SOURCE: "1001 Iranian Nights: History and Fiction in Xenophon's Cyropaedia," in The Greek Historians: Literature and History, Anma Libri, 1985, pp. 65-85.

[Arguing that Classical scholars have usually treated Persia as a negligible detail of setting in the Cyropaedia, Hirsch makes its presence central in the essay that follows in order to vindicate Xenophon's knowledge of Persian culture.]

This paper, which concerns itself with one of the more curious pieces of literature which have come down to us from classical antiquity—the Cyropaedia of Xenophon— is written in that spirit of respect for the intelligence and integrity of the ancient authors which has always characterized the writing and teaching of Toni Raubitschek, to whom this volume is dedicated.

Xenophon, as is well known, was an Athenian of aristocratic family whose adult life spanned the first half of the fourth century B.C. Student of Socrates, participant in the unsuccessful revolt of the Persian prince Cyrus, mercenary commander, exile, friend of the Spartan king Agesilaus, gentleman farmer and litterateur, he experienced more of the world than is granted to most men.

Xenophon nevertheless is a much maligned figure who has been out of favor with students of Greek literature and history in recent times. Somewhere it has been said that he was "a better philosopher than Thucydides, a better historian than Plato," by which it was meant that he was thoroughly mediocre in all his endeavors. Certainly, no one would presume to claim that he was the equal of such intellectual giants as Thucydides and Plato. But Xenophon was a more interesting and creative personality than is usually allowed. Indeed, in certain respects he shows greater enlightenment than his more brilliant and famous contemporaries. For one thing, he had overcome typical Greek prejudices towards barbarians and had developed a balanced and respectful attitude towards Persia, that vast empire whose power and pretensions cast a shadow across the Greek consciousness throughout the classical era. In his political theorizing Xenophon is able to do what Plato and Aristotle cannot—to envision a stage of political development beyond the independent Greek polis. In this, as in other respects, he foreshadows the Hellenistic age ushered in by Alexander the Great a quarter century after his death. Finally, he wrote books on a wide range of topics, historical, philosophical and technical. Here he was an innovator who was not afraid to cross traditional genre lines, and who created, or participated in the early development of, several new literary genres—memoir in the Anabasis, philosophic dialogue in the Memorabilia biography in the Agesilaus.

Perhaps the most difficult to categorize of all his works is the Cyropaedia. The title, Κύρου παιδεἱα means "The Education of Cyrus," and is nominally the story of Cyrus the Great, the Iranian king who founded the Persian Empire in the mid-sixth century B.C. But the eight books of the Cyropaedia amount to far more than the education of Cyrus, unless education is taken in its widest sense as the experience and knowledge gathered during a lifetime. The work begins with the ancestry and birth of Cyrus, and gives ample coverage to his boyhood and education. Glossing over his years as a teenager and young adult, it concentrates on his conquests and the initial provisions which he made for administration of the new empire which he had won. It then skips over the rest of his reign until it reaches his last days and his deathbed political testament to friends and heirs.

In the preface Xenophon makes the following claim:

Thus, as we meditated on this analogy, we were inclined to conclude that for man, as he is constituted, it is easier to rule over any and all other creatures than to rule over men. But when we reflected that there was one Cyrus, the Persian, who reduced to obedience a vast number of men and cities and nations, we were then compelled to change our opinion and decide that to rule men might be a task neither impossible nor even difficult, if one should only go about it in an intelligent manner … Believing this man to be deserving of all admiration, we have therefore investigated who he was in his origin, what natural endowments he possessed, and what sort of education he had enjoyed, that he so greatly excelled in governing men. Accordingly, what we have found out or think we know concerning him we shall now endeavor to present. (Cyropaedia 1.1.3; 1.1.6)

The reader is urged to keep in mind that, on Xenophon's own testimony, the Cyropaedia is an investigation of how Cyrus conquered and ruled his empire.

Despite Xenophon's explicit statement of purpose, there has never been a consensus on the question—"What is the Cyropaedia?" There are almost as many opinions as there are commentators on such fundamental issues as the genre of the work, its purpose and its inspiration. This is because it does not fit neatly into any established literary genre, ancient or modern.

What can be said, however, is that the majority of classical scholars have never been able to give any serious regard to the historical setting of the Cyropaedia, that is, the Old Persia of Cyrus the Great. To quote a recent study of Xenophon:

Xenophon's choice of subject need not, therefore, be taken as an indication of some new cosmopolitanism, nor a reflection of his own travels abroad, especially since a Persian ingredient in the Kyroupaideia is little more than a flavoring. [W.E. Higgins, Xenophon the Athenian, 1977]

For most classicists, the Persian context of the Cyropaedia is mere exotic decoration and of no real significance. They prefer to see it as a thoroughly Greek work which has been transferred to a fairy-tale "Persian" setting. Moreover, they imply that Xenophon simply invented most of the alleged "events" in the career of his Cyrus. It follows that, for them, the work is worth little as a source of information on Persian history, culture or institutions, nor can one gain from it any insights into the attitude of fourth century Greeks towards Persia. On the other hand, many Orientalists who are concerned with the civilization of ancient Iran have taken a very different view. For them the Cyropaedia has long been a major source of information concerning the history and institutions of the Persian Empire.

In light of these two fundamentally antithetical approaches to the work, it is a matter of obvious importance to determine the nature of the Cyropaedia. Is it history, is it fiction, or is it something in between? The answer to this question will dictate the extent to which, and the way in which, the historian is entitled to make use of the Cyropaedia. And insofar as the Cyropaedia was widely read in antiquity and had considerable impact on the evolution of a number of literary genres, it should be a matter of interest, not just to the historian of ancient Persia, but also to the intellectual historian who is concerned with the development of Greek thought.

To understand the nature of the Cyropaedia and the purposes of the author, it is essential to grasp the role of Persia in the work. Herein lies the key to the Cyropaedia. The traditional view of classicists, as has been said, is to minimize the significance of the Persian historical and cultural context. But there are a number of reasons for questioning this traditional view. In the first place, it begs the question to assert that Xenophon's choice of a Persian setting is of no particular importance. This issue deserves to be examined with an open mind. One must ask why Xenophon has chosen a Persian king and allegedly Persian models of education, ethics, leadership and administration to express his ideals. The question takes on added interest if the Greeks of the fourth century were really as contemptuous of Persian "barbarians" as is commonly maintained, for these same Greeks were the audience for whom Xenophon wrote.

In the second place, those who insist that the authentically Persian features in the Cyropaedia are few and inconsequential are simply mistaken. Indeed, the Cyropaedia contains numerous facts about the Persian Empire, its history, culture, institutions and peoples. Some can be confirmed elsewhere in Greek and Oriental sources, while others are at least quite plausible. Xenophon claims that many of the customs and institutions of the elder Cyrus' day are still in force in Persia in his own time. He also claims to have done research and to have had access to Oriental songs and legends. Moreover, Orientalists have detected stories and motifs in the Cyropaedia which recur in different contexts in the Shahnama and other Persian literature based on early oral tradition. Consequently, the investigator of the Cyropaedia must ask himself why Xenophon has gone to the trouble of discovering and reporting this wealth of data about Persia.

In the third place, it must be realized that the Cyropaedia is about the acquisition and administration, not of a polis, but of an empire. Some commentators explain that Xenophon was deeply disturbed by the instability of city-state governments and the incessant warfare within and between the Greek communities during his lifetime, and that this prompted him to a discourse on government in the Cyropaedia. Thus, the Cyropaedia is supposed to be seen as prescribing some sort of solution to the problems of the Greek polis. Once again, those who espouse this view seem to be proceeding from a set of a priori assumptions about what the attitude and interests of Xenophon, as a patriotic fourth century Greek, ought to have been.

Indeed, many of Xenophon's contemporaries were concerned with the problems of the Greek citystate. Plato in the Republic and the Laws and Aristotle in the Politics gave much deep thought to the nature of the polis, and each offered his vision of the ideal community. In both cases the emphasis is on the structure of the state. However, the comparison with Plato and Aristotle only serves to point up the differences in Xenophon's approach. Not only is Xenophon talking about a much larger and more complex political entity, that is, an empire extending over vast distances and comprising many different peoples, with all the problems of administration that this must entail, but he also focuses not so much on political structures as on the character of the individual ruler. Could he really have been prompted to this meditation by a desire to solve the problems of (for the sake of example) the contemporary Athenian democracy?

In fact, things had not been going entirely well for the Persian Empire either in the fourth century, what with the secession of Egypt, the attempted coup d'état of Cyrus the younger, and revolts of Cypriote, Phoenicians and disaffected Persian satraps. One should not dismiss out of hand the possibility that Xenophon has been prompted to these reflections by the problems of contemporary Persia. At any rate, one must ask—"Why has Xenophon concerned himself with the problems facing an individual who seeks to rule, not a city-state, but an empire?"

The foregoing consideration raise doubts about the prevailing assumption that the Persian context and the authentically Persian elements of the Cyropaedia are superficial and of little real moment. Xenophon obviously had a keen interest in, and ample knowledge about, Persia. It is my contention that the Cyropaedia is much more "Persian" in inspiration than is usually conceded. In order to establish this contention, it will be necessary to consider, first, the character of the Cyropaedia, by which I mean its genre, the sources to which Xenophon had access and the way in which he used them. Then we will take up the problem of the Persian setting, and I will suggest a number of reasons why Xenophon may have chosen to set his account in the Old Persia of Cyrus the Great. Finally, we will briefly take up the question of how reliable the Cyropaedia is as a source of information on the history, culture, and institutions of ancient Persia. Only from the vantage point provided by such a survey can one fairly evaluate the true position of the Cyropaedia on that elusive boundary between history and fiction.

There is, has been said, little agreement among commentators about the genre of the Cyropaedia. Perhaps there is no single, simple answer, since here, as elsewhere, Xenophon was apparently willing to cross traditional genre lines. Nevertheless, certain things can be said. The starting point must be Xenophon's own prefatory statement that he is concerned with the question of how one may govern that most problematic of creatures—Man—and that Cyrus' success in this enterprise makes him a fruitful subject for investigation. On Xenophon's own testimony, the Cyropaedia is to be an investigation of how Cyrus conquered and ruled his empire. In accordance with this design, Xenophon focuses on certain episodes in Cyrus' life— youth, conquests, initial consolidation of power and last moments—and virtually ignores the rest of a long life. Events from the past have been selected, and segments of Cyrus' life emphasized, largely because they illuminate the matter of what kind of ruler Cyrus had been. This selection allows Xenophon to expatiate upon the early signs of Cyrus' outstanding nature, the program of education which molded his character, the manner in which he carried out his conquests, his initial provisions for administration of the new empire, and his death-bed political testament. Thus, while it may contain much historical and biographical material, the Cyropaedia is neither history nor biography. A comprehensive and continuous treatment of the full career of Cyrus, such as would be expected in either a history of Old Persia or a biography of Cyrus, is not attempted and was surely never contemplated.

In light of Xenophon's statement of purpose and the contents of the work, it can, perhaps, be characterized as a didactic work on the subjects of education, values, military science, and political administration, drawing upon the example of Cyrus for its paradigmatic value and in order to provide a cohesive and entertaining framework for the instructional material. Such a formulation is safe enough and would probably win general approbation, but it does not tackle the fundamental issue of historicity. As was seen earlier, many classical scholars regard the framework of plot and setting as largely, or entirely, fictional, and believe that Xenophon invented most of the story line and drew his intellectual inspiration from Greek societies such as Sparta. To assert this is to ignore Xenophon's twin claims that he means to examine the career of the historical Cyrus for the illumination which it may provide on the problem of good government and that he is going to relate what he had discovered as a result of his researches.

At this juncture, we need to consider the sources of information on Old Persia which were available to Xenophon. They fall into three major categories. First, Greek books. Although he does not cite Herodotus by name anywhere, it is highly probable that he was familiar with Herodotus' Histories. There are strong similarities between Xenophon's and Herodotus' accounts of Cyrus' capture of Sardis and Babylon. Furthermore, Xenophon's story of the interview between Cyrus and Croesus, the captured king of Lydia, virtually proves his familiarity with the Herodotean version, for his alteration of the Herodotean account of these events amounts to an implicit criticism of Herodotus' treatment of the role of Delphi (Cyropaedia 7.2.9-28). That he had read Ctesias' Persica is proven by his citation of it in the Anabasis (1.8.26). It is reasonable to assume that he made some use of Ctesias for the Cyropaedia. As will be seen later, there are strong similarities between his and Ctesias' accounts of the death of Cyrus. Xenophon probably also made use of other Greek historical works which have not survived, or whose remains are too fragmentary to permit a firm connection to be established.

Barbarian oral tradition constitutes a second category of source material. Xenophon occasionally cites the stories and songs about Cyrus to be found among the barbarians. Clearly Cyrus had become a figure of legend among the peoples of the Near East. Herodotus claimed to be aware of four different versions of the birth of Cyrus and many tales of his death, and this process of mythifying will have gone that much further by Xenophon's time. Xenophon presumably picked up such stories in the course of his travels in the Persian Empire, first as a member of the entourage of the younger Cyrus and later as a commander of Greek mercenaries.

Xenophon's experiences in the Persian Empire are also integral to the third category of evidence. Obviously he could draw upon what he had seen and learned first-hand in the course of his travels. There is ample evidence that Xenophon tended to read back into the past certain Persian practices of his own day. He frequently marks this by employing some variant of the phrase ἔτι καὶ νῒν—"and still today …"

Thus Xenophon claims to have done research and he had access to a variety of sources. We may have our doubts about the historicity of Herodotus' and Ctesias' accounts of the career of Cyrus and about the veracity of the oral traditions circulating among the barbarians. And, in some cases, Xenophon may be mistaken in assuming that a contemporary Persian institution or custom was in existence already in Cyrus' day. But what is most important, for present purposes, is that Xenophon drew upon sources of information which he considered, and had every reason to consider, to be of some value.

It is fair to assume that Xenophon, like Herodotus before him, often had a number of versions of a story from which to choose, especially in the case of a nowlegendary figure such as Cyrus. Sometimes he takes over a version which we know to be derived from Herodotus or Ctesias. In theses cases there is no problem. At other times he gives a different account which is not attested elsewhere. Critics tend to point to these cases as examples of how Xenophon is prone to fabricate stories at will. However, later in this paper we will examine several instances in which the chance survival of outside evidence guarantees that the authority of Xenophon is to be preferred to that of Herodotus. It is, therefore, methodologically unsound simply to presume that Xenophon has invented any story for which independent confirmation has not chanced to survive into modern times.

Why does Xenophon choose the particular version which he reports in a given case? This brings us back to the problem of genre and purpose. If the Cyropaedia is a didactic work, them his principle of selection is most likely the suitability of a given version to his didactic purposes. With numerous traditions about Cyrus in circulation, Xenophon was in a position to choose the ones which best enabled him to illustrate those qualities of character and intellect which he felt were most important in a leader and ruler. There is no indication that he has submitted the material which he gathered to the kind of rigorous critical scrutiny which a Thucydides would have demanded. After all, a precise reconstruction of the past is not Xenophon's avowed goal. However, there is a meaningful difference between spontaneous invention of stories, of which Xenophon is so frequently accused, and the selective use of authentic traditions about the past.

To this point I have been arguing that we should take Xenophon at his word when he claims to have drawn upon authentic traditions about Cyrus and Old Persia in order to explore the problem of government. But how are we to account for the fact that Xenophon has chosen a Persian setting for the framework of his didactic treatise? It is a choice that is, in many ways, surprising, especially if one accepts the standard pronouncements about the hostility towards Persia of Xenophon and his Greek contemporaries. Some scholars dodge the apparent paradox by claiming that the Persian setting is a matter of little real significance—a literary fancy and nothing more—and need not be taken seriously. They confidently explain that the distance in space and time of Cyrus' Old Persia removed it from the realm of the "historical." It served as a convenient stage on which Xenophon could produce his own didactic fairy tale, while disregarding the inconvenient realities of history. Others assure us that Xenophon is merely following a well-established Greek tradition about Cyrus which can be seen in Aeschylus, Herodotus, Plato and Antisthenes. These commentators may be right about the advantages offered by a chronologically and spatially distant setting and about the prior existence of a favorable Greek tradition about Cyrus. But they are wrong to imply that these considerations make Xenophon's choice less meaningful. He could have chosen, as he did in the Hiero, a setting from the Greek past, or, as Plato did in the Republic, a hypothetical situation. But he did not. He chose a Persian setting. I believe that, at the very least, Xenophon should be credited with the capacity for making a deliberate and meaningful choice.

Several factors may help to account for Xenophon's choice of a Persian setting. In the first place, the situation begins to simplify itself if only one accepts Xenophon's own claims about the work. He said that he was exercised by the question—"How may one rule Mankind successfully?" If, in search of an answer to this question, he looked to Cyrus the Great and Old Persia, this ought not to occasion much surprise. Indeed, for an open-minded Greek of the fourth century it really should have been the obvious place to look. The greatness and capacity of Cyrus and the Persians as builders and rulers of a vast empire spoke for itself. Cyrus and his immediate successors had rapidly conquered an empire of unprecedented type and dimensions, encompassing a multitude of different peoples and extending (in modern geographical terms) from Turkey to India, from Russia to the Sudan. For almost two hundred years the Persian Empire had dominated most of the world as the Greeks knew it. For one who was in search of a solution to the problem of administering an empire, the authentic historical experience of Persia would clearly be of the utmost instructional value.

Any reasonable Greek might have reached this conclusion, but Xenophon had an advantage over most other reasonable Greeks—his own familiarity with the Persian Empire and its ruling people. To my mind, a large part of the inspiration for Xenophon's choice of a Persian setting is to be found in his contacts with the Persian prince Cyrus and other Persians in Cyrus' retinue during the march up-country to Babylonian Cunaxa in the year 401 B.C. These events, which he so eloquently described in the Anabasis, undoubtedly made a deep impression on the young Xenophon, and there are more than a few indications that he was captivated by the dashing young Persian prince with the famous name.

Many commentators have remarked upon the similarities between the younger Cyrus of the Anabasis and the elder Cyrus of the Cyropaedia. Xenophon himself makes the connection in the encomium which he inserts after his account of the heroic death in battle of the prince at Cunaxa (Anabasis 1.9). The encomium opens with a suggestive evaluation of Cyrus:

He was a man who, of all the Persians who have lived since that ancient Cyrus, was both the most kingly and the most worthy to rule.

I wish to argue that the comparison was suggested to Xenophon by the younger Cyrus himself. When Cyrus set out to organize a rebellion against his brother, the Persian king Artaxerxes II, he must have known that he would need some sort of a propaganda theme which he could employ both to attract support for his cause and to justify his usurpation of the throne. It appears that he took advantage of his famous name and summoned up memories of a former period of greatness, the Old Persia of Cyrus the Great. Plutarch preserves a remark of the younger Cyrus to the effect that Artaxerxes, because of his faintheartedness and softness, could neither keep his horse on the hunt nor his throne in a crisis. Cyrus may have argued that Artaxerxes was not worthy of the Persian throne. The famous Cyrus of the past had won an empire on account of his excellence, and the new Cyrus, who, as Xenophon says, was most like his namesake in kingliness and worthiness to rule, deserved to sit on the throne of empire and promised to revive the customs and qualities that had made Persia great.

Admittedly, this reconstruction of Cyrus' propaganda campaign is conjectural, but it can be confirmed by the counter-propaganda which issued from Artaxerxes' camp. If the rebel prince Cyrus was invoking the legendary Cyrus, it was to Artaxerxes' advantage to be-little this claim. One can detect this process at work in the Persica of Ctesias, a Greek who served as physician to Artaxerxes' family and lived at the Persian court at the time of the younger Cyrus' rebellion. Whereas Herodotus and Xenophon agree that the elder Cyrus was the son of Cambyses, Ctesias makes him a commoner, son of a low-born cutthroat named Atradates and his goatherd wife Argoste, who began his career as a servant at the Median court. This is tantamount to a denial that Cyrus was an Achaemenid, a member of the legitimate line of Persian kings.

Cyrus was also removed from the official genealogy of the royal family. A pair of Old Persian inscriptions on gold tablets which were found at Ecbatana carry the names of Ariaramnes and Arsames, addressing each as "the great King, King of Kings, King in Persia." Ariaramnes and Arsames were the great-grandfather and grandfather of Darius I, a member of a junior branch of the Achaemenid clan, who wrested power from the line of Cyrus in the 520s. These two shadowy figures had not been kings of Persia, and the terminology used in these inscriptions—"King of Kings"—is wrong for the period of vassalage to Media. Orientalists feel that the orthography of these inscriptions is appropriate to the time of Artaxerxes II, and Kent has suggested that they may have been part of an anti-Cyrus propaganda campaign related to the revolt of Cyrus the younger. By erecting these inscriptions, Artaxerxes is claiming that the legitimate royal line is that of Darius. Cyrus the founder is being ousted from the royal line, and in this way Artaxerxes hopes to counter his brother's pretensions to revive the Old Persia of Cyrus the Great.

Xenophon will have been exposed to the propaganda of the younger Cyrus while he was traveling with the prince, for this propaganda was directed primarily at the Persians in Cyrus' camp. It thus appears that the comparison of the two Cyruses was an idea which Xenophon derived from his Persian patron. But he took over more than this. The package of propaganda being disseminated by the rebel prince presumably incorporated a picture of Cyrus the founder which the new Cyrus undertook to emulate and a concept of Old Persia which he promised to restore. I would therefore go so far as to say that Xenophon received a very particular vision of Cyrus the Great and Old Persia from the younger Cyrus himself.

So powerful was the impression which this made on Xenophon that he could not easily disassociate the younger Cyrus from the ancestor whom he claimed to imitate and, in a sense, reincarnate. There are a fair number of passages in the Cyropaedia in which Xenophon remarks upon a trait or habit of the elder Cyrus in terms similar or identical to those used for the younger Cyrus in the Anabasis. They undergo comparable educations, show a remarkable aptitude and enthusiasm for its basic features—riding, shooting, hunting— and excel over all other boys in their age-group. Each is susceptible, as a youth, to reckless daring. Each has the habit of exercising before meals, each sends food to friends as a gesture of affection, and each proclaims his desire to outdo friends and enemies at doing good and harm respectively. Finally, there are multiple correspondences, sometimes in virtually identical phraseology, between Xenophon's description of the younger Cyrus' conduct as satrap in Asia Minor and his account of the elder Cyrus' efforts to guarantee the security of his person by winning popularity among friends, potential rivals and subjects. It is hard to resist the conclusion that, insofar as Xenophon paints a portrait of the character, conduct and personal relations of the elder Cyrus, it is based largely on the personality of his one-time patron, Cyrus the prince.

If, as has been maintained here, Xenophon modeled the figure of Cyrus the Great on the personality of the younger Cyrus, and he derived a vision of Old Persia in the time of the founder from the hopes, dreams and self-serving claims of the younger Cyrus, this does not constitute grounds for accusing Xenophon of lack of concern for historical accuracy or willful distortion of truth. The personality of Cyrus, dead now for one hundred and fifty years and encrusted with layer upon layer of legend, was irrecoverable. Where was Xenophon to turn for an accurate picture of conditions in sixth century Iran? Thucydides had complained of the insurmountable difficulties facing one who tried to reconstruct the history of the remote past and he was not even thinking about the additional barriers which had to be faced in dealing with an alien culture. Xenophon worked with what he had. The fullest and most vivid picture of Cyrus and Old Persia available to him came from the camp of the younger Cyrus. To the extent that the Cyropaedia violates history, this is at least partially due, not to bald invention on Xenophon's part, but to the fact that he had to rely on his sources, written and oral, with the younger Cyrus prominent among the latter.

How historically reliable is the Cyropaedia? The communis opinio, as has been seen, holds that Xenophon indulged in free invention of allegedly historical events. Critics are especially quick to pounce whenever Xenophon contradicts the "historical" tradition found in Herodotus. Yet there are occasions when it can be confirmed from Oriental evidence that Xenophon is correct where Herodotus is wrong or lacks information. A case in point involves the ancestry of Cyrus. Herodotus had accepted the folklore motif of Cyrus' exposure as a baby and made his father Cambyses "well born and of a quiet temper … much lower than a Mede of middle estate." Xenophon, on the other hand, correctly reports that Cyrus was the son of Cambyses, King of Persia, a principality within the Median Empire (Cyropaedia 1.2.1). This is confirmed by the so-called Cyrus Cylinder, a propaganda tract in Akkadian cuneiform composed after the capture of Babylon, presumably at the behest of Cyrus, which gives his lineage as:

… son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan
… of a family which always (exercised) kingship
…

As Xenophon's Cyrus is poised to attack Assyria (by which name Xenophon refers to the neo-Babylonian kingdom), he gains the allegiance of the Assyrian vassal Gobryas, who later plays an important part in the capture of Babylon (Cyropaedia 4.6.1; 7.5.24-30). This time confirmation comes from the Nabonidus Chronicle, a contemporary cuneiform document which describes, among other events of the reigns of Nabonidus and Cyrus, the fall of Babylon. One Ugbaru, the Babylonian governor of Gutium, accompanied Cyrus when he took Babylon and helped with the initial administrative reorganization. Nothing of this individual and his role is known to Herodotus.

Such examples provide a salutary warning that it is rash to see Xenophon as invariably mistaken or guilty of a fabrication whenever he disagrees with Herodotus or reports an incident or detail which has not chanced to be confirmed elsewhere. Let me emphasize this point with a final substantial example.

Xenophon's account of the death of Cyrus is regularly cited as a blatant example of the liberties which Xenophon takes with the established "history" of Cyrus. It is assumed that he simply invented his version because it suited his literary and didactic purposes, that is, the glorification and idealization of Cyrus, although he knew the truth full well from reading Herodotus.

In Herodotus' pages Cyrus dies a sudden and violent death in battle against the Massagetae. His body is captured, and the bloodthirsty nomad queen sticks his head in a sack of blood and taunts him. All too often it is forgotten that Herodotus goes on to say:

Many stories are related of Cyrus' death; this, that I have told, is the worthiest of credence.

A very different account is found in the waning pages of the Cyropaedia (8.7). Cyrus, now far advanced in years, has returned to the Persian homeland. A dream informs him that he is soon to die, and shortly there-after he becomes weak and bedridden. Summoning his sons, his friends and the Persian officials, he proclaims his last will and testament. Cambyses, the elder son, is to be king, while Tanaoxares is to receive the satrapies of Media, Armenia and Cadusia. Both are urged to love each other and to treat all men fairly. Cyrus also gives instructions for his burial.

Much of the content of Cyrus' deathbed oration is invented by Xenophon. Cyrus' declaration that he has always avoided hubris, knowing that misfortune could strike at any time and that no man can be accounted truly blessed until he is dead, is a thoroughly Greek sentiment which immediately calls to mind the lecture of Solon to Croesus in Herodotus' pages. Cyrus' discourse on the immortality of the soul is reminiscent of the speeches of Socrates as he prepares to die in Plato's Apology and Phaedo.

However, the historical framework of the scene is manifestly not the invention of Xenophon. For there is a strikingly similar account of the last moments of Cyrus in the earlier Persica of Ctesias. Here Cyrus is wounded in battle against the Derbici, an obscure central Asian people. He is carried back to his camp, where he lingers for several days. Before dying he must have summoned his friends and family, for he appoints Cambyses to succeed him as king, while making the younger son, Tanyoxarkes, master of Bactria, Choramnia, Parthia and Carmania. He urges his friends and family to show love for one another, praying for blessings on those who abide in mutual good fellowship and cursing those who initiate evil.

One can readily discern that Xenophon has drawn upon either Ctesias or the tradition from which Ctesias derived. Both have a deathbed scene in which the moribund monarch summons his family and associates in order to deliver his last will and testament. In both versions the younger son is called Tanaoxares/Tanyoxarkes, whereas he is known in our other sources by some variant of Persian Bardiya, and he is given a command comprising several regions in central Asia. In both versions Cyrus urges concord upon those who survive him, and he dies in the presence of family and friends. If the full text of Ctesias' account of this event had survived, rather than Photius' brief epitome, it might be possible to point to even more correspondences.

Any consideration of which version is to be preferred must take into account an additional factor—the tomb of Cyrus. In Xenophon's dramatic deathbed scene, Cyrus discusses arrangements for his own burial. It is known that Cyrus was buried in a stately tomb at Pasargadae. This tomb was visited and restored by Alexander the Great, and is described by the historians of that era. From their reports one can be certain that it was no cenotaph, but rather housed the body of Cyrus. This fact can easily be accounted for by the versions of the death of Cyrus given by Xenophon and Ctesias, for Xenophon has him expire in Persia and Ctesias maintains that Cambyses had the body of Cyrus returned from the land of the Derbici to Persia, where it was buried. But it is hard to reconcile the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae with Herodotus' account, in which Cyrus' body is captured and dismembered by the vengeful Massagetae.

Finally, as [Arthur E.] Christensen has shown [in Les gestes des rois dans les traditions de Viran antique, 1936], Xenophon's overall conception of the death of Cyrus is firmly rooted in Iranian tradition. In the Shahnama of Ferdowsi, which preserves the cultural concepts and story patterns of ancient Iranian oral tradition, the life of the ideal king ends with a scene in which the dying king summons family, friends and advisers, arranges the succession, makes known his last wishes, and communicates to his successors a political testment. The conclusion of the Cyropaedia fits precisely into this mold.

It must be emphasized that no attempt is being made here to argue for the historicity of the Cyropaedia as a whole. Numerous episodes, conversations, speeches and private encounters must have been invented by Xenophon, for there could have been no possible source for such material. And it is precisely in these scenes, the didactic and philosophical core of the Cyropaedia, that the patently Greek elements of thought, speech and values are strongest. However, it should now be acknowledged that this core is set into a historical and cultural framework, and that, for the construction of this framework, Xenophon had access to credible sources—Greek written sources, Greek and barbarian oral tradition, and the example of Persian customs and institutions of his own day. As a result, the Cyropaedia contains a greater quantity of valuable information about Persian history, culture and institutions than is generally recognized, and even where one is inclined to doubt the historicity of a given event, it should be conceded that Xenophon may have preserved an authentic Greek or barbarian tradition—however false or distorted—about Persian history. The student of ancient Iran would be foolish to neglect the Cyropaedia or reject it out of hand.

I have argued above that Xenophon received a particularly vivid picture of Cyrus the Great and Old Persia from the entourage of the younger Cyrus. Obviously this vision of the Persian past is not likely to be correct in all essentials. After all, not only was it part of a campaign of political propaganda meant to justify Cyrus' ambition, but there is no reason to believe that there existed, in ancient Iran, a critical historical tradition which would have made possible an accurate recreation of the events, personalities and conditions of the sixth century. But the traditions embodied in the Cyropaedia may, in some degree, represent a different sort of truth. It may reflect the Persians' own conceptions about their past, and would thereby provide us with precious insights into the traditions and values of the aristocracy in fourth century Persia. As such, it would be analogous to the early books of Livy, which, if they preserve little that is historically accurate about Rome in the era of the Kings and the earliest days of the Republic, do constitute a priceless treasury of conceptions about the past held by Romans in the late Republic and early Empire.

One last consideration is in order. How did Xenophon conceive of his achievement in writing the Cyropaedia? We in the modern world tend to treat the boundary between truth and fiction as absolute, as clearly separating two different and irreconcilable orders of things. But it is, I suppose, now widely recognized that this boundary was a shifting and permeable one for the people of classical antiquity. Of course, any formulation of Xenophon's own conception of his mission must inevitably remain tentative, but I suspect that his situation might profitably be compared to that of a pair of modern writers who are usually classified as authors of "historical fiction." Robert Graves and Gore Vidal have both written sto-ries set in the ancient world, and both have, on occasion, issued revealing protests against the classification of their works as "fiction." Each insists in his own way that, though he is not a professional historian, his work is based on historical research and represents a reconstruction of the past. If it be permitted to recast their claims in Aristotle's terms, the implication is that their works are valuable, not only for the general truths about human affairs which fiction seeks to convey, but also for the particular truths which derive from knowledge of the actual events and conditions of the past.

Xenophon probably lacked the self-awareness of these modern writers, and the relevant categories of history and novel were only in process of formation in his time. But I wonder whether he would not have been himself in a similar light, and have claimed that the Cyropaedia offered both particular truths to be garnered from the record of the past and the higher truths which he superimposed by artistic license.