Cyropaedia The Education of Cyrus
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 544 passages
Cite this work
- APAXenophon. (n.d.). Cyropaedia The Education of Cyrus. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/cyropaedia-the-education-of-cyrus
- MLAXenophon. Cyropaedia The Education of Cyrus. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/cyropaedia-the-education-of-cyrus.
- ChicagoXenophon. Cyropaedia The Education of Cyrus. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/cyropaedia-the-education-of-cyrus.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Xenophon's book on the education and government of Cyrus the Great: the first novel of the West, or the first manual of leadership, according to how one looks at it.
Context and history
It should be said at once that it is not history. Xenophon takes a real figure — the founder of the Persian empire — and invents his life in order to set out what a ruler ought to be: how command is taught, how loyalty is won rather than imposed, how an army is organised, how a beaten enemy is treated. Herodotus tells of an entirely different Cyrus. The book was much read in antiquity and in the Renaissance: Scipio and Caesar carried it, Machiavelli cites it, and Jefferson owned two copies. It repays reading in the knowledge that what is in it is Xenophon's idea of power well exercised, not what happened in Persia.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Persian laws try, as it were, to steal a march on time, to make their citizens from the beginning incapable of setting their hearts on any wickedness or shameful conduct whatsoever. And this is how they set about their object. In their cities they have an open place or square dedicated to Freedom (Free Square they call it), where stand the palace and other public buildings. From this place all goods for sale are rigidly excluded, and all hawkers and hucksters with their yells and cries and vulgarities. They must go elsewhere, so that their clamour may not mingle with and mar the grace and orderliness of the educated classes. [4] This square, where the public buildings stand, is divided into four quarters which are assigned as follows: one for the boys, another for the youths, a third for the grown men, and the last for those who are past the age of military service. The law requires all the citizens to present themselves at certain times and seasons in their appointed places. The lads and the grown men must be there at daybreak; the elders may, as a rule, choose their own time, except on certain fixed days, when they too are expected to present themselves like the rest. Moreover, the young men are bound to sleep at night round the public buildings, with their arms at their side; only the married men among them are exempt, and need not be on duty at night unless notice has been given, though even in their case frequent absence is thought unseemly. [5] Over each of these divisions are placed twelve governors, twelve being the number of the Persian tribes.…