The death of Cyrus the younger

Abstract

Plutarch's excerpt of Ctesias' version of the death of Cyrus makes fascinating reading. Although Ctesias has an unenviable reputation among scholars from antiquity onwards for fabrication and self-promotion, his description of the effects of trauma to the temple match well the clinical signs listed in a modern study of such injuries. Since he was a doctor from a family of doctors, this is not surprising, but it does suggest that his account here can be relied upon. It is possible that the was a saddle-cloth, as it is usually translated. However, a frontlet would appear to be a more satisfactory translation in view of the meaning of the words individually, the nature of Cyrus' injury, and the effects it would have had upon him. In this paper I have attempted to demonstrate that Xenophon was not working in a vacuum when he wrote his Anabasis. He was influenced by earlier authors, contemporary authors, and by stories that were circulating through Persian and Greek society at the time. His portrayal of events surrounding the death of Cyrus, and Cyrus' wounding in particular, show that Xenophon carefully crafted his material. He selected his words with skill, kept the image of Cyrus before us by commenting in different ways upon the relationship of others to him, and attempted to explain the reasons for Cyrus' actions (even when he could not have known them). He has taken the opportunity to make a philosophical comment upon the loyalty of an attendant and the lack of virtue of a king. Primarily, however, Xenophon's account is a dramatic and deliberate rebuttal of the eye-witness version recorded by Ctesias and what appears to have been the Persian court tradition which was later written down by Deinon.