How to Rule the World: An Introduction to Xenophon's The Education of Cyrus

Robert C. Bartlett

American Political Science Review, 2015, vol. 109, issue 1, 143-154

Abstract: As a contribution to the study of empire and imperial ambition, the present study considers the greatest analysis—Xenophon's The Education of Cyrus—of one of the greatest empires of antiquity—the Persian. Xenophon's lively and engaging account permits us to watch Cyrus as he builds a transnational empire, at once vast and stable. Yet Xenophon is ultimately highly critical of Cyrus, because he lacks the self-knowledge requisite to happiness, and of the empire, whose stability is purchased at the price of freedom. Cyrus finally appears as a kind of divinity who strives to supply the reward for moral excellence that the gods evidently do not. Xenophon implies that any truly global empire would have to present itself as a universal providential power capable of bestowing on human beings a blessed happiness that as such transcends our very mortality.

Date: 2015
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