Matchmaker, Matchmaker
An interlude that is short on time, but robust on weirdness breaks the monotony of hearing about the greatness of Cyrus in which he demonstrates his talent for making perfect romantic matches. Among the advice he doles out is that short men should marry short women and those with a high nose should seek out a mate with a flat nose. Just when one is beginning to severely doubt the intellect of those who hold Cyrus to be great, the whole thing is revealed to be an exercise in ironic humor on the part of Cyrus who, nevertheless, is greeted with submissive toasts to his ability to raise a laugh.
Lessons Unlearned
This text is often considered a blueprint for building empires. But it is equally well a blueprint for avoiding disasters when trying to build empires. The great irony is empires always fall eventually and disasters continue unabated. So, essentially, the advice that has been gleaned from the text seems perpetually misguided:
“You may learn this from all life and all history. How often have cities allowed themselves to be persuaded into war, and that by advisers who were thought the wisest of men, and then been utterly destroyed by those whom they attacked! How often have statesmen helped to raise a city or a leader to power, and then suffered the worst at the hands of those whom they exalted!”
Pantheia
Another curious insight into the greatness of Cyrus occurs in the immediate aftermath of the death of Abradatas. The man’s very recently widowed wife, Pantheia, is beside herself with grief, sobbing uncontrollably. The response of Cyrus is not just ironically out of sync, but profoundly ironic in its tone deafness. Acknowledging her chastity and nobility, Cyrus takes what he seems to view as the grand gesture of offering her “guardian to lead you withersoever you choose.” Literally less than 150 words later, Pantheia picks up a scimitar and slices her own throat. The greatness of Cyrus is immediately brought into starkly ironic relief.
The Whole Dang Thing
There exists at least one notable piece of scholarly analysis which argues that this entire text is an exercise in irony. In an extensive and quite lengthy piece published in 2007, Christopher Whidden takes as the centerpiece of his argument the contrarian perspective that in writing about the education of Cyrus, Xenophon is actually ironically subverting the generally accepted view situates Cyrus as a sincere heroic figure on the subject of empire-building. In fact, Whidden asserts that the entirety of the Cyropaedia is “Xenophon’s cautionary critique of empire.”
Unintentional Irony
Buying into Whidden’s rejection of the longstanding conventional wisdom regarding the sincerity of the author in his overview of the greatness of Cyrus becomes much easier when one realizes how much unintentional irony pop up throughout the text. Or, at least, what seems to be unintentional irony. This matter does not take long to work its way in the discourse. Less than three-hundred words into the narrative, this glaring example of what seems to be unintended irony jumps out in a way impossible to just casually gloss over. It’s a matter of perspective, of course: it all depends on whether you align with the ideology of those willing to go to any length and breath any law to rule over you:
“men unite against none so readily as against those whom they see attempting to rule over them”
