Senofonte, Ciropedia: Ciro bambino e adolescente

In the last decades the Cyropaedia enjoyed a renewed interest, mostly addressed to the controversial character of Cyrus, exemplary leader or susceptible to a dark reading. However the character of Cyrus as a child and adolescent, who appears in Cyr. 1.3-4, has been usually overlooked, especially with regard to the psychological side of his behavior, which instead deserves to be carefully analyzed. Xenophon indeed created a complex, multifaced character: on the one hand a Cyrus as a child, who already shows the exceptional character traits of the adult Cyrus; on the other hand – and this is the innovative aspect – a Cyrus as a child and adolescent who shows attitudes and behavior that today we are able to acknowledge as typical of children and adolescents. It is not difficult for us to grasp these attitudes and behavior, but that Xenophon succeeded in creating a character endowed with them is a really amazing achievement, because he could only rely on his observation skills, probably a kind of empathy and his gifts as a writer: an even more amazing achievement if we keep in mind that Greek literature and more generally Greek culture showed very little interest in the child itself, regarded nearly exclusively as the adult he was destined to become or anyway in its relationships with adults. Cyr. 1.4.3 is a very important passage, in which Xenophon gives a kind of overview of those features of Cyrus as a child that will quickly disappear already in the first phase of adolescence: immediately afterwards indeed in Cyr. 1.4.4 Xenophon summarizes in few lines some significant changes that mark the transition, often so abrupt, to adolescence and that will be described as the narration goes on. It is really noteworthy that very recent studies on some psychological processes (especially concerning mirror neurons) offer an explanation of the attitudes and behavior of Cyrus as a child and adolescent as they were narrated by Xenophon.