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2023 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

The Limits of Regimes: Education and Character Formation in Xenophon’s Political Thought

verfasst von : Gregory A. McBrayer

Erschienen in: Regime and Education

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This paper will examine Xenophon’s account of civic or republican education, the education necessary for producing good citizens, as he represents it in the Education of Cyrus. Xenophon’s goal in recounting this education is twofold. First, Xenophon shows the necessary limits regimes face in trying to shape the lives, habits, virtues, and beliefs of their citizens. For in this fictional Persian Republic, a kind of embellished Sparta, the tension between human nature and the demands of citizenship comes to light. Xenophon shows readers that the hold regimes have over their citizens is not as strong as other classical authors might lead us to believe. In addition, by pointing to the problematic character of civic education in even the best regime, Xenophon signals what a true education in virtue would entail.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Introduction

Nächstes Kapitel The Beautiful and the False: An Introduction to Plato’s Hippias

The title could also refer to the education the reader receives in learning about Cyrus with Xenophon. Of course, the title also draws attention to the incomplete or defective character of Cyrus’ education. Much like the title of the Anabasis of Cyrus (Ascent or Rise of Cyrus) contains an account of another Cyrus who failed to ascend, the Education of Cyrus seems to be about a Cyrus who fails to receive an education worthy of the name. I will discuss this further later.

This is not to deny Cyrus teaches non-Persians as well. He also teaches the Armenian King, Croesus, and the Cadusians, just to name a few.

Of course, Plato and Aristotle indicate the regime may not be as powerful as they present it. Consider, for example, Aristotle’s account of revolutions (Aristotle, Politics, trans. Carnes Lord [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984] Book 5) and Plato’s cycle of regimes (Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom [New York: Basic Books, 1987] Book 8).

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Susan Collins and Robert C. Bartlett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) II.1 (1103b21–26).

Politics, I.1–2 (1252a1–6, 1253a19–20).

Nicomachean Ethics, I.2 (1094a27–28).

This is not to deny that some regimes even take an interest in the characters of non-citizens. For example, see Plutarch’s discussion of Sparta’s harsh policies, including their so-called “Secret Society” (krupteia), for dealing with their non-citizen slave population, the Helots (The Life of Lycurgus, 28). In Xenophon’s account of the Spartan Constitution, he is notably silent about the practice of krupteia (See Susan D. Collins, “An Introduction to the Regime of the Lacedaemonians,” in Xenophon: The Shorter Works, ed. Gregory A. McBrayer [Ithaca, NY: Corenell University Press, 2018], 370, n. 103).

Let me leave open the possibility that Plato, too, was fully aware of the limits of his allegory. One need only reflect on the measures Socrates puts into place in Kallipolis to see that the project of fully indoctrinating citizens requires an elaborate, almost incredible system of lies, habituation, and force.

But consider Genesis 1:24–25.

Xenophon, Education of Cyrus, trans. Wayne Ambler (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).

His name even indicates as much. Etymologically, Cyrus’s name is derived from the word meaning power, authority, or even lord (kuros).

Twice in the span of a paragraph, Xenophon identifies his fictional Persia as a republic (politeia, 1.2.15). It is a kind of constitutional monarchy tempered by a common council that also has a regimented judiciary system.

Perhaps this is why Xenophon emphasizes opinion regarding Cyrus’s parenthood (the father is “said to be” Cambyses at 1.2.1). On a related note, consider Aristotle’s account of whether founders are citizens, Politics 3.2.3 (1275b32–34). Cyrus is descended from the first citizen.

In addition to Cyrus’s formal education Persia, Cyrus receives a significant but informal education from his grandfather in Media. Later, Cyrus’s father tries to teach him (1.6), and Tigranes, Cyrus’s boyhood friend, also imparts important lessons (3.1). These three men dispute key lessons of Cyrus’s Persian education. I have sketched an account of this in, “The Miseducation of Cyrus,” Paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. November, 2015.

There is a series of three beauty contests in 1.3, between Persia and Media. All three are over to kalon, the beautiful. The first contest regards the good looks of royal men (His Persian father’s simple mode of dress, compared with his grandfather’s elaborate clothes, jewelry, and make-up. Here, Cyrus declares a tie. Among the Persians, his father is most beautiful, and among the Medes, his grandfather is). The third contest is over which food is more beautiful or noble, Persian or Median (Here, and only here, Cyrus sides with his native Persia). The second, central contest is over the beauty of robes and horses, and here Persia does not even enter a contestant.

Consider Plato, Protagoras, 325d in Plato, Protagoras and Meno, trans. Robert C. Bartlett (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

For evidence Cyrus was no philosopher, consider 5.1.2–18; 7.2.15–29; 8.4.16; and 8.7.2–3 with 8.7.17–22. However, Xenophon does say that Cyrus was by nature a superlative lover of learning (“philomathestatos,” 1.2.1).

“The political activity of Cyrus—his extraordinary success—consisted in transforming a stable and healthy aristocracy into an unstable ‘Oriental despotism’” Leo Strauss, “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero,” in On Tyranny (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 181.

Xenophon presents this as a request made by a friend or an ally, and he thus obscures the historical fact that the Persians were in fact subjects under the Median Empire (See Herodotus, The History, trans. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 1.129–130). However, consider 1.3.1 and 1.4.24. Xenophon also reports that Media, “seemed [to the King of Assyria] to be the strongest of those nearby” (1.5.2).

Cyrus indirectly points to the possibility that the Persians are under the rule of the Medes. The ancestral practice of virtue did not even give the Persians independence. Perhaps only a massive empire can be independent, and massive empires rest on a different foundation (and education) than that given to an elite aristocracy. But in the case of empires, the citizens still lose their independence, insofar as they become subjects.

I should also add that their emphasis on martial training appears to be with a view to defensive war, rather than the acquisition of wealth, happiness, and honor.

According to Aristotle, the form of the regime is of greater importance than the people and place that make up a political community (Politics 3.3). The goal or final cause of a regime is bound up with the shape of the regime. In plain English, the rulers determine the goal of the regime and the form corresponds to the goal. The goals outlined by a founder limit or direct the form the government can take. In the case of the United States, for example, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution articulate the goals. The Constitution of the United States makes manifest one way of organizing a government that can achieve those goals. However, as the Declaration of Independence makes clear, some other forms of government could potentially achieve the same ends.

Xenophon gives the reader the impression that the entire military campaign (from 1.5.2 to 8.6.19) did not last very long. The entire campaign lasted, at most, two years (cf. 6.1.14). Cyrus was able to transform Persia from a republic into an empire in a very brief span of time.

Strauss (2000), 181.

It should not be puzzling why the commoners, those who were legally eligible but effectually disqualified from participation in the educational system, and thus the regime, were quick to abandon ancestral Persia. Consider the case of the exceptional commoner, Pheraulus (2.3, 8.3).

Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric, trans. Robert C. Bartlett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021) 1.2.1356a1–5.

“The first step in this transformation [i.e., from aristocracy to oriental despotism] was a speech which Cyrus addressed to the Persian nobles and in which he convinced them that they ought to deviate from the habit of their ancestors by practicing virtue no longer for its own sake, but for the sake of rewards.” Strauss (2000), 181.

Xenophon mentions the role of habituation specifically with regard to hunting (1.2.10) and war (1.2.11).

Compare also Regime of the Lacedaemonians (9.6 and context), and Regime of the Athenians (3.12).

Most of Cyrus’s subjects are ruled unwillingly (1.1.4).

See especially the Armenian King (3.1, 3.2.15). Cyrus himself equates ruling others with freedom (7.5.79).

Note the passive construction obscures who appoints mature men and elders as leaders (1.2.5).

Cf. Xenophon’s discussion of the ephors Regime of the Lacedaemonians, Chapter 8.

Cf. Lycurgus’s encouragement of the successful stealing of cheese, Regime of the Lacedaemonians, 2.9.

See also Xenophon, Ways and Means, or On Revenues (4.7) as well as Abram Shulsky, “An Introduction to the Ways and Means.”

The entire love story between Panthea and Abradatas, that begins in Book 5 and is concluded in Book 7, illustrates this. Cyrus exploits the love each has for the other (but see especially 6.1.45–51); he also exploits the erotic devotion of one of his soldiers, Araspas, for Panthea (Compare 5.1.17 with 6.1.34–44). Cyrus similarly exploits the love his Median “cousin,” Atrabazus, has for him as well (1.4.27–28), managing to get Artabazus to tell a lie to the Median soldiers that greatly benefits him (4.1.22 and following).

Astyages seems to have a harem (1.3.11). Similarly, his son Cyaxares enjoys the company of women (4.5.7–8). I have already mentioned the example of Abradatas and Panthea, but there is also the love Tigranes shows for his wife (3.1.36; 8.4.24), as well as Croesus’s love for his (7.2.28).

Consider also Regime of the Lacedaemonians, 2.2.

Strauss (2000), 181. Christopher Nadon, Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001), 30–32.

Strauss, “The Spirit of Sparta or the Taste of Xenophon,” Social Research 6, no. 4: 502–536. Collins, “An Introduction to The Regime of the Lacedaemonians”.

Regime of the Lacedaemonians, Ch. 14.

There are only passing references to Cyrus’s literacy: 4.5.26, 8.2.16–17.

Justice: 1.3.16–18.

Kalon: 1.3.2–5.

Love: 5.1.

Voluntariness: Ibid.

Regarding death, compare 1.6.4–6 with 7.3.8–16. See also 8.7.2–3, 17–22.

Perhaps this is why Xenophon says Cyrus was a lover of learning, and not a lover of wisdom (1.2.1).

Xenophon, The One Skilled at Hunting with Dogs, 13.8.