ABSTRACT
As we can see in the etymology, the Roman experience of invidia (whence our word “envy”) was conditioned heavily by perception, literally, “looking at someone,” an activity that assumes a sensitivity to the ways in which others may threaten our status in the community. The Greek phthonos does not derive from the act of looking,1 but appearance was just as important, especially in a leadership context. Here, both appearance and resemblance are at play. The leader must understand the world as it appears to others, including their own sensitivity to a perceived threat. In the case of Xenophon’s Cyrus in the Cyropaedia, one way a leader may diminish this threat is to try to make it resemble something benign. So, for example, a leader might try to resemble a “servant” of others rather than the “master.” Xenophon’s preoccupation with how a leader affects his followers’ perception of reality is touched upon throughout the Cyropaedia in a series of different relationships between Cyrus and his followers.
