With these words, she began to put the armor on him, and though she tried to conceal them, the tears stole down her cheeks. “No, by Zeus,” answered Panthea, “at any rate, not my most precious jewel for you, if you appear to others as you seem to me, shall be my noblest jewel.” And when he saw them he was astonished and turning to Panthea he asked: “Tell me, wife, you did not break your own jewels to pieces, did you, to have this armor made for me?” All these she had made without her husband’s knowledge, taking the measure for them from his armor. Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus depicts Cyrus as a young man of exceptional virtue, wisdom, ambition and generosity-as his actions in the following tale of the beautiful Panthea and her husband Abradatas (translated by Walter Miller from the Loeb Library edition) demonstrate:Īnd Abradatas’s chariot with its four poles and eight horses was adorned most handsomely and when he came to put on his linen corselet, such as they used in his country, Panthea brought him one of gold, also a helmet, arm-pieces, broad bracelets for his wrists-all of gold-and a purple tunic that hung down in folds to his feet, and a helmet-plume of hyacinth dye. Cyrus’s immortal quoteīetter to live in a rugged land and rule than to cultivate rich plains and be a slaveīecame, incidentally, the inspiration for our friend Shawn Coyne’s independent publishing house, Rugged Land Books (which published The War of Art).Ĭyrus founded the Persian Empire, no mean feat, and was in his way a precursor and inspiration to Alexander the Great, who, a few centuries later, conquered that very same empire. The Education of Cyrus purports to be the life story of Cyrus the Great of Persia, who lived and died a couple of hundred years before Xenophon was born. Xenophon’s Reflections on Socrates, while it pales alongside Plato’s dialogues, is still extremely illuminating, and his wonderful short works, On Hunting (meaning the pursuit of boars and hares, using hounds), The Cavalry Commander, and the Economicus (sometimes titled “How to Train Your Wife”) are great fun and give the reader unparalleled insights into life in Athens in the Golden and post-Golden Age. The March of the Ten Thousand, also known as T he Anabasis, is probably his most famous work (see my earlier post “The Sea, The Sea!”). Xenophon was an extraordinary character-an Athenian aristocrat and devotee of Socrates, who became a great friend to Sparta and died an exile from his native land. Panthea was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Asia
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