SOURCE: Proietti, Gerald. Preface to Xenophon's Sparta: An Introduction, pp. ix-xxii. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1987.

In the following excerpt from the preface to his study of Xenophon's Hellenica, Proietti explores the ancient writer's perceptions of Sparta.

We have reason today to read Xenophon's writings on Sparta with care. The central concern of most international political discourse is the search for a stable condition of peace that will, above all, provide for the freedom of all nations. Both World Wars ended with all but unanimous declarations of this principle and the establishment of international organizations seeking to maintain it, but the emergence of two “superpowers,” each accusing the other of imperial designs, has darkened those hopes. Xenophon's Hellenica remains the only extensive contemporary account—and in many parts it is even an eyewitness account—of a time in Greece when many believed that they were nearer than...