Mdthbs

Xenophon of Athens created a large amount of written material even by today's standards. Did he create this work knowing it would be read by future generations, or was it for his own satisfaction? I could imagine figures like Socrates, Aristotle, or Herodotus might expect their work to be copied many times, but maybe not?

Is this similar to academia, where a document or book might be highly useful to a smaller audience? Even in this case, the physical effort to create and copy the work seems trivial compared to the same with Papyrus and copying by hand.

Of course we can only conjecture (as we cannot know exactly what was in Xenophon's mind), so I conjecture that motivation was the same as for many modern writers: it is the desire to spread one's knowledge and ideas. To the contemporaries and to the later generations. There are additional, secondary motivations, of course, such as fame, respect in the society and other benefits. Famous writers can get various favors from the rulers and from the people.

The only difference between the ancient Greece and modern world in this respect is that monetary rewards play more important role in the modern world. We invented copyright, and some modern authors can be more motivated by selling their writings.
This was apparently not a motivation of the Greeks. And in general, money plays a much greater role in the modern world then in the ancient world.

In a specific case, his work was clearly intended as instructional manual for others:

His work On Horsemanship addresses cavalry officers and others either involved with the training of horses or the leading of mounted troops.

Thus sitting "between" your two positions of "for future generations" and "for own satisfaction".

The twist being that he almost certainly could not predict that future generations of equestrians would still return to this work and marvel about how much of his instructions and observations stood the test of time, through fads and fashions, across nearly 2 1/2 thousand years!

Xenophon (about 431 BC to 354 BC) produced a very wide range of work during his lifetime: historical, biographical, philosophical, instructional. For some of these works, he states a purpose (see below). For others we can sometimes deduce his intent with a certain degree of confidence, but other times we cannot be sure.

The historical works Anabasis and Hellenika are the most problematic for, as John Marincola states in The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon,

Xenophon does not give us much help in interpreting these works. No
major ancient historian is more reticent about the nature and purpose
of his history...

Among those where Xenophon gives at least part of his reason are:

In Agesilaus (King Agesilaos II of Sparta, ruled c. 398 – c. 360 BC), Xenophon begins with:

I know how difficult it is to write an appreciation of Agesilaus that
shall be worthy of his virtue and glory. Nevertheless the attempt must
be made. For it would not be seemly that so good a man, just because
of his perfection, should receive no tributes of praise, however
inadequate.

This laudatory account of Agesilaos is in contrast to some parts of Hellenika (see below) where Agesilaos is at times criticized.

In the Socratic dialogue Symposium, Xenophon, through a narrator, says:

To my mind it is worth while to relate not only the serious acts of
great and good men but also what they do in their lighter moods. I
should like to narrate an experience of mine that gives me this
conviction.

In the Socratic dialogue Apology his intent was make explicit something about Socrates' defence which he felt other writers hadn't:

It seems to me fitting to hand down to memory, furthermore, how
Socrates, on being indicted, deliberated on his defence and on his
end. It is true that others have written about this, and that all of
them have reproduced the loftiness of his words,—a fact which proves
that his utterance really was of the character intimated;—but they
have not shown clearly that he had now come to the conclusion that for
him death was more to be desired than life; and hence his lofty
utterance appears rather ill-considered.

Among those works where Xenophon does not obviously explain his intent are:

Cyropaedia (see also the section below on Anabasis) This multi-genre text is Xenophon's longest work and focuses on Cyrus the Great (although much of it is fiction) but it was intended neither as a history or a biography. Cyropaedia is

the most enigmatic with regards to the author’s intentions....Xenophon
sets out to narrate certain noteworthy incidents and exceptional deeds
(military and political) from the life of Cyrus the Great.... What he found most admirable and
underlines already in the prologue of this work is the fact that Cyrus
managed to rule a great empire with the willing obedience of his
followers. The Cyropaedia is thus presented as having serious claims
to contribute to the political discourse of Xenophon’s time. It is no
wonder that in antiquity it was considered a response to Plato’s
Republic...

Why did Xenophon choose a Persian, Cyrus? Melina Tamiolaki, in The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon argues that:

At least two reasons can be advanced to explain this choice: firstly,
Xenophon was interested in paradigms of successful empires; obviously
he could not fi nd such paradigms in Greece, which experienced
consecutive failures of empires. Secondly, he must have been impressed
by specific features on which the propaganda about Cyrus insisted,
mainly his qualities as a benevolent despot and his success in gaining
the willing obedience of his followers. Greek leaders ostensibly
lacked these qualities, for the simple reason that the regime of
monarchy that by definition enables and fosters them, was absent in
Greece. Xenophon wished to underline these qualities, but without
implying a suggestion about constitutional change in Greece.

In Hellenika, a continuation of Thucydides' work on the Peloponnesian War and then beyond, Xenophon does not clearly state a reason. His style reveals that he had clearly read both Herodotus and Thucydides. He begins Hellenika with "And after those things, not many days later...". David Thomas, in his introduction to The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika, observes:

Xenophon begins this way, expecting the reader to recognize that he is
picking up roughly where Thucydides left off....Xenophon...is in some
sense claiming to be a historian who can be compared to Thucydides.

Thucydides states why he wrote his work. It was because he thought

"it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any other
that had preceded it"

Xenophon may have felt the same way, particularly as he simply continues from where Thucydides left off. What else might have given him reason to write Hellenika we simply don't know.

Anabasis is similarly problematic in terms of motive. perhaps he felt that the march of 10,000 Greeks through the heart of the mighty Persian empire was too good a story not to tell. In Anabasis, the theme of Leaders and Followers is evident, as it was in Cyropaedia, and Xenophon's desire to make known his thoughts on what he personally saw as something very important may well have been an important (but not only) reason for writing both Anabasis and Cyropaedia.