Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T07:56:34.878Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Xenophon's Cyropaedia and military reform in Sparta*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Paul Christesen
Paul Christesen
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Xenophon's Cyropaedia can be read as a proto-novel, a biography, or as an essay on leadership or constitutional theory. This article argues that the Cyropaedia can and should also be read as a pamphlet on practical military reform with special relevance to the Spartan state.

The inclusion of a series of proposals for the reform of the Spartan army in the Cyropaedia has not heretofore been recognized because Xenophon presented those proposals in the guise of a reform of the Persian army undertaken by Cyrus. There was no historical basis for this part of the Cyropaedia, and there is no trace of a major military reform in either the Greek or the Persian tradition about Cyrus as it existed before Xenophon. Cyrus' military reform was thus an authorial invention that presumably served some important narrative purpose.

Xenophon inserted a military reform into the Cyropaedia as a way of presenting a proposal for the restructuring of the Spartan army. When Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia, the Spartans were struggling desperately to maintain their position in the face of a powerful Boeotian army. The Boeotians could put many more hoplites into the field and had a large cavalry force that they were using to excellent effect. The obvious response on the part of the Spartans was to take whatever measures were necessary to increase the number of men in their phalanx and to assemble a sizeable, highly trained group of horsemen. The programme of military reform enacted by Cyrus in the Cyropaedia produces just this result. If implemented in Sparta, this programme would have involved the wholesale addition of non-Spartiates to the Spartan phalanx and the conversion of the Spartan homoioi into an all-cavalry force.

Xenophon thus used Cyrus' army in the Cyropaedia to show what a revamped Spartan military might look like. The use of fictional narrative to explore ideas with immediate application to the real world has long been recognized as an integral part of the Cyropaedia. This aspect of the Cyropaedia has in the past been explored largely in regard to Xenophon's thinking about leadership and ethics, but it can and should be extended to include military reform in Sparta.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 126 , November 2006 , pp. 47 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, J.K. (1961) Ancient Greek Horsemanship (Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J.K. (1970) Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, J.K. (1974) ‘The battle of Sardis in 395 B.C.’, CSCA 7, 27–53Google Scholar
Bizos, M. (ed.) (1971) Xénophon Cyropédie, 3 vols. (Paris)Google Scholar
Breitenbach, H.R. (1967) ‘Xenophon’, in RE IXA.2, 1569–1928Google Scholar
Briant, P. (2002) From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, IN)Google Scholar
Buck, R.J. (1994) Boiotia and the Boiotian League, 432–371 B.C. (Edmonton)Google Scholar
Buckler, J. (1980) The Theban Hegemony, 371–362 BC (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Buckler, J. (2003) Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century BC (Leiden)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bugh, G.R. (1988) The Horsemen of Athens (Princeton)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlier, P. (1978) ‘L'ideé de monarchie impériale dans la Cyropédie de Xénophon’, Ktèma 3, 133–63Google Scholar
Cartledge, P. (1987) Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (Baltimore)Google Scholar
Cartledge, P. (2002) Sparta and Lakonia. A Regional History 1300–362 B.C. (2nd edn, London)Google Scholar
Christensen, A. (1936) Les gestes des rois dans les traditions de l'Iran antique (Paris)Google Scholar
Cloché, P. (1952) Thèbes de Béotie, des origines à la conquête romaine (Namur)Google Scholar
Cook, J.M. (1983) The Persian Empire (New York)Google Scholar
Cuyler Young, T. (1988) ‘The early history of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid empire to the death of Cambyses’, in CAH 4.1–46Google Scholar
de Miroschedji, P. (1985) ‘La fin du royaume d'Ansan et de Suse et la naissance de l'Empire perse’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 75, 265–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delebecque, É. (1957) Essai sur la vie de Xénophon (Paris)Google Scholar
Delebecque, É. (ed.) (1973) Xénophon. Le commandant de la cavalerie (Paris)Google Scholar
Delebecque, É. (ed.) (1978) Xénophon. De l'art équestre (Paris)Google Scholar
Drews, R. (1974) ‘Sargon, Cyrus, and Mesopotamian folk history’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33, 387–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Due, B. (1989) The Cyropaedia. Xenophon's Aims and Methods (Århus)Google Scholar
Due, B. (2003) ‘Xenophon of Athens: the Cyropaedia’, in Schmeling, G.L. (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Boston) 581–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, R.N. (1976) The Heritage of Persia (2nd edn, London)Google Scholar
Gaebel, R.E. (2002) Cavalry Operations in the Ancient Greek World (Norman)Google Scholar
Garrison, M.B. (1992) ‘Seals and the elite at Persepolis: some observations on early Achaemenid Persian art’, Ars Orientalis 21, 1–19Google Scholar
Gauthier, P. (1976) Un commentaire historique des Poroi de Xénophon (Geneva)Google Scholar
Georges, P. (1994) Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience (Baltimore)Google Scholar
Gera, D.L. (1993) Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Style, Genre, and Literary Technique (Oxford)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, W. (1992) ‘Agesilaus and the battle of Sardis’, Klio 74, 118–30Google Scholar
Gray, V. (1979) ‘Two different approaches to the battle of Sardis in 395 B.C.’, CSCA 12, 183–200Google Scholar
Hamilton, C.D. (1991) Agesilaus and the Failure of Spartan Hegemony (Ithaca)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, V.D. (1988) ‘Epameinondas, the battle of Leuktra (371 B.C.) and the revolution in Greek tactics’, CA 7, 190–207Google Scholar
Hirsch, S.W. (1985) The Friendship of the Barbarians. Xenophon and the Persian Empire (Hanover, NH)Google Scholar
Hodkinson, S. (1999) ‘An agonistic culture? Athletic competition in Archaic and Classical Spartan society’, in Hodkinson, S. and Powell, A. (eds), Sparta. New Perspectives (London) 147–87Google Scholar
Hodkinson, S. (2000) Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (London)Google Scholar
Hornblower, S. (2000) ‘Thucydides, Xenophon, and Lichas: were the Spartans excluded from the Olympic Games from 420 to 400 B.C.?’, Phoenix 54, 212–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humble, N. (1997) Xenophon's View of Sparta. A Study of the Anabasis, Hellenica, and Respublica Lacedaemoniorum (PhD diss., McMaster University)Google Scholar
Hunt, P. (1998) Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Johnson, D. (2005) ‘Persians as centaurs in Xenophon's Cyropaedia’, TAPA 135, 177–207Google Scholar
Kyle, D. (2003) ‘“The only woman in all Greece”: Kyniska, Agesilaus, Alcibiades and Olympia’, Journal of Sport History 30, 183–203Google Scholar
Lazenby, J.F. (1985) The Spartan Army (Warminster)Google Scholar
Lenfant, D. (ed.) (2004) Ctésias de Cnide: La Perse, L'Inde, autres fragments (Paris)Google Scholar
Luccioni, J. (1949) Les idées politiques et sociales de Xènophon (Paris)Google Scholar
Mueller-Goldingen, C. (1995) Untersuchungen zu Xenophons Kyrupädie (Stuttgart)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadon, C. (2001) Xenophon's Prince. Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia (Berkeley)Google Scholar
Newell, W.R. (1981) Xenophon's Education of Cyrus and the Classical Critique of Liberalism (PhD diss, Yale University)Google Scholar
Niebuhr, B.G. (1828) Kleine historische und philologische Schriften (Bonn)Google Scholar
Parpola, S. (2003) ‘Sakas, India, Gobryas, and the Median royal court: Xenophon's Cyropaedia through the eyes of an Assyriologist’, in Lanfranchi, G.B., Roaf, M. and Rollinger, R. (eds), Continuity of Empire (?). Assyria, Media, Persia (Padua) 339–50Google Scholar
Prinz, W. (1911) De Xenophontis Cyri Institutione (Göttingen)Google Scholar
Rahe, P. (1980) ‘The military situation in western Asia on the eve of Cunaxa’, AJP 101, 79–96Google Scholar
Sage, P.W. (1994/5) ‘Dying in style: Xenophon's ideal leader and the end of the Cyropaedia’, CJ 90, 161–74Google Scholar
Salmon, P. (1978) Étude sur la Conféderation béotienne (447/6–386) (Brussels)Google Scholar
Salomone, S. (ed.) (1980) Senofonte: Trattato d'ippica (Milan)Google Scholar
Scharr, E. (1919) Xenophons Staats- und Gesellschaftsideal und seine Zeit (Halle)Google Scholar
Spence, I.G. (1993) The Cavalry of Classical Greece (Oxford)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talbert, R.T. (1989) ‘The role of helots in the class struggle at Sparta’, Historia 38, 22–40Google Scholar
Tatum, J. (1989) Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus (Princeton)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tigerstedt, E.N. (1965–1978) The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity (3 vols, Stockholm)Google Scholar
Toher, M. (1989) ‘On the use of Nicolaus' historical fragments’, CA 8, 159–72Google Scholar
Tuplin, C. (1990) ‘Persian décor in Cyropaedia’, in Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. and Drivers, J.W. (eds), Achaemenid History 5: The Roots of the European Tradition (Leiden) 17–29Google Scholar
Tuplin, C. (1993) The Failings of Empire. A Reading of Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.11–7.5.27 (Stuttgart)Google Scholar
Tuplin, C. (1994) ‘Xenophon, Sparta, and the Cyropaedia’, in Powell, A. and Hodkinson, S. (eds), The Shadow of Sparta (London) 127–81Google Scholar
Tuplin, C. (1997) ‘Xenophon's Cyropaedia: education and fiction’, in Sommerstein, A.H. and Atherton, C. (eds), Education in Greek Fiction (Bari) 65–154Google Scholar
Worley, L.J. (1994) Hippeis. The Cavalry of Ancient Greece (Boulder)Google Scholar