The vitality of studies on the Socratic philosophies, and on Xenophon in particular, has become increasingly evident in the last decade. The foundation of the International Society for Socratic Studies (ISSS) and the International Xenophon Society (IXS), with their regular conferences and the editorial projects Socrates Series and Xenophon Series at De Gruyter, has provided fertile ground for scholarship. In this setting, works that revisit Xenophon’s writings and explore their philosophical dimensions do not merely add to a niche literature but contribute to a dynamic and expanding field of research. Brennan’s volume is best understood against this background, and it promises to have significant impact in an area currently enjoying vigorous growth.
Shane Brennan’s Xenophon’s Anabasis: A Socratic History offers a bold reinterpretation of one of antiquity’s most celebrated historical narratives. The central claim of the book is that Xenophon’s Anabasis should not be regarded simply as a memoir of the march of the Ten Thousand or as an apologetic narrative in defense of its author, but as a form of “Socratic history,” a text that embeds Xenophon’s vision of his teacher within an historical framework. In this sense, the work participates in the wider “Socratic industry” of the early fourth century, a literary enterprise in which disciples sought to defend and perpetuate the memory of Socrates. Brennan’s thesis aims to bring together two strands often treated in isolation, the philosophical and the historiographical, and to show that in Xenophon’s case they cannot be disentangled.
The volume is carefully structured, beginning with a biographical chapter on Xenophon and the formation of his intellectual and political identity, followed by a treatment of the Anabasis in its historiographical and literary context. Brennan stresses the hybrid character of the work, which is at once memoir, apologetic, and didactic narrative. He pays particular attention to Xenophon’s choice to narrate in the third person and to attribute authorship to a fictitious Themistogenes of Syracuse, a gesture that simultaneously distances the author from the protagonist and strengthens the exemplary status of the character. The subsequent chapters examine in detail the pedagogical theme of leadership, the apologetic strategies through which Xenophon defends himself against both internal and external critics, and finally the role of Socrates within the text. The flashback in which Xenophon recalls consulting Socrates before joining Cyrus’ campaign becomes the hinge of the narrative, transforming the figure of the young mercenary into that of a Socratic commander. Brennan argues that this reference is not incidental but programmatic: the entire Anabasis is shaped by the implicit presence of Socratic values and by Xenophon’s effort to vindicate his teacher in the decades following the trial of 399 BCE.
Brennan’s notion of “Socratic history” is the most original contribution of the book. He argues that the Anabasis belongs to the same apologetic and philosophical enterprise as the Apology or the Memorabilia, but that it does so in historiographical form. The leadership lessons and the personal vindication are two sides of the same coin, and Xenophon’s portrayal of himself as an exemplary commander functions both to defend his own reputation and to illustrate the efficacy of Socratic training. The result is a text that cannot be reduced to any single genre. It is at once an eyewitness account of a remarkable military expedition, an apologia for an exiled intellectual, and a contribution to the construction of Socrates’ posthumous image.
The analysis of leadership is particularly persuasive. Brennan compares the figures of Cyrus, Klearchos, Cheirisophos, and Xenophon’s own persona, and shows how the narrative progressively guides the reader to conclude that the Socratic model is superior to all others. Thus, Cyrus represents ambition and charisma, Klearchos embodies harsh discipline, Cheirisophos shows laconic brevity, but only Xenophon combines tactical intelligence with moral vision. Based on this didactic contrast, the author effectively turns his narrative into a manual of leadership, mirroring the educational practices of the Socratic circle. The apologetic dimension is likewise convincingly developed. Xenophon takes pains to answer accusations of hubris, deception, and mercenary opportunism, while also responding indirectly to the criticisms that his service with Cyrus and later with Sparta cast on his loyalty to Athens. The Anabasis, Brennan argues, is less a neutral record of events than a deliberate attempt to rehabilitate both its protagonist and his master.
The chapter devoted to Socrates provides the conceptual core of the study. Brennan insists that the Socratic presence in the Anabasis is not limited to the explicit flashback. On the contrary, it permeates the entire narrative through modes of reasoning, moral exemplarity, and rhetorical strategies. In this vein, Xenophon’s emergence as a leader is a direct test of Socratic education: abandoned in hostile territory, deprived of commanders, the young pupil proves the worth of his teacher’s good training. Each exhortation to the troops, each moral choice, becomes an implicit defense of Socrates against the charges of corrupting the youth and impiety. The Anabasis thus joins the broader apologetic movement of the 370s and 360s, in which multiple Socratics sought to present their own versions of the philosopher as models of virtue for the common good.
The book’s strengths are considerable. Brennan succeeds in situating the Anabasis within the renewed scholarly appreciation of Xenophon that has gathered momentum since the mid-twentieth century, countering the dismissive verdicts of Niebuhr, Russell, Guthrie, and others, who saw in Xenophon little more than a conventional moralizer or partisan historian. By bringing together literary, historiographical, and philosophical perspectives, he demonstrates the sophistication of a work too often pigeonholed as a simple soldier’s tale. His reading of the Anabasis as both apologia and didaxis is nuanced and compelling, and his insistence on the centrality of Socrates enriches our understanding of Xenophon’s place within the intellectual landscape of the fourth century.
At the same time, the focus on Socratic influence sometimes narrows the field of comparison. The broader philosophical environment, e.g., Isocratean didacticism, Stoic and Cynic precursors, or even Thucydidean narrative models, receives little sustained attention, and the exclusive emphasis on Socrates may risk overstating the philosophical depth of what often reads as pragmatic counsel. The discussion of autobiography and self-fashioning, though rich, might have been sharpened by a more systematic distinction between literary strategy and historical reality. One occasionally senses that Brennan oscillates between reconstructing Xenophon’s intentions and analyzing his narrative techniques without fully clarifying the difference. Finally, the book is heavily centered on Anglophone historiography and engages only minimally with discussions and scholarship in other languages, which makes it a strong representative of one type of reading but misses the opportunity to advance a more global perspective.
Yet these criticisms should not obscure the achievement of the book. Brennan offers a persuasive and original framework for understanding the Anabasis, one that will stimulate further debate on Xenophon’s position as both historian and philosopher. Even if one remains unconvinced about the stronger claims, one must acknowledge that Brennan has demonstrated how deeply the memory of Socrates informs Xenophon’s literary project. By insisting that the Anabasis be read alongside the explicitly philosophical writings, he dissolves the artificial barrier between Xenophon the historian and Xenophon the Socratic. The result is a richer, more complex picture of an author long dismissed as a superficial thinker. This book will not end discussions about the nature of the Anabasis, but it has ensured that they will henceforth have to contend with the possibility that Xenophon was, in his own way, a philosopher armed.