Xenophon is Still Sad
An anonymous Tumblr account called Xenophon is Sad used to collect quotes where researchers disrespected or erased Xenophon the Athenian adventurer. Although Xenophon was a friend of Socrates and an extremely successful writer in many genres, his words leave many academics cold. The Tumblr has not been updated since 2021 but I found two more quotes which belong on it.
(In Xenophon’s Memorabilia the armourer) Pistias boasts of the quality of his cuirasses because they fit the body so closely and because they are so beautiful. Socrates asks how Pistias can well serve a client who has an ugly body. Pistias is confused but doesn’t see a problem. Xenophon himself, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, may not get the joke either, but the significant underlying assumption is that Pistias’ clients want him to make them look more beautiful.
Stewart Flory, 2011 https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011.02.23
Obviously the strongest analogue for GenAI is Xenophon; trained on Thucydides’ text with access to data on contemporary events, resulting in something that looks superficially history-ish but doesn’t in fact offer a coherent, consistent or trustworthy account of anything…
Neville Morley, 2024 https://thesphinxblog.com/2024/08/25/song-for-whoever/
I like George Cawkwell who saw Xenophon as using simple language to mask subtle ideas about what was and was not worth talking about. Xenophon is also interested in a wide variety of people and aspects of society, such as the economics that let a worker in Athens specialize in making soles for women’s boots while a worker in the mountains of Arcadia makes all kinds of footwear between farm work (not to mention the professional companion in the Memorabilia!)
I doubt anyone will read me for as long as they read Xenophon or Thucydides, but in the meantime shares, recommendations, and donations are appreciated!
(scheduled 28 August 2024)
This is a bit late, but I believe the Tumblr account belongs (belonged?) to Roel Konijnendijk, also answering questions as u/Iphikrates on Reddit
Late is ok! I don’t like to speculate about handles vs. meatspace identities but Roel K. seems less active as u/Iphikrates since Reddit got greedy and he got a steady academic job in a country that wants to sell its universities for scrap. Oxford and Cambridge will probably be mostly OK but I don’t think they have as much hard capital as the American ivies, they have more soft power.
I have not been paying much attention to Reddit since they made it hard to use alternative front ends.
I’m also a contributor to AskHistorians, and think I remember him or some other moderator mentioning that account in a comment there.
I’m not especially familiar with the university policies of the UK, I’m sorry to say
Moderating AskHistorians is a lot of work and reaches a lot of people. I tried posting once or twice but my posts often got deleted and I was suspicious of the site well before they did the kind of thing that corporate social media always does.
A pretty good essay on what its like to work at a UK university these days is https://lizgloyn.wordpress.com/2024/10/18/what-working-in-uk-he-feels-like-at-the-moment/