./ R'57'$)/ 6*93(7"D/ R#B1UN4.8$7". 8U $) W3U(1Q$/ d 73")#X/ n57P# 6%J3() '; 95#'( 6*6Q"N"D/ R'$3A] 25 WM1$* 6$%X# H$M3"*( %(*3A6(/ '+'" .42

According to Lauxtermanns interpretation, the date of thepoem and, by extension, of the originalMS. of the Anabasis, is904. The main argument is the identification of Cyrus theElder with Leo and Cyrus the Younger with Alexander, hisbrother (1720), who, it seems, tried to assassinate Leo in903.43 Given that in the following year Thessaloniki had brieflyfallen into Arab hands because of the cowardice of the generalHimerios a charge the poem would make by attributingR'$3A( to Klearchos (2426), the Spartan general who foughton the side of Cyrus at Cunaxa the poem should be dated to904. The historical inconsistencies have been explained by

Lauxtermann as Byzantium at its best (212): the poet, whoknows the Anabasis as well as does the recipient of the man-

42 Transl. Lauxtermann: Nothing is as pleasant as an ancient text oozingwith Attic eloquence, especially if it lucidly shows the truth and depicts thestate of affairs; then it teaches the wise and renders them even wiser so thatthey know what to do in life. For it provides courage and readiness foraction, procures the more accurate insights and renders the young moremature and aged through its lessons in ancient lore. Speak up, Xenophon,in support of what I am saying! For I have in mind our lord Leo, the brightsplendour of the empire, who, having culled intimate knowledge about theworld from his study of ancient writings, is the eye of the whole universe.For, whoever sees Cyrus the Younger here as he deploys his shield of ten-

thousand men and takes up arms against Cyrus the Elder, would he notimmediately understand that the lust of power is fraught with disaster? In afit of blazing anger and spite, rushing at full speed but without any sense ofdirection, he was killed, a victim of his own undisciplined impulses. Yet Ithink that Clearchus, the famous Spartan, ruined the whole enterprise byhis cowardice, thus thwarting the wise strategy of Cyrus.

43 But see S. Tougher, The Reign of Leo VI (886912). Politics and People (Leiden/New York 1997) 225227, who disputes this accusation.


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uscript, has played with the characters to denounce to theemperor the threat posed to him by the lust for power of hisbrother Alexander and by the cowardice of Himerios.

An objection to this interpretation is that the poem is ad-dressed to a young Leo (line 9), but in 904 he was 38. The finalpart of the dedication, wishing him many years of peaceful

rule, also suggests that we are at the beginning of his reign(886). And the Anabasis does seem an appropriate gift for a young emperor, who has understood the educational value ofhistory and has studied it in depth, as suggested by the be-ginning of the poem. In my opinion, therefore, the date of thepoem is 886: in the work dedicated to Leo, Cyrus the Youngertakes up arms against the legitimate emperor Artaxerxes, whohas just inherited the entire Persian empire. In 886, after thedeath of Basil I, the co-emperors Leo and Alexander havetaken the reins of Byzantium. The older brother wastes no timein sending signals that he has the situation under control (onesuch signal is the second exile of Photios), and that his youngerbrother will be subordinate. But Alexander had been the heirapparent in 883886 (during Leos imprisonment) and was alegitimate son of Basil, unlike his older brother, whose fathercould have been Michael III. Consequently in 886 Alexandermight have had no intention of being sidelined: the%)3(1QA( which the poem denounces did not have to refer to the situ-ation in 903 but to the permanent tension between the co-emperors.44 This does not explain why the author of the poemchanges Artaxerxes to Cyrus the Great, but neither does theinterpretation of Lauxtermann; nor does the identification ofKlearchos with Himerios explain lines 2426, because it wouldsuggest that he supported Alexanders ambitions, which is no-where attested.It is worth noting that, in blaming the defeat at Cunaxa onthe disobedience and cowardice of Klearchos, the poet is not

44 As explained in the chapter devoted to Alexander by Tougher, The Reign of Leo VI 219232, Cyrus the Younger was vexed by his fathers de-cision to name Artaxerxes as his successor.


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following Xenophon ( Anab. 1.8.1314). The latter attributedthe defeat to a miscalculation by Cyrus, who had ordered theGreek hoplites of Klearchos to occupy the right wing, by theEuphrates, while he occupied the centre. But Artaxerxes besttroops, located at the centre of the formation, being more num-erous, enveloped Cyrus left wing. Understanding this, Cyrus

ordered Klearchos to occupy the centre, that is, to place him-self in front of Artaxerxes, but this would have required adiagonal advance and coming between the rest of the army andthe royal units, which Klearchos was unwilling to do.45 In hisaccount of the battle ( Artax. 8.1), Plutarch provides some detailsthat are not in Xenophon, such as the name of the place,Cunaxa, and its location relative to Babylon. According to thisversion, Klearchos tried to convince Cyrus before the battle toleave him in the rearguard, and finally occupied the right flankin order to enjoy the protection of the river (8.23). It was thecowardice of Klearchos and not Cyrus rashness that causedthe latters downfall (8.5). Thus, the author of the epigram wasfollowing Plutarchs version, not Xenophons.46 If we try totranslate Klearchos cowardice to the situation in 886, what the

45 J. W. Hewitt, The Disobedience of Clearchus at Cunaxa,CJ 14(1919) 237249, reconstructs the battle and shows that Klearchos could notobey the spur-of-the-moment order of Cyrus, who had miscalculated thedeployment of Artaxerxes forces and wanted Klearchos and his hoplites tobe in front of the king, a movement which at this stage of the battle wasalready impossible. For a discussion of the texts on the battle see J. M.Bigwood, The Ancient Accounts of the Battle of Cunaxa, AJP 104 (1983)340357. Photios cod. 224 includes a moral portrait of Klearchos (222b).

46 PlutarchsVitae were early favourites with Byzantine readers: Par. gr.

1678, for example, was copied in the first third of the tenth century, ac-cording to J. Irigoin, La formation dun corpus: un problme dhistoire destextes dans la tradition desVies paralllesde Plutarque, RHT 1213 (1982 1983) 111, and La tradition des textes grecs. Pour une critique historique (Paris2003) 311328, esp. 324. Another readily accessible source in the first halfof the tenth century, Diodoros (14.2224), does not mention Cyrus error oftactics and, on the contrary, insists on the bravery and success in battle ofthe Spartan mercenaries.


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poet is trying to say is that supporting Alexander militarilywould only lead to failure.

The poem presents its author as well positioned at the courtand familiar with ancient history. As it happens, therewas someone there interested in ancient history and with a weak-ness for books. Arethas of Caesarea was the favourite orator of

Leo VI in the years 901902, according to the date given to aseries of speeches made before the emperor,47 but his relation-ship with Leo, who was of the same age, went back probably tothe reign of Basil,48 who would have considered Arethas a goodinfluence on his son. Leos wisdom is a subject that reappearsin several of Arethas compositions.49 One of these, from 902,develops a metaphor that might well reflect the proliferation ofbooks at the end of the ninth century, which Arethas hereattributes to the interest of the emperor (II 46.2327): I nolonger feel concerned about purchasing books, I have sated mythirst for them, for you have sown for us the seeds of all goodthings and our land yields fruit corresponding to the sower andthe seed.

47 R. J. H. Jenkins, B. Laourdas, and C. A. Mango, Nine Orations ofArethas from Cod. Marc. gr. 524, BZ 47 (1954) 165. M. Loukaki, Notessur lactivit dArthas comme rhteur de la cour de Lon VI, in M.Grnbart (ed.),Theatron. Rhetorische Kultur in Sptantike und Mittelalter (Berlin/New York 2007) 259275, at 260, considers that this group of speeches re-flects an attempt by Leo (thwarted in the Tetragamy) to set up a systematicprogramme of ceremonies at court. On the homilies of Arethas see Th. An-tonopoulou, Homiletic Activity in Constantinople around 900, in M. B.Cunningham and P. Allen (eds.), Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christianand Byzantine Homiletics (Leiden/Boston 1998) 317348, at 327. One of thepractises described in De caerimoniis, and the first example of which is also

from Arethas, is that of giving a speech in the palace during a banquetfollowing the liturgy and processions of Epiphany: G. T. Dennis, ImperialPanegyric: Rhetoric and Reality, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204 (Washington 1997) 131140, esp. 136 and n.32.

48 Tougher,The Reign of Leo VI 51.49 L. G. Westerink, Arethae archiepiscopi Caesariensis scripta minora II (Leipzig

1972) 2425 (Leo presented as a Platonic philosopher-king) and 46; cf.Tougher,The Reign of Leo VI 115, 122.


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If the recovery of ancient history took place thanks to Pho-tios, his personal interests, and imperial policy (both domesticand foreign), it was in the next generation, that of Arethas, LeoChoirosphaktes, and the emperor Leo VI, that texts started tobe copied with a frequency that would guarantee their survival.However, the real explosion in the copying of historical books

was yet to come. The bibliophile Arethas had a particular in-terest in historical works, and even added into his copy of theShort Chronicle of patriarch Nikephoros, Mosquensis gr. 231, asummarized excerpt from theChronicle of Monemvasia(of whichArethas himself was likely the original author), in order tosupplement Nikephoros text with information about his home-land, Patras, which was reconquered by the emperor Nikepho-ros in 805/6.50 That Arethas had also read the Anabasis isshown by the sentence with which he began his famous in-vective against Leo Choirosphaktes in about 907:51 H(H(A, # {1( 7(D '+8" Q1*6$


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in the same work (I 210.2325,R33 "\ 7(D ` '(


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perial scriptorium shortly after 920,56 includes the title of apoem addressed to Leo VI on the occasion of the Brumalia,57 but the poem itself is lost. The somewhat stilted style of thededicatory poem prefacing the Anabasis is perhaps strange forthe pen of Arethas, but it shows affinities with the poetry ofanother of Leos courtiers, a rival of Arethas, Leo Choirosphak-

tes. In his poems, this Leo tended to use long compound words,and one of these monsters is in the already mentioned poem inVindob. Theol. gr. 212,58 a copy of Theodoretos offered byPetros Patrikios to the emperor, the dedicatory poem of whichmay have been commissioned from Leo Choirosphaktes.

Despite the paucity of this initial evidence, it is possible toconfirm that it was in the time of Leo VI that a form of oratorywas formalized at the court, in which reference to ancient his-tory came to form an inevitable part. In 927, in an encomiumaddressed to Romanos I Lekapenos celebrating the armisticewith Bulgaria, Theodoros Daphnopates stressed the uniqueand ineffable nature of the armistice with a series of questionsculminating in these words: The histories of how many Po-lybioses, the Parallel Lives of how many Plutarchs, the verses ofhow many rhapsodists, the gems of how many rhetoricians willcontain stories like this?59 Henceforward, there would be noimperial discourse that could do withoutdiegemata from ancient

56 Wilson,Scholars 143, has identified the writing and some elements ofthe decoration of this codex with those of Berol. gr. 134 (Phillipps 1538), acopy of the Hippiatrica dedicated to Constantine VII.

57 A. Mai,Spicilegium Romanum IV (Rome 1840)XXXVII.58 See n.41 above and Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry 29.59 R. J. H. Jenkins, The Peace with Bulgaria (927) Celebrated by Theo-dore Daphnopates , in Polychronion. Festschrift F. Dlger (Heidelberg 1966)

287303:9+6P# K6'$1A() C$3*HAP#, 9+6P# C3$*'51QP# 9(153343$),9$AP# (_?8 U'1(, 'A#P# "Y23P''A() 4'+1P# '; '$)(


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historiography.60 It is also significant that during the reign of Leo VI were

copied the oldest surviving codices of Xenophon, EscorialT.III.1461 and Erlangen ms. gr. A 1 (88),62 and it should comeas no surprise that both contain theCyropaedia, the work ofXenophon most copied in Byzantium, and the preference for

which among Byzantine readers is explained by its greaterpolitical and ideological focus in addition, no doubt, to thefascination aroused by the Persian paraphernalia and royalfigure of Cyrus the Elder. We cannot locate the copying ofthese manuscripts with greater accuracy, but we can point tocontemporary codices reflecting the same sensibility: Isocratesin Vat. Urb. gr. 111, usually dated to the late ninth century,Thucydides in Heidelb. Palat. gr. 252 (end of the ninth cen-tury),63 and Cassius Dio in Marc. gr. 395 (second quarter of thetenth century).4. Xenophon and Constantine Porphyrogennetos

Compared to Photios, the historical work of the successor ofLeo VI had quantitatively superior material consequences,which puts at our disposal many historical codices contem-

60 Cf. Alexander,Speculum 15 (1940) 196, on theVita of Theodoros Stou-dites apparently composed by Daphnopates, who also wrote an encomiumof Theophanes Confessor: K. Krumbacher, Ein Dithyrambus auf denChronisten Theophanes,SBMnch4 (1896) 583624, where theChronicle isnot mentioned. On whether or not Daphnopates is the author of Theopha-nes Continuatus see A. Markopoulos, Thodore Daphnopats et la Con-tinuation de Thophane, JBG 35 (1985) 171182, with discussion ofearlier bibliography; he does not think that the attribution has been securelyproved.

61

G. de Andrs, Sobre un cdice de Jenofonte del s. X (Escurialense174, T. III. 14), Emerita 23 (1955) 232257; L. Perria, Arethaea. Il codiceVallicelliano di Areta e laCiropedia dellEscorial, RSBN 25 (1988) 4156.

62 On this codex, the second of Xenophon to reach Italy, see M. Bandini,Un nuovo libro della biblioteca di Guarino Veronese, RivFil 136 (2008)257266.

63 A. Diller, The Age of Some Early Greek Classical Manuscripts, in J.L. Heller and J. K. Newman (eds.),Serta Turyniana(Urbana 1974) 514524.


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porary with Constantine X, or shortly later, and their copies.64 This plethora of historical codices, as would also be the caseduring the reign of Andronikos II Palaiologos, reflects theinterest in historiography of the emperor himself and membersof the court (Basil parakoimomenos, Alexander of Nicaea,65 theanonymous professor of rhetoric appointed by Constantine,

Niketas Magistros,66

Kosmas Magistros, John Kourkouas). Theimmediate benefit was to provide materials that could be usedin dealings, peaceful or otherwise, with the neighbours of theempire, as indicated, for instance, in the preface to Constan-tines own De administrando imperio. The only example of Xeno-phon in this specific sense of the use of ancient historiographyis in chapter 8 of De thematibus, dedicated to thethema ofChaldia:'X 8, 7(3$M"#$# NU( x(38A( 7(D r 4'1+9$3)/ 3"2$U#4 b1(9"l$


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'J/ )71u/ G1"#A(/ "\6D 91$$A)( (cf. Anab. 4.8.22). At thesame time, antiquarian interest in the past stimulated a passionfor reconstructing events that had been erased by time and rel-egated to oblivion, as indicated by the preface of TheophanesContinuatus.67

In theVita Basilii, Constantine VII (or his ghost-writers) had

in mind the models provided by the ancient biographies. Jen-kins has pointed to the influence of Isocrates Evagoras,68 whichis held to be the first eulogy written about a contemporary and,being the encomium of a king of Cyprus that Isocrates ad-dressed to his son Nicocles, is presented as a work of filial love,so with the same orientation as theVita Basilii . But the Evagoras is a speech, not a narrative, and a speech that reflects on itsown significance as an encomium and that, either through itsbombast or by reflecting on its own task, distances itself from itssubject. Markopoulos has demonstrated the influence of theCyropaedia on theVita Basilii ,69 although he admits that it liesnot so much in its use of language or in the motifs that make upthe story but rather in that Xenophon composed a moral por-trait of the sovereign, a portrait neither sober nor reliable, but

67 34 Bekker:7(D '$


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created with the freedom that enabled him to convert Cyrusinto a paradigm of good government. In that sense, Xenophoncould have inspired Constantine to face the task of recountingthe reign of his grandfather.70

As far as the Excerpta Constantiniana are concerned,71 weshould remember that, in the list of historical sources used in

the Excerpta book De virtutibus et vitiis, Xenophon (no.Nc !"#$%'$/ WM1$* 9()8"A(/ 7(D R#(H56"P/ WM1$* '$< C(1*65')8$/ ) represents classical Greek history together withHerodotus and Thucydides. Nevertheless, we find no trace ofthe Hellenica in these books nor in the others of the Excerpta, butonly of theCyropaedia and Anabasis.72 The Xenophontean sec-tions of De virtutibus et vitiis73 do not seek to recount the for-mation of Cyrus empire, but are a carefully-told narrative thatallows us to understand the story as a whole. It begins with apresentation of the work (1.1.6) and then of its protagonistCyrus (1.2.12); it explains the Persian diet (1.2.16), the char-acter of Cyrus, his entry into adulthood (1.4.15), and hisvirtues (e.g. austerity 1.5.1, 4.5.4); relations with the Armenians(3.1.4143, 3.3.15); the army on campaign (4.2.10, 4.3.3); the

70 I have not found any special presence of the excerpta of theCyropaedia included in De virtutibus et vitiis in the encomium of Basil, as we would expectfrom a personal involvement of Constantine in both projects. In fact, the ex-cerpta do not give any biographical details, such as the premonitory dreamsabout his birth, which might have inspired theVita Basilii. However, the ex-cerptor has indeed been sensitive to the moral qualities of the monarch: hispersonality and upbringing, generosity, sobriety, loyalty, and friendship.

71 See A. Nmeth, Imperial Systematization of the Past. Emperor Constantine VIIand his Historical Excerpts (diss. Budapest 2010); B. Flusin, Les Excerpta Constantiniens. Logique dune anti-histoire, in S. Pittia (ed.), Fragmentsdhistoriens grecs autour de Denys dHalicarnasse (Rome 2002) 537559.

72 Markopoulos, in Proceedings I 288.! ev! enko, in Byzantine Diplomacy 180,points out the percentage of classical texts in Constantinian compilations,where the literature from the classical period is indeed in a minority; thegreater part of the texts are Hellenistic, Roman, or Byzantine.

73 A. G. Roos, Excerpta historicaII (Berlin 1910) 46:-7 'J/ K6'$1A(/ !"#$-%'$/ WM1$* 9()8"A(/.


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story of Gobryas (5.2.219); the sack of Sardis (7.2.57); thestory of Pheraulas and the Sacan (8.3.4950); and the epilogue(8.8.127). The excerptor shows no interest in military tactics(he omits, for example, the preparation for war in Book II andthe conquest of Babylon in Book VII), or in Persian govern-ment. Most notably, in the second part he does not adequately

describe the wars.The extracts-7 'J/ R#(H56"P/ WM1$* C(1*65')8$/ thatfollow those from theCyropaedia have suffered an accidentleading to the loss of the final part, along with the extracts fromArrians Anabasis and the beginning of the extracts from Dio-nysios of Halikarnassos.74 Unlike theCyropaedia, the excerpta from the Anabasis do not attempt to tell the story of the TenThousand, but have chosen static events, such as the portrait ofCyrus the Younger from the end of Book I (1.9) and the char-acterizations of Klearchos (the leader of the Greeks), Proxenos(Xenophons friend), and Menon (the traitor) from the end ofBook II. The explanation of Xenophons participation in theexpedition (3.1.48) does contain action, but is also a moralargument. The last surviving excerpt (5.3.510) is an excursusthat illustrates Xenophons piety and recounts an importantmoment in his biography: as this passage from the Anabasis relates, Xenophon gave part of the booty from Kerasos to thetemple of Apollo at Delphi, in his own name and in that of hisfriend Proxenos, killed in battle, and another portion to a priestof Artemis. Later, during his exile at Scillus near Olympia,Xenophon used the money to buy a piece of land where hunt-ing was excellent and to build an altar and temple to Artemis,where he made annual offerings.75

The De sententiis excerpta begin with fourteen fragments ofvarying length from Books VII and VIII of theCyropaedia.76

74 Th. Bttner-Wobst, Die Anlage der historischen Encyklopdie desKonstantinos Porphyrogennetos, BZ 15 (1906) 88120, esp. 94.

75 E. Badian, The Life of Xenophon, in Chr. J. Tuplin (ed.), Xenophonand his World (Stuttgart 2004) 3353, esp. 34, 4546.

76 These are 7.2.29, 7.4.1213, 7.5.7579, 7.5.8083, 7.5.84, 8.1.1, 8.1.8,


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Some are simple sentences, while others are long extracts likethose contained in De virtutibus et vitiis. As in that collection, theyfollow the original order and reflect a certain amount of effortto complete the sense of the fragments, for example by re-placing pronouns by their referents at the beginning of eachtext.77 The sentences chosen are not part of the gnomological

collections, and generally have a distinct tradition, except forsome chance overlap with Stobaeus.78 This means that theselection made by Constantines excerptors was original.

As for the long fragments, they complete those collected in De virtutibus et vitiis: excerpts nos. 35 are part of the discourse ofCyrus with which Book VII ends, in which the king, with hisleaders, tries to establish the organization of Babylon. Excerptno. 12 (8.4.78+2127) includes part of Cyrus conversationswith his guests at a banquet: they are verbal duels with whichthe feast ends, and contain nothing noteworthy. No. 14 (8.7.5 22) includes most of the last will of Cyrus, the words addressedto his family and friends, taking stock of his life, thinking aboutdeath, and more importantly, naming an heir and setting outwhat Cambyses relationship with his brothers should be.79

This is all of Xenophon contained in the Excerpta,and, as wehave seen, it is limited to the two most widely circulating works,the Anabasis and Cyropaedia. The manuscript of Xenophonclosest to the work of the emperors excerptors is Vat. gr. 1335,

___8.1.12, 8.2.5, 8.2.1, 8.3.3548, 8.4.78+2127, 8.4.32, 8.7.522.

77 As in no. 13 (8.4.32).78 As in 8.1.1 ({1QP# R2(NX/ $Y8,# 8)(%U1") 9('1X/ R2(N$< ), and the end

of 8.4.32 ($YQ d WM1$* '1+9$/ '$)$


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whose oldest part (ff. 69237), usually dated to the second halfof the tenth century, contains theCyropaedia, Anabasis, Socrates Apology, Agesilaus, Hiero, and theConstitution of Sparta. This makesVat. gr. 1335 the oldest surviving example of a corpus of Xeno-phons works, though it omits the Memorabilia and the technicaltreatises. Since the codex suffered two restorations, in the

twelfth century and the late fourteenth, the original selectionmay not coincide with that preserved today; but it is in thespirit of the times that the works transcribed are the mostpolitical of our author, while those of a more technical natureare not included. Not even the Constantinian ambitions tocreate a practical encyclopaedia seem to have aroused any in-terest inOn Horsemanship, Hipparchicus, or On Hunting . Constan-tines team satisfied its curiosity instead with technical treatisesfrom late antiquity, such as theGeoponica by Cassianus Bassus.80 Constantine did not encourage a search for new sources onsuch vital questions for the government as the breeding of

80 J. L. Teall, The Byzantine Agricultural Tradition, DOP 25 (1971)3359, at 40; H. Beckh, Geoponica sive Cassiani Bassi scholastici De re rusticaeclogae(Leipzig 1895); English transl. A. Dalby,Geoponika: Farm Work(Totnes2011). A. Bryer, Byzantine Agricultural Implements: The Evidence ofMedieval Illustrations of HesiodsWorks and Days, BSA 81 (1986) 4580,noted medieval inertia on matters of cultivation: One might fondly expectmore stimulus from Byzantine landowners, who inherited ancient agricul-tural treatises and were capable of reading them. But in fact such gentryalso made a virtue out of self-sufficiency, rather than exploitation (46). Thephenomenon recurs with works on the breeding of horses or Hippiatrica, acollection of texts created in late antiquity and reworked in the tenth cen-tury: A.-M. Doyen-Higuet, The Hippiatrica and Byzantine Veterinary Med-icine, DOP 38 (1984) 111120; A. McCabe, A Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine (Oxford 2007) 2327, 269275, on Berol. gr. 134 (Phillipps1538), the copy offered to Constantine VII and probably produced by theimperial scriptorium. The text of this collection is characterized by polishedlanguage, more analytical organization, and two new sources. According toMcCabe (4, 194200, 218), XenophonsOn Horsemanship, although it dealswith the breeding and training of horses and not with their illnesses, wasused only by writers of late antiquity; there is no evidence of the veterinarycollection in Macedonian texts.


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horses. This lack of interest set the tone in Byzantium and cer-tainly lay behind the fact that the oldest manuscripts containingthese treatises are from the Palaiologan period.5. Xenophon and military strategy

Byzantines interested in strategy do not seem to have felt theneed to browse Athenian historiography for examples of mil-itary successes and failures, but this did not apply to Romanhistorians.81 To give one example, the De obsidione toleranda,composed after 924, incorporates in its final part passages fromPolybios, Arrian, and Flavius Josephus, dealing with famoussieges.82 A famous codex at Milan, Ambros. B 119 sup., copiedin Constantinople about 950960 and linked by C. M.Mazzucchi to the imperial library and members of the court ofConstantine VII (specifically Basil Lekapenos, the parakoimome-nos ), contains fragments of ancient historiography incorporatedinto a corpus of military works from Macedonian times.83

81 On Byzantine writers weakness for military anecdotes see M. Mullett,Theophylact of Ochrid. Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop(Aldershot1997) 6978; J. D. Howard-Johnston, Anna Komnene and the Alexiad , inM. Mullett and D. Smythe (eds.), Alexios I Komnenos (Belfast 1996) 260302,at 273276.

82 D. F. Sullivan, A Byzantine Instructional Manual on Siege Defense,in J. W. Nesbitt (ed.), Byzantine Authors: Literary Activities and Preoccupations(Leiden 2003) 139266, esp. 143144.

83 H. Bolla, De Xenophontis fragmentis quae leguntur in Ambrosianocodice vetusto, RivFil 21 (1893) 366369; C. M. Mazzucchi, Dagli anni diBasilio Parakimomenos (cod. Ambros. B 119 sup.), Aevum 52 (1978) 267 316, at 291. According to Nmeth, Imperial Systematization176, these are theeight speeches taken from Xenophon. Their order is the original one, they

reproduce the whole text (with minor omissions), and are introduced byindividual titles: 1.Z442$1A( WM1$* 91X/ '$S/ z(*'$S/ 6'1(')g'(/ (Cyr .1.5.714); 2.Z442$1A( '$< G66*1AP# H(6)3UP/ 91X/ '$S/ (Y'$< 6'1( -')g'(/ (3.3.4445); 3.Z442$1A( WM1$* 91X/ '$S/ 6*5Q$*/ e334#(/ ( Anab. 1.7.34); 4.Z442$1A( !"#$%'$/ 91X/ '$S/ WM1$* 6*5Q$*/ e3 -34#(/ "'; '`# -7"A#$* -# '^ 91X/ H(6)3U( G1'(TU1T4# 'X# (Y'$< R8"3%X# R#(A1"6)# R9)U#() H$*3+"#$# "\/ '; $\7".( (3.1.1518, 2125); 5.Z44-2$1A( !"#$%'$/ 91X/ I334#)7X# 6'15'"* ( (3.1.3544); 6.Z442$1A(


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Probably because of his or his patrons literary interests, thecopyist responsible decided to include in ff. 141145 severalspeeches drawn from theCyropaedia and Anabasis, followed bysimilar ones from Josephus and Herodian. The Ambrosiancodex is not a copy of a previous codex but its selection wastaken directly from a complete original, since the fragments of

each author occupy separate quires, with some folios remainingblank at the end and now cut out. The speeches are followed inthe manuscript by two harangues of Constantine VII himself,composed to be read to the troops who were preparing to fightthe emir of Aleppo.84 Although the textual tradition of the Am-brosian speeches does not coincide with that of the text of Xen-ophon that the emperor had available,85 Nmeth has shownthat it is a selection closely linked to the text of the Excerpta, one(lost) volume of which bore the titleC"1D 8442$1).86

The Sylloge tacticorum (O*33$2 b(7')7 ) , a compilationfalsely attributed to the emperor Leo VI but actually linked tothe activity of Porphyrogennetos around 950, uses ancientsources and theTactica of Leo VI, though it updates their infor-mation on military equipment and cavalry tactics.87 The workmakes a reference to Xenophon concerning a Persian measure-ment, the parasanges, which for this author is equivalent to 30stadia.88 The information does not come directly from Xeno- ___x")1)6+%$* 91X/ '$S/ (Y'$S/ e334#(/ (3.2.23); 7.Z442$1A( !"#$%'$/ 91X/ '$S/ (Y'$S/ e334#(/ (3.2.10, 21.2632); 8.Z442$1A( '$< (Y'$< 91X/ '$S/ (Y'$/ (3.2.39).

84 Mazzucchi, Aevum 52 (1978) 298 and 303304; E. McGeer, TwoMilitary Orations of Constantine VII, in Byzantine Authors111135, at 113;A. Markopoulos, The Ideology of War in the Military Harangues ofConstantine VII Porphyrogennetos, in J. Koder and I. Stouraitis (eds.), Byzantine War Ideology(Vienna 2012) 4756, esp. 48.

85 Mazzucchi, Aevum 52 (1978) 290292.86 Nmeth, Imperial Systematization175.87 A. Dain,Sylloge tacticorum (Paris 1938); A. Dain and J. A. de Foucault,

Les stratgistes byzantins,TravMm 2 (1967) 317392, at 357358.88 Syll.tact. 3.3:d 9(1(65224/ 9"16)7+# -6') U'1$# $Y 9(1; 9u6) 8, 'X

(Y'X 8UQ"'() U'1$#, R33; 9(1; ,# '$./ 93"A6'$)/ '"66(1(7$#'(6'58)+/


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phon (who, indeed, normally measures distances in differentunits, and in these measurements the parasanges is equal to 30stadia ), but from a lost work of Posidonius (second-first centuryB.C.) by way of the Metrologica of Julianus of Ascalon.89

One of the texts used in the composition of theSylloge tacti-corumis responsible for the indirect dissemination of the work of

Xenophon: a compilation of theStrategemata of Polyaenusknown as the Hypotheseis.90 Polyaenus was not a widely readauthor in Byzantium and, although Constantine VII did usethe Strategemata, the entire manuscript tradition is derived froma single Byzantine codex, Laur. Plut. 56.1, which was tradi-tionally dated to the thirteenth century, but is undoubtedlyfrom the Komnenian period.91 However, Polyaenus work wassummarized in the 9$NU6")/ ' -7 ' 6'1('42)7 915-T"P#,92 which survives in ff. 76v 103v of Laur. Plut. 55.4, thefamous Florentine codex of the tacticians.93 The Hypotheseis in-cludes 354strategemata or anecdotes of the original 833 (but thetext selected is not even a quarter part of the original), orderedthematically, headed byf') , and in some cases paraphrasedand abridged. Although this type of abstract of ancient textsdoes not usually have an independent tradition, the Hypotheseis, ___-6') , 9(1; 8, !"#$%') '1)(7$#'(6'58)$/ , 9(1 {33$)/ 8, 7(D zT47$#-'(6'58)$/ , 7(D 0') 9$33 93U$# -# {33$)/, 7(N %46) O'15HP# (11.11.5),91$%U1P# 51'*1( '$< 3+2$* 'X# 9$3*(NJ C$6")8g#)$#. Cf. Agathias Hist. 21.6, mentioning the similar equivalent in Herodotus and Xenophon.

89 A. Dain, Les cinq adaptations byzantines des Stratagmes dePolyen, REA 33 (1931) 321346, esp. 341.

90 According to Dain,Sylloge tacticorum 9, it is the source of ch. 77102 oftheSylloge.

91 F. Schindler, Die berlieferung der Strategemata des Polyainos (Vienna 1973)17 and Taf. I.

92 I. Melber, Polyaeni Strategematon libri octo (Leipzig 1887) 427504; P.Krentz and E. L. Wheeler, Polyaenus, Stratagems of War II (Chicago 1994)8511073. On Byzantine adaptations of Polyaenus see Dain, REA 33 (1931)321346; Dain and de Foucault,TravMm 2 (1967) 317392; Schindler, Dieberlieferung 205225.

93 Wilson,Scholars 143, thinks it is a product of the imperial scriptorium.


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perhaps because of its organization which made it a collectionof advice on how to act in many different theatres of war,aroused some interest: it was copied in Macedonian andPalaiologan times, and was also partially included in theSyllogetacticorum. Finally, we have no fewer than four reworkings ofthis text that alter the order of the original, or include strata-

gems that were not in the drafting of Laur. Plut. 56.1.94

What effect did the success of the Hypotheseis have on the dis-semination of the writings of Xenophon? In Polyaenus, whosework is organized around various historical figures, Xenophonis the protagonist of 1.49, containing four short paragraphs in-spired by Book III of the Anabasis to narrate some moments ofthe expedition of the Ten Thousand. The first of the four isalso picked up in the selection of Ambros.B 119 sup.: Xeno-phons advice to leave the carriages and superfluous baggage,under pressure from the horsemen of Tissaphernes ( Anab. 3.2.27). The second relates to the organization of the soldiers toprotect the baggage when travelling ( Anab. 3.3.16 = Hypoth. 46.2). The third tells how he avoided the danger of a gorge inwhich the enemies were lying in wait, being able to attack themfrom a higher position on a hill ( Anab. 3.4.37). The fourth pre-sents a diversionary stratagem: a river crossing was occupied,so Xenophon sent a party of soldiers to cross it by another fordand surprise the enemy from behind, while he distracted themby pretending to try to cross there ( Anab. 4.3.20 = Hypoth. 48.1).

A second group ofstrategemata, drawn from the Hellenica, dealswith Agesilaos and forms ch. 2.1. The first story illustrates theprudence of the general, who waits for the Acarnanians togather in the harvest before attacking them, because at thatmoment they will be more inclined to negotiate peace ( Hell. 4.6.13). The second (2.1.5, from Hell. 4.3.20) is an apophthegmabout the inadvisability of attacking a desperate enemy (in thiscase, the Thebans after Koroneia, in 394). In the third (2.1.8,from Hell. 3.4.5 and Ages.1.10), Tissaphernes breaks the truce

94 One of these, Ambros. B 119 sup., has been edited by J.-A. de Fou-cault,Strategemata (Paris 1949).


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agreed on with the Greeks and Agesilaos responds to the fearsof his countrymen with the confidence of someone who has thegods on his side in the face of a perjurer. The next anecdote(2.1.10, from Hell. 4.6.5) shows us Agesilaos gaining a rapidvictory over the Acarnanians who had left their refuge in themountains and had come down to the plain. In the two final

paragraphs (2.1.11 and 12, from Hell. 5.4.4849) we findauthentic stratagems: in the first, the Thebans are stationed atSkolon waiting for the army of Agesilaos, but he announces toall the Greeks that they will pass through Thespiae. The newssoon reaches the Thebans, who leave Skolon in the direction ofThespiae; Agesilaos can then cross unhindered through Skolon.In the last story, Agesilaos gets the Thebans to abandon aprivileged position on a hill by threatening to attack Thebes.95 6.The reign of Basil II (9761025): John Geometres and the Souda

The great work of Constantine especially his funding ofeducation and his efforts to preserve ancient texts in new copies was followed by a period of inertia until the reign of Basil II.The culture of the second half of the tenth century was thusdominated by writers trained in the age of Porphyrogennetoswho sometimes held positions of increasing responsibility at thecourt, such as John Geometres and thelogothetes Symeon Meta-phrastes.

The reign of Basil II has traditionally been depicted as a timeof cultural decline, based on the assertion of Psellos (Chron. 1.29) that the emperor despised culture and read only books onstrategy.96 But what actually characterizes the reign of Basil is

95 In Polyaenus, there are other isolated anecdotes concerning Iphicrates

(3.9.4, from Anab. 2.2.20) and Mania, the wife of Zenis the Dardanian (8.54,from Hell. 3.1.10). These do not appear to have circulated in Byzantium.96 Wilson,Scholars 148150; B. Crostini, The Emperor Basil IIs Cultural

Life, Byzantion 66 (1996) 5580, which focuses on Psellos claim aboutBasils disdain for literary culture and presents Psellos as prejudiced, un- justly accusing the emperor. C. Holmes, Basil II and the Governance of Empire(Oxford 2005), has no chapter about cultural life. A copy of theCyropaedia,Vat. gr. 129, is datable to the first decades of the eleventh century: it is a


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the absence of imperial patronage of literature, which is whatPsellos is referring to when he mentions the distancing of the3+2)$) from the palace in about 990, when the emperor tookeffective control of the administration.97 This meant removingcourtiers from their positions, among whom were men of let-ters such as John Geometres himself. As Psellos states in the

same passage, at that time orators and philosophers flourishedbut apart from imperial patronage.Concerning the reception of Xenophon at this time, we can

identify some broad outlines that foreshadow the apathy of theeleventh century. Noteworthy is a passage of theChronicle of the Logothetes or, more specifically, of theChronicon Ambrosianum.98 Itscomposer comments about Artaxerxes II:99

Artaxerxes, the son of Darius and Parysatis, received from hisfather the empire he held for forty-two years. In his time Socra-tes the philosopher was executed as having corrupted the laws ofthe Greeks, drinking hemlock in prison. Contemporaries of his

___parchment codex of medium format on which copyists of diverse sensi-tivities worked (one of them was linked to the administration, as his hand-writing suggests).

97 According to M. Lauxtermann, Byzantine Poetry and the Paradox ofBasil IIs Reign, in P. Magdalino (ed.), Byzantium in the Year 1000 (Leiden/Boston 2003) 209, the intellectuals that Basil had at his side were Nikepho-ros Ouranos, John Sikeliotes, Leo of Synnada, and Symeon Metaphrastes;cf. Magdalino at 5962.

98 This is Redaction Ab, the version preserved in Ambros.D 34 sup., ofthe tenth-eleventh century (which contains theOnomasticon of Pollux as wellas the Chronicle in question): St. Wahlgren,Symeonis Magistri et LogothetaeChronicon (Berlin/New York 2006) 47*. On the difference in cultural level

between the redactions see A. Markopoulos, Byzantine History Writing atthe End of the First Millennium, in Byzantium in the Year 1000 183197, at188189.

99 46.14:G1'(TU1T4/ d Z(1"A$* 7(D C(1*65')8$/ 'X# 9('U1( 8)(8"T5-"#$/ -H(6A3"*6"# 0'4 Hc -9D '$M'? OP715'4/ d %)3+6$%$/ p/ %(*3A6(/ '$S/ I33V#P# #+$*/ N(#('$


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were the historians Thucydides and Xenophon, and the philos-opher Plato, a student of Socrates, and Aristippus.

This is an excursus that breaks with the overall succinct tone ofthe chronicle, although it does not deviate from the model thatputs famous characters from the past into the context of theircontemporaries. The source of theChronicon Ambrosianum was

perhaps Georgios the Monk, where the list of persons is morecomplete but also more absurd.100 Xenophons works do not appear to have been used in the

Historia of Leo the Deacon,101 although in Leos encomium ofBasil II the emperor is compared to other monarchs who werethe objects of encomia,!U1T(/ 8V ')#(/ 7(D WM1$*/ 7(D G3"T5#81$*/, 0') '" W(HM6(/ 7(D C$94$*/.102 Admirationfor Xenophon is clear in the other great writer of the period, John Geometres,103 a military poet who recognized Athens asConstantinoples predecessor as the home of knowledge.104 In

100 C. de Boor,Georgii monachi chronicon (Leipzig 1904) 284:"'; 8, G1-'(H5#4# -H(6A3"*6"# G1'(TU1T4/ d =(71+Q")1 0'4 ( ! . -% $ O$%$73J/ 7(D >1573")'$/ 7(D G#(T(2+1(/ 7(D C*N(2+1(/ 7(D @$*7*8A84/ 7(D hY1)9A84/ 7(D >1+8$'$/ 7(D | 9"8$73J/ 7(D Z)$2U#4/ 7(D V#P# 7(D E"1"7M84/ 7(D G1A6'(1Q$/ 7(D 99$715'4/ 7(D C(1"#A84/ 7(D C35'P# 7(D G1)6'$'U34/ 7(D Z4$6NU#4/ -2#P1Al$#'$, 7(D OP715'4/ p/ %(*3A6(/ '$S/ #+$*/ ' I33V#P# N(#('$


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epigram 127, Xenophon appears as the first among rhetors.105 Our historian also inspired epigram 126,h\/ '$S/ I334#)7$S/ 9$3U$*/, about the childish Greeks who stopped their warsagainst the barbarians to draw swords against each other.106

About the figure of Xenophon himself, theSouda the greatlexicon combining prosopographical entries with the normal

contents of a dictionary and which, despite its length, cir-culated widely has two entries, of which the first (T 47) gives asuccinct presentation of Xenophons merits:107

Xenophon, son of Gryllus, Athenian, Socratic philosopher. Hewas the first to write the lives of philosophers and memoirsabout them. He had two sons by Philesia, Gryllus and Diodorus,who were also called Dioscuri. He himself was nicknamed theAttic Bee. He was a fellow student of Plato and flourished inthe ninety-fifth Olympiad. He wrote more than forty books, in-cluding the eight of theCyropaedia, seven of the Anabasis, seven ofthe Hellenica, theSymposium, and many others.

The success of theSouda made it a reference work for anyonewho wanted information about an ancient author, indispen-sable when there was no Vita or brief note heading the writersworks in manuscripts. While manuscripts of Thucydides orAristophanes, for example, preface their works with a Vita ofthe author, Xenophon did not enjoy this advantage; readers ofhis work, or those who found his name in gnomologies or

105 Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature 259. Cramer, Anecd. Par. IV(1841) 326:h\/ 'X# !"#$%'(. !"#$%'$/ r 23&66( 91&'( 4'+1P#, /_*Q 8, 7(D #$


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lexica, knew his life from theSouda. Among the readers of thissuccinct biography of Xenophon were Eustathios of Thessa-lonike108 and Theodoros Metochites, who at the beginning ofthe chapter of Miscellanea dedicated to Xenophon (p.149), re-calls the nickname Attic Bee.

That the Souda is more than a linguistic tool explains the

presence in it of stories told by Xenophon, such as that ofHerakles which, according to Mem.2.1.2134, came from the Hours of Prodikos of Keos. In this famous story, an adolescentHerakles has to choose between virtue and vice, and thediscussion takes the form of an encounter with two women whoembody and defend both options before the young man.109 The story is also in theSouda s.v. 1() C1$8A7$* H)H3A$# -9)-21(%+"#$# 1(), -# 9"9$A47" 'X# >1(73U( 'F R1"'F 7(D 'F 7(7A] 6*#'*2Q5#$#'(, 7(D 7(3$M64/ z7('U1(/ -9D '; wN4 (Y'J/ , 91$673.#() 'F R1"'F 'X# >1(73U( 7(D '$S/ -7"A#4/ K81&'(/ 91$71.#() ' 91$67(A1P# 'J/ 7(7A(/ r8$#.

But the great Xenophontean story included in theSouda isthe expedition of the Ten Thousand, summarised in the secondentry on Xenophon (T 48):110

108 G. Stallbaum, Eustathii archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis commentarii ad HomeriOdysseam I (Leipzig 1825) 418 (ad 11.299, on the Dioscuri):K6'$1A( 8, , r 3U2$*6( f') !"#$% d 23*7S/ -7".#$/ G'')7X/ U3)66( -9P#$5l"'$ ,9(1(8A8P6) 7(D f') $K -T -7"A#$* 7(D E)346A(/ *K$D L1M3$/ 7(D Z)+8P1$/ Z)+67$*1$) -9"7(3$


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Xenophon, a pupil of Socrates, campaigned against the Persiansafter joining the army of Cyrus to fight against Artaxerxes.Darius appointed Cyrus to replace Tissaphernes at the head ofthe province of Asia, and after the death of Darius Artaxerxeswanted to kill Cyrus, who had been slandered by Tissaphernes;but he yielded to the entreaties of his mother Parysatis, who pre-served his military command for him. Then Cyrus raised anarmy to fight against Tissaphernes, aware that he would befighting against his brother. Four hundred deserted Cyrus and3500 of their fellow soldiers, infantry and peltasts, fled. Xeno-phon marched inland with him. So, after gathering 10,000 bar-barians, from there he went to Pisidia, and as he passed throughthe tribes, whom he was looking for an excuse to attack, theGreeks who were with them were afraid that the march wasagainst the king. But when Klearchos said that turning back wasimpossible if Cyrus did not consent, they agreed. Cyrus foughtbareheaded against Tissaphernes, although Klearchos had ad-vised him not to fight, and he died. The Greeks who were underthe command of Klearchos proposed Ariaios as their king, buthe refused. The king cut off Cyrus head and hands and sentthem to the Greeks, demanding the weapons of the defeated,but they did not surrender them to him. Tissaphernes, violatinghis oath, betrayed the Greeks and Klearchos and Menon, whomhe murdered. Xenophon became leader and was victorious overall of them. When they arrived in Thrace, thousands of survivorsput themselves under the orders of Seuthes as mercenaries.

___6*#(#UH4. 8U7( $# H(1H51P# *1)58(/ 6*#(N1$A6(/ p/ -9D C)6A8(/ 8JN"# -9$1"M"'$. p/ 8, '; 0N#4 8)J3N"#, -% s 6'1('"M")# 91$"%(6Al"'$,6*#U#'"/ $K e334#"/ -9D H(6)3U( "#() '`# 6'1('"A(# 7#$*# '`# R#5-H(6)#. W3"51Q$* 8, "\9+#'$/ '`# a9$6'1$%`# {9$1$# "#(), WM1$* ` 6*#()1$U#$*, 6*#}"6(#. W


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It is a summary similar to that already found in Georgios Syn-kellos. It focuses on the Persian civil war and ignores the rest,except the arrival in Thrace of the Greek survivors. It is poorlywritten and confusing.

The sources used by the author of theSouda, whose workdates from the 970s and 980s, have been analysed with the

thoroughness that their complexity requires.111

From the 202explicit mentions of Xenophon (and others not explicit), weknow that a part comes from previous lexica such as theO*#(2P2 3UT"P# or Pseudo-Cyril, the scholia on Aristoph-anes, and the Lexicum tacticum of Par. Coislin 347,112 but alsofrom the Excerpta Constantiniana taken from theCyropaediaand Anabasis.113 7. Xenophon at school: the lexica of the ninth century

To paraphrase a reflection by Photios himself (cod. 187), thecriterion of usefulness is what decides which texts may surviveand which will fall victim to the passage of time.114 If we applythis criterion to Xenophon, the reason for his survival is surelythe quality of his prose. In the mid-ninth century, the Ety-mologicum Genuinum and the Etymologicum Gudianum,collections ofterms together with their definition and origin, put some ex-pressions of Xenophon back into circulation.115

111 A. Adler,Suidae Lexicon I (Leipzig 1928)XVI XXII, and Suidas, RE 4A (1931) 675717, esp. 706709.

112 Adler,Suidae LexiconIV 855864; on thelexeis of Xenophon taken fromthe tactical collection see C. de Boor, Suidas und die KonstantinischeExzerptsammlung, BZ 23 (19141919) 1127, at 3435; Adler, RE 4A (1931) 702.

113 De Boor, BZ 23 (19141919) 3337, 118.114 W. T. Treadgold, Photius on the Transmission of Texts,GRBS 19

(1978) 171175.115 These collections and Photios Lexicon have been described by R. Tosi,

Prospettive e metodologie lessicografiche , RSBS 4 (1984) 181203, at 202,as basically compilations, unlike collections from the Roman period, whichwere critical and selective of materials.


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In the (so far) partial edition of Photios Lexicon116 there are84 mentions of Xenophon, and his name accompanies ex-pressions drawn from all his works, probably more from the Anabasis than the others. It is accepted that the Lexicon is a youthful work of the future patriarch, and the quotations andextracts from our author, when they appear in no other similar

compilations,117

likely have their origin in his personal readingof Xenophon, which would have occurred at an early age andwhich we have seen was precise.118

Xenophons language had spurred two commentaries by theearlier Byzantine scholar Helladios Besantinoos noted byPhotios: the first is a correction to the text of Hell. 4.10.4;119 thesecond, more interesting, disqualifies Xenophon as a model ofAtticism because he was away from his homeland for a longtime.120 This disqualification is common in Atticist lexica, fromPhrynichus to Thomas Magistros, who classifies some of Xeno-phons expressions as Ionic.121 In general, these lexica include

116 Ch. Theodoridis, Photii Patriarchae Lexicon IIII (Berlin/New York19822012).117 On Photios sources see Wilson,Scholars 9192; K. Alpers, Das at-

tizistische Lexikon des Oros(Berlin/New York 1981) 6979, on theO*#(2P2 3UT"P# Q146AP#, which is the main source.

118 For example, Pollux attributes an expression to Herodotus (R#"6'+-P6" ';/ '5%1$*/ ) which in fact comes fromCyr. 7.5.15; cf. R. Tosi,Studisulla tradizione indiretta dei classici greci (Bologna 1988) 101. But Photios Lex. ( 1887 gives the correct origin:R#'D '$< R#U?T". !"#$% C()8"A(/ lc . Theexpression is included by Zonaras, Epit.hist. I 254 Dindorf.

119 Cod. 279 (532a) on the indeclinability of the names of the Greekletters, which leads to the correction of Xenophons text:8)X 7(D 'X 9(1; '^ !"#$%') -# '$./ I334#)7$./ "\14U#$# $YQ a% # '; 6A2('( ' R69A-

8P# R#(2#P6'U$#, R33; 8)6*335HP/ ,# '; 6.2( 7(D R9 {334/ R1QJ/ '; ' R69A8P# 7('; 8)56'(6)# .120 Cod. 279 (533b):"\ 8, 7(D !"#$% " 147" '$S/ #$"./ ( Mem. 2.9.7,

Cyr. 1.1.2),$Y8,# N(*(6'+# , R#`1 -# 6'1('"A()/ 6Q$35lP# 7(D TU#P# 6*#$*6A()/ " ')#( 9(1(7+9'") 'J/ 9('1A$* %P#J/ 8)X #$$NU'4# (Y'X# $Y7 {# ')/ R'')7)6 $< 9(1(35H$). Cf. M. Bandini, Testimonianze anticheal testo dei Memorabili di Senofonte, AATC57 (1992) 1140, at 1516.

121 Xenophontean non-Attic words repeated in the lexica are8V for


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the more unusual expressions,122 which have no tradition inByzantium, but there are also many examples of Xenophonscorrect syntactic use of common words.123

While the presence of Xenophon among the instruments oflinguistic learning is established, ninth-century Byzantine litera-ture contains next to no historical exempla. These, in antiquity

and Byzantium, were food and drink to the progymnasmata ,124

but the only progymnasmata composed in the Macedonianperiod, those of John Geometres, do not deal with historicalsubjects.125 This does not mean that historical material was notused in the schools: the collection of letters of an anonymousprofessor in Constantinople, dated to the second quarter of thetenth century, contains several references to figures from thepast,126 but it would not be until the Komnenian period thathistorical themes would be fully reinstated in the compositionof progymnasmata. ___6V, or the use ofR7V# for0').

122 M. Naechster, De Pollucis et Phrynichi controversiis (Leipzig 1908) 15; Al-pers, Lexikon des OrosB 105 ( #"('+# ), B 90 (3"P12+# ), B 14 (R#"T*#$


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8. Moral florilegia Xenophon is represented in Macedonian florilegia127 par-

ticularly as a disciple of Socrates and in terms of his ownbiography; contents drawn from his historical works are lesscommon.128 The WM1$* G9$%NU2('( in the Florilegium pro- phanum, one of the collections included in theCorpus Parisinum

(CP 3.445448), the richest of the whole Corpus in secularepigrams and the oldest surviving Byzantine collection ofsententiae,129 are also partly based on the works of Xenophon. Inparticular, Anab. 1.9.2324 is the source of CP 3.446447 (=MaxSarg 6.88, Patm. 11.124), which, with the changes neededto transform the text into an apophthegm, faithfully reflects thewords concerning friendship that Xenophon puts into themouth of Cyrus.

Aside from anecdotes that draw on the works of Xenophon,the sacred and secular florilegia present both minimally mod-ified passages from Xenophon and aphorisms that paraphrasethe original more loosely. The Loci communes of Pseudo-Maxi-mos reflects this variety of methods, and its source is not alwaysthe Anthologion of Stobaeus. The typology of texts includes state-ments of just a short sentence,130 passages with a single subject

127 CP = D. M. Searby,The Corpus ParisinumIII (Lewiston 2007);MaxIhm = S. Ihm, Ps.-Maximus Confessor (Stuttgart 2001); MaxSarg = E.Sargologos, Florilge sacro-profane du Pseudo-Maxime(Syros 2001); Patm. = E.Sargologos, Un Trait de vie spirituelle et morale du XI e sicle: le florilge sacro-profanedu manuscrit 6 de Patmos(Thessalonike 1990); Stob. = O. Hense and C.Wachsmuth, Ioannis Stobaei anthologium IV (Berlin 18841912).

128 S. Ihm, Xenophon und Maximus, Eranos 97 (1999) 6885.129 P. Odorico, Il Prato e lape. Il sapere sentenzioso del Monaco Giovanni

(Vienna 1986) 78, dates CP to the first half of the ninth century. Searby (I112) suggests a much broader possible dating, the eighth and ninth cen-turies, theterminus post quem being the composition of its most recent source,the Sacra Parallela. On the CP see also J. Gerlach,Gnomica Democritea: Studienzur gnomologischen berlieferung der Ethik Demokrits und zum Corpus Parisinum(Wiesbaden 2008).

130 -;# $K 6g%1$#"/ '$S/ %(M3$*/ 8P6)# R')(l$ U#$*/, 9$3S 91$N*-+'"1$# 'J/ R1"'J/ R#NUT$#'() (CP 1.8, MaxIhm 61.5/68.5) comes from


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but respecting the original syntax,131 and finally long extractssuch asCyr. 5.1.716 (MaxIhm 37/21, Patm. 48.37) illustratingthe subject of beauty and Mem. 1.2.2022 (Stob. 3.29.95, MaxIhm 15./48) on the educational value of conversation. Someof these selections from Xenophon are repeated in manycompilations, and continue in the tradition until the end of

Byzantium,132

but in general they are texts that did notcirculate outside the florilegia. We can mention two exceptions,however: Chorikios (37.1.6) repeats the anecdote in Xenophon(Cyr. 1.3.17: MaxIhm 51.9/58.11) recounting Cyrus decisionabout the boy with a small tunic who replaced it with the largetunic worn by a smaller boy, but without explaining it properly,as the reader presumably already knew the story. Anotherexample likely due to a reading of the complete text is Anab. 3.2.35 (MaxIhm 66.13/37.16; Patm. 42.40),$K ,# 9$3U)$),69"1 $K 8")3$D 7M#"/ '$S/ ,# 9(1)+#'(/ 8)g7$*6A '" 7(D 857#$*6)#, "\ 8M#P#'(), '$S/ 8, 8)g7$#'(/ %"M2$*6)#. Com-paring the enemy to a dog is not very original, but we find thesame comparison in Nikephoros Gregoras.133 ___Cyr. 2.2.2728 ($K 8, R2(N$D '$S/ 7(7$S/ \8+#'"/ R')(6NU#'(/ 9$3S "YN*+'"1$# 'J/ R1"'J/ R#NUT$#'() ), in spite of being attributed in somecases to Basil of Caesarea. Also, fromCyr. 3.1.23 comes!"#$%'$/ -7 J/ WM1$* C()8"A(/. d %+H$/ '$< 012? 7(7$


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The late Macedonian period marks a temporary decline inthe reception of Xenophon in Byzantine texts.134 The eleventh-century historians Michael Psellos and Michael Attaleiates donot seem to have particularly appreciated his works; nor didKekaumenos, who could have turned to the Hipparchicus forinformation suited to his own interests. The poems of Psellos, at

least, contain some echoes of Xenophon, precisely in a didacticcontext, on grammar and rhetoric.135 9.Conclusion

To treat the ancient heritage in Byzantine texts as a merematter of form (the slavish use of expressive resources or ar-chaisms) can mask the fact that the information provided bythe ancient texts (on customs, beliefs, forms of government,observations of nature or the stars, etc.) was a point of refer-ence for Byzantine culture; in it could be found all the elementsinherited from the ancie

pérez martín inmaculada the reception of xenophon in byzantium the macedonian period.pdf

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