A01=Christopher Nadon
amazing resourcefulness
ancient empire
ancient history
Author_Christopher Nadon
Category=DSBB
Category=DSK
Category=NHC
Category=NHF
classical author
classical studies
cyrus the great
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
great contemporaries
history theory
imaginative biography
interpretive difficulty
king cyrus
literary puzzle
machiavelli
original treatment
persian king
platonic dialogues
political process
provocative
public policy
socratic education
subtle and sophisticated
works cited
Product details
- ISBN 9780520224049
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 18 Jun 2001
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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For over two millennia, the Cyropaedia, an imaginative biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great, was Xenophon's most popular work and considered his masterpiece. This study contributes to the recent rediscovery of the Cyropaedia and Xenophon, making intelligible the high esteem in which writers of the stature of Machiavelli held Xenophon's works and the importance of his place among classical authors. The ending of the Cyropaedia has presented a notoriously difficult puzzle for scholars. The bulk of the work seems to idealize the career of Cyrus, but the final chapter documents the swift and disastrous degeneration of the empire he founded. This conclusion seems to call his achievements into question. Nadon resolves this long-standing interpretive difficulty and demonstrates for the first time the overall coherence and unity of the Cyropaedia. He elucidates the Xenophontic critique of Cyrus contained within the whole of the work and unearths its analysis of the limitations of both republican and imperial politics. This provocative and original treatment of the Cyropaedia will be a definitive step in restoring the status of this important work.
Nadon's lively, insightful study draws upon his deep knowledge and understanding of classical political theory and reveals in the Cyropaedia a subtlety and sophistication overlooked until now.
Christopher Nadon is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College in Hartford.
