* * *

The Education of Cyrus is a wonderful book.Footnote ² Among its many wonders are the immediacy and power with which it still speaks especially to those young people whose souls smolder or burn with grand ambition. In it we witness the astounding rise of Cyrus of Persia, from a boyhood that, though it promises much, cannot quite foretell the greatness of the man: starting out with a small army of Persians, Cyrus in short order crushes the aggressive expansion of the Assyrian Empire, establishes himself as King of the new empire, and then reigns unchallenged over it in all its prosperity and peace. He can accomplish these things not least because he is always attentive to what he owes to gods and to human beings, in compliance with the stern demands of piety and justice. The Education of Cyrus also puts before us the impressive sight of what martial courage can accomplish when it is under the yoke of moderation or self-restraint. And it holds out to readers, however dismal their present circumstances, the possibility of a community that fully meets the highest standards for political life; it holds out even the possibility of a world in which nobility and goodness are inseparable in the sense that moral excellence there always receives its due. These are among the accomplishments of Cyrus the Great, and they account for no small part of the allure of Xenophon's book.

It is however more difficult than it might first seem to identify the sort of book the Education of Cyrus is, and Xenophon himself does not state the genre to which it belongs (compare, e.g., Xenophon Reference Thucydides and Jones1954 5:58; Gera 1993, 1–2). It cannot be accounted a political history of the kind we are accustomed to or, for that matter, of the kind the author of the Hellenica proved himself capable of writing. For while making use of such famous events of the past as the fall of Babylon, Xenophon does not otherwise even pretend to historical accuracy: he has his Persians swear by Greek gods, for example (consider the glaring exception that proves the rule: 7.5.53), just as at one point he refers to the Assyrians and their allies as “barbarians,” evidently to distinguish them from the Persians (3.3.26–27; consider also 7.4.9); he invents out of whole cloth private conversations to which no one could have been privy (e.g., 1.6.2–46; 6.4.5–11); and he makes frequent use of the expression “as was likely” or “as was only to be expected” (hōs eikos), in this way noting or confessing that the “facts” he thus records are only intelligent surmises.Footnote ³ Let it suffice to add that Xenophon has his aged Cyrus meet a peaceful end in bed, surrounded by family and other well-wishers; the historical record suggests that he died violently in battle and in more or less his prime.Footnote ⁴

The Education of Cyrus cannot be called a biography either, even allowing for Xenophon's freedom from slavish adherence to the historical record. For Xenophon suggests at the outset that his book was prompted by a reflection he (“we”) once had concerning the instability of all democracies, monarchies, oligarchies, and especially tyrannies. So fraught is the rule of human beings by other human beings that the difficulty of it extends even to households large or small, to the subpolitical community. And this difficulty is only heightened by the comparison Xenophon here makes to herd animals that never unite against their rulers but, quite to the contrary, willingly permit them to profit from them. Reflection on these facts led Xenophon to conclude that “it would be easier for a human being, given his nature, to rule over all the other animals than to rule over human beings” (1.1.3). This problem of the instability of regimes is of course a political one, but it is theoretical too inasmuch as it takes its bearings by “nature”; and it is solely as a result of his reflection on this problem so conceived that Xenophon first has reason to mention Cyrus (see 1.1.3). Xenophon's interest in Cyrus, then, is rooted in a reflection on human nature and on the resulting character of political life. Only because Cyrus presents the solution to this grave problem is he deserving of Xenophon's attention.

The terms in which Xenophon sets forth what is evidently the problem of politics suggest that it is solvable only if human rulers can somehow become indisputably superior to those whom they rule. And he implies that this would come to pass if the rulers were to stand to the ruled as do herders to their herds. This state of affairs in turn could arise either by making the ruled resemble herd animals as closely as possible or by making the rulers transcend the merely human in the direction of a divine supremacy. With these possibilities in mind, we ask: what constitutes the “education of Cyrus” that permitted him to rule human beings on the basis of knowledge (epistamenōs: 1.1.3) and so to achieve the kind of stability that had seemed to Xenophon impossible?

THE EDUCATIONS OF CYRUS

After describing briefly Cyrus's lineage and the “nature” of his bodily form as well as soul, Xenophon turns to an account of the education Cyrus received. The most striking fact about that education is the interruption that marks it. For having spent the first twelve or so years in republican Persia, Cyrus then went with Mandane, his mother, to neighboring Media at the request of Astyages, his maternal grandfather; Cyrus ended up living in Media for some four or five years (consider 1.2.8, end; 1.3.1; 1.4.16; and 1.5.1). Astyages was the king or rather “tyrant” of the place (consider 1.3.18 [14]), and he wished to see for himself what the reports had suggested—that his grandson was “noble and good.” To understand the education of Cyrus, then, one must first understand the education on offer in each country, and this in turn requires that one understand the laws and customs (nomoi) at work there. For laws, and the way of life they constitute, are one's first education: “Cyrus was educated in the laws of the Persians.”

According to Xenophon, the Persian laws, in their care for “the common good” (1.2.2; see also 3.3.10, end; 4.5.33 and 46), begin further back than do the laws of most other cities. Whereas other laws permit citizens to teach their children as they please and then punish them as adults for the transgressions they all too often commit, the laws of Persia take care to form citizens disinclined from the outset to break them. The laws shape the very souls of citizens, in other words, from their earliest youth onward, such that their first and indeed last thought is for the common good. And to take one's bearings always by the common good is to prefer it always to one's own, merely private good, to say nothing of pleasure, whenever the two goods conflict: while it is not strictly speaking illegal for one of the married youths to visit his wife and so to abandon his age-mates who must as a matter of duty sleep outside in the “free square,” the nomos nonetheless has it that it is not “noble” for him to do so often (1.2.4, end). The laws of Persia teach that goodness consists in nobility, in one's noble dedication to the common good and its demands, a dedication that is choiceworthy for its own sake and that may well come at some cost to oneself.

The principal traits of soul inculcated by the Persian laws are moderation, obedience, and continence or self-restraint (enkrateia) in matters of food and drink (1.2.8). Citizens are thus habituated to shun the guidance supplied by the individual or private body (and indeed soul: 1.3.18 [11–12]) in favor of that supplied by the judgment of the rulers. This education takes the form of imitation of the actions of others and so relies somewhat more on sight than hearing, to say nothing of conversation (1.2.8 [18, 21, 24]; compare 1.6; 3.1.14–30; 7.2.15–29). As for piety, it would be wrong to suppose that it is not among the virtues prized (compare Sandridge Reference Sandridge2012, 70; Nadon Reference Nadon2001, 37), but it appears there under the heading of gratitude. That is, it is illegal among the Persians to be ungrateful, “for they suppose that the ungrateful especially would be neglectful both as regards gods and as regards parents and fatherland and friends” (1.2.7). But at the center of the Persian education is the training in justice that the boys receive at a special school or schools, attendance at which is the prerequisite to holding political office in later life (1.2.15); as Xenophon notes, the Persian boys learn justice at school the way Greek boys learn letters (1.2.6). (Do the Persian boys learn letters?) When Mandane subsequently worries that Cyrus will fail to (continue to) learn justice if he extends his initial stay in Media, we discover more of the character of that education. Cyrus tells his mother that he already knows “altogether precisely” what justice is. For one day he was asked to judge a dispute between two boys: a large boy with a small tunic had taken the large tunic of a small boy and given his own in exchange for it. Thus both boys now had suitably fitting tunics, large and small. Cyrus judged, on just this ground, that all was as it should be. His teacher, however, beat him for his ruling, because the teacher had asked Cyrus to judge, not the fitting or suitable, but the just, and justice demands that each boy have the property that is his by law. Persian justice, then, is exhausted by the dictates of the law. The Persian “education” to justice or the law includes beatings; and by them Cyrus was prevented from pursuing his initial supposition that justice, whatever it is, must be good for those who act justly or are treated justly (1.3.16–18).

What then is the contribution of Media to the education of Cyrus? Whereas in Persia a certain equality is the law, in Media Astyages the tyrant “has made himself master of everything” and “supposes that he ought to have more than all [others]” (1.3.18). In Persia Cyrus learned to sacrifice his own good so as to be noble, and in Astyages’ Media he saw first-hand the great delights of the pursuit of one's own good, including one's own pleasure. As Cyrus puts it playfully to his mother, Astyages has “educated” everyone there to have less than he himself has, and so Cyrus too will learn that lesson (1.3.18, end)—but he surely sees things more from the point of the “educator” than from that of the “educated.” Persia stands to Media, one may say provisionally, as the noble stands to the good. And we cannot understand Cyrus without seeing that he is deeply attracted to both—to virtue or nobility (consider 1.3.3), which may well demand the sacrifice of one's own good, on the one hand, and to the attainment of one's own truest good or advantage, on the other, which may well include one's own pleasure (consider 1.3.3 [7–8]; compare 1.3.4). In accord with this, the first political speech Cyrus delivers, now as a mature (“complete”) man in Persia, raises explicitly a question that would have previously seemed inappropriate to the Persian Peers—the upper class that rules in Persia and that is distinguished by its enthusiastically carrying out “what the city lawfully holds [nomidzei] to be noble” (1.5.7). For Cyrus notes in this speech that, while their ancestors were not inferior to them in spending all their time too practicing the things that are held to be the deeds of virtue, Cyrus for his part cannot yet see “what good they acquired by being such.” What benefit or advantage did our ancestors themselves receive, each of them, from their dutiful attention to virtue or their noble service to the common good? If the Persians of old were taught to ask only what they can do for Persia, Cyrus now introduces, as a necessary and indeed respectable consideration, also what Persia can do for them; he holds out the prospect to them of the enjoyment of “much wealth, much happiness, and great honors, both for them themselves and for the city” (1.5.9, end). Not without reason, this speech has been singled out for its “subversive and revolutionary character” (Nadon Reference Nadon2001, 55) and even as an act of “corruption” (Bruell Reference Bruell, Strauss and Cropsey1987, 99 and 102; Strauss Reference Strauss, Gourevitch and Roth2013, 181–2; compare Tatum Reference Tatum1989, 83–4).

It would be wrong, then, to underestimate the change that Cyrus thus seeks to effect. Still, the step Cyrus here takes, while jarring, does receive some authorization from the very standards of old Persia. For old Persia promised its citizens that, in submitting to the comprehensive education that the law conveys, they would become not only noble but also good: they would become kaloikagathoi or “gentlemen.”Footnote ⁵ They would embody that excellence that is the possession of what is good, guided or limited and elevated by what is noble. To put the point more sharply: did old Persia say that it was utterly indifferent to the welfare, to the “happiness” (1.5.9), of its citizens? Did old Persia mean to say that the citizens’ dedication to virtue would render them—miserable? This is impossible, precisely if “the common good” to which one is devoted is both genuinely good and truly common. Accordingly, we learn that the elders govern the boys so as to make them “supremely good” or “best” (beltistoi), just as the mature men govern the youths so as to make them “supremely good” or “best” (1.2.5; consider also 1.2.15, end). In keeping with this, the practice of the austere virtues of old Persia was defended partly in terms of the pleasure of the virtuous themselves, the pleasures of food and drink included (see 1.2.11). Cyrus could not have secured the ready agreement of the Persian Peers to transform the Persian commoners into close-range fighters—a privilege previously reserved for the Peers alone—if the Peers’ attachment to virtue for its own sake were not “vulnerable to temptation” (Bruell Reference Bruell, Strauss and Cropsey1987, 97 and 99).

If in this way Cyrus does receive from old Persia a sort of permission to raise the question of the good of the virtuous themselves, it is certainly true that he makes the greatest possible use of it: he destroys the idea that virtue must be practiced for its own sake alone. Those who fail to see this calculation miss something important about the man. Of the many examples one might cite, this is perhaps the most important: When the Persian allies capture Panthea, “the most beautiful woman in Asia,” Cyrus, far from violating her as she assumes he will, refuses even to see her. But what she understandably regards as the most extraordinary virtue—piety, moderation, and pity above all (6.1.47)—is better explained by his calculation that she could prove valuable to them one day, as indeed she does. Her gratitude, and especially that of her powerful husband, is more useful to this “cold king” (8.4.22–23) than any fleeting pleasure she might afford him could ever be (Faulkner Reference Faulkner2007, 155). As a general rule, Cyrus eagerly forgoes a little gain now—what to the world appears to be the most remarkable moderation or self-restraint—for the sake of the greatest possible gain later (see especially 4.2.43–44). “I too have an insatiable greed [aplēstos] for money, as do the others,” but Cyrus invests that money in gaining such “friendship” as permits him to “harvest safety and glory” (8.2.20 and 22).

Yet this calculation of advantage does not exhaust the concerns of the man or quite do justice to the phenomena. Just as those who fail to see Cyrus's calculating nature misunderstand him, so too do those who see in all his actions nothing but such calculation: “Cyrus's outlook cannot be reduced simply to the instrumental” (Faulkner Reference Faulkner2007, 152). Cyrus is not an accountant, let alone a gangster. At one point the common council of Persia decides to send out an armed expedition to aid Cyaxares, now the ruler of Media, in a strictly defensive operation meant to push back the expansion of the Assyrian Empire that threatens Persia too; and Cyrus explains and defends this mission to his fellow Peers in these terms: “Let us set forth boldly, since the appearance of unjustly aiming at what belongs to others is far from impeding us, for now our enemies are coming, they who have begun the unjust deeds, whereas our friends are summoning us as auxiliaries. What is more just than defending ourselves or more noble than aiding friends?” (1.5.13). In this way Cyrus indicates—in the course of his very “corruption” speech—that he takes seriously and wishes his men to take seriously the knowledge that their deeds are both just and noble. And once Cyrus and his soldiers have not only repulsed the Assyrian forces but destroyed the Empire, Cyrus insists that the gods will be with them (still), “for we are not unjust, having plotted against others, but rather being plotted against, we sought vengeance” (7.5.77). Moreover, once Cyrus has installed himself as King, he insists that his courtiers devote themselves to the practice of “virtue” and that the children they raise there be dedicated to “spending their day in noble and good practices, not even seeing or hearing anything shameful” (7.5.70 and context; 7.5.86).

That Cyrus seeks to combine a clear-eyed calculation of his advantage with the dedication to noble virtue means that, as he insists to his men, it is precisely virtue that is the greatest good for the virtuous themselves. Such was already the import of his “corruption” speech. It is Cyrus's hope that “all will say in the future that nothing is more profitable than virtue” (7.1.18); it is possible in principle for soldiers in war to possess simultaneously “safety, justice, and happiness” (6.2.55; consider also 3.3.8). When Cyrus exhorts his soldiers to aid Gadatas, a man who has taken the dangerous step of revolting from the Assyrian in favor of Cyrus, he states that it is “noble” to aid their benefactor, “just” to pay back the favors done them—and “advantageous for ourselves” to do so: far from there being some tension between the demands of what is just, what is noble, and what is advantageous, they go together to form a seamless whole (5.3.31). As Cyrus explains to Croesus of Lydia, he is “happiest” who is “able to acquire the most while keeping to what is just and to use the most while keeping to what is noble” (8.2.23): justice must strictly guide or limit acquisition, and nobility must strictly guide or limit its use. But it is precisely in being so “limited” that one reaps the greatest possible reward or profit for oneself and one's friends.

As others have suggested, the title of Xenophon's book may point, not to the excellence of the education Cyrus received, but to its limits.Footnote ⁶ We recall that, in his youth, Cyrus had claimed to know justice altogether precisely: justice is the law. Cyrus at that point would have been as untroubled by Socrates's question “what is just?” (Memorabilia 1.1.16) as he was by Mandane's observation that, since laws differ from place to place, so too must justice: this suggests that there is nothing just by nature or that justice is entirely conventional. And, as Mandane adds, if Cyrus practices Median justice in Persia, he will be beaten to death. Perhaps because he was beaten for having attempted to separate justice from the law, in the name of the fitting or the good, Cyrus does not then take the first step in wondering about justice, about what our hopes for it really are and what it must be to meet them. It is certainly true that, upon his return from Media, Cyrus contends that the deeds of virtue, those of justice included, must be good for the virtuous themselves, and to this extent he restores the connection between justice and the good. But that Cyrus has not thought sufficiently about justice in its relation to the good is suggested by the dramatic highpoint of his conversation with his father (1.6). For there Cambyses contends that precisely justice demands getting the advantage over the enemy in everything, and it is impossible to say in advance what this laudable goal may require: plotting, dissembling, trickiness, cheating, stealing, rapacity, and so on (1.6.27). Swearing for the only time “by Heracles,” Cyrus is astonished by this. For he had been taught that deception, for example, is always unjust; he learns now that it may well be just, which means that it is neither simply the one nor the other. This change in the status of deception is due, not to a change in law, but to the complex demands of serving the common good; deception can be judged only by its contribution to the end it properly serves, helping friends and harming enemies. Cambyses tells Cyrus that this more adequate education to justice had been attempted in Persia but had had to be abandoned. For it proved to be only a small step, at least for those with “good natures” (1.6.32), from the thought that lying or cheating in the name of the common good is acceptable, to the thought that lying or cheating for my own good is acceptable too; it is possible to glean from the dedication to the common good an approval of the concern for one's own good, especially if the former can be shown to be incapable of fulfilling its promise to supply the latter. And so Persia reverted to the simple teaching—that justice is the law and the law always prohibits deception and the rest—a teaching whose principal merit is the fostering of “gentler” or “tamer” citizens (1.6.33, end).

Cambyses’ teaching is not an amoral one, or still less an immoral one, since its central concern is justice understood as the common good. It does however demonstrate the inadequacy of any attempt to bind by unalterable rules what the common good may require, especially in war. Cyrus thus leaves Persia with much less respect for the law and a greater appreciation for the “flexibility” that precisely justice, in its promise to give to each the fitting or good, demands. Accordingly, Cyrus is all but silent about the law as he builds his empire (3.3.52; 4.3.22) and, at its peak, presents himself as a “seeing law” above any written law (8.1.22; also 7.5.73 [“eternal law”]; 8.2.27). That is, he by himself does or seeks to do what the law wishes to do but, given its generality and inflexibility, cannot: he sees that all, friend or enemy, receive their due.

THE PROBLEM OF VIRTUE

If we accept Cyrus's principal contention to his subordinates that nobility and profit go hand in hand, we must conclude that the world in general and political life in particular are altogether suited to human life, to life at its best or finest. For there is then no tension, to repeat, between the demands of nobility or virtue—“Persia”—and our own good—“Media.” It hardly needs to be said that this view of things is deeply attractive (e.g., Danzig Reference Danzig2012); much of modern political philosophy relies for its efficacy on the attractions of “self-interest rightly understood” or on the allure of the perfect coincidence of duty and rights. Only a certain Aglaïtadas, who represents old Persia at its most austere, voices an objection to Cyrus's new order; and even he is to some extent “corrupted” by it, to the amusement of his colleagues (see 2.2.11–16). But for this very reason it is surprising that Cyrus himself proves to have reservations concerning its truth. Of particular interest is a private conversation Cyrus has with his closest confidant, the Persian Peer Chrysantas, which takes place just before the first great clash with the Assyrian forces. In response to Chrysantas’ concern that Cyrus is giving no exhortation to his men as the leader of the Assyrians has just given to his, Cyrus assures him that no single speech or argument (logos), uttered on a single day, is sufficient to improve men's souls, not even if it should be “nobly spoken” (3.3.55, end). No such logos, that is, could fill the men with the requisite respect or sense of awe (aidōs) or keep them from ignoble acts, just as it could not urge them to take upon themselves every toil and every risk “for the sake of praise” (3.3.51). No logos, moreover, could prompt the soldiers to “grasp firmly, by means of the judgments [they form], that it is more choiceworthy to die while fighting than to save themselves by fleeing” (3.3.51). This last formulation is especially striking, since Cyrus has never uttered and will never utter such a thought, in such blunt terms, to his men—that is, to prefer “death” (apothnēiskein) to flight and to do so only for the good that is “praise” (compare the immediately preceding remarks of the Assyrian leader: 3.3.45 [apothnēiskousi]).Footnote ⁷ Is this the whole of the “profit” or “advantage,” including the pleasure, that actions in accord with the peak of nobility procure for one?

What is more, in order for these judgments to be “inscribed” in human beings and remain fixed in them, there must be, first, such “laws” as will secure for those who are good a life characterized here and now by both honor and freedom and, for the bad, a lifetime that is miserable, painful, and indeed unlivable. But even laws are not enough to secure this end. The soldiers, Cyrus continues, must also have “teachers and rulers” over them who will “correctly show and teach and habituate them” so to act, until it is “inbred in them” (engenētai autois) “to believe” or “hold” (nomidzein) that the best and renowned “really are happiest” (3.3.53). This conviction, then, of the supreme happiness of the best so defined, requires not only teachers but also “rulers,” not just an education but also “habituation”: the conviction concerning the supreme happiness of those who prefer death to flight is not according to Cyrus a logos that as such can be known but must be largely, and merely, believed; one must come to feel it in one's bones rather than understand it.

That Cyrus never says as much to his troops is hardly surprising. His general approach is indicated by the following example. After their victory in the first battle, Cyrus tells his troops this: you “may always judge for yourselves whether virtue saves lives more than does flight, whether those who are willing to fight escape more easily than do those who are not willing, and what sort of pleasure victory supplies” (4.1.5). It is not death to life, then, that the soldiers must understand themselves to be choosing—even if they are making that choice in fact—so much as the choice for victory and, with it, safety, ease, and pleasure. Cyrus goes so far, in his conversation with Chrysantas, as to call this capacity to stick to the conviction indicated “the greatest virtue” (3.3.54, end; consider also Plato Reference Burnet1902, Republic 429b8–d1). But such a virtue, whatever its other merits, surely cannot always “save lives,” at least not the lives of the virtuous themselves.

Cyrus is aware, then, that there may well be a discrepancy between noble dedication and deserved reward. One might suppose that this thought could prompt Cyrus to return to the austere virtues of old Persia, whose lingering effects he still relies on: let what is noble regain its as it were natural ascendancy above the good, or let sacrifice for the common good appear in its splendor as what it is. But such a return seems impossible. For, as we have suggested, the very laws of Persia give at least tacit approval of Cyrus's concern for the good because they too do not so clearly or consistently separate the noble from the good. It is to Cyrus's credit that he discerns within the dedication to virtue its promise of happiness; Xenophon's Socrates too seems to hold to the identity of the noble and the good or to the advantageous character of what is noble (e.g., Memorabilia 3.8.5–6; Symposium 5.4–7). Beyond that, the “common good” by which the Persian laws take their bearings proves to be deeply flawed, as Xenophon makes plain and Cyrus himself indicates. Though by law a democracy whose political offices are open to all citizens alike, Persia is in fact a narrow oligarchy of the rich for the benefit of the rich; if the makeup of the army is any indication, the many poor may outnumber the few rich by a ratio of thirty to one (see 1.5.5). Persia thus presents itself as something other than it is in fact or practice. In fact it is based on a fraud facilitated by the innocuous demand that all rulers attend, in their youth, the all-important justice school: having of necessity to work, the sons of the poor are of course excluded from doing so, not by the rich, but “by necessity” (consider 1.2.6 and 15; 2.1.15; 2.3.13–15). One can respect Cyrus's dissatisfaction with old Persia—but can the new project succeed?

THE PIETY OF CYRUS

Hardly more than a glance at the text is needed to see the course that Cyrus follows in his pursuit of what is noble and good: he begins every work with the gods and always pays heed to their signs, both in the sacrifices and in or from the heavens (consider, e.g., 2.1.1; 3.3.21; 6.4.12–7.1.3; also Memorabilia 1.1.7–9). For surely only gods could bridge the gap that sometimes opens between our hopes and our fate—gods, that is, who exist always and know all things past and present and whatever will result from each of these (1.6.46; consider also Memorabilia 1.1.19 and Symposium 4.47–48). As Cyrus learned from his father, it is only by remembering the gods especially when we are faring well, rather than by flattering them when we are in want, that we are likely to have greater success in action. And it is on account of just such care or diligence that Cyrus may approach the gods with greater pleasure, when he intends to make a request of them, just as it is his awareness of the fact that he has never neglected the gods that gives him greater hope of attaining what he needs or asks for (1.6.3–4). The pleasure afforded by the anticipation of attaining something good: this must be an integral part of Cyrus's piety.

Yet precisely the teaching of Cambyses, in what is the longest and most complex conversation in the book (1.6), suggests that the gods remain mysterious in a matter of great importance to human beings. For both the first and the last topic Cambyses takes up is the gods, and to begin with he suggests only that the difficulty Cyrus faces is the manipulation to which the interpretation of the divine signs is subject, it being a matter of human art. This implies that there is a difficulty, not with the signs themselves or with those who send them, but with the all-too-human interpreters of them, the prophets who may wish to deceive Cyrus for their own ends: prophetic signs may be made to serve altogether political purposes. And this problem had already been solved, at the time of the conversation, because Cambyses had taken care to teach Cyrus the art of prophecy (mantikē: 1.6.2, end).Footnote ⁸ The graver difficulty appears only when Cambyses returns to the subject of the gods, at the end of the conversation and hence just before Cyrus crosses into Median territory (1.6.44–46). Cambyses now broaches what he himself calls “the greatest” matters (1.6.44). All human action is based on nothing more than guesswork, since human beings “do not know from which [actions] the good things will be theirs.” And they do not know this because “human wisdom no more knows how to choose what is best than if somebody should cast lots and do what the lot determines.” This assertion of the impotence of human wisdom is in tension with Cambyses’ earlier account of the power of human prudence, which, while it certainly needs to be supplemented by divine prophecy, was quite capable in its realm (1.6.23 and context). Still, one could well suppose that precisely “the lot” is only another means the gods have to make known their will, to those to whom they are propitious (compare 6.3.35–36 with 7.1.15), and so the impotence of human wisdom or prudence is fully compensated for. Yet Cambyses contends, in the words that constitute his farewell to his son, that the omniscient gods may not, because they need not, advise one what to do and what not to do: “if they [the gods] are unwilling to give counsel to all, that is nothing to be wondered at. For it is not necessary [anangkē] for them to care for those whom they do not wish to care for” (1.6.46; consider, even in the earlier statement, the “likely” [eikotōs] at 1.6.3 [5]). Cambyses does not indicate a way to ensure that one be among those whom the gods favor. In other words, the gods may remain silent even to those who observe the most exacting piety (consider also Oeconomicus 8.16 and 11.8); the gods as such are above “necessity.” Far from questioning this teaching or objecting to it—let alone permitting it to deflate his ambitions—Cyrus responds to it in deed: he crosses the border, praying both before and after doing so (2.1.1).

Yet if Cyrus took his father's teaching to heart, he must see that, the gods being under no necessity to aid him, there can be no certainty that the just or virtuous will receive what is in a sense theirs. Or is it not rather the fact that Cyrus has received this education, an education that goes beyond what either Persia or Media offers, that he knows of the discrepancy in question? If this is so, then Cyrus must know that recourse to the gods does not solve the problem of virtue in the manner one would wish (hence, perhaps, the possibility of blaming or reproaching gods: 7.1.11 and 7.5.42; also 5.2.12, end). Political events support this conclusion. Astyages, for example, seems to have died peacefully of old age, his “tyrannical” ways notwithstanding: evidently no one succeeded in poisoning him (1.3.9, end). We may consider in this regard also Cyrus's encounter with Gadatas, whom the present Assyrian King had had seized and castrated when the King's mistress had mentioned Gadatas’ nobility or beauty (5.2.28). Gadatas is thus an enemy of the Assyrian but subjugated by him, and when Cyrus appears, Gadatas understandably sees him as a possible avenger of the grievous wrong done him: “And I swear to you, Cyrus, by the gods who both see all and hear all, that I have suffered even though I have neither said nor done anything either unjust or shameful” (5.4.31). Gadatas weeps bitterly at his fortune, as he says these things, and is so overcome that he can no longer speak. Like Cambyses, then, Gadatas too holds the gods to be all-knowing—at any rate, they see and hear “all things” and therefore also his suffering—and yet they have done nothing either to protect him before the fact or to avenge him after it. Gadatas thus vividly illustrates the problem sketched in outline by Cambyses. As just and noble as Gadatas has been and is, the gods have permitted his misery; they have looked on in apparent indifference (consider also 6.1.3). As for Cyrus's own fastidious and ostentatious piety, perhaps it is a product of a persistent hopefulness—that the gods may, even if they need not, intervene for him (consider also Oeconomicus 7.7 and 11.8–9).

It is true that Machiavelli compels us at least to consider a rather different possibility, according to which Cyrus's piety is less the expression of a heartfelt and hopeful duty than an infinitely useful device serving a military or political purpose. After all, if the prophets can manipulate the divine signs or their interpretation, so can Cyrus. As we have noted, Machiavelli identifies Cyrus—Xenophon's Cyrus (Prince, Chap. 14)—as one of four “armed prophets” and so places him, together with Romulus and Theseus, in the company of Moses as great founders: “and if their particular actions and orders are considered, they will appear no different from those of Moses, who had so great a teacher” (Machiavelli Reference Machiavelli and Mansfield1998, 22–23). In other words, Moses spoke to God as much as Cyrus did: not at all. Xenophon's Cyrus too can be called an “armed prophet” inasmuch as he is both heavily armed and trained in the art of prophecy. And although Xenophon is far more cautious or reserved than Machiavelli on this score, he too indicates occasionally the political or military utility of pious observance: soldiers who are fearful of the divine fear human beings less, for example (3.3.58; consider also 3.3.40 and 42, end; 6.2.6; 8.1.23 and 25; 8.7.22). Still, the fact that Cyrus sees in pious observance a certain political utility does not by itself establish the insincerity of his practice of it, as little as his conviction of the utility of virtue means that his is a strictly low or mercenary view of virtue. For the happiness Cyrus seeks he wishes to deserve, and desert seems pegged to compliance with a standard one regards as kalos, as beautiful or noble or high. Cyrus would not be as hopeful as he is, then, if he did not understand himself to be complying with an extraordinarily demanding standard that as such he admires.

THE PROVIDENTIAL RULE OF CYRUS

We have argued that Cyrus is dedicated to what is noble or virtuous, even as he seeks in all things the good or advantageous, and that he knows that the world does not so simply support his genuine wish to see moral excellence unfailingly attended by just reward: such a view must be buttressed by laws and an alogon habituation, since it is not reliably supported even by omniscient gods. But we suggest now that what the world or cosmos may not supply, Cyrus himself strives to supply. Cyrus is intent, that is, on constructing a new order that is in principle open to all who are good as he understands goodness, regardless of their wealth or status or nationality (consider 2.2.26), a truly universal meritocracy that to a degree looks to nature (e.g., 2.1.15 and especially 2.3.7–10); and in that new order, through the scrupulous attentions of Cyrus himself, merit will always receive its earned recompense. Accordingly, immediately after the first great triumph over the Assyrian forces, Cyrus himself sees to it that Chrysantas, who most distinguished himself in the battle, receives the reward of a promotion (4.1.3). Cyrus is constantly on the lookout for those deserving of reward, be it money or praise or honor, and he directs his officers to do the same (e.g., 3.3.6). It is solely through the this-worldly deeds of Cyrus that Gadatas the eunuch is finally permitted the vengeance he longs for: Gadatas and Gobryas (whose son was murdered by the Assyrian) are directly responsible for the execution of the Assyrian King (7.5.30–31). And although Xenophon is reluctant to mention it, Cyrus must also demote or punish, for the undeserving can never profit or be seen to profit. When, for example, the disobedient Chaldaeans (consider 3.2.7 and 25–26) begin to plunder, against Cyrus's direct order, they are saved from expulsion in enemy territory only when they agree to give all they have plundered to the good troops who as such remained at their posts (7.2.5–8; also 2.2.25, end).

The depth of Cyrus's attachment to virtue or nobility is perhaps clearest on those occasions when the well-being of the virtuous is most exposed. In such circumstances, one can even say, Cyrus takes on the role of a providential god; he attempts to do here and now what the gods evidently do not. Cyrus's concern for “the noble and the good,” for the union of “Persia” and “Media,” compels him to go beyond the limits of all ordinary politics in the direction of a universal providence. No wonder, then, that some men are even of the view that Cyrus is descended from gods, that is, is himself a god (see 4.2.24, end; 7.2.24; also 1.2.1). In the confusion of the battle against the allied Assyrian forces, Cyrus surveys the scene from atop one of the moveable towers he has had built. From that vantage point he catches sight of the Egyptians, his enemies, who alone are standing their ground. But being in impossible circumstances, they simply form themselves into a circle and sit down under such cover as their shields provide. Here they begin to suffer “many terrible things” (7.1.40). No longer able to fight, in other words, the Egyptians submit to a slaughter. Cyrus's reaction to this sight is telling: he is filled with both admiration and pity, “because they were perishing, despite being good men” (7.1.41). Accordingly, Cyrus intervenes in an effort to save them, and he manages to do so when he allays their sole concern—that their salvation be somehow compatible with what is “noble” (7.1.42). The Egyptians, then, show by deed that they prefer a noble death to an ignoble salvation, just as Cyrus shows his abiding concern that men of extraordinary virtue not meet a harsh end: he intervenes to save the stoutest of his enemies—the very ones, as the reader knows but Cyrus does not, who are responsible for the death of that man of the most outstanding nobility in Cyrus's army, Abradatas of Susa, husband of Panthea (7.1.31–32).

The case of Abradatas and Panthea too is revealing. Abradatas expresses in prayer his gratitude to Cyrus for the treatment accorded his captured wife: “Greatest Zeus, grant that I may come to light as a husband worthy of Panthea, and a friend worthy of Cyrus” (6.4.9). And it is Panthea who exhorts her husband to aid Cyrus in an outstandingly noble way: she would prefer to be under the earth with her husband than live on with him in shame, should he fail to acquit himself well in battle (6.4.6 and context). In addition to her misattribution of Cyrus’ treatment of her to his selfless virtue, she still labors under the false opinion that she is responsible for the end of the friendship of Cyrus and Araspas, a friendship that in fact survives but whose apparent demise Cyrus uses to great advantage (6.1.45–51 and 6.4.8; compare 5.1.2–18; 6.1.31–44; 6.3.11–16). Panthea and Abradatas together are exceedingly noble or beautiful in every way: in bodily appearance, in adornment, in character. So little do they seek their own advantage or profit that the very arms and clothing Panthea has had specially crafted for her husband are noteworthy for their beauty as distinguished from their utility (consider 6.4.2), just as his chariot would seem to be best for driving straight into enemy lines, whereas the chariots of Cyrus's new design seem rather more maneuverable and are themselves a lethal weapon merely by being in motion (compare 6.1.51 and 6.4.2, beg., with 6.1.29–30 and 52; 6.2.17).

When Cyrus learns the news of the death of Abradatas in battle, he reacts in an unprecedented way. Striking his thigh in vexation or grief, he rides immediately to the corpse—thus seeing Panthea for the first time—begins to weep and weep bitterly (7.3.6, 8 [15] and 11 [7]; compare 1.4.26 and 5.5.10), and is reduced for a time to silence. He does not know what to say. Cyrus has cattle, horses, and many sheep brought along so they may be slaughtered in sacrifice for Abradatas, as befits a good man (7.3.11, end), and he attempts to console Panthea with the thought that Abradatas has received “the noblest end, for he has met his end while being victorious” (7.3.11). Thus the noblest man has received the end most fitting for him—although there is no suggestion in the text that Abradatas died with the knowledge that victory was theirs (compare, e.g., Thucydides Reference Thucydides and Jones1942, 5.10.11). Cyrus also promises that a great memorial mound will be raised for Abradatas. Yet Panthea is consoled by none of this, and she makes a remark that is as disturbing in its way as is the corpse that lies in pieces beside her (7.3.8–10): “I know. . .that [Abradatas] suffered these things on my account not least, but perhaps [or equally] also on account of you, Cyrus, no less. For I—the fool!—I uttered many exhortations to him to act in this way, so that he would be a worthy friend to you. And I myself know that he did not reflect on whatever he would suffer, but rather on what he might do in gratitude to you” (7.3.10). If Panthea remains true to her earlier statement that she would prefer a noble end with her husband to an ignoble life—she immediately commits suicide, an act that leaves Cyrus “dumbstruck” (7.4.15)—she does so with deep regret: surely her statement here means that, were it possible for her, she would in fact prefer the continuation of her life with Abradatas, noble or not. She regards herself now as a “fool.” This scene reveals simultaneously the limits of Cyrus's own power to reward the virtuous and the limits of the noblest outlook taken on its own terms. That the honors or rewards arranged by Cyrus fail to satisfy Panthea is clear enough; Xenophon himself refers to the memorial mound for Abradatas as “the memorial mound of the eunuchs,” the eunuchs, that is, who immediately imitate the suicide of their mistress: were it not for the artful intervention of Xenophon, as distinguished from that of Cyrus, the eunuchs would be at least as well remembered as Abradatas and Panthea. The noble dedication to virtue seems to call out for immortality—Panthea had spoken of the possibility, not indeed of death, but of her being together with her husband in or under the earth, once he has shown himself to be a good man (6.4.6)—and this Cyrus cannot supply. In attempting to jettison what is noble insofar as it transcends the good, must not Cyrus jettison also the hope undergirding Panthea's words to Abradatas?

THE UNIVERSAL RULE OF CYRUS AND THE PROBLEM OF REGIME STABILITY

We hope to have shown that Cyrus is both deeply attractiveFootnote ⁹ and deeply flawed. He seeks to preserve something of the beauty of noble or moral action even as he insists that such action is always good for those who so act. Insofar as he sees that neither human beings nor gods always make this so, he himself enters the breach: Cyrus takes upon himself the offices of a providential despotēs or “master” (e.g., 4.6.2–3; 5.3.28; 7.2.9; 7.3.3; consider also 7.5.61–62). At one point he assures the Persian commoners that he, “together with the gods,” will overcome a certain “necessity” (2.1.15): Cyrus appears in the company of gods, above necessity. Yet he lacks the omniscience such providence would require. If he can bestow on Chrysantas the requisite honor because he himself saw him in battle, Cyrus must rely on hearsay reports in distributing the other honors (see again 4.1.2–3); he wishes to be, but cannot be, a “seeing law.” That there is a grave difficulty with Cyrus's enterprise is obvious no later than his accession to the throne and the organization of his empire (7.5.37 and following). There he attempts to make up for his lack of knowledge by means of the so-called “Ears and Eyes of the King”—that is, a clandestine network of informants who report whatever it may be useful for him to know. The result of this, which Stalin could approve of, is that the people “are everywhere afraid to say what is not advantageous to the King, just as if he himself were listening, and to do whatever is not advantageous, just as if he himself were present” (8.2.10–12). The distance between omniscience and the native human capacities is compensated for by the judicious use of fear (consider already 1.1.5 [23–25]) and perhaps also by “technological” inventions or contrivances (consider, e.g., 8.6.17–18). And this in the chapter devoted to explaining how Cyrus won over his “friends” (see 8.1.48, end and 8.2.28)! Accordingly, Cyrus sees to it that the first grand procession from the palace is both “most noble” and “most frightening” (8.3.5). Cyrus knows that it is not enough just to be better than his subjects; he must also “beguile” or “bewitch” them—with makeup, elevator shoes, elaborate dress—so as to improve on “nature” (8.1.40–41). Because many enemies surround him in Babylon, he must surround himself with the only people he can now trust, a coterie of eunuchs, who are of course themselves unnatural and are without the natural attachments (7.5.58–65); those who do not have (Gobryas) or cannot have issue (Gadatas) are especially dependent on Cyrus (consider also the implication of the apparently inapt metaphor of Cyrus the King Bee at 5.1.24). The crowning moment of Cyrus's first procession occurs when the vast audience, partly spontaneously and partly by prior arrangement, prostrates itself before him. And this means in turn that, for the first time, the Commoners and Peers of Persia—republican Persia—too abase themselves before the man, who hardly seems to be a mere man any longer (8.3.14; see also 4.4.13; 5.3.18; and 7.5.32; compare 2.4.19 and Anabasis of Cyrus 3.2.13).

Here we may return to the opening of the Education of Cyrus and recall—what becomes easy to forget—that the book presents itself as a high praise of Cyrus. Yet Xenophon's praise of Cyrus rests on a single ground: that Cyrus solved, on the basis of knowledge, the problem of political instability. It gradually becomes clear that he solved this problem, for so long as he solved it, by destroying politics in favor of something on the model of the family. That is, Cyrus the King is routinely called “father” by his subjects—which means that they, both slaves and “the best,” are themselves akin to children (8.1.1 and 44; 8.2.9; 8.8.1, end) and come to prefer him to their own brothers, fathers, and children (8.2.9). Or, since “familial” rule too can be difficult (recall 1.1.1 [8–13]), Cyrus also calls himself “shepherd,” which means that his subjects are akin to sheep (8.2.14). A saying of Cyrus is remembered: “as the shepherd ought to use his flocks while making them happy—in the happiness of sheep of course—so a king ought similarly to use cities and human beings while making them happy.” Cyrus fails to add: “in the happiness of human beings of course.” It is striking how frequently Cyrus takes his bearings, in dealing with his soldiers and subjects, by observation of herd or pack animals (e.g., 2.1.28–29; 7.5.62; 8.1.9 and 44; 8.2.4); the significance of Xenophon's early juxtaposition of human beings and herd animals is now apparent (recall 1.1.2). In accord with all of this, Cyrus replaces political rule or judgment or deliberation (e.g., 1.5.5; 5.5.43) by “management,” “household management” (e.g., 7.5.58; 8.1.14 and 15).

Cyrus distinguishes between those in his circle and those whom he is “preparing for slavery,” and in the former especially he instills piety, justice, respect or awe, obedience, moderation, and continence (8.1.23–33; compare 1.2.8). Yet the line between the two begins to blur. As Chrysantas has it, the distinction between free and slave is that the free are willingly, slaves unwillingly, obedient (8.1.4; on “freedom,” consider also 3.1.10, end; 8.3.21): everyone must always be eager to dance a Persian jig before Cyrus (see 8.4.12 and context). The “education of Cyrus” informed him that a great many human beings will obey if such obedience brings with it “the good things” and their preservation (8.1.3; the speaker is Chrysantas: compare 1.6.19 [13–14] and 8.4.12 [17–20]). First among those goods are the pleasures of food and drink (8.2.2) and clothing and adornments (8.2.8), on the one hand, and bodily health on the other. Accordingly, Cyrus encourages the more-than-Median refinement that goes together with the division of labor, whose products he alone controls (8.2.5), and he maintains a monopoly on access to “health care” (8.2.24–25). Much of life in the new empire, then, is taken up with procuring and enjoying the bodily pleasures or their close cousins—a “sheep-like” happiness. Insofar as Cyrus's providential rule seeks to preserve mere life and to supply comforts—comfortable self-preservation—these must be according to Xenophon important motives bringing the people to the adulation of Cyrus; awareness of the fragility of life and of its attendant pleasures may be sufficient to bring some human beings to the worship of beings who present themselves as providential.

The emptiness of the life Cyrus creates at the peak of empire becomes clear in his attempts to answer the question of what the empire, with all its striving and strife and hardship, is for. In his first speech after becoming king, Cyrus contends, before the Peers and those who have proved themselves best, that if so great a success as the empire renders it impossible “to have leisure either for oneself or to enjoy oneself with friends, I bid farewell to this happiness” (7.5.42; compare 8.7.12, end and context). The practice of virtue, we can now say, is for the sake of empire, which is for the sake of leisure, for oneself and with one's friends. Everything rests, then, on Cyrus's conception of the concern or activity that properly fills that leisure. Artabazus, the Mede who from youth has been in love with Cyrus, suggests that such leisure be given over to a kind of private life shared by Cyrus's friends from the beginning—Artabazus has in mind a love affair with Cyrus—but Cyrus regards this suggestion as risible: he openly laughs at it (7.5.48–55; for a different reading of this passage, see Nadon Reference Nadon2001, 112). Instead, since the empire must be not only maintained but also expanded, Cyrus indicates that his men “must not slacken in their practice of virtue”: virtue is for the sake of empire, which is for the sake of leisure, which is for the sake of the practice of virtue, which in turn maintains the empire that is for the sake of. . .leisure? Given the circularity of this, Cyrus is compelled to raise the following question: “If someone is reflecting on such things as these—‘so what profit is there for us to have accomplished the things we desired, if it will still be obligatory for us to practice endurance while being hungry and thirsty and while laboring and being diligent?’—he must understand that one enjoys the goods things more insofar as one labors first before proceeding to them” (7.5.80). As this suggests, the only clear answer Cyrus can give to his question is enjoyment or “pleasure,” which he mentions six times in the context. But this answer is problematic. For these promised pleasures always lie just around the corner, and the austere pleasures subsequent to hunger and thirst must lose their allure amid the Babylonian splendor, eventually if not immediately (consider 8.8). And to the extent that Cyrus hesitates to make an avowed hedonism the core of the self-understanding of the Persians, at least, he is compelled to “repeat” old Persia at the peak of the new (see 7.5.85). Cyrus, that is, must also encourage something akin to virtue's being practiced for its own sake alone, after having done so much to destroy it: “those whom I see making a regular practice of the noble things and the good things, these I will honor” (7.5.85, end; the formulation is compatible with the separation of the noble from the good).

If Cyrus did indeed solve the problem of regime stability, at least during his lifetime (8.8, with all the MSS; also 1.2.16; compare Agesilaos 1.4, end), and if the empire needed to solve it becomes more repellent the more we see of it, then political stability must be judged the floor rather than the ceiling of healthy political life. Xenophon is able to praise Cyrus as he does only by lowering the standard by which he judges political life: Xenophon must cease to judge political life by its highest aspiration, to secure for all citizens the good or best way life, if he is to praise Cyrus. Such stability may be the necessary condition of happiness, at least of the community (compare Apology of Socrates to the Jury 18); it is not its sufficient condition. One is led to wonder, in other words, whether Cyrus's solution to the problem of political stability, which is indeed possible and includes the destruction of politics together with a freedom worthy of the name, is not worse than the problem itself.

* * *

The Education of Cyrus has been called a “historical romance” (Grant Reference Grant1883, 124). More cautiously one can say that it is an act of philosophical poēsis: like Plato in his portrait of Socrates, Xenophon in his portrait of Cyrus presents the life of an extraordinary individual in such a way as to permit his readers to learn a universal truth or truths from it—retail fabrication in the service of wholesale truth-telling. The “education” of the title may include not only the education that Cyrus received but also the education that he makes possible for us, thanks to the artfulness of Xenophon.