SOURCE: "Did Xenophon Intend to Write History?," in The Ancient Historian and His Materials, edited by Barbara Levick, Gregg International, 1975, pp. 31-43.

In the following essay, Grayson offers a qualification to the general opinion that Xenophon was a poor historian by suggesting that the Hellenica, his most "historical" text, has a moral intent that overrides its function as history.

Xenophon as a historian stands condemned. His intellectual honesty is impugned as his abilities are questioned. For the history of the first half of the fourth century he is frequently ignored in favour of the unknown author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia fragments, in favour of parochial Atthides, hardly less fragmentary, in favour of orators, the bias of whose speeches is at the same time universally recognised, and also in favour of Ephorus, intuitively read between the lines of a third-rate first-century hack, Diodorus.

I have no defence to offer...