Biographical fiction; Cyrus, King of Persia, -529 B.C. -- Fiction; Education of princes -- Fiction
C1.4, med. On _willing_ service. This again is one of the best
utterances in all Xenophon. It has a deep spiritual import.
C1.4, fin. He is thinking of Athens, perhaps. It is a choice: obey the
ruler or knock under to foreign foes.
C1.8. Surely a remark of the author. It is an old inveterate thought of
his: "the Master's eye." I feel the _old_ man at times.
C1.9-10. This side of the Persian state-machine strongly impressed the
mind and imagination of Xenophon. Hence he works it into the treatise
on economy as well as here. In fact his expansion of the Socratic
reflections into the _Economist_ has to do, I believe, with these
reflections on state economy.
C1.13. Hellenic aristocratic theory of existence. Leisure for the grand
duties which devolve on the lords of mankind. It doesn't seem to
strike Xenophon that this rigid system of self-absorption in the higher
selfhood of the social system might be destructive of individual life.
Of course he would say, "No, it enlarges the individual life."
C1.17-20. Seems to me to show Xenophon struggling with the hard parts
of the later Persian system. The theory of Persian feudalism is too
high-strung for these grand satraps, rulers of provinces as big as
ordinary kingdoms. It tends to snap, and from the beginning did. The
archic man has no charm to compel his followers to archic virtue. It is
a negative {episteme} after all. Does Xenophon realise this, or is hgd.
wrong?
C1.21. Cf. headmasters with preposters in a public school, based on the
same system of high aims and duties corresponding to rights.
C1.23, init. Cf. Louis Napoleon in Browning's poem [_Prince
Hohensteil-Schwangau_].
C1.23, med. The Magians, the Persian order of priests. Yet we have heard
of them throughout.
C1.27. A very true saying and very nice the feeling it gives us towards
Xenophon. We think of him with his wife and his little sons and his
friends and their friends.
C1.28. How true of women!
C1.33. A reduplication of the description in Bk. I., and also a
summing-up of Xenophon's own earthly paradise--quite Tennysonian.
C1.37. An important point or principle in Xenophon's political
theory--indeed the key and tone of it: no one has a right to command
except by virtue of personal superiority.
C1.40 foll. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning!" The section, if, as I think it is, by Xenophon, throws
light on the nature and composition of the book. The author isn't so
disengaged from "history" that he can set aside obviously integral
parts of the Persian system traceable to Cyrus, or at any rate probably
original, and their false-seeming and bamboozling mode of keeping up
dignity has to be taken account of. It has its analogy in the admission
of thaumaturgy on the part of religious teachers, and no doubt a good
deal can be said for it. The archic man in low spirits, if he ever is
so, has some need of bamboozling himself. Titles do give some moral
support even nowadays to certain kinds of minds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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