XENOPHON'S IMPERIAL FICTION On the Education of Cyrus

Princeton University Press. Very Good in Very Good+ dust jacket. 1989. Hardcover. 0691067570 . Foxing to top of textblock with some minor shelfwear. DJ has light shelfwear. ; "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. ; 328 pages .