[In the excerpt that follows, Heiserman briefly summarizes the Cyropaedia, stressing the elements that later authors of early romances could imitate; in this way, Heiserman argues, despite Xenophon's clearly didactic purposes, his work could be the "First Romance in the West."]

One candidate for the role of "First Romance in the West" is the Cyropaedia, written by Xenophon, the spartanophile admirer of Socrates, about 400 B.C. More particularly, it is the story of Panthea and Abradatas, woven through books 5, 6, and 7 of the Cyropaedia, that is clearly romantic. This story is indeed exactly the kind of arcane, serious tale that Parthenius would have called an erōtikon pathos: its early date supports its candidacy—though similar stories in Herodotus, and the Odyssey itself, would win on this score; and its fame was apparently such that later romances sometimes adopted the name Xenophon—as though nineteenth-century English novelists had habitually signed their works "Richardson." But the story as Xenophon tells it is designed to reveal the virtues of Cyrus; for Cyrus himself, along with his career, is fashioned to show that "to rule men might be a task neither impossible nor even difficult, if one would only go about it in an intelligent manner." That is, Xenophon molds the conventions of the biography, the adventure, and the story of erotic suffering, already ancient in his time, to didactic ends.

In book 5, when Cyrus captures Susa, he wins Panthea, wife of Abradatas, as one of his many lovely prizes, and he asks his young friend Araspas to guard her until he, Cyrus, has time for women. Though Panthea disguises herself as a slave girl, Araspas can immediately identify her because her stature, her "grace," and her tears (which fall "even to her feet") evince her superiority; and this superiority, dramatized when she rends her garments upon hearing that Cyrus is to have her, signals that we are to take her predicament seriously. Already we recognize a convention of romance: the extraordinary and admirable character whose dominant value, marital fidelity, is jeopardized by fate. Xenophon might now have employed another convention: Araspas could here be struck by Eros and fall in love at first sight. But Xenophon chooses to make Araspas a conventional Scorner of Love so that he may return to Cyrus and work through still another convention: the Debate on Love. Many a courtly lover conducts this debate within himself; but Xenophon has Cyrus take part in it (as he could not if his minion were already in love with one of his women) to show how a prudent empire-builder deals with the conventional topics of these debates—Reason and Passion. Cooled by experience, Cyrus argues the right cause of reason and attacks erotic passion with ancient figures of speech: love is a disease, love enslaves even the gods, and so forth: Young Araspas mistakenly insists that love is rational—and trivial: "Everyone loves what suits his taste, as he does his clothes or shoes" (5. 1. 11). Later, in book 6, we learn that of course Cyrus is right. Araspas is suddenly brought to his king in chains because he has in the interval fallen so passionately in love with Panthea that he has attempted to rape her. Paternal Cyrus laughs at "the man who had claimed to be superior to the passion of love" (6. 1. 34) and demonstrates his compassionate wisdom by forgiving his squire, who confesses that he has learned "in the school of that crooked sophist Eros" that the soul's bad part leads us to betray our king, while the good part strives to obey him (6. 1. 41). But the psychodynamics inherent in all "courtly love" triangles—especially potent here because the lady has two kingly possessors, her husband and her conqueror—hardly interest Xenophon.

He uses the situation to enhance our admiration of Cyrus' strategic wit. Since the squire now seems to be his lord's enemy, Cyrus commands him to feign terror, pretend to defect, and return with the enemy's battle plan. When this is accomplished, we appreciate how Cyrus' mercy and intelligence bear political fruit.

But Xenophon has not yet extracted from this story of erōtika pathēmata all of its didactic potential. Cyrus rewards Panthea's chastity by permitting her to summon her husband to the camp. Grateful, and urged on by his grateful wife, the man volunteers to lead the van and charges to his death, winning the battle and illustrating how Cyrus' intelligence enables him to rule men. Even the story's final tableau celebrates Cyrus' virtues. In book 7, when he finds Panthea embracing her husband's corpse, Cyrus weeps. But his noble sententia—that it is glorious to die a brave victor—fails to console the admirable wife, who stabs herself. This pathetic scene is given a baroque twist when the corpse's hand, shaken by the conqueror, comes off at the wrist; but the conventions of horror soon give way to those of myth: three passing eunuchs who have observed Panthea's suicide stab themselves in frustrated emulation, and the great Cyrus, marveling and weeping, orders the erection of four great stones, one to commemorate the love of Panthea and Abradatas, the other three to memorialize the eunuchs; and these monuments, we are told, stand there to the present day. The intelligence of this wise ruler is crowned by the compassion that can honor passion; it sets an example for those who would rule men and makes the myths by which fame conquers death.

These conventional themes, characters, and predicaments are used in many later romances, tragedies, comedies, epics, and histories, both didactic and nondidactic.