Xenophon's Imperial Fiction: On the Education of CyrusIf you inquire into the origins of the novel long enough, writes James Tatum in the preface to this work, . . . you will come to the fourth century before our era and Xenophon's Education of Cyrus, or the Cyropaedia. The Cyrus in question is Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire celebrated in the Book of Ezra as the liberator of Israel, and the Cyropaedia, written to instruct future rulers by his example, became not only an inspiration to