Decision-Making in Xenophon (on M. Zimmermann, Entscheidungsfindung und Machtausübung bei Xenophon)

iven Xenophon's military expertise and experience, it is not surprising to find many passages in his oeuvre where decisions to be made are deliberated upon, reflected on, and taken by those in power.Yet it is surprising that no comprehensive study of these phenomena existed until now, which can be perhaps best explained by the division and distribution of Xenophon's works into different modern fields of study: (ancient) historians being mainly interested in the historical aspects of both the Hellenica and Anabasis; philologists in the Cyropaedia, for instance; philosophers in the Socratic dialogues.Against this division and following the recent scholarly attempts to see and read Xenophon's various writings in a systematic way together, Markus Zimmermann has published his slightly revised, admirably compact Habilitation thesis in which he focuses on decision-making mainly in the two historical works of the author, the Hellenica and Anabasis, however placing them into the decision-and-power discourse of the late fifth and fourth century BC to which Xenophon himself substantially contributed.For this purpose, Zimmermann tackles in his introduction the important question of the degree to which literary descriptions of, and reflections on, decision-making processes relate to actual discourses, discussions, and practices in Greek, especially Athenian, societies: for him, there is a close relation so that works of philosophy, historiography, drama, etc. become an essential source for research into the history of societies and their ideas.Hence, he sees a study of Xenophon's thoughts on decision-making as relevant for revealing not only the author's view, which he overall classifies as coherent through the various works, but also for offering a glimpse into the Zeitgeist.In a short, second chapter, he then turns to the theoretical foundation of decision-making processes as sometimes touched upon by ancient Greek authors, and the legitimation and narrative strategies of presenting decisions, underlying motives and factors as systematically analysed by modern researchers.He then follows up in the next chapter where he briefly investigates Xenophon's life and work, which were to a considerable degree entangled (not least in the Anabasis), and among others proposes the possibility (following, e.g

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