Xenophon (general)

Xenophon ( Greek  Ξενοφῶν ), son of Euripides, was a general of the city of Athens in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). It is believed to have been around 480 BC. And fell in 429 BC. At the battle of Spartolus in Thrace .

As a general , he was mainly involved in the siege of the city of Potidaia on the Thracian peninsula Chalkidike , which played an important role in the early phase of the Peloponnesian War: the city, founded as a colony by Corinth , had declared its detachment from the Attic League due to disputes with Athens . Thereupon the Athenians marched against the city and besieged it. Xenophon became a general with Hestiodorus , son of Aristokleides , and Phanomachos , son of Callimachus , 430 BC. Was sent to the north as a replacement and was commissioned to bring this siege to a good end, which had already cost the Athenian treasury 2,000 talents . After two years the city, in which cannibalism had spread due to a famine, surrendered in the winter of 430/429 BC. The besiegers.

The Athenian generals, whose army had to suffer from the wintry conditions, were relieved and granted the opposing military and residents free retreat in the negotiations, for which they were criticized by the Athenian people's assembly, which would have liked a tougher approach.

Later in the same year (429 BC), Xenophon and his fellow military officers undertook an attack against the Chalcidians and the Bottians in the summer with 2,000 of their armored soldiers ( hoplites ) and 200 riders, but this ended in a catastrophe: the Athenian army was above all Not up to the Chalcidian cavalry and their flexible attack tactics, panicked and had to retreat to Potidaia in heavy battles, whereby all the generals lost their lives.

The famous rhetor Lysias tells of a granddaughter of the general Xenophon, who was married to the Athenian diplomat Aristophanes , the son of Nicophemus , a close colleague of the Admiral Konon , and who was married in 389 BC. Became a widow when her husband was sentenced to death and executed in Athens.

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• Lysias : Speech (XIX) “About the wealth of Aristophanes” . Freytag, Leipzig 1927 (Greek-German)
• Thucydides : History of the Peloponnesian War, II 70 and 79 ("De bello peloponnesiaco"). Artemis & Winkler, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-1637-1 ( Tusculum Collection )