Cyrus' Paradise

For an additional point of comparison, cf. the comment to Cyropaedia 2.3.5.

This is a very interesting approach. How would you account for the fact that the homoerotic story of Artabazus seems particularly Greek (even something out of Xenophon or Plato’a Symposia (cf. especially Xenophon Symposium 4.15)? Would you postulate another Greek source for Cyrus other than Herodotus or Ctesias (Ctesias is of course a possibility since we only have him in summary form)? On the nature of childhood tales about Cyrus, it’s interesting that Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon all treat Cyrus’ childhood without much similarity. This is perhaps not the place for a lengthier discussion but this emphasis on childhood makes me wonder, again, about Xenophon’s purpose in writing the Cyropaedia. If the goal was to train the adult reader to be a better leader, it doesn’t make that much sense to talk about childhood because you can’t say, “emulate this kind of childhood”.  Of course, the Cyropaedia could be seen as a guide not only to training better leaders but spotting them from a young age. It also strikes me as conceivable that the Cyropaedia might be a kind of children’s literature, at least Book One (maybe you were supposed to read the subsequent books as you aged, like the Harry Potter series?). This might explain the paucity of names. In theory Xenophon could have named Tigranes, Araspas, and Artabazus, but instead he waited. The effect of the recognition might be more of simple delight than a profound thematic point. I wonder if there are parallel naming conventions in children’s literature.

“Is the narrator Xenophon in Cyropaedia 3.1.7 correcting Cyaxares in Cyropaedia 2.4.15, not only by giving a specific name (Tigranes), but also by implying that it was only one Armenian prince who was Cyrus’ hunting companion, and not several as Cyaxares implies?” Good question. Xenophon mentions at Cyropaedia 3.1.2 that the Armenian king has a younger son, Sabaris, and some daughters. Maybe he was part of the hunt, too.

This subject is also treated by Bodil Due 2003:581-599 in “Xenophon of Athens: The Cyropaedia,” in Schmeling, Gareth, The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden); her list (Due 2003:594) does not include Cyaxares, but adds Gadatas (Cyropaedia 5.2.23 and Cyropaedia 5.3.8). She sees this phenomenon as something designed to create “a sort of suspense or stimulus for further reading…”

Another solution seems to me possible here, somewhere between your 4) and 5) (though equally, if not even more, conjectural): could it be that Xenophon, in the process of stitching together a variety of shorter stories about Cyrus’ life from various sources, waits to supply the name until it is supplied in the story he is actually recounting, and then supplies the “retrojection” himself, whether by conjecture or on someone else’s authority? That is, Artabazus is not actually named in his source for the kiss, but later, when the name Artabazus comes up, he reasons that this fellow must be the same (from his dedication to Cyrus, perhaps), so he asserts that this devoted courtier is the same as the one who stole the kiss. One argument in favor of this explanation is that three of your four characters are first introduced in book 1; tales about Cyrus’ childhood seem to me likely to be the obscurest and most legendary (and hardest to corroborate from any other, more historical sources), so it seems possible that Xenophon’s sources for Cyrus’ childhood just don’t use as many names (a common feature of folklore). It would not surprise me if Xenophon then filled in the names retrospectively if his rationale for doing so seemed sound. Of course Pantheia is the notable exception who challenges this hypothesis.

Another example of an “anonymous introduction” in the Cyropaedia involves Tigranes. At Cyropaedia 3.1.7 Xenophon first mentions the Armenian prince Tigranes by name and says that he was the one “who once had gone on a hunt together with Cyrus” (ὃς καὶ σύνθηρός ποτε ἐγένετο τῷ Κύρῳ). To find out what Xenophon is talking about here we have to go back to Cyropaedia 2.4.15, where Cyaxares is discussing the Armenians with Cyrus. Cyaxares agrees with Cyrus that Cyrus himself has a good chance of winning over the Armenian king. “For, I hear,” says Cyaxares, “that some of his [i.e., the Armenian king’s] children were companions of yours on the hunt” (ἀκούω γὰρ καὶ συνθηρευτάς τινας τῶν παίδων σοι γενέσθαι αὐτοῦ). Is the narrator Xenophon in 3.1.7 correcting Cyaxares in Cyropaedia 2.4.15, not only by giving a specific name (Tigranes), but also by implying that it was only one Armenian prince who was Cyrus’ hunting companion, and not several as Cyaxares implies?  

I would like to add a related case, namely Cyrus’ father. Although his name is given two or three times in the preceeding narrative, it seems ot me remarkable that it does not appear once in his only major appearance, namely the conversation with Cyrus in chapter six. Some translators add it, and many writers refer to him as Cambysis in this scene, but Xenophon does not. It is understandable that Cyrus refers to him as father throughout, but why doesn’t Xenophon find a way to refer to Cambysis? Perhaps we can call this anonymous dialogue? My inclination is that such a naming would draw atention away from the content and into a biographical direction: this is not advice that is special to Cambysis, it is simply good advice and it happens to be given by Cyrus’ father. Perhaps in other cases the use of name would distract from the contents being described? On the other hand, there is a degree of personalization in the conversation, so I am open to other hypotheses.A second related case is that of the unnamed sophist in Armenia.One may also consider in this context unnamed characters in Plato. I don’t have a full list, but I am thinking of the unnamed audience of Apollodoros in Plato Symposium who is dubbed “friend” in the manuscripts, but is actually unnamed in the dialogue.

After a partial read through Xenophon’s Hellenica I have noticed several anonymous figures, but no clear pattern.  Cyrus’ relationship to Artabazus recalls that of Spithridates’ son to Agesilaus (the son is mentioned at Hellenica 3.4.10; Xenophon, Agesilaus 5.4-7 calls him Megabates and defends Agesilaus against the charge of seducing him; Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 21.4 calls the son Megabates and also says that Agesilaus was infatuated with him) and Pharnabazus’ son by Parapita (Hellenica 4.1.39-40 which gives two anecdotes about his relationship with Agesilaus).  He also mentions a “son of Mania,” a local ruler in the Troad, at Hellenica 3.1.14; mother and son were both murdered.  A number of other individuals are mentioned by occupation: in some cases one gets the impression that they weren’t Xenophon’s sort of people and therefore were less notable to him.  An example here is the engineer (μηχανοποιός) in Athens during the civil war of 404/403 (Hellenica 2.4.27).  There are some cases where he probably knew an aristocrat’s name but chose not to give one, like the Spartan embassy which brought Cyrus to the coast (Hellenica 1.4.2). None of this seems precisely parallel to this naming practice in Cyropaedia.The only detailed study of naming practices in a work of Xenophon which comes to mind is Roy’s “The Mercenaries of Cyrus” (Roy 1967:306). He notes one anonymus on p. 306: the Macronian peltast at Anabasis 4.8.4. He also notes that 80% of the mercenaries who Xenophon names are officers or aristocratic hangers-on, and that all but two are Greeks. My own study of the court of Cyrus the Younger (unpublished, but see my forthcoming MA thesis) confirms this: Xenophon names about thirteen barbarians, all of them close to Cyrus so apparently of high status.

Norman’s point about retrojection in paragraph 8 also reminds me of some issues in histories, where the author sometimes alludes to something but only explains it later.  Xenophon’s Hellenica is the most famous example, since it seems to have been written for an audience that already knew the basic story, but there are issues like the revolt of Amorges in Thucydides 8 where the revolt appears in media re and it slowly becomes clear that Athens has been actively supporting it.  Then there are intetextualities like the different accounts of the background to Cyrus’ revolt in Xenophon, Hellenica 1.4-3.1 and Anabasis 1.  This is moving towards ground I’m not very comfortable on, but this afternoon I will spend an hour or two with the Hellenica looking for characters without names.

This is a very interesting question, esp. the way you bring genre into it. We could add a question of nationality: is this a particular practice of Iranian story-telling? Probably one of the best ways of tackling it, as well as the question I have pose in the blog, would be to compare Xenophon’s naming practices in the Hellenica and Anabasis. I’ve never noticed “anonymous introductions” (to use David J.’s term) or seemingly random decisions on whether to name someone at all, though I haven’t exactly looked for them either.