Abstract

There are clear shared themes within the political and ethical thought of Xenophon and Aristotle. Both are interested in human life in its extreme forms, from the slave to the absolute monarch, in the structure of the household and its relationship to the wider political and other responsibilities of the male citizen who was its manager, in the constitutions of cities, ideal and otherwise, and in the practicalities of implementing the ideals that underlay the politeia. However, Aristotle’s use of Xenophon’s texts has often been treated as limited to the extraction of useful data about, for example, Spartan educational and political practices, rather than as a critical engagement with Xenophon’s ethical and political thought itself. Their common subject matter appears to be due to emerging genre conventions, although both writers are establishing those genres rather than working in established ones.