Xenophon Roundtable: Revised Schedule

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xenophons-anabasis

The revised schedule is for our roundtable on Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus is as follows:

Week of September 13, 2009: Posts re: Books I, II, III and IV
Week of September 20, 2009: Posts re: Books V, VI and VII
Week of September 27, 2009: “Wrap up” Posts: Opinions, Analysis, Conclusions.

Late in August I will post the list of contributors.

I am starting to think about what I am going to write, having recently finished my first read-through of the Anabasis.

I have been looking at two books on background, which I am finding of interest: Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age by Robin Waterfield, and Xenophon and the Art of Command by Godfrey Hutchinson. I also hope to read at least some portions of Xenophon’s The Education of Cyrus, also translated by Prof. Wayne Ambler.

(I linked earlier to this review of the Anabasis from Military Review. StrategyPage has a positive review of the Ambler translation here (though it manages to get his translation methodology precisely backward)).

ALSO: A “distant early warning” for our readers. The current thinking is that we will have roundtable discussion of The Federalist Papers in the Winter of 2010, and we will have a roundtable discussion of selections from the Arthashastra of Kautilya (The Clausewitz, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli of India all in one) in the Fall of 2010.

Two good articles about Kautilya’s Arthashastra.

8 thoughts on “Xenophon Roundtable: Revised Schedule”

  3. I plowed through a bunch of them last year and should probably start over. Not what I had in mind though for my beach vacation, which happens to be next week – I usually pick at something a little lighter.

    The Fed Papers are more cold weather reading to me – and need to be read when I don’t have kids asking me to toss them around in the water or bury them in the sand.

  5. I have finished one read-through of the Anabasis.

    I was left with the thought “What a great (albeit long) movie this would make.” It has it all.

  7. A boys’ movie. All those hunky Greeks lusting after young boys. Who needs it? Give me Jimmy Cagney any day of the week.

    The Federalist Papers is a fantastic idea. I’ve been thinking of re-reading them. Now I shall have the perfect excuse.

    Btw I am finding Robin Lane Fox’ “The Long March” quite useful as a background to the Anabasis (that I am still ploughing through). http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300104035

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