13 Facts About Cyropaedia

Cyropaedia, sometimes spelled Cyropedia, is a partly fictional biography of Cyrus the Great, the founder of Persia's Achaemenid Empire.

The Latinized title Cyropaedia derives from the Greek Kurou paideia, meaning "The Education of Cyrus".

In turn, the Cyropaedia strongly influenced the most well-known but atypical of these, Machiavelli's The Prince, which affected the rejection of medieval political thinking and development of modern politics.

In substance, the Cyropaedia is a narrative describing the education of the ideal ruler.

Cyropaedia proves a faithful vassal to the Medes, initially acting as a general to defend them from the more powerful and assertive Babylonian empire.

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Cyropaedia is able to avoid a long siege by deflecting the course of the river through it, then sending soldiers in over the dry bed during a festival night.

In classical antiquity, the Cyropaedia was considered the masterpiece of a widely respected and studied author.

Cyropaedia was rediscovered in Western Europe during the late medieval period as a piece on political virtue and social organization.

However, unlike most mirrors of princes, whether the Cyropaedia was really intended to describe an ideal ruler is a subject of debate.

Cyropaedia continued to be widely read in the early modern period and during the Enlightenment.

Machiavelli's The Prince, which represented a turn toward modern political thinking, was particularly influenced by the Cyropaedia and represents a more sophisticated reading of Xenophon.

The Cyropaedia was often used to model correct prose in classical Attic Greek, mastery of which was part of the education of European and American gentlemen in the eighteenth century.

Some present scholars argue that the basic historical events of the Cyropaedia are more credible than those described in Herodotus's Histories, and debate continues over the work's relevance and historical accuracy.