Cyropaedia

Cyrus’ Paradise: An Online Commentary to Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus

¶ 1Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Welcome to Cyrus’ Paradise, an online commentary to Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus (Cyropaedia), hosted by Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and created by David Carlisle (Washington and Lee University), Sarah Ferrario (Catholic University), Jennifer Gates-Foster (University of Texas at Austin), Allen Romano (Florida State University), and Norman Sandridge (Howard University). If you are interested in getting involved with this project, please read our call for participants in a “virtual” symposium to take place this summer.

¶ 2Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 In what follows we will discuss (1) the state of the online commentary as it is typically used by Classicists and others in the Humanities, (2) our ideas for revolutionizing the online commentary, (3) our reasons for choosing the Education of Cyrus for a commentary, and (4) finally our current progress toward these goals.

¶ 3Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 There is one obvious advantage to an online commentary: it may be infinite in size and thus relieve the commenter of the burden of deciding what kind of comment to make (grammatical, stylistic, textual, historical, social, thematic?) and how long to make it. Online commentaries also have the advantage of incorporating multimedia to illuminate the text in radical ways and indeed better approximate the memories and experiences of an ancient reader in the form of, e.g., videos, images of artifacts, maps, and audio recordings.

¶ 4Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Beyond these advantages there are obvious disadvantages to an online commentary, or at least features of an online commentary that are no better than the book. Some online commentaries today are simply digital versions of hundred year old books whose copyright has expired. Even a contemporary commentary may become a very static entity, in the sense that it is dependent on the level of expertise and dedication of the solitary commenter. The progress of writing a commentary may thus be very linear and sporadic, and it may take years for the commentary to be of service to the rest of the scholarly community. So there is a clear advantage to working collaboratively and publicly on an online commentary: work may be done more quickly and synergistically by a few dozen commenters rather than one or two, and those coming to the work for the first time may be able to witness scholarship in action and stay abreast of the newest developments. Nevertheless online commentaries may suffer from the carelessness and poor editing of much of what is produced on the Internet. For the online commentary to thrive it must be more than a blog or a chat room; it must be able to grow with the addition of new information and perspectives and it must have structures and procedures in place to ensure that the commenters strive for the same academic standards as a book commentary.

¶ 5Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 According to the foregoing observations we have set four goals for our commentary on the Cyropaedia:

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1. Produce comments according to the highest scholarly standards.
2. Incorporate multimedia wherever possible to enrich, expand upon, or even challenge the text.
3. Utilize a format that is intuitive and easy to expand and also easily searchable for those new to the commentary.
4. Create a community of scholars and readers of all generations who will keep the commentary alive indefinitely.

¶ 7Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Why choose the Cyropaedia as an online commentary? The Cyropaedia is a somewhat fictitious but somewhat historical portrait of an idealized leader, Cyrus the Great, the first king of the Persian Empire, written by Xenophon the Athenian in the early fourth century BCE. At present there is no commentary on it in the English language other than a number of old school-boy editions. There are a few very old German commentaries of high quality and an excellent more recent French commentary from Bizos (1971–1978), but scholarly interest in the Education of Cyrus has grown immensely in the past four decades. It is an important work for ancient theories of leadership and deserves to be read alongside Plato’s portrait of the Philosopher King in the Republic and the Cyprian Orations of Isocrates. An online commentary thus has the potential of reaching students of leadership who are not otherwise likely to encounter the Cyropaedia outside of a course in ancient Greek or Classical Civilization. These fields may include business, political science, history, and communications, as well as other humanistic disciplines. Additionally, as a work by a Greek author about a Persian king, the Cyropaedia allows for extensive cross-cultural study. Much of this cross-cultural story can best be approached through images of Achaemenid art. The Cyropaedia has also been called the first Western novel, and as such admits of study in comparison to the later Greek and Roman novels, and even to their modern inheritors. All of these avenues of study demand collaboration if any aspect of the work is to be fully appreciated. Finally Xenophon has long been recognized as the perfect third-semester Greek author (one example of which is Mather and Hewett’s edition of the Anabasis); thus an online commentary will attract and delight a new generation of interested Hellenists.

A screenshot of the prototype commentary in action...

¶ 8Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Where are we now? Cyrus’ Paradise has precisely five gardeners (introduced above). Our expertise includes Xenophon, the Education of Cyrus itself, the digital humanities, Achaemenid art and archaeology, leadership, and narratology. This site is being hosted by Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. At present we are using the CommentPress plug-in on WordPress to generate comments amongst ourselves and to tell Xenophon’s story using multimedia. The process of generating a comment has four stages:

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1. Sowing the seeds of inquiry. All comments begin with a question prompted by the text of Xenophon rather than an observation. The purpose of this approach is to elicit contributions from other users of the commentary and to train us all on the kinds of questions we might ask elsewhere. Rather than have various members hold forth with their own observations, which can discourage input and deviate from the text, all are encouraged to consider the text anew and answer questions however they see fit.
2. Nourishing the seeds. All commenters, including the poser of the initial question, are encouraged to offer answers, suggest bibliography, or pose further questions for clarification. The more input the merrier. We encourage casualness and spontaneity.Vigorous and honest debate is expected. Consistent with the blog format, this commenting period happens within (or underneath) the question, and a chain of answers, as many as ten deep, may be created.
3. Potting the plant. After the passage of a sufficient amount of time, when it seems as if the community’s perspectives have been exhausted for the moment, the poser of the question (or some other agreed upon commenter) takes responsibility for surveying all of the answers and condensing them into a coherent whole, being sure to incorporate any variant perspectives and their justification.
4. Pruning the garden. All previous comments are removed from the question and the updated comment is posted in their place to allow for easy navigation in the future. The new comment is itself available for further growth, even at the level of suggested edits to clarify meaning or correct typos. While CommentPress is capable of addressing the goals enumerated above, we foresee upgrading to better platforms as they become available.

¶ 10Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 By August of 2012 we will have prepared a commentary and translation to Book One of the Cyropaedia (the work is comprised of eight books). Many or all of us will use the commentary in our courses in the Fall of 2012. It will also be used by many of the members of Sunoikisis, a national consortium of Classics departments and programs, whose most recent initiative is the development of inter-institutional courses in introductory and intermediate Greek (advanced courses having already been developed). This commentary will serve as the teaching text for the latter and the target text for the former. Other institutions (including your own) are welcome to use it for their courses—for free. To find out how, simply contact any of the current gardeners listed above, or send a note to the contact address listed below.

¶ 11Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 Currently the comments are being generated by the five of us, but from June 18-29 we will host a “virtual” symposium of scholars who will be invited to comment broadly or on questions of rare specialization. To find out more, including how to participate, please see our call for participants. Participants will be given 24-hour access to the commentary and its accompanying blog, and may post as much or as little as they wish. Guidance and some suggested questions will be provided in advance, and technical support furnished throughout. By the end of this symposium, our hope is that we will have generated an unprecedented number, quality, and variety of comments on this text. These comments will then be incorporated (with full attribution, of course) into the commentary as it is prepared for use in the Fall semester and beyond.

¶ 12Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 For AY 2012-2013 the commentary will be carefully monitored and tested, with the understanding that the procedure we develop will be as important as the comments themselves. We are working with the Perseus Treebanking Project to diagram syntactic dependency for all sentences in the Cyropaedia. It is expected that undergraduate students will be able to help with this process and also contribute high-quality recorded readings of the text. The commentary as such will always be a work in progress, or a “living garden,” that will grow over time, require nourishment and pruning, and hopefully approximate that longed for goal of scholarly perfection, a paradise.

¶ 13Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 If you are interested in using the commentary for your class or on your own, or are a scholar interested in participating in the planting, cultivation, or further maintenance of the garden, whether during the virtual symposium or otherwise, please do not hesitate to contact us: contact@cyropaedia.org.