THE MEDO-PERSIAN CEREMONIAL: XENOPHON, CYRUS AND THE KING'S BODY

The Cyropaedia is a long text involving many different approaches; and yet there is a major split in the work: the taking of Babylon which, at the end of Book 7, marks the end of Cyrus ' military conquest. Indeed, while throughout the first part, the young conqueror was at the head of a kind of "travelling Republic"1 and was deliberately rejecting the slightest display of luxury, the circumstances turn to be entirely different with the defeat and the fall of the enemy capital town. Cyrus settles down in the palace under Hestia's patronage.2 The last conquests are swiftly reported in just a few sentences.3 And then, a crucial pattern appears, the development of which gives a framework to the whole beginning of Book 8: the notion that the sovereign must be very parsimonious and cautious in his public appearances. Immediately after the end of the final struggles, "Cyrus conceived a desire to establish himself as he thought became a king (hôs basilei hêgeito prepein) [...] in such a way that his public appearances should be rare and solemn (spanios te kai semnos) and yet excite as little jealousy (epiphthonôs) as possible " (7.5.37). For Xenophon's Cyrus, monarchy requires a certain degree of pomp. As P. Carlier puts it, "the verb prepein must be taken in its strongest meaning: the lack of pomp would be inappropriate and shocking " (Carlier 1978: 149). The etiquette and magnificenc