Xenophon · c. 370 BCE

Cyropaedia

The Education of Cyrus

Read Xenophon's Cyropaedia with the translator's own notes and commentary from five voices in the margin.

Begin reading Introduction
In the margin

Five voices read along with you

The text stands on the left; on the right, five readers annotate it. Each can be turned on or off as you go. One of them is no invention — the translator's own notes, pencilled in his Xenophon over a century ago.

Eight books

The Library

From the schooling of a Persian boy to the ordering of the largest empire the world had yet seen — and the warning of its undoing.

  1. I Book I · 6 chapters The Making of a Prince Cyrus's lineage, the Persian schooling in justice and self-command, a boy let loose at the Median court, and a father's parting lesson in the art of command.
  2. II Book II · 4 chapters An Army of Equals Cyrus arms the commoners beside the noble Peers, rewards merit over birth, and drills a new kind of force amid the banter of the mess-tent.
  3. III Book III · 3 chapters The Armenian Trial A near-bloodless conquest, the philosophical plea of young Tigranes, and mercy practised as policy on the road toward Assyria.
  4. IV Book IV · 6 chapters The Birth of the Cavalry Victory over Assyria, the Persians put to horse, a jealous Median king left behind, and the first allies won from the enemy's own ranks.
  5. V Book V · 5 chapters The Captive and the Conqueror Panthea entrusted to honour, a discourse on the mastery of desire, and a coalition that swells even as Cyaxares smoulders.
  6. VI Book VI · 4 chapters The Arming of Abradatas A disgraced officer redeemed as a spy, scythed chariots and moving towers made ready, and a wife who arms her husband for the last time.
  7. VII Book VII · 5 chapters Sardis and Babylon The camel stratagem, the fall of Croesus, the tragedy of Panthea and Abradatas, and Babylon taken along a dry riverbed.
  8. VIII Book VIII · 8 chapters The Ordering of Empire Leadership by example, the institutions of rule, a king's deathbed counsel on the soul and concord, and the bleak coda to all he built.