Wives and Mothers (VARIAE LECTIONES Book 7)
The point is that Xenophon seems to be a realist not an idealist in seeing multiple motives. It would be inaccurate, I think, to call him very wise at this young of an age, however; he does much that is impulsive and reckless. Am I addressing your question? I also think that the very physical language here is striking. Free Greek men were very sensitive about physical violence as a threat to their status as free men there is a good article on Spartiates striking free men with their staffs which I wish I could recall.
There is also the the Old Oligarch Constitution of the Athenians 1. Classical Press of Wales. This is a very interesting question. In both instances, that of domestic life and animal husbandry, respectively, the formulations seem to be nothing more than variations for introducing indirect discourse, i. Hendiadys is probably the right idea, too: For that general issue see however C.
According to this passage, Xenophon would seem to be offering knowledge of proper leadership to his audience. Hertlein vii cites several ancient authors e. See Carlier in Gray for the argument that Xenophon may have been hoping to encourage and train a Greek leader to conquer Persia. Ultimately Carlier believes that Xenophon believed such imperial conquest was not worth the effort: The Cyropaedia seems to be the work of a clear-eyed traditionalist, a man worried about the disruptions that the conquest of Asia would create for the Greeks.
They know about Homeric kingship from the epics, and would have thought of it as part of their past, but it was neither exclusive nor all that powerful, as the plight of Agamemnon in the Iliad makes clear. The kings of the fourth century Greek world, such as the rulers of Syracuse, Evagoras on Cyprus, and Jason of Pherae, are all closer to tyrants than proper kings, having gained power recently and tending to be relatively short-lived phenomena.
The contemporary examples of hereditary kingship other than Persia that Xenophon gives in Cyropaedia 1. Discussions of monarchy as one of several theoretical forms is, of course prevalent — Greeks liked to think about things theoretically. Against this context, one has to ask why Xenophon is so interested in kingship as a form the best form? Whereas so much attention is given in classical political thought to forms of government, this is a non-issue in China, where monarchy as the best and only conceivable form of government is a given and is deeply validated by religious concepts ancestor worship, Mandate of Heaven theory.
In ancient China the political discussion is all about the character, conduct, and attitudes of the monarch, for herein lies the key to good government. The Cyropaedia seems to me to be infused with that approach to the problem — Cyrus comes off looking like a good Confucian king! I am not for a moment suggesting that there is any East Asian influence on Xenophon. But he seems to think about monarchy in the way that people who live under monarchy think, and that can, perhaps, best be explained by his unusual experience of and knowledge about Persia.
Note that this is also the approach to justifying his rule taken by the Persian King Darius in his inscriptions. Aside from the constant reminders that Ahuramazda wants him to be king, he frequently advertises his character and his conduct as validations of his fitness to rule. There are lots of great lines of inquiry to pursue hear, and I certainly want to hear more about your China-Mediterranean connections! Many of the metaphorical areas they drew from to describe government are in fact monarchical, e.
The arguments that Isocrates puts in the mouth of Nicocles in the the speech to the Cyprians are not the best but perhaps they are the most intuitive: This is peculiar, given that there was no great experience of monarchy at least of the Persian type in Greece, whereas there was an example of successful regime, democracy, in the sense that it was more stable than other regimes. Oligarchy, on the other hand, had indeed failed. So, would it be possible that Xenophon was in a sense encouraging Greeks to experiment on sth which was not tested before?
And how far had he gone with this idea? Had he seriously considered its feasibility or was it more utopian thinking? This is a great observation. Having grown up in the midst of the Peloponnesian War, particularly as a young adult through the later stages, this might certainly give him a sour disposition towards democracy. Also acknowledging his close association with Socrates, and the lengths he goes to, as we will see , to import or even manufacture a Socrates-like character in the Cyropaedia highlights the probability that he was very critical of democracy based on the Athenian form.
It seems to be a long tradition in academic study of Classical Greece that Athens was the superior polis in all ways, especially government. Is not therefore possible that Xenophon also represents a philosophical reaction to the Periclean Age, where Pericles operates in actuality very much like a constitutional monarch in imperial practice, but for the sake of appearance has no official title?
For the sake of argument, during the height of the Athenian Empire, we can just say that the democracy of Athens was something less than a technical democracy , precisely because it was so completely dominated by the efforts of Pericles. Those decades and policies were the antagonist that sparked the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Athens as a polis sat at the head of an empire that was anything else — certainly not a democracy. It seems logical that Xenophon correctly saw the dressing of democracy that was and often still is hailed as a great governmental achievement as something of a sham.
These circumstances also ushered in horrific consequences that affected the entire Greek world, throwing it into political chaos. The democracy which was defended in the Persian Wars, then turned and exiled the most prominent of its defenders, Cimon, Miltiades, Themistocles — even those great leaders held up as the standard Athens had thanked them for their services by exiling them. Very early on Xenophon himself was exiled, therefore is so difficult to see the logic that Xenophon saw democracy as being vulnerable to be counterproductive to itself?
It does seem, especially in the case of the post Peloponnesian War reality, that the varying democracies have failed. At least it is easy to understand why Athenians and other Greeks may come to the conclusion at the end of the 5th Century going into the 4th Century. And of course attempts were made from within, but those reformers, who probably had their own not so noble agenda in mind , also failed. Of course the Achaemenid Empire had been running at various levels of competency, for over a century.
Perhaps it would be better not to think in terms of the failure of types of government, but rather failure of the polis system itself — after all, the revived democracy of the Athenians restored a credible semblance of empire in a comparatively short time — but in the end, they were still a polis, with all the logistical as well as political liabilities that entails.
I think Isocrates concerns himself very much with precisely such limitations. See my other post raising the prospect that this work is not as laudatory as one may think. The only locus of overt negativity is in the so-called epilogue Cyropaedia 8. There is much scholarly controversy about whether Xenophon or someone else composed the epilogue. But either way, Xenophon or the forger read the bulk of the Cyropaedia as positive, and used the epilogue to show that contemporary Persia had fallen away from the virtues of the past.
I think that the view that X. I am not at all certain that I am right, but it might prove fruitful to examine. I found your own argument that the appendix is inconsistent with a positive reading of the Cyropaedia pretty convincing, but consider it ironically? To be convincing, though, ironic readings need to rely on more than the appendix. That is a very interesting path to consider and part of a larger question I have been wondering about for a while: Maybe someone will take them up on a blog post at some point technically, I am no longer just tackling the question of why Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia!
On the one hand, Xenophon had some measure of firsthand access to some important leaders, e. He certainly also had access to information, true or otherwise, about Cyrus the Great. Moreover, Xenophon had plenty of experience as a leader himself. So, the questions from here abound: Was his Theory of Leadership an inductive generalization from all of these experiences? Did one particular leader i. In the end, we are never certain if he is offering practical advice or commenting on his poetic predecessors — as I argued in a couple of papers I gave on the myth of Er, he is ever backtracking to his war on poetry — only in Plato Laws does he finally approach something like a practical approach to a realizable state.
It certainly removes the possibility of any simplistic idealisation of monarchy as the best form of government by transposing it into a different cosmological era not accessible to us. I am merely stating that Plato Republic cannot stand up as a manual to the extent that Plato Laws can, given the preoccupation P. Plato Statesman presents an entirely different challenge, as you well point out.
I have thought about this issue in the context of agricultural and other didactic poetry, but not government. What are the characteristics of a manual? Why does Xenophon seem to find this a noteworthy and perhaps admirable accomplishment? What is the history of Greek attempts to subdue other nations and establish an empire outside of Greece itself? Xenophon describes several such attempts in the Hellenica and Anabasis including ones as small as his own dream of a colony on the Black Sea and the wars of Dercylidas and Clearchus against the European Thracians.
Even inside Greece, he saw a whole series of powers fail to maintain hegemony, let alone maintain it through voluntary consent. Perhaps his own failures in this area, and those of leaders he admired such as Agesilaus, made him especially respectful of Cyrus the Elder? Note that Herodotus Histories 1. Are these actions identical, viewed from complimentary perspectives? Ruling the willing and ruling the unwilling are the first way in which Plato distinguishes types of constitutions, e.
Again, this vocabulary here seems to me to be setting out a message to the reader to read this work as political theory, or at least as a politeia type text, rather than simply as a historical narrative. Cyrus wins the affection of his Medan contemporaries for challenging them in contests that he knew he would not win e. Artabazus later agrees to follow Cyrus against the Medes and help him enlist others Cyropaedia 4. It is not clear to me whether the fear that Xenophon inspires in others cf.
Xenophon seems to recognize that social position is an essential condition for leadership. Not everyone can do that, and not everyone is born into royalty. This suggests to me that for Xenophon knowledge is the basis of i. The group could collect and discuss passages that help to answer it as well. It occurs to me that we could also bring in other ancient works on leadership that emphasize lineage to a greater or lesser extent. According to Cramer The Way to the White House this Christmas card list grew from 4,, file-cards which could include whole families in the mid-seventies to 39, Christmas cards sent in Cicero notes that the Cyropaedia is very popular in his day and refers to it as Cyri Vita et Disciplina Cicero Brutus Cicero Letter to Quintus 1.
Bizos v cites Aulus Gellius To name a work after the events in the first book is not unprecedented for Xenophon, however. At any rate some form of education continues after Book One. To pick up on the thread that a title may refer to the events of the beginning of a work, as is the case in Anabasis, this would make particular sense to an ancient audience accustomed to referring to poetic works by their first line.
As this is not a custom confined to Greece, but with a very long pedigree e. As a multi-book i.
Are You an Author?
To put it another way, book 1 provides a measure for later books. Xenophon may be reflecting on the past two hundred years of political life in Athens Bizos on Cyropaedia 1.
The city had witnessed the tyranny of Peisistratus and his son Hippias — BCE , the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes , and the radical democracy of Pericles — , followed by the short-lived oligarchies of and 5, In the Spartans imposed a tyranny of thirty members that was overthrown in by democrats led by the general Theramenes. From a more theoretical vantage Xenophon may also be thinking of the treatment of governments devolving from the kallipolis in Plato Republic a—c , i. Though neither author ever mentions the other except once, Memorabilia 3.
In the ancient world both Diogenes Laertius 3. From a literary or historiographical vantage Xenophon may also be thinking of the rise and fall of individual city-states that Herodotus Histories 1. He gives several reasons why a city-state might bring about its collapse: These instances all illustrate for Cambyses the limitation of human wisdom and the need to rely on the gods, who reward the pious.
Both the Histories and the Education of Cyrus share an interest in the first king of the Persian Empire, and there is precedence for Xenophon to pick up from another famous work of literature. It is commonly assumed that Xenophon takes up the narrative thread of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War in his Hellenica cf. Gray and Dillery Even if we are to read a philosophical and literary influence into the introduction, as seems likely, the fact that Xenophon begins his reflection with the decline of democracy, which, he says, some find less desirable than any other constitution, suggests that he is trying to connect broadly with his Athenian audience and its legacy of democracy, for better and worse see additional comments to this subsection.
I might suggest that Xenophon rather moves us away from democracy by listing it first, only to leave it behind and make the transition to individual leaders. After all, the reversals of Athenian democracy listed above took place some time before the Cyropaedia was written, and the Athenian democracy was rather stable in the 4th century. It is hard to see an political application of the Cyropaedia at Athens, then—even if one thinks Xenophon was rather anti-democratic, it is hard to imagine him advocating a transition to monarchy.
What is the history of classifying governments according to democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, and tyranny? Hertlein on Cyropaedia 1. And be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards. The Constitutional Debate in Herodotus Histories 3. Isocrates Nicocles or To the Cyprians gives a multi-faceted defense of monarchy and criticizes democracy and oligarchy.
Angelos Chaniotis discusses the success of democracy as well as attitudes toward democracy and illusions of democracy in ancient Greece, especially the Hellenistic world. Xenophon seems somewhat anti-democratic here, with his observation that some prefer any other form of government to democracy. Moreover Cyrus is clearly a monarchical leader, who at times even works outside the laws. Many of the forms of leadership that Xenophon treats, including the general, the captain, the father, and the estate manager, are monarchical. Cyrus is educated publicly, he encourages open discussion, he seeks to build consensus, and he shows concern for the injured and needy.
What are the connotations of the terms demokratia, oligarchia, monarchia, tyrannia in the Cyropaedia and in Xenophon in general? Xenophon seems to qualify the tradition about constitutional debates by blurring the distinction between the tyrant and the monarch. Moreover, in the fifth-century B. This statement creates a link with the reflection of the Hiero , but also raises some questions concerning Cyrus: Carlier notes that several commentators have thought that Xenophon prefers monarchy. For a helpful introduction to many facets of Athenian democracy, see Demos: Herodotus, too, grounds his investigation historia on the fact that the deeds of Greeks and barbarians are wonderful Herodotus Histories 1.
This technique is practiced today by familiar, folksy commentators such as Andy Rooney and Frank DeFord. As in the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1. For how long had he known about him? Many ancient authors, prior to and contemporary with Xenophon, wrote about the Persians: It seems perfectly likely to me that Xenophon could assume that his readers were familiar with Herodotus. The reading public in classical Greece was presumably not that large, and any audience that would be interested in the subject matter of the Cyropaedia would also probably be interested in Herodotus. There seems little doubt that Xenophon continued the work of Thucydides in his Hellenica, since he begins right where Thucydides text breaks off.
Why not try to outdo Herodotus as well? Herodotus was the great expert on Persia in an earlier generation, a title that I think Xenophon and also Ctesias was eager to lay claim to in his own era. In the agonistic society of the Greeks, that usually meant contradicting and even badmouthing their predecessors the contrast with Chinese historiography is startling — Chinese historians were so respectful of their predecessors that they basically copied what they had written when covering the same ground. The foregoing thoughts about the relationship of Xenophon and Herodotus inevitably get us into the question of what kind of book the Cyropaedia is.
Xenophon was an innovator in literary genres, creating or contributing to the early stages of memoir, biography, history, philosophic dialogue, technical manual, and, perhaps, the novel. There was still much fluidity in these genres, and an author can have more than one purpose. As you know, I think his patron Cyrus the younger gave him some openings. It seems pretty obvious to us that the Persian debaters are tossing around the concepts of Greek political theory, and Herodotus had already obviously run into this criticism, because he insists that he has it from a reliable source.
I assume that the source must be Persian. There were Persian families that had lived for generations on the Greek frontier, and some Persians must have learned the Greek language and imbibed Greek ideas, such that they could explain themselves and their civilization in terms the Greeks could understand. Likewise, there were Greek professionals and slaves in Persian service who could also talk across the language and culture boundary.
We get a glimpse of this when the claim is made that the Persians descended from Perseus, and the Persian fleet that lands on Delos in gives assurances based on their familiarity with Greek religion. The younger Cyrus spent seven or eight years on the Western frontier, making friends with Greeks e.
Could he not have told the Greeks in his entourage stories about the great and wise founder of the Empire? And could not this have given Xenophon who obviously took copious notes on the March into and out of Mesopotamia an opening and some ideas which he later ran with and, at the least, used as a frame?
I cannot agree more: Cyropaedia should be studied in the context of the historiographical tradition, mainly Herodotus Histories , but also Thucydides Histories see an interesting article by J. Moreover, concerning the Herodotean Constitutional Debate, as you mention elsewhere, the arguments used by Darius in favour of monrarchy are not compelling I tried to show this in detail in an article published in Tamiolaki But Xenophon seems to build upon the same argument in the proem of the Cyropaedia: Darius had done roughly the same thing in Herodotus.
Might Xenophon elaborate the Herodotean Constituational Debate? Your points are all well made and well taken. And I continue to be intrigued by your parallels with China. For that matter I think the work can also be easily read as a response to Thucydides Histories and certainly to Plato esp. Where I start to lose faith is in the intensity or obviousness of their interplay. Perhaps his claim to expertise derived not so much from the fact that he was showing himself to have done better research than his predecessor as from the fact that he had actually campaigned with Persians.
Perhaps now I am agreeing with your point below about the Cyropaedia having more than one purpose. We could do it for Thucydides and Plato, too. As a test of all these points, I would be interested in what you think Xenophon is doing with the Croesus vis-a-vis Herodotus. Perhaps we can look at that scene in more detail in the coming days. But I imagine for a large portion of the highly literate public, and even of those who were familiar with previous Lincoln biographies, the interaction between the current biography and previous ones would be largely unnoticed.
But seriously, our contemporary world that is so awash in books does not provide a good analogy to the situation in classical Greece. Name a Greek text that does not in some way assume knowledge of Homer. I think ancient people did read that way. Steven, I would pay good money to see Cyrus team up with Abe Lincoln or Buffy Summers to fight vampires, especially after they had eaten some cardamom to give themselves superhuman strength. Vergil is less meaningful without Homer in the literal sense that fewer meanings are available , but not meaningless.
Why are you opposed to different readerships? There is some evidence for this back to the sixth century BCE: In other words, can we assume that an 4th century Greek with a literary education would be able to reel off a summary of Herodotus by memory, and some passages verbatim? This also touches on the times where Xenophon seems to repeat himself across different works.
He had, presumably, inherited the framework of the stories, and felt no qualms about filling in the details, characterizing the protagonists, and putting words into their mouths. Of course, the expectations about what an historian should properly do developed subsequently, but even a Thucydides Thucydides Histories allowed himself some amount of license in reproducing speeches, and more latitude had to be allowed those historians who chose to cover the distant past.
Livy Livy Histories , living at a much later time, when the obligations of the historian were more clearly defined, is still doing this when he narrates the conversation between Lucretia and her relatives just before she killed herself. I am, therefore, suggesting that Xenophon could have seen what he was doing in the Cyropaedia as being, among other things, a kind of history, where, given the nature of the evidence, no other kind of history was possible.
Is it seen primarily as a Persian practice? To what extent do we see Xenophon or others addressing the ways in which Cyrus interacted with other cultures, e. There does seem to be an impressive overlap of imagery between Cyropaedia 1 and Plato Republic 1. In his reference to human nature, and the human in ability to lead others, to what extent is Xenophon aligning himself with the Xenophontic Socrates, who favors the study of human nature over the nature of the universe cf. Cyrus is respectful of the humanity of others and aware of his own human weaknesses.
Humanity is the basis for forgiving the rashness of the Cadusian prince cf. Cyrus emphasizes a shared humanity with Croesus cf. Cyrus acknowledges his own human potential for greed Cyropaedia 8.
Similar authors to follow
Cyrus is aware of his vulnerability to overconfidence and excessive happiness cf. Is the thauma felt here for tyrants cf. Doty on Cyropaedia 1. Bizos on Cyropaedia 1. Simonides seems to suppose that Hieron has knowledge or wisdom cf. Hieron says that a tyrant fears the sophoi in his community because they might contrive to plot against him cf. It is instead the dikaioi whom the tyrant fears will seem more desirable leaders to the masses. On one of these occasions Peisistratus was escorted into the city by a tall woman disguised as the goddess Athena; Herodotus Histories 1.
Peisistratus is several times described with a verb of contriving cf. The placement of tyrants at the end of a list of toppled governments seems to make the point in the extreme. Xenophon begins the Memorabilia by noting at his wonder that the Athenians convicted Socrates. I realize that I was not clear in my original post. But I think the passive verb is more designed to keep the focus on the different types of government in the subject of each sentence. He switches to an active verb and puts estate manages in the accusative in the following sentence because of a different form of indirect discourse.
Thus I think his point about thauma is rather that tyrannies like, say, Ponzi schemes are so hard to maintain even for short periods of time that you need a lot of cleverness and luck to have any success, more so than the virtue of wisdom. Hence you are not someone to be emulated. The issue of thauma is indeed complex. There is a French dissertation devoted to this topic, but studies mainly the Homeric epics: Hunzinger , Thauma: Rosario Munson is good on this, Telling Wonders: University of Michigan Press.
Thauma is also important to Plato, but his language of wonder has many nuances and occasional irony. Thauma as an introduction to an argument or piece of rhetoric is also familiar from Isocrates Panegyricus 1. In summary, I think any thauma language at the start of a work can be taken to signal an argumentative approach, and to make some claim about genre. One would expect to find lots of thauma-worthy things in a work that tackled both politics and the inherently thauma-generating world of Cyrus, and Xenophon is dutifully signally that to his audience. I have wondered if this work is really as laudatory as it is usually believed, and would be glad for any direction in this area that anyone could give me.
This is one of the biggest and most interesting questions of the work and one certainly tied to many of the other important questions. With some qualification I am strongly inclined to agree with her though I could be wrong. Cyrus is not a morally perfect or physically indestructible creation and he does seem to evolve in the course of his childhood. Later in life, I think his awareness of his vulnerability makes him a better leader. According to the spirit and texture of this paragraph, the approach of Professor Sandridge who consider this three words in a meaningful interconnected set seems justifiable.
On the contrary, human beings can improve themselves, he says, by education paideusis and diligence epimeleia. Norlin on Antidosis notes a similar sentiment. There Isocrates makes the implicit a fortiori argument that if animals can be trained be, e. For a comparison between the leader as herdsman metaphor in Plato and Xenophon see Carlier But as the Iliad language makes clear, shepherds were often used as a positive comparison for leaders of men, rather than to imply that leaders exploit their followers as shepherds do sheep.
Compare the ambiguity of the famous moschophoros illustrated here. On the one hand, we have the happy shepherd who, like many a pet owner, is coming to resemble his pet. But he is presumably bringing that cute lamb to be slaughtered as a sacrifice a top the Acropolis. I like the point of contrast with Thrasymachus in the Republic. They were all of the belief that to benefit Cyrus was to benefit themselves. Another essential comparison is Oeconomicus Ischomachus, discussing how he trains his overseer, notes that the methods used for animals also work with human beings, to a point—and in fact suffice in many cases for slaves.
Humans can be moved not only by carrots and sticks but by words, especially praise and reproach. Cyrus will of course be a past master when it comes to praise and rewards and, though more rarely, reproach. In the Oeconomicus passage, in other words, the metaphor is more than a metaphor. At another time he fell in with a man who had been chosen general and minister of war, and thus accosted him.
Was it possibly to show that, even as a shepherd must care for his sheep and see that they are safe and have all things needful, and that the objects of their rearing be secured, so also must a general take care that his soldiers are safe and have their supplies, and attain the objects of their soldiering? Which last is that they may get the mastery of their enemies, and so add to their own good fortune and happiness; or tell me, what made him praise Agamemnon, saying— He is both a good king and a warrior bold? Since a man is not chosen king in order to take heed to himself, albeit nobly, but that those who chose him may attain to happiness through him.
And why do men go soldiering except to ameliorate existence? He, then, who undertakes that office is bound to procure for those who choose him the thing they seek for. And indeed it were not easy to find any nobler ambition than this, or aught ignobler than its opposite. After such sort he handled the question, what is the virtue of a good leader? To what extent is the good will of the followers fundamental to successful leadership according to Xenophon and others?
We might imagine that the objective prosperity of the followers would be more fundamental to successful leadership, but Xenophon seems to believe that everyone will figure out what is or is not in their benefit eventually that the will is central cf. Plato Republic characterizes the sophrosune of the polis as the condition in which the rulers and the ruled are in agreement about their respective roles. At the end of Book One, Xenophon explains how cities and leaders may ruin themselves with misguided invasions of other countries.
On this topic, see now Gray who emphasizes the mutual profit of ruling and ruled through leadership. See also, from a different perspective, focusing on the ambiguities of voluntary submission, Tamiolaki Relevant here is also the concept of eunoia more prominent in the Oeconomicus.
Note that the objections to all four forms of government tend to revolve around the character of the rulers, more so than some intrinsic form of rule. Another way of saying this may be that all forms could work if the leaders had the right character sic Cyrus. Why does Xenophon assert that it is so hard for a master to employ obedient slaves when he has written a treatise the Oeconomicus devoted to success in this practice?
At the end of the Oeconomicus Ischomachus himself the master of those slaves admits that leadership is something very difficult much more difficult than farming, which merely requires effort- epimeleia , so difficult that it is in some sense divine. You are of course right that elsewhere in the work Ischomachus gives plenty of apparently successful advice about how to manage slaves, so this remark is surprising even within the Oeconomicus. You make a good point: It would be interesting to ponder who thinks good leadership is rarer, Plato or Xenophon….
What is the history in Greek thought of treating the household as a type of government and vice versa? To what extent is Xenophon challenging the claim made by the interlocutors including Socrates in the Republic that establishing the kallipolis may be impossible? The relationship between Plato Republic and Cyropaedia must of course be complex starting with the question of whether Xenophon even knew the Republic in the form we know it, though I think that is likely. That is, both Republic and Oeconomicus may concur that a paradisaical community is unlikely, given how rare individuals like Cyrus or like philosopher-kings are.
The question is whether anyone other than the fictional? Cyrus has ever known how. Could the analogy of ruler with herdsman also have some basis in the Persian material? Hast thou a ratu for the Cow such that you are able to give him, together with a herdsman, zeal for fostering the Cow? Whom do you want as a lord for her, who, hostile toward Liars, may repel Wrath?
What is he reading or what has he been exposed to to suggest this analogy?
- The Monkey Mirror!
- Victim of Bullying: The day I stood up and said No more!.
- www.farmersmarketmusic.com: Roger Thurling: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle.
The intriguing link is that both the Cyropaedia and Tristram Shandy contain lots of engagement with philosophy and ideas embedded within narratives that are far from straightforward, and challenge notions of genre prevalent then and now. I never did get around to finishing it, but what about The Education of Henry Adams? I assume the title is an allusion to Cyropaedia , and it has the same ambiguity about whether education is an event in youth or a life-long process.
Thanks for this recommendation! I am only one chapter into the Education of Henry Adams many thanks for the recommendation, Sean! While not exactly modeled on Persia and Media, they are presented in many antithetical ways, the former rigid and lawful, the latter free and sensuous. I wonder if these similarities are just coincidental, if Adams himself noticed them, or if he in fact ever saw himself as another Cyrus and tended to process and relate his own life in those terms. I was just reading a bit on Alexander the Great today, and I came across an interesting factoid.
Onesicritus is one of just six eyewitness sources extant on Alexander. For more on the question of whether Onesicritus is referring to Cyrus the Younger or Cyrus the Great, cf. Is Xenophon drawing on other Persian? Where he diverges from Herodotus, is he like Ctesias claiming to be a superior authority on Persian affairs? Yet legetai appears throughout the Cyropaedia in places, such as conversations, where one would not expect a major debate about historicity cf. I am puzzled by the general question of whether Xenophon wanted or expected his readers to know very much in detail about Cyrus and thus very much about Herodotus.
Obviously there had been a lot of writing on Cyrus before Xenophon most recently perhaps the two works by another pupil of Socrates, Antisthenes , but the pose of history and ethnography throughout Book One esp. Either Isocrates borrowed this from some unknown source or he made it up; in either case he does not seem concerned that anyone is going to call him out on it. Isocrates To Phillip similarly claims that Cyrus was cast out into the street by his mother, also unattested anywhere else to my knowledge. Are there any parallels, either classical or from other times and places like the early modern European custom of referring to nobles by the name of the largest estate they owned?
This is covered in the same expression in Cyropaedia 1. Thanks for the helpful suggestion. What is the relationship between the kind of fear that Cyrus inspires in his followers and the kind of fear he himself confesses to have felt throughout the course of his life cf. A closer parallel passage then may be Cyropaedia 3. The fear in Cyropaedia 8. My question is more related to the development of Greek civilization.
Does Xenophon consider a successful monarch one who has a good military background? Do the people overthrow governments by violence, and does this relate to the idea of citizen-soldiers? The leading expert on the Greek way of war is ancient historian Victor Hansen. Read anything by him, especially his recent books, and you can see how a neo-conservatist uses Greek history to assess US foreign policy, especially when it comes to Israel.
I have not studied Archaic Greek warfare in detail and can only refer people to Van Wees as a starting point. Similarly, the early history of democracy is a very controversial field. India, some of the Punic cities, Greece, and Rome are the best documented cases. I can recommend, but have not read, an anathology edited by Steven Muhlberger of Nippising University as a starting point.
These are all very interesting questions! Let me take a stab at one: On the one hand, military excellence, exhibited either in the role of a commander or even better a warrior, is often the basis even for the privilege to speak in a Homeric assembly. Traits of the good general can readily be transformed into good leadership elsewhere, esp. Generally speaking, in as much as monarchs are expected to provide for the safety soteria of their communities, the ability to command an army is a must.
But I would add two qualifications to this rule. It is not always expected that the would-be monarch will risk himself in battle see Sandridge They needed to be, e. Did Orwell had read the Cyropaedia? I think it is appropriate here in 1. It is summed up in a single word—Man.
I think it could have interesting implications for understanding how a particular student thinks and struggles through a translation. This feature could also introduce discussion about how close a translator should keep to the original Greek, and how far one can reasonably stray. If we made one translation communal, we could keep polishing it and using it as a basis for further discussion on the specifics of word choice and what impacts such choices can have both in Greek and in translation on the overall meaning.
This is a very good question that we will consider further in light of your points. Your thinking is right in line with ours on the matter of the communal translation. It is definitely something we would like to build into the commentary down the line. We could thus allow anyone to comment on the translation just as we may comment on the Greek text.
Such a medium would illustrate well how much is lost in translation and how our own interest in the text can govern what we decide to keep and leave out from the Greek. I certainly find it an excellent space for discussion and expanding my worldview, and in that sense it is more than satisfactory, but the translation could add a whole new dimension. Thank you for fielding so many questions! This is an amazing project. As someone still struggling to become a comfortable reader of Classical Greek, I think that an online commentary like this has great potential to bridge the traditional gap between the authors of a new student edition and their imagined audience.
I wonder if the herdsmen are good leaders only because the herds are good followers? These are, again, outstanding questions. Your question about Cyrus as an exception is very pertinent to the conclusion of the Cyropaedia , where Xenophon says that after Cyrus Persia began to decline, beginning with a neglect of piety. One may either explain this by saying Cyrus is so exceptional a leader that all others pale in comparison or by saying that Cyrus is somehow flawed as a leader because he could not ensure that Persia prospered after his death.
The issue of jealousy or envy is a very complicated one.
Father and Son (VARIAE LECTIONES Book 16)
However, two thousand five hundred years later, with very little unification in sight, we might wonder if men like Cyrus can pass on their knowledge of successful ruling. Xenophon does seem to believe that leadership is teachable, both from what he says here and elsewhere see Gray On Cyrus as putting an end to tribal warfare, see his treaty between the Armenians and Chaldaeans in Book Three. Such a treat seems to require a careful application of justice see the Two Coats Story at the end of Cyropaedia 1.
Xenophon compares men to that of domestic farm animals in that men will rise up against one another while domestic animals will not rise up against man. This is an important question to continue to think about, but I think that here Xenophon is focused not so much on humans as followers somewhat analogous to domestic animals but humans as leaders; and so while their is perhaps an implicit characterization of humans as flawed e.
How does this help him become a great leader? This may also be a slight dig at Plato Republic , which proscribes a single, ideal city-state consisting of about 10, Greeks only. The Athenians had made much of pan-Ionianism based on common language and rituals, but at least some insisted that in the end the Ionians had been eager to leave.
Depending on his date of writing the Spartan and Theban hegemonies would also come to mind as less-than-appetizing attempts to rule those who spoke a single language. Xenophon is praising Cyrus for his apparent ability to overcome language barriers, ethnic barriers, and distance barriers. Do you see any points of comparison between Cyrus as described here and this famous American leader?
Both love riding horses see Cyropaedia 1. I was wondering does Xenophon, later on, go into more detail about how Cyrus was able to first conquer these nations with only his small band of Persians? Much of the rest of the Cyropaedia tells this story, though it is interesting to see how many ways Cyrus is able to bring other nations into his empire, some by conquest, to be sure, but more often by forging alliances that are at least on the surface mutually beneficial.
See also Sandridge What possible resonances of this paragraph might we read in Machiavelli The Prince esp. In Herodotus, laughter usually but not exclusively, as in Herodotus Histories 4. But in the Cyropaedia laughter usually seems positive; Cyrus and especially his friends engage in good-natured laughter with each other on several occasions e. And does this strengthen the possibility of the Homeric allusion I suggested there since it is Hephaestus who assists Achilles in his conflict with the Scamander? Why, then, does he add this phrase? And why is this the only conquered spot worth transplanting Persian religion to?
Is the implication that had the Persian effort failed, the gods might have been blamed? If so, is Cyrus taking for granted that his side is in divine favor? I suspect that this highly rhetorical opening sentence — of course no-one would blame the gods for delivering them everything they had asked for — is setting up the next sentence, in which Cyrus appears to run the risk of blaming the gods, in offering to reject the eudaimonia of his new situation.
What might these similarities and differences tell us? Are we to believe, in other words, that the Persians had the gods on their sides for no other reason than because the Assyrians were the unjust aggressors? He exhorts them to hard work and virtue. This leads straight into Cyropaedia 8. How does this section mark a turning point in the Cyropaedia?
And how does it fit with other Greek political writing of its time? For those who read the Cyropaedia as a contrast between the republic and the empire as forms of government, this section marks the moment when Cyrus transitions between republican and imperial leadership, and becomes open to accusations that he has become a tyrant; see Nadon Xenophon here appears to step back from a strong endorsement of this model of kingship, although there is much dispute about this.
Xenophon presents this view of kingship, as presented in this passage, as being that of his character Cyrus, focalised through his speech with occasional comments from the narrator. By using the literary device of irony Xenophon can present his critique as apparent approval. Others outside the Straussian tradition also discern irony in this work Pierre Carlier , now in English as P.
What is the significance of the distance created between Cyrus and his subjects, in terms of other Near Eastern examples and Greek attitudes toward such distancing? Both the substance of kingship the practical arrangements for administration of an empire and its ritual and performative elements religious ceremonies, processions, special costume, court ceremony will be established and explored in the following sections of the narrative.
In practice, as the remainder of this chapter explores, the question is one of removing Cyrus from everyday contact with his subjects. Persian royal iconography, as seen in the reliefs that decorated wall palaces, suggests that establishing distance and communicating it was important to kings such as Cyrus and his successors see Root ; other sources include the Hebrew Bible for example at Hebrew Bible Esther 5: Xenophon incorporates these themes into his analysis of tyranny, as in his Hiero. For Xenophon, however, kingship also requires the monarch to provide an example and template paradeigma of virtuous behaviour and superlative physical qualities for his courtiers and subjects Cyropaedia 8.
Again, this is reflected in numerous Near Eastern sources, including the Old Persian inscriptions. Clearly, within the model as it stands, it is not possible for the vast majority of subjects, excluded from access to the king, to perceive him well enough to gain sufficient knowledge to imitate him. Plato and Aristotle both draw on this account in their analysis of kingship and the foundation of regimes; Plato chooses Persia under Cyrus and his successors as his example of extreme monarchy Plato Laws 3. Isocrates, most likely writing before Xenophon, identifies the idea that a king can provide a model of virtue for his subjects.
His trio of connected speeches, the Isocrates Evagoras , Isocrates Nicocles and Isocrates To Nicocles , contribute to a model of the king as paradeigma of good behaviour; copying this behaviour enables his subjects to flourish Alexiou ; Bloom Cyrus chooses not to exert his full authority over Persia, leaving his troops at the border, and leaving the Persians to govern themselves in his absence and Cambyses warns him to do so, Cyropaedia 8. Both Xenophon and Isocrates can be seen to anticipate a model of rule that would become more common in the Hellenistic world, where the successors to Alexander the Great ruled kingdoms incorporating cities which still maintained many aspects of their pre-existing systems of internal governance Farber The form of kingship that Cyrus adopts rests on the approval of those whose situation as homotimoi is displaced by the elevation of the king and his separation from them.
Deioces is elected as king by the Medes after his friends have lobbied for this outcome, Herodotus Histories 1. Even among apparently hereditary forms of monarchy in ancient cultures including the created societies of Homer there may be competition between potential heirs, especially in complex royal dynasties where half-brothers may compete to succeed their father.
However, friendship has a greater significance for kings as a means of controlling and managing relationships with powerful subjects. This episode follows several previous ones in which Cyrus secures his desired goals through actions that seem manipulative or even deceitful; the most important of these is the central episode by which Cyrus wins the loyalty of the Median troops and dislodges his uncle Cyaxares from their affections, enabling him to control the direction of the war and ultimately to secure his own position see Danzig for a detailed reading of the debate between Cyrus and Cyaxares, Cyropaedia 5.
Trickery is likewise a part of the process by which Herodotean kings secure power. Deioces does not actively engage in trickery, although his friends improperly influence the debates at which he is chosen as king Herodotus Histories 1. Darius does use trickery to secure victory over his fellow conspirators after they have agreed to a monarchy Herodotus 3. In denying them access to him through this staged encounter, he persuades them to submit to the new court hierarchy in which the relationship between him and his friends can no longer be analysed in terms of strict equality.
For some interpreters, this simply formalises a hierarchy that was implicit in the arrangements of Persia, which was not an egalitarian republic, rather than demoting the homotimoi to a lower status than that which they previously enjoyed. Cyrus will use the same language and imagery within his speech Cyropaedia 7. The relationship between the peers and the crowd is ambiguous in this chapter. The problem that they have is that the presence of the crowd makes it impossible for them to access Cyrus.
Cyrus appears to be deceiving his friends here, with promises of attention from him that are not fulfilled Cyropaedia 7. This experience will make them more likely to submit to the new arrangements, although they may not, as Chrysantas hints, have much choice in the matter C yropaedia 8.
Delebecque comments that this remark is not in good taste Delebecque The necessities are not named, but may be the same as those similarly hinted at in Cyropaedia 1. How consistent is this with historical Near Eastern practice, and how tyrannical might it seem? This use of Persian soldiers as bodyguards prefigures the adoption of the 10, Persians as bodyguards and special forces, that Cyrus will implement soon as part of his new royal establishment Cyropaedia 7. Low to High Price: High to Low Avg. Available for download now. Provide feedback about this page. There's a problem loading this menu right now.
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