Xenophon and the alternative to realist foreign policy:<i>Cyropaedia</i>3.1.14–31

Abstract

Abstract The dialogue Xenophon stages at Cyropaedia 3.1.14–31 constitutes a sophisticated theoretical treatment of Greek foreign-policy motivations and methods, and offers an implicit rebuttal to Thucydides' realist theses about foreign relations. Comparison of this passage to the historians and Attic orators suggests that Xenophon was attempting to systematize conventional Greek conceptions: the resulting theoretical system, in which hybris is regarded as the main obstacle to interstate quiet, and control of other states depends not only upon fear but upon superior excellence and the management of reciprocity, is likely to approach closer than Thucydides' theses to mainstream classical Greek thinking about foreign relations.