Princes or Tyrants? Xenophon’s 'Cyropaedia', the Achaemenid Monarchy and the 'Specula principum' of Modernity (16th Century)

Abstract

Xenophon’s Cyropaedia offered the humanists a model of ideal sovereign who reigned by duty and with the support of the aristocracy, but whose work was understood as a service also based on legality. The Xenophon’s speculum principis was motivated by the search for an ideal leader, a need felt as imperative in 16th century modernity, also facing the Ottoman threat, from Italy or Spain to the Netherlands, Great Britain or France. His Cyrus marked the way forward for the defenders of monarchical absolutism in his appeal to the reason of state and, especially, in the dispute against the popular republican models of Platonic or Aristotelian inspiration. Xenophon and his Cyropaedia also satisfied two of the great passions of humanism, politics and education.