This chapter examines Xenophon’s portrayal of the Athenian elite in the opening books of the Hellenica. His presentation of the Arginusae episode (406 BC), in which the Athenian dēmos executed six of its generals without trial, focuses not so much on the behavior of the dēmos as on the essential role of elite Athenians in advising the dēmos. Despite his attraction to oligarchy as an alternative to democracy, Xenophon presents a dark picture of the regime of the Thirty and its rapid descent into violence and lawlessness and hails the restoration of the democracy as a return to normalcy and harmony. This episode is key to understanding Xenophon’s political perspective: the manifest failure of the city’s elite to offer a reasonable alternative to democracy means that for Xenophon the central political question for elite Athenians of his time is not how to overthrow the city’s democratic constitution but how to provide the democracy with the leadership it needs to succeed. Xenophon’s portrayal of several elite Athenian leaders in the opening books of the Hellenica provides some important indications of what Xenophon regards as capable and responsible elite leadership.

This book seeks to understand Xenophon as an elite Athenian writing largely for an elite Athenian audience in the first half of the fourth century BC. Xenophon was an exceptional member of the Athenian elite in many respects: as a Socratic, mercenary general, and longtime exile from his city. Nonetheless, his diverse and extensive corpus deeply reflects his elite Athenian identity and addresses matters of great importance to his Athenian readers. Central among these is the question of the proper political role of members of the elite within the Athenian democracy especially in the aftermath of the brutal oligarchy of 404/3 that many members of the city’s elite had supported. Close consideration of Xenophon’s treatment of this can help us to understand better not only his personal perspective but also the challenges, both practical and ideological, faced by his contemporary elite Athenian audience.

Port cities are places suigeneris. They are starting points foropening up the world both militarily andeconomically, sites of intersection between land andsea trade, for the local, regional andtrans-regional exchange of goods, and are thusplaces characterized by economic activities,migration and cosmopolitanism. In short, they are‘urban agglomerations of human mobility’. Roman portcities were provided not only with the usualelements of infrastructure and architecture,designed to impress with their monumentally stagedregularity, but also with extravagantly planned‘waterfronts’ (see Figure 12 in Chapter 2): theorthogonal network of streets; aqueducts, fountainbuildings and thermal baths; the centrally locatedsanctuaries dominating squares, columned streetsleading towards them; the towering theatre buildingswhich, tall and massive, caught the eye from theoutside across the houses of the cities; the solidfortifications, completed by harbour basins,breakwaters and gigantic piers; a lighthouse,sometimes made of white marble; and broad coastalroads with inlets to house the crews of incomingships. Greater than life-sized statues flanked theentrances to the harbours, providing safety from theincalculable sea but also from piracy. At the sametime, however, a port city had the function of agate, of both a ‘sally port’ and a ‘gateway’,predominantly the latter – for merchants, members ofthe armed forces and the Imperial administration,magistrates and subaltern public officials; fortravellers, visitors, pilgrims, artists andscholars; for migrants who were not there for shortstays but intended to stay longer, perhaps for good.They completed the society of a municipium or a provincial capital, ofwhich we commonly know only of the élite – that isto say, those who dominated the political discourseand also, due to the donations and honours theyreceived, the public spaces, as they occupied theprestigious offices or key positions of thesocio-economic network of relationships, to form‘sub-élites’, such as those of the members of culticand professional associations: ingenui, peregrini and liberti. Thus, port cities had socialstructures that were both much more differentiatedand more ethnically mixed than those of othercities.

This chapter considers one particular piece of evidence for the perceived importance of artistic skill in the Greek world: the unrestricted mobility of artists. Skill is both a rare and portable commodity. High demand for skill may encourage travel, as artists are tempted by ever higher offers of pay in different locales. On the other hand, variable levels of demand may equally force artists to move in order to gain full employment. Crucially, the fact that Greek cities did not attempt to block the entry of foreign artists from hostile polities testifies to the widespread demand for skilled artists and the respect accorded to their craft.

Xenophon’s Oeconomicus examines how elite Athenians should manage their individual households and estates (oikoi) and makes the case that they should set aside aristocratic disdain for work and money-making and seek to become successful estate managers and entrepreneurs. This will benefit them personally in many ways and make them better citizens of the democracy, who will more effectively serve the city as hoplites and cavalrymen and perform other civic roles: the wealth they accrue will allow them to carry out liturgies for the city, and the managerial skills they develop will make them better leaders. Indeed, Xenophon portrays the oikos as a microcosm of the city in which members of the elite can hone the skills that they will need to lead the city effectively. Socrates figures prominently in the Oeconomicus, as in the Memorabilia, as a critic of destructive elite values and behaviors and a proponent of reconceptualizing what it means to be a “gentleman” in light of the good citizenship needed from the elite; his account of his conversation with Ischomachus offers elite Athenians a model for transforming themselves into “gentlemen” in the true sense of the word.