¶ 1
Question: If Cyropaedia is a long prose fiction (a novel), what types of novel does it resemble?
¶ 2
The literary specialists here seem to agree that Cyropaedia has no exact parallels in surviving ancient literature. There has been some discussion of what genre Xenophon, or an ancient reader, might have assigned the text too. I have noticed a certain reluctance to see Cyropaedia as a novel because of its dense philosophical content, and because it is quite different from the ancient novels which happen to have survived. I haven’t read the right things to address the question of what ancient genre Cyropaedia fits into, but I can comment on some parallels in more recent fiction.
¶ 3
Fiction often has a didactic purpose. Not only does this help to justify the huge amount of work in composing a long work of fiction, but fiction gives the author freedom to design his work to raise certain points or themes. Sometimes the fiction is just a way to make teaching more attractive and memorable. Other fiction tries to give the pleasures of learning without the necessary work: here one thinks of Dan Brown novels with their half-baked lectures on various topics, or techno-thrillers filled with trivia about equipment and tactics. Both seem designed to make the reader feel like they are learning while placing less demands on both the writer and the reader. Ancients often read the Iliad and Odyssey as didactic works; moderns might class Socratic dialogues, some speeches in histories, the fables of Aesop or Plato, or the parables of the New Testament as didactic fictions.
¶ 4
Some technical problems in writing fiction are also common. Presenting setting, portraying character, and blending didactic and narrative are all difficult arts. Other fiction can remind us of approaches which Xenophon did not take, inspiring questions about why he chose a particular technique.
¶ 5
Here are four works which Cyropaedia reminds me of. Not all are “novels” in the ancient or modern sense, but all use fiction to teach political or military lessons.
¶ 6
– Ernest D. Swinton The Defence of Duffer’s Drift (1904). This military fiction has a young lieutenant dream of his first assignment. His mission is simple, to defend a ford against possible Boer attack, but somehow everything goes wrong. He wakes up, but next night falls asleep and and finds himself being given the same task again. There are a total of six dreams, in the last of which the narrator finally manages to defend a static position. This has an explicitly didactic purpose- it was published in the United Service Magazine based on the author’s service in South Africa and includes a list of 22 lessons- but is not based on any one incident and is written as a story. The narrator is a Lt. Backsight Forethought. Why is this a parallel? Its a didactic military treatise with a framing story. Its not my area of expertise, but one might also compare many works from the Italian Renaissance written in the form of a dialogue, such as Machiavelli Art of War or Giovanni Dall’Agocchie Dell’Arte di Scrimia.
¶ 7
– Robert A. Heinlein For Us, the Living (written 1938, published 2003). Heinlein’s first fiction was a utopian novel explaining how free love and social credit could save the world. Like most novels arguing for a new political system, it had many flaws, including a 500 word footnote, characters remarkably incurious about how a 20th century man has appeared in their 21st century future, and long stretches of lecturing where the protagonist is inevitably convinced. (For the classicists among us, it also has a scene where the hero watches Lysistrata with his girlfriend). It includes a fairly detailed future setting, with some explanation of how they got there from here. The reader is urged in a footnote to play an economic game described in the text to see why social credit is necessary. It also includes many ideas which Heinlein worked over for the next 50 years. He chose not to publish it and to destroy all copies, but a typescript turned up in a friend’s garage after his death. Why is this a parallel? Its a complicated fiction meant as a ‘spoonful of sugar’ for a philosophical message.
¶ 8
– H. Beam Piper Space Viking (1962-1963). Despite its hyperbolic title, this “philosophical space opera” reflects long and serious thought about political organization and patterns in history. Piper was a heir to the early “scientific world history” of Toynbee and Spengler who had thought uncomfortably hard about the implications of nuclear weapons. At one level the novel is a straightforward adventure story: a noble in the distant future suffers a disaster, leaves home to raid and trade amongst distant peoples, finds a new cause to dedicate himself to, and is compelled to face an old enemy in defence of that cause. But embedded in this are dense observations of, and theories about, politics and the development of societies. We see a dozen imaginary societies, often with their strengths and weaknesses highlighted for the reader; techniques for manipulating a meeting, including priming someone else to suggest an idea which the chair doesn’t want to raise himself; a hero who applies Hitler’s “big lie” technique; and long discussions of the problem of nuclear weapons and of creating a lasting political order. Why is this a parallel? Its a work of entertaining fiction which pays significant attention to teaching and speculating about politics. Its also a modern attempt to portray various good and bad leaders in difficulties. Piper always wanted to write historical fiction, but he killed himself before selling any. Interested readers may be interested in John T. Major’s review at http://members.iglou.com/jtmajor/Viking.htm; the text is available through Project Gutenburg, although the Ace edition with introduction is very handy.
¶ 9
– Jerry Pournelle Lord Falkenberg stories. Pournelle is a curious character, who was born poor in the rural southern US, fought in Korea, and ended up a Doctor of Political Science who gave advice to the Reagan Administration. His Falkenberg stories are set about the year 2100 in a world where the US and USSR decided it was better to divide the world between them then fight and possibly lose. They extended this arrangement when a faster-than-light drive was invented. Unfortunately, tensions are brewing, and its clear to any intelligent observer that there will be a nuclear war soon. Enter John Christian Falkenberg, a professional soldier turned mercenary and part of a conspiracy devoted to delaying that war and ensuring that some sort of technological civilization survives it. Pournelle uses some interesting techniques to portray his brilliant soldier, including keeping him offstage as much as possible and using different viewpoint characters who notice different sides of him; he also uses such devices as a Socratic dialogue between two indentured servants, a government designed by political scientists who have read their Polybius and Aristotle, and a scene drawn from Justinian’s suppression of the Nike riots. Unfortunately, he isn’t as effective at masking his views about contemporary politics as Xenophon is in Cyropaedia. Why is this a parallel? It shows a recent solution to the problem of portraying a brilliant military leader, and of embedding political philosophy in fiction.
¶ 10
Can anyone else suggest other works of fiction which seem to be trying to do similar things to Cyropaedia? I could multiply examples amongst 20th century American science fiction indefinitely (Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson, etc.) but I’m interested in what parallels Cyropaedia invokes in other readers. Xenophon lived in a very different world than the 20th century US, but some of the things which an author can try to do with a long fiction are common across cultures, and so are many of the challenges which an author must overcome.
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Your science-fiction parallels put me in mind of the last chapter of JamesRomm 1994 The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought.
I don’t know enough about the ancient novel to have an opinion about whether the Cyropaedia counts, but I am struck by the “sub-genre-y” nature of a lot of your parallels, the fact that we would class many of them as “genre fiction” rather than “serious” novels. Could a similar sort of distinction (I’m tempted to say prejudice) be at play in our evaluation of the Cyropaedia and its intruding “genre” material?
That’s an interesting question! I suppose that one difference is that today genre fiction is often seen as frivolous and escapist, whereas Cyropaedia almost seems too earnest with its advice on drill and Socratic dialogues. Its interesting that Xenophon doesn’t chose to include a lot of wonders and traveler’s tales in Cyropaedia, where they are a regular feature of genre fiction today (and of some works which Xenophon was familiar with, such asCtesias Persica and Herodotus Histories ). Xenophon seems to want readers to feel wonder at Cyrus’ personal qualities (he is φιλανθρωπότατος καὶ φιλομαθέστατος καὶ φιλοτιμότατος, Cyropaedia 1.2.1 ), the glamour of huge armies long ago and far away, and maybe his cleverness in designing scythed chariots and ox-drawn battle towers.
Perhaps one of the things that makes the Cyropaedia like a modern novel is, as said above, that it incorporates a variety of genres. There’s lots that could be done (has been done?) with the Cyropaedia and the way in which different genres intrude into each other.Bakhtin would be the obvious theorist to illuminate such a reading, perhaps looking at the way that Andrea Nightingale 2000 has applied his theories to Platonic dialogue (Genres in Dialogue). I’m intrigued that people here who like genre fiction perceive the Cyropaedia in terms of their favoured genres. I like experimental literary fiction, so I read the Cyropaedia as experimental literary fiction, where the character of interest is the narrator and the action of interest is the way that different elements are woven into the narrative.
Sean: As you say, the absence of natural wonders is quite striking, but the war-technologies you mention seem a lot like the maybe-it’s-possible-maybe-it’s-not sorts of technical wonders one finds in science fiction. The question of escapism is really important, I think. Of course, a lot of science fiction (includingHeinlein ), and other exemplary/utopian fiction (like Ayn Rand ), is at least in some sense dead serious – even if it’s also seen as “frivolous” by literati. Carol: Thank you so much for that observation about seeing our favorite genres!
Sean, thank you for this stimulating post. I like the way you extract the Cyropaedia out of its ancient context and think about it in relation to works that are probably a lot more familiar to modern readers. You may be on your way to designing a course that treats the Cyropaedia in a very new way! I hope you will comment more on the post I create tomorrow on Xenophon’s Cyrus in the 21st century.
For now, I would add to your listAyn Rand Atlas Shrugged , also a work about “ideal” or “idealized” figures, who have both inspired some and struck others as ridiculously implausible and misleading. I discuss some of the relevance in this comment here, but I think there might be many more parallels (or anti-parallels) to flesh out.
Yes, I think one could do a lot comparingAyn Rand ‘s novels to Cyropaedia (or a lot of the military science fiction which Baen publishes these days). It seems like Cyropaedia shares some things in common with utopian fiction, and some with ideological fiction, if I’m using those terms correctly. But Xenophon is a bit ambiguous about Cyrus and monarchy, as has been suggested in the other thread. He seems to approve of Cyrus, but even without 8.8 its not clear that things will go so well after his death. I meant this as a bit of a provocation, since Cyropaedia isn’t exactly like a modern novel either, but it still seems like “historical novel” or “fictionalized biography” might fit better than other modern genres. Owen Ewald’s recommendation of Gill and Wiseman 1993 has given me some interesting thoughts about the relationships between histories and novels, truth and falsehood in ancient literature.
In case you’re not already aware of it, I think you would also enjoy P.Stadter 1991b:461-491 . “Fictional Narrative in the Cyropaedeia.” AJP 112.4:461-491.
Another approach to this question might be suggested by a piece of bibliography that I have just encountered: V.Gray 2004:391-401 . “Xenophon” in I.J.F. de Jong, R. Nünlist, and A. Bowie (eds.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature: 391-401. Gray’s short essay approaches the Cyropaedia from a narratological perspective.Gray suggests that the narrator of the Cyropaedia is “external” (he often refers to own time as different from and later than that of Cyrus) and that this narratological device (p. 392) “gives another sort of authority to the narration and the praise.” She suggests that the narratological structure of the work is meant to remind readers of historiography.Another way in which the narrator of the Cyropaedia follows historiographical models is that he “validates his accounted by repeated references to ‘(anonymous) spokesmen’.”A second feature of the narrator – and one that is related to the praise of Cyrus – is his status as “overt narrator” (p. 396) in which the narrator uses the first-person to comment on the excellence of Cyrus.How does this narratological approach compare with your impressions Sean?
Humh. I can’t speak much to the relationship between novels and histories in the ancient world, but what I have read suggests that the Greeks and Romans were often concerned about plausible narratives- how could you tell if they were truth or lies, and was there a difference between types of lying? Apparently a number of the works which we class as novels use framing stories, and they all set themselves in the familiar world of the present or past- even if that world has things, like miracles or curses, which we see as fantastic today (my sources are T. P.Wiseman 1993 and J. R. Morgan 1993 ). In my examples, Heinlein intervened in the footnotes- such as the one where he urges his readers to play the game which is supposed to demonstrate why social credit is needed. Swinton chose to tell his story in the first person under a pseudonym, and takes an interesting attitude to it. On one hand he uses cartoonish illustrations and comic names (Regret Table Mountain, Silliaasvogel River, “Lieutenant Backsight Forethought”) to mark it as fiction, on the other hand he tells readers in the prologue that his “fantastical story” is based on actual experience from 1899 to 1902. Pournelle and Piper avoid authorial comments, but both have wise characters make general statements- and Space Viking contains some direct statements which the careful reader realizes are the thoughts of Lucas Trask the main character. I do think that the way that Xenophon intervenes in his narrative is interesting: he does make some comments in his own voice, but he doesn’t appeal to a source for his stories other than the “and even now” remarks (which Cyropaedia 8.8 rather undermines). In a way it reminds me of Thucydides Histories , but Thucydides has a prologue where he identifies his work as a history based on observation and conversation with participants.
This is such an interesting idea! Your post is making me want to go and read old military journals. I had to think about this a bit, but two parallel novels came up for me: first,Hermann Hesse The Glass Bead Game – it has the same escapist narrative feel with a focus on the education and life of a protagonist that seems almost “too good to be true”, also contains extended dialogues of a similar philosophical bent, and like Cyrus’ Near East, the futuristic world of The Glass Bead Game is only vaguely sketched out, so that the philosophy is in the forefront and actual day-to-day life is in the background. Given Hesse’s interest in all things eastern and Indian, is there a parallel to be made there with Xenophon’s influences from the east? It also reminds me of Samuel Richardson Sir Charles Grandison – not least because both are often considered “dull” and their heroes “too excellent to be interesting”!
One thing I like about “Duffer’s Drift” is that it has survived on its literary and technical merits for a century, making it closer to Xenophon than a typical ephemeral magazine article. Its also from a military world closer to Xenophon than modern western armies are today. I will have to look at Herman Hesse and Samuel Richardson if I pursue this more seriously- I’m still polishing off a thesis and have some conference papers that I would like to work up into article submissions.