Patrick Peterson's Reviews > Anabasis

2022-05-25 Just finished this early this morning. Had it on my "To read" list since either High School World History class or an ROTC class in college when I first heard of it. Classic Greek work about a mercenary group of 10,000 in Persia and how they fought, marched, cajoled, outthought, outtalked and outfought their incredible number of adversaries, to get out of Persia or Mesopotamia and back to Greece/Hellas, after the Persian leader Cyrus died trying to kill his brother and take over the Persian Empire. It was quite a feat and quite a tale.

I'm not sure how many years it took or men were lost in the journey, but wow, was it a tale of incredible scope and magnitude.

The motivations and circumstances for why this group of about 10K Greek mercenaries happened to go to Persia to fight for Cyrus were not discussed too much in this book. Money, greed, adventure, ostracism from their Greek homeland, proving one's sense of manhood, etc. - all probably played some parts for the members of this group.

I found the narration of the story fascinating, since the book is accredited to Xenophon, but he plays almost no role in the first third or so of the book, just as the narrator, but then he emerges as the leader of the group, but is only acknowledged as a totally separate actor in the story, not as the narrator. Therefore, the motives of Xenophon are suspect, since the story is very, very complimentary (at least to his values) to him.

The values he says are his highest, and he seems to consistently support throughout the book, are:
- valor
- honesty
- justice
These are reasonable, but do not cover things like:
- human thriving
- peaceful dealings with others
and his views of justice were quite constrained by his understanding of the need for force and what is "due" a whole army which just happens to show up on many, many different peoples' lands, with a request for sustenance, shelter and free passage,... and belief in their honesty and true motives - no small requests, those.

I hope to find a little extra time to review some notes and add some quotations and observations on this fascinating work from about 2500 years ago.

My Kindle advertised another book by Xenophon that I had never heard about before, "Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus" which I took to delve into more on the "Why" would Greek soldiers be so attracted to this leader in Persia as to stake their lives and reputation to travel all the way there to be in his employ. Maybe someday I might follow-up on it. But for now, it is just beyond me why someone would do that.

Oh, and as to the title of the book: "The meaning of ANABASIS is a going or marching up : advance; especially : a military advance." - Interesting that it says "advance" and not "retreat." Spin, not a new concept at all.