Information about Anabasis (xenophon)

This article is about the written work by Xenophon; for other uses see Anabasis

Anabasis Aνάβασις is the most famous work of the Greek writer Xenophon.^[1] The journey it narrates is his best known accomplishment.

Xenophon accompanied the Ten Thousand, a large army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger, who intended to seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II. Though Cyrus' army was victorious at Cunaxa in Babylon (401 BCE), Cyrus himself was killed in the battle, rendering the victory irrelevant and the expedition a failure. Stranded deep in enemy territory, the Spartan general Clearchus and most of the other Greek generals were subsequently killed or captured by treachery on the part of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Xenophon played an instrumental role in encouraging the Greek army of 10,000 to march north to the Black Sea. Now abandoned in the middle of the hostile Anatolian plateau, without communications and supplies other than what they could obtain by force as they went, the 10,000 had to fight their way northward, making ad hoc decisions as to their destiny. Ultimately this "marching republic" managed to reach the shores of the Black Sea, a destination they greeted with their famous cry of joyous exultation on the mountain of Madur in Surmene : "thalatta, thalatta (Greek: the sea, the sea!^[2]). "The sea" meant that they were at last able to communicate their position and buy board on the merchant ships that would bring them back to Greece, and safety. This is the story Xenophon relates in this book.

The Greek term referred to an expedition from a coastline into the interior of a country. The term katabasis referred to a trip from the interior to the coast. Since most of Xenophon's narrative is taken up with the march from the interior of Babylon to the Black Sea, the title is something of a misnomer. Socrates makes a cameo appearance when Xenophon asks whether he ought to accompany the expedition. The short episode demonstrates the reverence of Socrates for the Oracle of Delphi.

Cultural influences

Traditionally Anabasis is one of the first unabridged texts studied by students of classical Greek due to its clear and unadorned style; similar to Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico for Latin students. One of the best and most easily found translations is Rex Warner's The Persian Expedition.

The cry of Xenophon's soldiers when they meet the sea is mentioned by the narrator of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, when their expedition discovers an underground ocean.

The Anabasis was the (loosely-adapted) basis for Sol Yurick's novel The Warriors, which was later adapted into a 1979 cult movie of the same name. Both versions relocate Xenophon's narrative to the gang scene of New York. After a gang meet ends with an assassination, the falsely accused Warriors gang have to get home to Coney Island by travelling through territory controlled by hostile gangs who include The Lizzies (Sirens), the Baseball Furies, The Orphans, The Boppers, The Hi-Hats and even The Hoplites.

The book The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford is a fictional account of this group's exploits.

Harold Coyle's 1993 novel The Ten Thousand shows the bulk of the US Forces in modern Europe fighting their way across and out of Germany instead of laying down their weapons when the Germans stole nuclear weapons that were being removed from Ukraine. The operational concept for their move was based on Xenophon's Ten Thousand.

Editions and translations

Anabasis, transl. by C.L. Brownson, Loeb Classical Library, 1922, rev. 1989, ISBN, 0-67499101-X Expeditio Cyri, ed. by E.C. Marchant, Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford 1904, ISBN 0-19-814554-3.

Further reading

• The Project Gutenberg EText
• Anabasis at The University of Adelaide

Footnotes