Xenophon has long been identified as a chief contemporary source, if not the chief source, for the history of classical Sparta. But his information has commonly been treated in restricted ways. Scholars who have studied Xenophon’s oeuvre have tended to apply a knowledge of Athenian history and of general Greek literature rather than a specialist knowledge of Sparta. And specialist students of Sparta have commonly `mined’ elements of Xenophon’s work without sufficient regard either for the author’s general characteristics and biases or for the variety of his literary genres.

In this volume, 12 internationally-recognised experts on Sparta examine the quality of Xenophon’s information on central topics of Laconian history, in the light of the author’s political, literary and intellectual characteristics.

This book is the first of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales will apply to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome’s revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods.