Hellenica
Hellenika
Greek history did not stop when Thucydides's account broke off in 411 BC, and continuing it through Sparta's rise, overreach, and the unsettled balance of power that followed shows how quickly a hegemony won by war can be lost again.
- continuation of Thucydides's unfinished history
- Sparta's rise, dominance, and fall
- partisan sympathy for Sparta and Agesilaus
- sole continuous narrative source for the period
- uneven composition across decades
The Hellenica picks up Greek history precisely where Thucydides's unfinished History leaves off in 411 BC, carrying it through the Peloponnesian War's end, the brutal rule of the Thirty Tyrants, Sparta's dominance and wars against Persia and its former allies, Sparta's defeat by Thebes at Leuctra in 371 BC, and the unsettled struggle that followed to the inconclusive battle of Mantinea in 362 BC, where the narrative ends. Xenophon began the work at Scillus but finished it at Corinth after the Eleans expelled him following Leuctra. He writes with far less analytical ambition than Thucydides, offering a straightforward, at times openly partisan chronicle favorable to Sparta and his friend King Agesilaus, but the work remains the essential continuous narrative source for a turbulent half-century of Greek interstate politics that no other surviving history covers in comparable detail.
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