It would be reasonable to maintain that after the expedition Xenophon was not universally seen as having played a saviour role in it and that there was continuing criticism of his leadership style. If those circumstances were not to hold, then, while we may well still have had an Anabasis, that would likely have been a different book; in the one we have, Xenophon is at pains to represent his role on the retreat of the Ten Thousand as highly significant. From obscurity in the march upcountry, he emerges on the banks of the Zapatas River as a formidable leader of men. Until the army leaves Thrace some fifteen months later, he is involved in almost every major action described and is constantly on hand with sound advice. The fact that he appears to have used a pseudonym – Themistogenes of Syracuse – reinforces this view, there being an argument at least from the time of Plutarch that he ‘assigned [Themistogenes] the honour of authorship in order to make his account more credible by having himself described in the third person’ (SB) (De gloria Atheniensium 345e).

This reading, adopted by many as an explanation for the work, is nonetheless complicated by the evidence of Xenophon's other writings. Where he features at all, he is a retiring presence, and much of his writing besides is concerned with ethical philosophy. On a fuller view of his life and works, he was not a man we might expect to be given to self-aggrandisement. A resolution to this contradiction – a reconciliation between Xenophon the author and historical figure and the foregrounding of his character in Anabasis – can be brought about if we take account of the extensive apologetic theme, in particular the mission to promote the worth of Socrates the Athenian.