Cyropaedia (The Education of Cyrus)
Xenophonc. 370–360 BC
An idealised life of Cyrus the Great by an Athenian soldier who had served in Persia. It is closer to a political novel than to a history, but it preserves a Greek tradition about the fall of Babylon.
Xenophon of Athens marched into the Persian empire with a Greek mercenary army in 401 BC and later wrote this portrait of Cyrus the Great as the model ruler. It was composed about 170 years after Cyrus took Babylon, and much of it is invention in the service of its argument.
Its account of the capture of the city agrees with Herodotus that the Persians entered along the bed of the Euphrates during a night festival, and adds that the Babylonian king was killed in his palace. It does not name the king. See Cyrus Takes Babylon.
Cited in
- 12 October 539 BC, firm date