Abstract

In settings ranging from an Athenian home to a Persian palace, Xenophon shows women engaging in dialogue and asserting a distinctive perspective that comments on their own position in society. It also illuminates their experience of being the objects of the male gaze and restricted in their social interactions. In using women such as Theodote, an Athenian courtesan (Memorabilia) and Pantheia, a non-Greek queen (Cyropaedia) to represent ethical positions and virtue itself, Xenophon both draws on and contests the Greek literary heritage, and the depiction of women in genres ranging from epic and tragedy to historiography. He represents a broader Socratic tradition from that evident in Plato’s work, in which women were more often used as interlocutors. These women appear as participants in the project of philosophical reflection on the pursuit of virtue, not just as the objects of male discussion.