Xenophon's Cyrus in Paradise: Hunting and the Art of War in Antiquity

Abstract

Xenophon’s portrait of the education of Cyrus the Great in his Cyropaedia depicts a youth with an erotic desire for hunting, which in the ancient world trained men in the art of war. But Cyrus learned quickly from going on hunts in the royal parks or “paradises” of his grandfather, the King of Media, that the luxurious mode of hunting game in parks could not match the thrill of hunting animals in the wild. Moreover, hunting in paradise was a temptation to be avoided, because it failed to educate one in that kind of virtue which (as Machiavelli later argued) alone prepares a prince to conquer and, as in the case of Cyrus, become the founder of an empire.