Ch. 4. Honour and the Art of Xenophontic Leadership
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/histos96Keywords:
Xenophon, honour, leadership, <em>philotimia</em>, awards, incentives.Abstract
Throughout his wide-ranging corpus Xenophon portrays the desire for honour as a fundamentally human characteristic, one commonly attributed to rulers and commanders and yet also found among other individuals, regardless of their sex or social status. Here I explore how the motivations of honour, and the award of instantiated honours, are to be negotiated by Xenophon’s ideal leader. Every leader is in a position of honour: in order to be successful the good leader must first establish, by properly honouring the gods and his followers, the context within which he may then distribute honours effectively, thereby helping train his followers and achieve their mutual flourishing. Published in Richard Fernando Buxton, ed., Aspects of Leadership in Xenophon (HISTOS Supplement 5), p. 121-62.
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