Fictional Leaders

Heroes, Villans and Absent Friends

Jonathan Gosling, Peter Villiers

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781137272744
• eBook ISBN: 9781137272751
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Management theory is vague about the experience of leading. Success, power, achievement are discussed but less focus is given to negative experiences leaders faced such as loneliness or disappointment. This book addresses difficult-to-explore aspects of leadership through well-known works of literature drawing lessons from fictional leaders.

1

Xenophon and the Pursuit of Willing Obedience by Cyrus the Great

Lynette Mitchell

Introduction

The context

During the final years of the fifth century BC, the Athenians were involved in a long war with Sparta, which they eventually lost in 404. Democracy was replaced by a brutal and violent oligarchy imposed by the Spartans, although within months the democrats had ousted the regime of the so-called ‘Thirty Tyrants’ and democracy was restored. And yet democracy and the democratic ideal had suffered during the long years of war; particularly from among the Athenian intelligentsia there were, at the end of the fifth century BC and the beginning of the fourth, demands for new ways of conceptualising constitutional rule.

It is in this context that Xenophon, friend of Socrates, mercenary commander, prolific writer of history and philosophy, and political thinker of some standing in his own time, wrote The Education of Cyrus, an historical novel about the rule of Cyrus the Great, king of the Persian Empire in the mid-sixth century BC. Through his portrayal of Cyrus, Xenophon creates a model for leadership in an ideal constitution in which democratic equality is rejected in favour of a hierarchical community of the ‘willing obedient’ serving Cyrus, who respects the law and yet also embodies it.

The content

The purpose and content of this article is to analyse the main features of Xenophon’s treatment of the ideal leader, assess its significance and offer a critique of its value as a model for leadership and rule by one man.

The adaptation

This chapter is condensed from the full text as originally published in 2008 as an occasional paper of the Centre for Leadership Studies of the University of Exeter. The original article with its full content and references may be obtained on application to the Centre for Leadership Studies. We are most grateful to Dr Mitchell for agreeing to the adaptation of her original text.

The commentary

The article is followed by a commentary in which Jonathan Gosling relates Xenophon’s fictional biography of Cyrus the Great and the leadership issues arising to some contemporary issues in leadership studies.

Xenophon’s portrayal of Cyrus the Great in the form of an historical novel remains of great relevance to leadership studies today, and the medium is part of the message.¹

Cyrus the Great and the obedience of the willing

A model constitution

Xenophon begins his account with Cyrus’s childhood and boyhood education first at the court of his father, the king of the Persians, and then that of his grandfather, the king of the Medes.

Under the Persian constitution children are educated by the state, and are taught justice, moderation and hunting (as preparation for war). The numbers of citizens are limited to 120,000 men, who are called ‘those equal in honour’ (hoi isotimoi), and include only those whose parents can afford formal education. Any of the isotimoi can hold office, but the emphasis of the constitution is on strict regulation and law, so that if any one does not fulfil any of the requisite steps in preparation for full citizenship then he is excluded from the citizen body. Likewise, in decisions regarding justice, the rule of law is strictly maintained.

When he reaches 12 years old, Cyrus leaves Persia and goes to the court of his grandfather, the king of the Medes. In contrast to Persia, life at the Medish court is excessively hedonistic. Cyrus, however, chooses to stay in Media, because there he can learn to be the best at skills in which he does not yet excel. When Cyrus’s leadership comes to be tested, however, he neither accepts nor rejects either the Persian or Medish model completely, but creates a style of commanding and ruling which is a balance of the two. Calling himself a king rather than a tyrant, he rejects Medish hedonism and assiduously practices self-control. On the other hand, he accepts that excellence can only be obtained by rivalry and pushing at limits, and that merit is not limited by class or wealth but only by opportunity.

Furthermore, while Cyrus understands that society must be regulated and that written law has its place, he also emphasises obedience to one’s superiors (rather than acquiescence to the common will), and believes that a good ruler is ‘seeing law’, since he not only gives orders but punishes wrongdoers.

The ideal constitution?

What Cyrus produces, then, is a blend of kingship and tyranny. He rules and expects obedience; he rewards the good and punishes the wicked; he practices moderation and self-restraint; and he provides the ultimate model of virtue.

Cyrus’s ideal constitution is a meritocracy where the best people are given the highest rewards, and the lazy and wicked are weeded out.² Cyrus rejects completely the democratic notion that all should have the same rewards and transforms his army from one based on an elite of equals, the isotimoi, and a ‘common’ mercenary contingent, into one based on ‘nobility’, which is defined by the pursuit of excellence irrespective of social class or nationality. Excellence is achieved through constant training and practice and never sliding into complacency despite success.

Cyrus creates a system of hierarchies rather like Isocrates’s monarchic hierarchy, over which the king, as necessarily the best man, presides as ruler. The theoretical innovation here is not that either rich or poor could excel (Thucydides’s Pericles had already claimed that), but the recognition that the conditions for equality of opportunity have to be created through equality of education, training and equipment so that anyone can be the best. The result, however, of allowing equality of opportunity does not produce equality of either status or reward.

A paternal analogy

The model for Cyrus’s constitution is not of itself innovative, but instead reflects a radical conservatism which institutionalises domestic models of leadership and popular morality. The ruling of a state (as with Plato) is compared to the management of a household or commanding of an army. The role of a ruler, then, is like that of a father, who not only makes sure that his family has sufficient for its livelihood, but also looks to its interests and ensures the training and education of all those who manage his household.

The good ruler secures willing obedience

Willing obedience is the central pillar of Cyrus’s success and security as a ruler. It is based on the good ruler, who is wiser, stronger and braver than anyone else and is generated, on the one hand, by kindness and benefaction, and, on the other, by fear and the punishment of wrongdoers. Cyrus is so successful at acquiring willing obedience that it is claimed he is a ‘king by nature’ and that those he leads have a ‘terrible passion’ (deinos eros) to be ruled by him no less than bees wish to obey the leader of the hive. As a result, Cyrus rules, unlike a tyrant, without slavery:

We are different from slaves (Cyrus says to his friends) in that slaves serve their masters unwillingly, but for us, if indeed we think we are free (eleutheroi), it is necessary to do everything willingly which we think it is worthwhile to do.

Social and political relationships

By insisting on willing obedience, Xenophon is not only being original, but is also de-politicising political relationships. The power relation between king and subject is neutralised, since his subjects need to be ruled by him because of their desire for the relationship, rather than out of fear or compulsion. Furthermore, this social model for leadership obviates the need for written law, since society self-regulates, or at least has an internal and moral (although secular) mechanism for regulation, and does not require an external standard for measuring and imposing behaviour. In this way, Cyrus can be king rather than tyrant, provide freedom rather than slavery, rule by law and yet be law, and control his subjects through the positive pursuit of kindness and virtue rather than through fear.

The basis for successful leadership

Xenophon’s political theorising was deeply embedded in contemporary trends of political thought, and yet also managed to be both conservative and innovative. The conservatism resided in the formalisation of social norms and hierarchies, whereas the turning of these values towards rule through willing obedience overturned existing anxieties about monarchy, the rule of law and rule of the best man. Nevertheless, while Xenophon’s Cyrus may have been original in these respects, the question still needs to be asked whether he represented a successful or legitimate model of leadership.

Doubts and uncertainties

Xenophon’s analysis of successful leadership is not convincing. In the first place, the insistence on willing obedience may theoretically neutralise power relations, but actually distorts and obscures them. Cyrus’s rhetorical emphasis on kindness as the basis for benefaction masks the fact that his gift-giving often takes the form of excessive financial rewards, which necessarily impose not only personal distance in the relationship but also create a political gap. (‘I do not know’, Xenophon says, ‘any better reason for the people’s attitude towards him than that he gave large benefactions in exchange for small ones.’)

Further, while Cyrus gave munificently, he was also the only one allowed to give with such generosity. Moreover, although he gave rewards according to merit, his system of rewards was intended to produce hierarchies, and so also effectively to maintain unequal power relations. Cyrus encouraged the manipulation of exchanges for securing privileges. When Hystaspas asked Cyrus why Chrysantas had been preferred to him and rewarded more highly despite the fact that Hystaspas had always offered willing obedience, Cyrus replied that Hystaspas had only done what was asked, whereas Chrysantas had looked for ways of anticipating Cyrus’s wants and desires.³

The misuses of power

There was a darker side to Cyrus’s benefactions. The boast that no one else but the Persian king could punish enemies who were a journey of many months away, or be called ‘father’ by those he had subdued, may have sounded little more than rhetoric: but the threat became substantial when gift-giving was used to pay informers to be Cyrus’s ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’, and to report on anyone who dared to speak or act against the king, so denying freedom of action and of speech. Disobedience at court was punished not just by the withdrawal of honours, but also by the confiscation of all property, which was then given to someone else: ‘In this way he would get himself a useful friend in exchange for a useless one.’

On this level, Xenophon’s political theorising not only lacks transparency, but also is disingenuous in the way that it represents power relations as (more benign) social relations. It is also disturbing since, by disguising the real power inequalities in relationships behind the emotively charged rhetoric of benefaction and kindness, it distorts actual and powerfully charged relations of subordination. Viewed in this light, willing obedience appears less willing.

This politicisation of social relations is further complicated by the fact that Xenophon’s Cyrus simplifies social codes and supposes an ease in relationships which they did not and could not sustain. Cyrus assumes that strong relationships would be based on a simple exchange of favours. However, as the Greeks themselves were very much aware, social relationships were by no means simple. Greek literature is littered with explorations of the problems inherent in the exchange of benefactions; and in knowing who one’s friends (and enemies) are. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics engages with many of these issues, and decides that balance can only be achieved by an unequal exchange, and different kinds of exchanges.

In practice, the line between friendship and enmity is not necessarily clear-cut. In Sophocles’s Ajax, Ajax is all too aware of the inconstancy of friends and the ties that bind them when he cries:

How shall we not come to be wise? I shall. For I know so much that an enemy (echthros) must be hated as one who will some day be a friend (philos), and so much in assisting a philos, will I wish to help him as one who will not always remain a philos. For to many among mortal men the harbour of companionship is faithless.

Knowing who one’s friends were may have been fundamental to the maintenance of social fabric, but it was not always easy to discern. Cyrus fails to engage with these issues; for him, the natural and unwritten laws have force because of both their simplicity and their own internal momentum. While for Cyrus the social world provides a model for political life, it can only do so because he fails to offer a deep and critical examination of the real politics of social life, the intricacies of social negotiations or the drama of betrayal.

Tyranny, law and obedience

Finally, and even more unsettlingly, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Xenophon and the Pursuit of Willing Obedience by Cyrus the Great
• 2. Sharing the Secret: Joseph Conrad on Leadership at Sea
• 3. The Isolation of the Spirit: Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN
• 4. Leadership and Monomania: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
• 5. Nevil Shute: Pastoral
• 6. Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe
• 7. Leadership and Improvisation: A Bell for Adano, by John Hersey
• 8. The Silhouette of Leadership: James Bond and Miss Moneypenny
• 9. A Wild Sheep Chase: Haruki Murakami
• 10. Leadership and Expectation: Thomas Pynchon
• 11. Leadership: The Madness of the Day by Maurice Blanchot
• 12. Leadership and Dharma: The Indian Epics Ramayana and Mahabharata and Their Significance for Leadership Today
• 13. The Leader as Poet: Tennyson, Whitman and Dickinson
• 14. Leadership and Tradition: Rabindranath Tagore
• 15. Leadership and Acceptability: Plato and the Odium of Truth
• 16. Ten Great Works for Leadership Development
• Index