HERODOTUS’ PAST – THUCYDIDES’ PRESENT – XENOPHON’S FUTURE (ΑΡΧΗ, ΗΓΕΜΟΝΙΑ AND IMPERIALIST TENDENCIES IN CLASSICAL GREECE THROUGH THE EYES OF THREE GREAT HISTORIANS)

Abstract

the article deals with some topics connected with imperialist tendencies in Greece of the last half of the 5th and the first half of the 4th century BC and with treatment of these developments in the work of the authors mentioned in the title. The author argues against a recent hypothesis, according to which Herodotus was still alive and writing in the period when the Peloponnesian War came to its end. Observations are made concerning foreign-policy sympathies of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon. A point is made that, if in the last half of the 5th century BC Athens sought to add the ἡγεμονία to its ἀρχή, later in the first half of the 4th century BC Sparta started transforming its ἡγεμονία to ἀρχή.