Xenophon: Anabasis Book III

Description

This is the first comprehensive commentary on a section of Xenophon's Anabasis in English for almost a century. It provides up-to-date guidance on literary, historical and cultural aspects of the Anabasis and will help undergraduate students to read Greek better. It also incorporates recent advances in Xenophontic scholarship and Greek linguistics, showcasing in particular Xenophon's linguistic innovations and varied style. Advanced students and professional scholars will also profit from the sustained attention which this commentary devotes to Xenophon's varied narrative strategies and to the reception of episodes from Anabasis III in antiquity. The introduction and commentary show that Xenophon is just as important (if not more so) to the development of Greek historiography, and of Greek prose in general, as Herodotus and Thucydides.

Luuk Huitink is currently employed as a research fellow on the ERC Project 'Ancient Narrative' at Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg, Germany, where he examines the relationship between ancient rhetoric and cognitive linguistics in order to shed light on the ancient readerly imagination. He was previously the Leventis Research Fellow in Ancient Greek at Merton College, Oxford, and also taught at Universiteit Leiden as a Spinoza Visiting Research Fellow. He is co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (Cambridge, forthcoming). Tim Rood is a Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Oxford, and Dorothea Gray Fellow and Tutor in Classics at St Hugh's College. In 2007-8 he was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. He is the author of Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (1999); The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination (2005); and American Anabasis: Xenophon and the Idea of America from the Mexican War to Iraq (2011). He has also written many articles on Greek historiography and its reception.

'The commentary of course covers much more than the language. Introductions are provided for individual sections and explain details of the march at each stage. Information is not gratuitously presented, so we are not treated to a full-scale discussion of Assyrians despite the army passing through their former territory. In short, the commentary and introduction are very helpful and informative, lucidly expressed and clearly presented. One of [the authors'] aims is to 'help students to read Greek better' and in this they surely succeed.' Alan Beale, Classics for All 'This is a fine contribution to the 'Green and Yellow' series, and a valuable addition to the Anabasis' growing bibliography. It wholly succeeds in its ambition to demonstrate the important contribution that Xenophon made to Greek historiography and will be no doubt prove essential reading for students and scholars alike.' Jan Haywood, The Classical Review