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Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises
Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises
Nov 24, 2025 1:33 PM

Author:Xenophon,Paul Cartledge,Robin Waterfield

Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises

One of Socrates' Athenian disciples in his youth, Xenophon (c. 498-354 bc) fought as a mercenary commander in Cyrus the Younger's campaign to seize the Persian throne, and later wrote a wide range of works on history, politics and philosophy. These six treatises offer his informed insights into the nature of leadership. In the dialogue between the poet Simonides and Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, Xenophon provides a consummate consideration of the burdens of being an absolute dictator and the superior happiness of the private man. Elsewhere, his biography of King Agesilaus II of Sparta depicts the author's patron as a model of piety, justice, courage and wisdom, while other texts consider the essential qualities of the cavalry commander, analyse the skills of the horseman and the hunter, and advance a bold economic plan for democratic Athens.

Reviews

'A must for James admirers and everyone else who appreciates fine writing and an original story'

—— Ruth Rendell , Guardian

A convincing, compelling and icy reworking of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, in which Sallie, an American girl obsessed by the subject of her PhD thesis, quits university to take on the job of temporary nanny in an English country house. Sallie is so manipulated by words, so deluded by her own emotional fantasies that she interferes with James's original narrative and screws it into terrifying reality.

—— Beryl Bainbridge , Books of the Year, Observer

'Chilling... Once you have read A Jealous Ghost, I'm afraid you won't be able to get it out of your head. Ever? Quite possibly'

—— Susan Hill , Spectator

'Irresistibly readable and, finally, terrifying. Wilson turns the screw in masterly fashion'

—— John Sutherland , Evening Standard

'Gruesomely entertaining ... intellectually fascinating'

—— Daily Mail

'A tragi-comedy of elegant and unrelieved blackness'

—— Sunday Telegraph

'Erudite and compelling... Genuinely hard to put down'

—— Sunday Times

'Wilson has always been a brilliant storyteller, who ­- unlike many of his no less famous contemporaries - is incapable of ever writing a boring line... Masterly... Always enthralling... Here is a book one races through, so eager is one to know what happens next... In [Wilson's] hands, as in James's, each turn of the screw succeeds in intensifying the reader's unease'

—— Francis King , Literary Review
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