Cyropaedia

The Cyropaedia, sometimes spelled Cyropedia, is a partly fictional biography[2] of Cyrus the Great, the founder of Persia's Achaemenid Empire.

The Latinized title Cyropaedia derives from the Greek Kúrou paideía (Κύρου παιδεία), meaning The Education of Cyrus.

[5] While most scholars note that Xenophon did not write it as a historical text,[6] the Cyropaedia does not fit into any known classical genre, only somewhat resembling an early novel.

[5] Its validity as a source of Achaemenid history has been repeatedly questioned, and numerous descriptions of events or persons have been found inaccurate.

Xenophon had visited such as one of the "Ten Thousand" Greek soldiers who fought on the losing side of a Persian civil war, which he recounted in his Anabasis.

Cyrus's mother Mandane receives a message from her father Astyages, King of the Medes, requesting that she and her son visit him in Media.

Introduced to his grandfather, Cyrus notes how the luxurious clothing and behavior of the Medes differ from the simpler customs of Persia.

Mandane and Cyrus stay in the kingdom for a bit, and the boy learns the traditions of the Medes and forms a good relationship with Astyages.

When Mandane is ready to go back to Persia, which is a vassal under the Medes, to see her husband, her father wants Cyrus to stay.

While hunting with Cyaxare, Cyrus comes upon dangerous animals that he risks his life to give his game to Astyages out of the love he has for him.

Arriving at the hunting spot, the Assyrian King realized he had a massive host to raid the Medes' borders.

Cyrus suggests that Cyaxares should lead a small cavalry division to intercept the foot soldiers carrying the loot.

In response, Cyrus orders the Armenians to feint a retreat to reel in the Chaldaean soldiers into his more experienced melee troops.

He will set the prisoners free to go back to their people and can decide if they want to make peace or continue the war.

Cyaxares wants to attack, but Cyrus informs him that once the enemy sees the smaller force then the Assyrians would not hold back against them.

The fighting continues to take place at the enemy camp, but Cyrus orders his soldiers to pull back worried that reinforcements will overrun them.

Everywhere, the author observes, humans fail to obey their rulers; the one exception is Cyrus the Great, a man who inspired obedience.

The first book is devoted to Cyrus's descent, education, and stay at the court of his maternal grandfather, the Median dynast Astyages.

Books two to seven cover Cyrus's life as a Median vassal on his path to establishing the world's largest empire.

He proves a faithful vassal to the Medes, initially acting as a general to defend them from the more powerful and assertive Babylonian empire.

He is able to avoid a long siege by deflecting the course of the river through it, then sending soldiers in over the dry bed during a festival night.

The claim that Babylon was conquered on the night of a festival by diverting the Euphrates River from its channel is also made by Herodotus (1.191).

[15] Polybius, Cicero, Tacitus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Quintilian, Aulus Gellius and Longinus thought highly of Xenophon and his work.

[17] Among classical leaders, Scipio Aemilianus is said to have carried a copy with him at all times;[18] it was also a favorite of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.

[19] The Cyropaedia was rediscovered in Western Europe during the late medieval period as a piece on political virtue and social organization.

[20] It heavily influenced the late medieval and Renaissance genre known as mirrors of princes, which gave examples of leadership behavior to educate future rulers.

[21][22] Giovanni Pontano, Bartolomeo Sacchi, Leon Battista Alberti and Baldassare Castiglione treated Cyrus as such an example.

[25] Many early modern writers after Machiavelli, including Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Bacon, Jonathan Swift, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Benjamin Franklin also esteemed Xenophon as a philosopher and historian.

The Cyropaedia was often used to model correct prose in classical Attic Greek, mastery of which was part of the education of European and American gentlemen in the eighteenth century.

In the nineteenth century, Xenophon and the Cyropaedia began to decline in popularity compared to other classical authors and works.