Xenophon's Cyrus and Oriental Despotism
I will bring this back to the War on Terrorism, I promise.
One great find in my grad school years was Xenophon's Education of Cyrus. In professional academic circles this book "belongs" to classics professors, who treat Xenophon as a rather dull general who wrote about his own exploits or about the interests of a gentlemanly Athenian. They reject any attempt to argue that Xenophon might have been a first-rate student of Socrates, i.e. that he has something to teach us.
As the sex education part of Monty Python's the Meaning of Life demonstrates, you can make anything boring if you present it as part of regular classroom learning. Xenophon's Education of Cyrus is, if nothing else, a fantastic adventure story about a man who grows up in the royal family of an obscure part of Asia, and ends up conquering much of the known world. The book constantly emphasizes the art and wisdom he has to employ to win over different groups of people and individuals--some by force or battle, some by appeals to self-interest, some by what can only be called seduction. There are "side" stories in which Xenophon allows us to reflect on how many aspects of life affect, and are affected by, the career of the great conqueror. Can he have any close friends? A love life? A family? Any of these might threaten his political and military conquests. What is the relationship between politics and happiness? Anticipating Machiavelli: what is the relationship between the virtues that are needed for political/military success, and virtue in general, including what we call the moral virtues?
Can political loyalty actually be built on several different bases, or are many of the "regimes" built by Cyrus quite ephemeral? Do each of the ways of life of which we get at least a glimpse--close friends, people with loving families, two ambitious lovers like Antony and Cleopatra--somehow make the others in the book look incomplete? Are they all in fact incomplete? In Plato and Aristotle we would expect the great contrast to be between all other lives and the philosophic life, represented by Socrates. In Xenophon there is barely a glance at such a life, but it is an interesting glance.
All of that is preliminary. I want to say that the opening of the book raises questions about what has been called "Oriental Despotism," and this is of at least some relevance to questions in the War on Terrorism, including whether it will be easy for the U.S. to build a democracy in Iraq.
The opening chapters prepare us for a story that focuses on Cyrus's deeds by indicating his true importance. Ruling human beings is very difficult, we are told, and Cyrus has excelled at this art; indeed he has made it look easy. His accomplishment must be remarkable--not nearly as easy as it looks--since it is so rare. Admittedly, we might question whether it is really Cyrus himself who deserves praise, or a kind of political science, or science of ruling, which in principle could be taught to many people by a teacher such as Xenophon; Cyrus shows that ruling can be easy if it is done "scientifically" or "with knowledge" (episteme).
What is the difficulty in ruling human beings? Apparently, it is the loyalty people have to something other than the would-be ruler(s). In the opening we are told of loyalty to regimes: democracies are ovethrown by those who would prefer "any other regime (politeia)"; monarchies and oligarchies are overthrown by democrats. In the third chapter we are told that each people (ethne) tends to be loyal to its own king; thus it is impressive that Cyrus became ruler over so many peoples, some of them a vast distance from his home, and speaking many different languages.
In between these two accounts of the difficulty of ruling, Xenophon compares human beings to animals, especially herd animals. He strongly suggests human beings are not inclined to take direction, or feel gratitude to their keepers. Perhaps human beings have a natural desire for freedom, which indeed would pose a difficulty for all rulers, including managers in large organizations.
All of this is enough to make Cyrus's accomplishments appear very impressive indeed, and it even anticipates some of his most successful measures. He leaves local rulers in place where possible, so that people continue to see a ruler who is "their own," and thus keep at least the appearance of "freedom"--that is, freedom from foreigners. Cyrus also creates incentives--both rewards and punishments--for individuals to do his bidding; he doesn't expect them to do as he wishes with no benefit to themselves.
On the other hand, however, Xenophon quietly introduces a theme in these same early chapters which might make us question whether Cyrus's accomplishment was as great as it might appear. That theme is: Europeans (i.e. Greeks) vs. Asians; or as we would say, the West vs. the East. Xenophon provides evidence that the Greeks have achieved actual political life, with a variety of regimes and a debate about ways of life. The Asians seem to have accomplished nothing better than what we might call "Oriental despotism."
The regimes or politeiai listed at the very beginning are arrangements of the polis or city, as their common root implies. The city is not simply an agglomeration of people that has reached a certain size. It is a place with a certain awareness of choices that can be made, of freedom not simply from what is foreign, but freedom to choose. In the ancient world, outside of the Greek city and then the Roman republic, one could almost say there was either absolute monarchy or anarchy. Even monarchy has a different meaning when it is chosen by a city--it is more likely to be defined by laws, for example. For the Greeks, rule that was utterly lawless was tyranny. This did not necessarily have the same negative connotation it does now, but it surely implied a lack of true political life.
The peoples or "ethne" who love their kings are all or almost all Asian. Their kings, including Cyrus, are not monarchs but "basileuoi." When he generalizes to say all peoples love their kings, Xenophon says "those in Europe are still free and self-sufficient to this day"--presumably this means "unlike the Asians, who were conquered by Cyrus and perhaps by others." When he lists all the peoples conquered by Cyrus, he includes the "Asiatic Greeks"--not the Greeks proper.
Finally, when Xenophon turns to Cyrus's childhood and describes ancient Persia, he describes it as "polis," or a Greek city, which it surely was not. As one editor says, the description does not match Persia, but Sparta, about which Xenophon wrote elsewhere.
Xenophon lets us see a difference between Greeks and Asians that is probably in favour of the Greeks; but he doesn't emphasize it. Clearly he wants Cyrus's accomplishments to be as impressive as possible, so he doesn't want to say "not bad for an Asian," or "not bad for someone only conquering Asians." He doesn't simply wish to escape from crude or well-informed bigotry, however. He wishes his book to teach us something about ruling in general, human beings and their nature (physis) in general. If he allowed the book to be only about Asians, and only about some historically accurate Cyrus, it might fall short of this goal. Thus he fictionalizes where necessary not simply to help Cyrus, or beautify him, but to make this book as instructive as possible.
Cyrus's education is unique, on the surface, in that he goes back and forth between two Asian royal households. Xenophon makes his education even more remarkable: part Greek, part Asian, and in a way partaking of the best of both?
Again I end with questions. Is any of this stuff from long before Christ of any relevance to West vs. East today? Greek rationalism is surely still one of our guiding lights. Greek regimes were usually unstable (although Sparta's regime lasted for 800 years), and Greek cities turned out to be quite easy for Alexander and then the Romans to conquer. What has allowed the West to build more lasting institutions? Part of the answer may be monotheistic religion; and it could be argued that this is always Oriental religion. We live under absolute monarchy or tyranny in one part of our lives; and then we can exercise our freedom in other parts. (Some of the people ruled by Cyrus start to see him as a god. When Catholics say "kyrie eleison," they are saying "Cyrus have mercy"--the name Cyrus having become a synonym for "Lord.")
Obviously I'm rambling a bit.
The War on Terrorism? Iraqis, like anyone else, probably love their freedom, and are likely to resent a foreign invader. If they are Asians in some meaningful sense, they may prefer a native ruler, even a brutal one, to any regime that seems foreign. Something like that, at any rate, is implied by those who say the U.S. does not understand what they have gotten in to. (Of course, one answer is : look at Japan post-World War II? Worship of MacArthur?)
On the other hand, the modern West may have found a way of perfecting the initiatives that the fictional Cyrus began in a more tentative fashion. Allow individuals to pursue their self-interest within some over-arching order. It has worked before, and it might work again.
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