American Political Science Review (2017) 111, 2, 308–321 doi:10.1017/S0003055416000721 c  American Political Science Association 2017 Xenophon on the Psychology of Supreme Political Ambition LORRAINE SMITH PANGLE University of Texas at Austin T his study illuminates Xenophon’s teaching about the underlying psychological motives of the most fully developed political ambition. An analysis of what the Cyropaedia portrays as the interplay among Cyrus’s spiritedness, justice, benevolence, piety, and cultivation of an aura of divinity leads to an unveiling of supreme ambition’s deepest root: not the desire for power as such, nor the love of justice, but the desire to be a quasi-divine benefactor. The article traces the development of this ambition from its earliest manifestations in the young Cyrus’s puppylike spiritedness, through his hope-filled rise to power, to his grim mature rein and his death, showing how a shadowy concern for immortality drives him in ways he is reluctant to see or acknowledge. THE PROBLEM OF AMBITION C ontemporary political science is curiously uncu- rious about political ambition. In assumptions and methods it is better suited to measuring overt behavior than ferreting out hidden motives and obscurely felt hopes, more given to attending to what is widely shared than to what is unusual. When ambition is studied it is chiefly to measure the effects of a drive that remains unanalyzed or to explain its strength in terms of cost-benefit calculations; on the few occasions when political scientists look to personal traits to ex- plain the root causes of ambition, they have focused on the sort of demographic features and “political values” that opinion surveys can capture in everyone. 1 Our political system counts on the existence of ambition to draw talent into public service and on its institutional structure to keep that ambition safely contained. But already in 1834 Abraham Lincoln warned that Ameri- cans are poorly prepared to grasp the forces that would impel a “towering genius” to disdain the ordinary trusts of offices already established and to seek honors of a higher and more dangerous order. Describing a mem- ber of what he called the “family of the lion” or the “tribe of the eagle,” he writes, “Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down” (Lincoln 1953, 114). Ancient political science was more attentive to this human type. It recognized in it the same restless, boundless, dan- gerous yearnings as Lincoln did, but it also identified something more unified and even higher than the thirst for fame at the core of these men’s ambition. The So- cratic student Xenophon, meditating longer than had Lorraine Smith Pangle is Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin, 158 W. 21st St., Stop A1800, Austin, TX 71712 (lorrainepangle@gmail.com). The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of Tim- othy Burns, Steven Forde, Russell Muirhead, Thomas Pangle, Linda Rabieh, Jean Yarbrough, and the anonymous referees of the APSR on earlier drafts of this article. Received: January 16, 2016; revised: August 25, 2016; accepted: November 13, 2016. First published online: February 14, 2017. 1 On the former see Ehrenhalt (1991), Rohde (1979), and Sch- lessinger (1966); on the latter see Fox and Lawless (2005) and Lawless (2012). the young Lincoln on these men’s driving passions and observing first-hand such statesmen, future tyrants, and aspiring conquerors as Pericles, Alcibiades, Critias, and Cyrus the Younger, produced in his historical novel about Cyrus the Elder, the Cyropaedia, what is ar- guably the richest ancient study of high political am- bition. Whereas Lincoln sketches towering ambition mainly to warn his fellow citizens against its dangers, Xenophon shows how noble such yearnings can be even when the results are oppressive, how the best and most dangerous elements of ambition spring from common roots, and how the same tangled motives that can be seen vividly in a man like Cyrus are at work more obscurely and in more fragmentary form in all political leaders, and even, since we are political animals, to a degree in all of us. Beginning from the extraordinary rather than from the ordinary, the Cyropaedia offers a corrective for the defects of vision to which our political science is prone. In the first chapter of the Cyropaedia, Xenophon makes clear that his historical novel is intended to provide a paradigmatic case study that will answer a fundamental political question. At first that question seems to be just the problem of how to achieve stable rule—a task so difficult, as Xenophon presents it, as to make us wonder whether only a god could solve it. Humans so strongly resist control by their fellow humans, he observes, that any ruler is doing well if he can stay in the saddle for any length of time at all. Reflecting on the comparative ease with which humans govern animals, Xenophon says he was at first inclined to the judgment that “it is easier, given his nature, for a human being to rule all the other kinds of animals than to rule human beings” (1.1.3). 2 Human nature seems to be essentially political yet ungovernable, naturally di- rected neither to republicanism nor to monarchy. “But when we reflected that there was Cyrus, a Persian, who acquired very many people, very many cities, and very many nations, all obedient to himself, we were thus compelled to change our mind to the view that ruling human beings does not belong among those tasks that are impossible, or even among those that are difficult, if one does it with knowledge” (1.1.3). 2 All quotations from Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus will be cited in the text by book, chapter, and section number. Translations are based on that of Wayne Ambler with occasional modifications. 308 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core . 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