Xenophon's 'Hellenica' (here translated as 'A History of My Times') covers 411 to 362 BC. A period which begins with the fall of Athens and ends with Sparta, Corinth and Athens all reduced to a similar level of impotent petty wrangling. Although Xenophon could not have known it, the time of the City States was almost over, and the stage was set of the rise of Macedon, of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great.
Xenophon's book is an engaging guide to this time, but is it reliable? Apparently not at all. Even to a lay reader like me it was clear that Xenophon misses out great chunks of history. He's not writing a history in our sense of objective history at all. Instead, one can imagine Xenophon towards the end of his life discussing the old days with his mates over a couple of bottles of wine, then writing it down. This is not history, perhaps not even memoirs. Acts worthy of report of included, all else is omitted; Xenophon censors by silence. As he says himself 'I shall pass over those actions not worth mentioning, dealing only with what deserves to be remembered'.
So, engaging as this book is, I really can't recommend it, there must be much better, clearer and more detailed histories of this period; even if they are written twenty four centuries later.
Penguin Classics, 425 pages