Xenophon the Socratic Prince


Book Description

An interpretation of Xenophon's Anabasis of Cyrus, paralleling the text to Machiavelli's The Prince, and focusing on the question: How did the Socratic education help Xenophon reconcile morality with effectiveness, the noble with the good, as a ruler?




Xenophon's Prince


Book Description

For over two millennia, the Cyropaedia, an imaginative biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great, was Xenophon's most popular work and considered his masterpiece. This study contributes to the recent rediscovery of the Cyropaedia and Xenophon, making intelligible the high esteem in which writers of the stature of Machiavelli held Xenophon's works and the importance of his place among classical authors. The ending of the Cyropaedia has presented a notoriously difficult puzzle for scholars. The bulk of the work seems to idealize the career of Cyrus, but the final chapter documents the swift and disastrous degeneration of the empire he founded. This conclusion seems to call his achievements into question. Nadon resolves this long-standing interpretive difficulty and demonstrates for the first time the overall coherence and unity of the Cyropaedia. He elucidates the Xenophontic critique of Cyrus contained within the whole of the work and unearths its analysis of the limitations of both republican and imperial politics. This provocative and original treatment of the Cyropaedia will be a definitive step in restoring the status of this important work. Nadon's lively, insightful study draws upon his deep knowledge and understanding of classical political theory and reveals in the Cyropaedia a subtlety and sophistication overlooked until now.




Xenophon's Prince


Book Description

For over two millennia, the Cyropaedia, an imaginative biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great, was Xenophon's most popular work and considered his masterpiece. This study contributes to the recent rediscovery of the Cyropaedia and Xenophon, making intelligible the high esteem in which writers of the stature of Machiavelli held Xenophon's works and the importance of his place among classical authors. The ending of the Cyropaedia has presented a notoriously difficult puzzle for scholars. The bulk of the work seems to idealize the career of Cyrus, but the final chapter documents the swift and disastrous degeneration of the empire he founded. This conclusion seems to call his achievements into question. Nadon resolves this long-standing interpretive difficulty and demonstrates for the first time the overall coherence and unity of the Cyropaedia. He elucidates the Xenophontic critique of Cyrus contained within the whole of the work and unearths its analysis of the limitations of both republican and imperial politics. This provocative and original treatment of the Cyropaedia will be a definitive step in restoring the status of this important work. Nadon's lively, insightful study draws upon his deep knowledge and understanding of classical political theory and reveals in the Cyropaedia a subtlety and sophistication overlooked until now. For over two millennia, the Cyropaedia, an imaginative biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great, was Xenophon's most popular work and considered his masterpiece. This study contributes to the recent rediscovery of the Cyropaedia and Xen




Xenophon's Anabasis, Or The Expedition of Cyrus


Book Description

Xenophon's Anabasis, or The Expedition of Cyrus, is one of the most famous survival stories ever written and the most important autobiographical work to have survived from ancient Greece. This book places the Anabasis in its historical and literary context and opens up for the reader different ways of interpreting its major themes.




Xenophon's Cyrus the Great


Book Description

This classic portrait of the ancient Persian king is “still the best book on leadership” (Peter F. Drucker). Cyrus, a great Persian leader, was so widely and memorably respected that a hundred years later, Xenophon of Athens wrote this admiring book about the greatest leader of his era. Among his many achievements, this great leader of wisdom and virtue founded and extended the Persian Empire; conquered Babylon; freed 40,000 Jews from captivity; wrote mankind’s first human rights charter; and ruled over those he had conquered with respect and benevolence. According to historian Will Durant, Cyrus the Great’s military enemies knew that he was lenient, and they did not fight him with that desperate courage which men show when their only choice is “to kill or die.” As a result the Iranians regarded him as “The Father,” the Babylonians as “The Liberator,” the Greeks as the “Law-Giver,” and the Jews as the “Anointed of the Lord.” By freshening the leader’s voice, style, and diction, Larry Hedrick has created a more contemporary Cyrus, and also contributes an introduction describing him and his times. A new generation of readers, including business executives and managers, military officers, and government officials, can now learn about and benefit from Cyrus the Great’s extraordinary achievements, which exceeded all other leaders’ throughout antiquity.




Xenophon's Retreat


Book Description

"With this first masterpiece of Western military history forming the backbone of his book, Robin Waterfield explores what remains unsaid and assumed in Xenophon's account - much about the gruesome nature of ancient battle and logistics, the lives of Greek and Persian soldiers, and questions of historical, political, and personal context, motivation, and conflicting agendas. The result is a rounded version of the story of Cyrus's ill-fated march and the Greeks' perilous retreat - a nuanced and dramatic perspective on a critical moment in history that may tell us as much about our present-day adventures in the Middle East, site of Cyrus's debacle and the last act of the Golden Age, as it does about the great powers of antiquity in a volatile period of transition."--BOOK JACKET.




The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon


Book Description

Introduces Xenophon's writings and their importance for Western culture, while explaining the main scholarly controversies.




Xenophon's Imperial Fiction


Book Description

"If you inquire into the origins of the novel long enough," writes James Tatum in the preface to this work, ". . . you will come to the fourth century before our era and Xenophon's Education of Cyrus, or the Cyropaedia." The Cyrus in question is Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire celebrated in the Book of Ezra as the liberator of Israel, and the Cyropaedia, written to instruct future rulers by his example, became not only an inspiration to poets and novelists but a profoundly influential political work. With Alexander as its earliest student, and Elizabeth I of England one of its later pupils, it was the founding text for the tradition of "mirrors for princes" in the West, including Machiavelli's Prince. Xenophon's masterpiece has been overlooked in recent years: Tatum's goal is to make it fully meaningful for the twentieth-century reader. To accomplish this aim, he uses reception study, philological and historical criticism, and an intertextual and structural analysis of the narrative. Engaging the fictional and the political in a single reading, he explains how the form of the work allowed Xenophon to transcend the limitations of historical writing, although in the end the historian's passion for truth forced him to subvert the work in a controversial epilogue. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




The Landmark Xenophon's Anabasis


Book Description

The Landmark Xenophon’s Anabasis is the definitive edition of the ancient classic—also known as The March of the Ten Thousand or The March Up-Country—which chronicles one of the greatest true-life adventures ever recorded. As Xenophon’s narrative opens, the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger is marshaling an army to usurp the throne from his brother Artaxerxes the King. When Cyrus is killed in battle, ten thousand Greek soldiers he had hired find themselves stranded deep in enemy territory, surrounded by forces of a hostile Persian king. When their top generals are arrested, the Greeks have to elect new leaders, one of whom is Xenophon, a resourceful and courageous Athenian who leads by persuasion and vote. What follows is his vivid account of the Greeks’ harrowing journey through extremes of territory and climate, inhabited by unfriendly tribes who often oppose their passage. Despite formidable obstacles, they navigate their way to the Black Sea coast and make their way back to Greece. This masterful new translation by David Thomas gives color and depth to a story long studied as a classic of military history and practical philosophy. Edited by Shane Brennan and David Thomas, the text is supported with numerous detailed maps, annotations, appendices, and illustrations. The Landmark Xenophon’s Anabasis offers one of the classical Greek world’s seminal tales to readers of all levels.




The Expedition of Cyrus


Book Description

"First published as an Oxford World's Classics paperback 2005"--Title page verso.