This paper addresses intertextual similarities of ethnographical and geographical details in Xenophon’s Anabasis and Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica and argues that these intertextualities establish a narrative timeline of Greek civilization on the Black Sea littoral. In both these works, a band of Greek travellers proceeds along the southern coast of the Black Sea, but in different directions and at vastly different narrative times. I argue that Apollonius’ text, written later than Xenophon’s, takes full advantage of these intertextualities in such a way as to retroject evidence about the landscape of the Black Sea littoral. This geographical and ethnographical information prefigures the arrival of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand in the region. By manipulating the differences in narrative time and time of composition, Apollonius sets his Argonauts up as precursors to the Ten Thousand as travellers in the Black Sea and spreaders of Greek civilization there. In Xenophon’s text, the whole Black Sea littoral becomes a liminal space of transition between non-Greek and Greek. As the Ten Thousand travel westward and get closer and closer to home and Greek civilization, they encounter pockets of Greek culture throughout the Black Sea, nestled in between swaths of land inhabited by native tribes of varying and unpredictable levels of civilization. On the other hand, in the Argonautica, Apollonius sets the Argonautic voyage along the southern coast of the Black Sea coast as a direct, linear progression from Greek to non-Greek. As the Argonauts move eastward, the peoples and places they encounter become stranger and less recognizably civilized. This progression of strangeness and foreignness works to build suspense and anticipation of the Argonauts’ arrival at Aietes’ kingdom in Colchis. However, some places have already been visited before by another Greek traveller, Heracles, who appears in both the Argonautica and the Anabasis to mark the primordial progression of Greek civilization in the Black Sea region. The landscape and the peoples who inhabit it have changed in the intervening millennium of narrative time between first Heracles’, then the Argonauts’, and finally the Ten Thousand’s journey, and they show the impact of the visits of all three. / text

Cette étude a pour but d’analyser l’attitude de Xénophon vis-à-vis d’Athènes et de la démocratie. En retraçant les événements de l’histoire athénienne comme ils sont relatés dans les Helléniques et comme l’auteur les a vécus, le travail vise à démontrer : - que Xénophon ne condamne pas la démocratie comme une forme politique injuste, bien qu’il n’approuve pas ses choix politiques au cours du Ve siècle ; - que, grâce à la leçon tirée de l’expérience de l’échec subi au Ve siècle, Athènes est la seule cité capable, aux yeux de l’auteur, de résoudre le conflit entre Grecs et d’apporter la paix en Grèce au IVe siècle ; - que Xénophon essaie d’améliorer la démocratie sans apporter de réformes structurelles, mais à travers une réforme des mentalités politiques selon le modèle socratique. / The following study aims to analyse Xenophon’s attitude to Athens and democracy. By recounting the events of Athenian history as they are related in Hellenica and as the author experienced them, the work aims to demonstrate: - that Xenophon does not condemn democracy as an unfair form of politics, even though he does not agree with the political decisions made by Athens during the 5th century B.C. - that, due to the lessons it learnt from its defeat in the 5th century B.C., Athens is the only city capable, in the eyes of the author, of resolving the conflict between Greeks and bringing peace to Greece in the 4th century B.C. - that Xenophon would like to improve democracy, not through structural reforms but through a reform of political thinking based on the Socratic model.

Xenophon of Athens probably did not write his Anabasis until thirty years or more after the events which it describes. This remarkable gap, taken together with the absence of a prologue, the presence of a number of prominent themes and authorial concerns, and the complex literary construction of the work, has made the task of explaining it problematic. Situating the text in the context of Xenophon's later life and wide-ranging literary output, in this dissertation I argue that apologia is the defining element in the work. Through his elaborate narrative structure and representation of his own character, Xenophon is defending himself, his social class, and his teacher, Socrates. In Books 5 and 7 (of 7) he is occupied with a rigorous defence of his conduct on the retreat, answering charges of deceiving the soldiers, hubris, corruption, and mercenary service, while in Books 3 through to 7, he is defending the memory of Socrates. For from the point of his introduction into the text at the opening of Book 3, following the decapitation of the Greek High Command at the Greater Zab River, Xenophon the character is acting as a pupil of Socrates would have done had he found himself in similarly dire circumstances. His actions, counsel, and moral bearing during the course of the retreat are a testimony to the value of his teacher's training, and powerfully undermine the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth levelled against Socrates in 399. At the same time, the outstanding leadership performance on the retreat of Xenophon's character reflects on himself as the historical figure behind the exemplar. By highlighting its different forms and bringing out its pervasiveness, the dissertation demonstrates that apologia is the major factor in the formation of the text.

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