'This is how I explain the universality of Xenophon': Machado de Assis, Brazilian Republic and the Cyropaedia.

This article examines the reception of Xenophon's *Cyropaedia* in Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s 1904 novel *Esau and Jacob*, focusing on how the Brazilian author uses a passage reflecting on political instability and the difficulty of governing men to comment ironically on Brazil’s transition from monarchy to republic in the late nineteenth century. Machado’s narrator, Counselor Aires, quotes Xenophon’s reflections to highlight the superficiality of political change and the persistence of elite power despite regime shifts, illustrating the novel’s broader themes of duality and social contradiction in Brazilian society. The article situates Machado’s engagement with classical literature within his specific historical and cultural context, contrasting his ironic and relativist reading with European interpretations of Xenophon, and underscores how Machado’s use of ancient texts serves to reinterpret political ideals in light of Brazil’s complex realities during the abolition of slavery and the establishment of the republic.