Xenophon's
Kyropaideia

As discussed by Walter Miller in his Introduction to his 1914 translation :

INTRODUCTION

Xenophon, the son of a knightly family of Athens -- general, historian, philosopher, essayist -- was born probably about 429 B.C. But there is a story, not very well authenticated, that his life was saved by Socrates in the battle of Delium (424 B.C.), and that this marked the beginning of his attachment to his great master. If this story be true, the date of his birth can hardly be placed later than 444 B.C.

Our chief interest in his career centres about his participation in the Expedition of the Younger Cyrus (401 B.C.) ; the Anabasis, his own account of that brilliant failure, gives him his chief claim to a high place among the great names in historical literature ; and his successful conduct of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand gives him his high rank among the world's great generals and tacticians.

When he arrived once more in a land of Hellenic civilization, he found that his revered master Socrates had been put to death by his purblind countrymen, that the knights, to whose order he belonged, were in great disfavour, that there was no tie left to bind him to his home ; and so, with the remnant of the troops that he had brought safe back to Hellas, he joined the Spartan king Agesilaus as he was starting for the conquest of the East, and with him fought against his own native city at Coronea (394 B.C.).

From that date he lived, an exile from Athens, at Scillus, among the hills beyond the Alpheus from Olympia. And there he wrote the Anabasis, the Cyropaedia, the essays on Agesilaus, The Spartan Constitution, Horsemanship, Hunting, and most of his other books. He died at Corinth some time after 357 B.C.

Xenophon's works have been roughly classified under three categories : history, philosophy, and miscellaneous essays. The Cyropaedia, however, can scarcely be made to fit into any one of these three groups. It is historical, but not history; it has much Socratic dialogue, but it is not philosophy ; it has discussions of many questions of education, ethics, politics, tactics, etc., but it is not an essay. It is biographical, but it is not biography ; it contains also, in the episode of Panthea and Abradatas, one of the most chiarming love stories in literature. We may best call it an historical romance -- the Western pioneer in that field of literature.

Like all his followers in the realm of historical fiction, Xenophon allows himself many liberties with the facts of history. The constitution of Persia, as set forth in the Cyropaedia, is no oriental reality ; it is the constitution of Sparta, which, in his admiration for Agesilaus and Clearchus and the Spartan discipline he has transfigured and set up as the model of his idealized constitutional monarchy. His Persians worship Heroes, go crowned with garlands into battle, send a watchword up and down the lines as they prepare for battle, sing a paean as they enter the fight, and do many other things that real Persians never, Spartans always, did. The simple fare and dress of the Persians smack much more of the austere life of the Eurotas Valley than of the luxurious East. Even the education of the Persian youth is identically the education of young Spartans ; and in the teacher of Tigranes no one can fail to recognize Socrates himself. So, too, Cyrus's invincible battle lines are not the wavering, unwieldy hordes of orientals, easily swept away by the Grecian phalanx like chaff before the strong south-wind, but the heavy, solid masses of Sparta ; and his tactics on the march and in the fury of battle are not the tactics of a "barbarian" king, but those of the consummate tactician who led the famous Ten Thousand Greeks from Asia back to Hellas.

Actual violence to historical facts is sometimes committed. For example, Media was subdued by force (and treachery) in the lifetime of Astyages (550 B.C.), not voluntarily ceded to Cyrus by Cyaxares as the dowry of his daughter ; Cyaxares himself, the son of Astyages, is unknown, save through Xenophon's story ; it seems most probable that he is wholly unhistorical. The conquest of Egypt, ascribed to Cyrus, was in reality accomplished by his son and successor, Cambyses. The beautiful account of the peaceful passing of Cyrus is wholly out of accord with the well-established record of his violent death in the battle against the Massagetae (529 B.C.).

This exhausts the tale of serious divergences from historical accuracy. There is much, on the other hand, that has been overlooked by the critics, though it is of prime importance for the history and the conditions of the orient in Xenophon's own times. The account he gives us of the Armenians and Chaldaeans, for example, affords us information, more full and more valuable than we have from any other source. Xenophon knew his Herodotus and Ctesias, of course, and probably other earlier historians whom we cannot identify ; and he drew at will from those sources such facts as he needed for the earlier history of the East. But of far more value to us is the wealth of material gathered by him on his memorable march through Asia and the flood of light that in the Cyropaedia he throws on contemporary peoples and manners and customs in the orient.

As a work of art, the Cyropaedia brings together and sums up the results of nearly all of Xenophon's literary activity. The Anabasis and the events that led to its composition furnish the background of geography, history, and custom ; the Memorabilia and the discipleship to Socrates contribute to the Socratic method in the discussions of ethics, tactics, generalship, and statesmanship ; the Agesilaus and The Spartan Constitution afford the basis for the ideal state that might have been constructed on Greek soil after the pattern of the kingdom of Cyrus ; the essays on Horsemanship and Hunting find full illustration in every book of the Cyropaedia ; the views set forth in the Oeconomicus on the social status of women and the ideal relations of married life and the home have their practical realization again in the story of Panthea and Abradatas.

The title of the Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus) is misleading. In its scope it includes the whole life and career of the great conqueror. The first book covers the period of his boyhood and youth, and only one chapter of that has to do strictly with his education. In the remaining seven books the theme is not his own education but his campaigns of conquest and his training of others as soldiers and citizens in his new empire. But the first book, in dealing with the education of Cyrus, really answers the supreme questions of government -- how to rule and how to be ruled -- and therefore gives its name to the whole ; for that problem is the real theme of the work.

The spirit of the book is Hellenic throughout -- a picture of the East with a dash of local colour, but dominated by the civilization in which Xenophon was reared and the ideals that he had learned to cherish.

The corner-stone of his idealized Persian constitution, "equality of rights before the law" (I. iii, 18), and the "boasted equal freedom of speech" (I. iii. 10) are transferred bodily from the democracy of Athens to the uncongenial environment of an oriental despotism. And yet his chief purpose in writing the story of Cyrus was to give his people a picture of an ideal monarchy with an ideal monarch, guided by Socratic principles and carrying out the author's political and philosophical ideals. In the Cyropaedia the didactic element dominates both the history and the fiction ; and the hero is an idealistic composite portrait of Socrates, the younger Cyrus, Clearchus, Agesilaus, and Xenophon himself. However it may have been received at Athens, it is only natural that such a book should have been extremely popular among the Romans, and that Cato and Cicero should have found in it teachings that appealed strongly to them for the upbuilding of an empire founded on the majesty of the law and on justice and righteousness, and that the younger Scipio should have had it "always in his hands" as his vade mecum.

In point of literary merit, it stands first among the writings of Xenophon, His hero, though he has been criticised as being a little too good, has the same qualities of greatness, goodness, gentleness, and justice that are given to him by the great prophets of Israel. ''The Lord God of heaven" has given him "all the kingdoms of the earth" (II. Chron. xxxvi. 23 ; Ezra, i. 1-2) ; and the greatest of Messianic seers finds in Xenophon's hero "the Lord's anointed" (the Messiah), and makes Jehovah say of him (Is. xliv, 28 ; xlv, 1) : "He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure . . . whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him."

~ Xenophon's Cyropaedia, translated by Walter Miller, with Introduction and Full Text

~ And Prof Miller's translation is also available, with the Greek text, on Perseus.Tufts.Edu.

See also Areté.

And:

MANHOOD : A Reductional, Functional, Teleological, Incantational, and above all, Sanctional, Lexicon.