For the Glory of Athens: Xenophon’s Hipparchikos , a technical treatise and instruction manual on ideal leadership

Abstract

Xenophon’s Peri hippikes <technees>, “On Horsemanship,” and the Hipparchikos <logos>, “the Cavalry Commander”, writings which can be regarded as technical works with a didactic purpose, are almost unknown. Xenophon was interested in problems of leadership and the exercise of power (For the titles of the both writings and the analogous supplementary terms “technees” and “logos” compare Breitenbach, 1966, 1761. Angled brackets are used by modern editors of ancient texts as text-critical signs and are inserted here because “peri hippikes” and “hipparchikos” are adjectives and cannot stand alone; “technees” and “logos” are supplied as absent, but implied, substantives. The conventional signs “<>” clarify this supplementary act for the modern reader.). The “Cavalry Commander” (ca. 365 B.C.) intended for the instruction of potential hipparchs (calvary commanders) is simultaneously political and didactic and technical; in this text, categories of leadership that had been developed in earlier works are combined in a powerful manner. Xenophon constructed “leaders” as exempla (“examples”) of correct behaviour; military and political theory are synthesised. The Hipparchikos logos, as a didactic work, aims to produce specialists who master their techné (“art” or “skill”), to develop their ideal qualities. Both texts are directed at an Athenian society, in which the cavalry had lost their significance and pride as a result of recent political turbulence. Xenophon hoped to reform the cavalry for the benefit of Athens. The basic question of the didactic work is: how can I become the best hipparch, how can I go beyond simply filling the office, and instead develop it for the well-being of the polis and thus serve the city? The art of leadership consists in dealing with subordinates in such a manner that they obey and follow voluntarily—still an innovative and modern approach today.