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At some point in the past six months, I read a passing reference to Cyrus in a book review as having been favorable noted by Machiavelli. No matter, I noted it long enough to park in my Amazon shopping cart until it could come home. Eventually when I re-read The Prince, I may come back and include that reference here.

I wasn’t impressed. As I get older and hopefully wiser, I have less and less patience with reading the ancients. Yes, humans are murderous and conniving, gracious and noble, sometimes all at once. However, every fifth grader should know more than an Aristotle or Augustine, literally. Xenophon is ever and finally ignorant of gravity, or genes, or germs just to stick with the letter ‘g�. Whatever insights into human nature the ancients gained and can share with us are forever leavened with fatal misunderstandings of the world, attributable to ill humors, the gods, and fates instead of electrons and Brownian motion.

According to Xenophon, writing a hundred years after his reign, in the 5th century BC, Prince Cyrus grew up in a semi-Platonic society. The best and brightest (or at least the children of the well-to-do) were kept apart and drilled hours a day on their way to becoming full citizens, or peers. The King raised an army to answer the call of an ally, and chose his son Cyrus to lead. Cyrus first instructed the peers take several commoners under their wings to whip into shape for the campaign. Cyrus would cajole, bribe, and ferociously fight his way to uniting the middle east while giving all credit to the gods and fates and sacrifices � presumable goats I guess, not prisoners. The text never really states what is being sacrificed. Cyrus also democratically shared the spoils of his campaign with his troops, increasing their loyalty and determination.

Here then is an ancient after Machiavelli’s lead heart. He carefully and completely attributed his meticulously planned successes to the whims of fate and the beneficence of the gods, and then grew into the comforts of his office until death, at which point his kingdom dissolved into the various factions he had united. Xenophon thought this a sterling example. Men with little will risk it to gain everything. A politician who can subvert the greed of others, thus multiplying his own, wins all.

This can only be seen as noteworthy if contrasted with the essentialist absurdities of Plato. A shorter review might be that Thrasymachus was right and Socrates wrong. We will not succeed in a given fight if we are the most gracious or morally correct, but instead only if the most powerful. Strategic underdogs can win tactical victories through dash and daring but only because they won the field between the two competitors on the given day, not because they possessed the purest form of dash and dare.

Two starts for describing phalanx warfare.