Note 127:1 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
It was an artistic device, to make this paternal despot a foreign prince, living in a bygone age, of the same kind as the device of Æschylus to narrate the Persian war from the Oriental side, and make Darius a capital figure. No Greek or contemporary person could have sustained the figure of Cyrus in Xenophon's book. I need only remind the reader that the tract on the Athenian State now preserved among Xenophon's works is by an unknown author, and therefore an authority independent of Xenophon.