Cyropaedia

An account of how Cyrus the Great was brought up and how he built the Persian empire — the Median grandfather's court where he learned what luxury does to men, the Persian discipline he was trained in, and then the long campaign against Assyria, told through the councils, the speeches and the handling of allies rather than through the battles. Xenophon is interested throughout in one question: what makes men willingly obey a commander. Around it he assembles the cavalry reforms, the treatment of prisoners, the story of Panthea and Abradatas, and a closing chapter on how quickly it all decayed after Cyrus died.

Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia in the fourth century BC, some two hundred years after the events. It is not a reliable history of Persia and was not meant to be one; it is the first sustained European treatment of leadership as a subject, and it was read as such by Cicero, by Machiavelli and by the Elizabethans. This edition is Henry Graham Dakyns's English translation.

This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text in its eight books.