Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War

162 Pages·2007·0.72 MB·English

by  Larry Hedrick (ed.)

XENOPHON’S
CYRUS
THE GREAT
_________________________________________
ALSO BY LARRY HEDRICK

Rogues’ Gallery: America’s Foes from George III to Saddam Hussein

XENOPHON’S
CYRUS
THE GREAT
__________________________________________________
THE ARTS
OF LEADERSHIP
AND WAR
__________________________________________________
EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
LARRY HEDRICK

TRUMAN TALLEY BOOKS
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
NEW YORK
XENOPHON’S CYRUS THE GREAT. Copyright © 2006 by Larry Hedrick. All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Medallic portrait of Cyrus the Great on page iv by Bud Wertheimer
www.stmartins.com

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Xenophon
[Cyropaedia, English Selections]
Xenophon’s Cyrus the Great : the arts of leadership and war / edited with and introduction by Larry
Hedrick.
p. cm.
Based on the 1906 English translation of Henry Graham Dakyns.
ISBN 0-312-35531-9
EAN 978-0-312-35531-9
1. Cyrus, King of Persia, d. 529 B.C.—Fiction 2. Iran—Kings and rulers—Fiction. 3. Leadership. 4.
Management. I. Title: Cyrus the Great. II. Hedrick, Larry. III. Title.

PA4494.C7 2006
883'.01—dc22
2006040395

First Edition: May 2006

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Barb and Marissa
CONTENTS
____________________________________

Introduction by Larry Hedrick

1. Boldness at the Beginning
2. Advice Fit for Royalty
3. Rules to Compete By
4. Seize the Day
5. Swelling the Ranks
6. Spurs to Speed
7. Hearts Joined as One
8. Shifting the Balance
9. Straight On to Success
10. The Kindness of Friends
11. Mastering the Ego
12. To Change the World
13. The Clash of Arms
14. On the Wings of Victory
15. The Temptations of Success
16. When Harmony Reigns
17. Leadership and Cunning
18. The Wisdom of the Ages
INTRODUCTION
_____________________________________________________

BY LARRY HEDRICK

X
enophon of Athens was a historian and a genuine hero of ancient Greece. Born
in 431 B.C., he was at the height of his powers when he wrote his Cyrus epic.
The insights about leadership that are revealed in this book have inspired great
men from Julius Caesar to Benjamin Franklin to Lawrence of Arabia.
Far more than most books on leadership, Xenophon’s masterpiece possesses
deeply ethical and profoundly spiritual qualities, which were to be expected from
a man who had sat at the feet of Socrates. There is little doubt that Xenophon
was remembering the wisdom that he learned from Socrates during his writing of
Cyrus.
A descendant of Xenophon’s manuscript, Cyrus the Great dramatizes the
methods of leadership used by the Persian emperor, who is remembered as the
most magnificent monarch of the ancient world. The course of Cyrus the Great’s
career was triumphant throughout, so this book is, quite simply, one of the
greatest success stories ever written.
Cyrus the Great (ca. 580–529 B.C.) founded the Persian Empire in the sixth
century B.C. by uniting the Medes and the Persians, the two original Iranian
tribes. Ultimately, Cyrus’ Persian Empire extended from India to the
Mediterranean Sea and was the most powerful state in the world until its
conquest two centuries later by Alexander the Great. Although Cyrus flourished
a century before Xenophon’s own time, he was an apt choice to represent the
ideal leader. This great Persian’s astonishing military successes and mild rule
provided just the kind of raw material that Xenophon needed to fashion his
portrait of a human paragon.
Plato, another of Socrates’s celebrated disciples, praised Cyrus the Great as
the very model of an enlightened monarch. What Moses was to the Israelites,
Cyrus was to the Persians. When Cyrus conquered Babylon, he was cheered by
the Hebrews for freeing them from their captivity and allowing more than forty
thousand Jews to leave Babylon and return to the Promised Land. Because of his
benevolence and his innermost desire to allow mankind to live in peace, Cyrus
the Great is immortalized in the opening verses of Isaiah 45.
Even those subjugated by Cyrus the Great considered him an eminently just
and upright man. Shapour Suren-Pahlav of the University of London notes that
the Persians regarded him as the “Father,” the Babylonians as the “Liberator,”
the Greeks as the “Law-Giver,” and the Jews as the “Anointed of the Lord.”
A document in the form of a cuneiform cylinder was discovered in 1878
during the excavation of a Babylonian site. That document, in which Cyrus
describes his humane treatment of the Babylonians after his conquest of the city,
is acknowledged as mankind’s first charter of human rights. In recognition of
this achievement, the United Nations published a translation of Cyrus’ Human
Rights Charter in each of the official U.N. languages.
The historian Will Durant points out that Cyrus the Great “was the most
amiable of conquerors, and founded his empire upon generosity. His enemies
knew that he was lenient, and they did not fight him with that desperate courage
which men show when their only choice is to kill or die.”
No other leader throughout antiquity can match the scope of Cyrus’
achievements. Though Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) is sometimes
considered to be a greater military tactician, he indulged in excesses that would
have made Cyrus the Great blanch.
Whereas Cyrus treated the peoples he conquered with deep respect,
Alexander sometimes urged his soldiers to put civilian populations to the sword.
As his domains widened, Alexander increasingly gave himself over to tyrannical
methods and monstrous egotism. Had any of Cyrus’ generals acted with a
cruelty equal to Alexander’s, he would have been relieved of his duties
immediately.
A deeply humane man in his own right, Xenophon would have found it
natural to develop a sense of spiritual kinship with the founder of the Persian
Empire. They both had many opportunities to master the military virtues:
Xenophon’s own leadership skills were sharpened during his service as a
battlefield commander where indecision would have meant defeat and death.