Political philosophy, the problem of how to rule, pervades Xenophon's writing. Time and again, whether by way of households, armies, kingdoms or oneself, it surfaces in his works. We need only look to his experience of war and civil war at Athens on the one hand and to his early association with Socrates on the other to appreciate how such a deep-seated concern developed. In the comparative scheme presented by the author in Anabasis, ‘Xenophon’ serves as a paradigm for an ideal leader, and in this chapter I seek to show how this ideal derives from Socratic and Athenian elements. The representation serves at the same time to obliquely defend the author, as the historical figure behind the model, and Socrates, Xenophon's mentor and teacher, against accusations made against them respectively. The cases for Anabasis as personal and Socratic apologia are examined in the following chapters.

As Anabasis is the story of an army on campaign written by one of its commanders, it should not be surprising that it encompasses the subject of military leadership. The fact that the author is a Socratic furthermore sets up an expectation that guidance on the subject may be provided. Yet it is not immediately obvious from the narrative that the treatment has a function beyond the storytelling itself; it does not, of course, follow from the presence of leadership content in the narrative that it must be didactic. Carried along by the trials of the Greeks, a reader who had not been drawn to the text by an interest in leadership could be excused for not registering the force of that underlying theme. This is a mark of Xenophon's talent as a writer, and we can see his artful approach as a way of transcending the often tedious style of military treatises of the day.