In the Library
Anabasis
Xenophon, 390 BCE
- Form
- Form Essay
- Reading time
- Reading time 6.5 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by H. G. Dakyns
- Chapters
- Chapters 7
- Length
- Length 88k words
£1.99
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About the book
Ten thousand Greek mercenaries hire themselves to a Persian prince in the autumn of 401 BCE, march fifteen hundred miles into the interior of the empire, and find themselves stranded by his death at a battle they have won. Xenophon, an Athenian gentleman of Socrates' circle who joined the campaign as a private adventurer, wrote this memoir in the third person around 370 BCE so that another commander seems to be praised. The army elects new generals (Xenophon among them) and turns north, fighting through Armenia, freezing in the passes, until the column's vanguard crests a hill and shouts the word every reader remembers: thalatta, thalatta, the sea, the sea. The anabasis is the going up. The going home is the book.