Kingdom versus empire in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia

Abstract

This paper examines the role of the distinction between the Persian kingdom and the Persian empire drawn in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia with the view to showing that Cyrus’s government of his empire does not lend itself to a darker reading, but rather that his style of rule is based on an aristocratic-meritocratic view of the world. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, 177012: Society, spiritual and material culture and communications in prehistory and early history of the Balkans]

Keywords

• Xenophon
• kingdom
• empire
• Cyropaedia