Xenophon the Socratic soldier and admirer of Sparta would never have written a book like On War because the character of war would have been of less interest to him than the character of men who waged it. Or at least the character of the Greeks who waged war and that of the leaders of the barbarian armies, Cyrus, Tissaphernes and Artaxerxes (ordinary, individual, barbarians are of no consequence to Xenophon except insofar as they are instrumental in carrying out the designs of their leaders). And their character at war and in peace were inseparable and constant, though having different effects, as Xenophon explained in his passages on Clearchus and his captains and his paean to Cyrus the Younger. It has been remarked in this roundtable by Joseph Fouche that Xenophon was thoroughly Greek in his attitude toward the barbarians which Joseph Fouche called a “mirror image” to the attitude of Herodotus toward the Others of the East. I agree, to an extent. The countervailing example though is Cyrus, on whom Xenophon lavished praise with so heavy a hand that it must have struck Athenian eyes as bordering on sycophancy toward a would-be basileus. Few Greek writers, other than Herodotus, were ever so generous with their pen to a barbarian.

The Anabasis of Cyrus is a broad book that contains many levels of understanding; we might even say deceptively broad because the literary style of a war memoir gives it a simpler impression than it actually contains. One can find lessons on leadership, human nature, psychology and always and above all, politics in Xenophon’s march upcountry. Writing in the ancient world was not done for profit as it is today (though “books” circulated or were “published” then far more widely than most moderns realize) but to acquire intangible benefits of influence, a reputation of a sort that the later Romans called “auctoritas”, or to have put in a final word for posterity. Xenophon is never an objective observer and The Anabasis is not a record of the deeds of the Ten Thousand, but instead is Xenophon’s advocacy for The Ten Thousand and most of all, for himself.

Finally, I must put in a word for the translator, Dr. Wayne Ambler, who has mostly been absent from this discussion. I am not a competent judge of linguistics nor is ancient Greece my historical specialty, but I thoroughly enjoyed his edition of The Anabasis of Cyrus. For me, Xenophon was “present” on the pages as I read it. One could see a determined, sweating, short of breath Xenophon dismounting and marching on foot in heavy bronze armor to shame those in the ranks who were complaining about the measures Xenophon was taking for the good of the army. This Xenophon lives and strives. He is not a distant, marble, statue of antiquity, inaccessible to the modern reader.

Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus continues to be read after 2400 years, I suspect, because the narrative of struggling to overcome terrible odds – and succeeding – appeals to our better nature. It is a construct of hope that our daring and our intelligence are enough to see us through any tight corner, given sufficient courage and inexorable drive.

We should all, at some point in our lives, march upcountry.

“As they were thinking about all this, they began to turn to Xenophon. The captains approached him and said that army was of this judgment, and each showed his goodwill and tried to persuade him to undertake the rule. Now in some ways Xenophon wished for this, for he believed that in this way he would obtain greater honor for himself in the eyes of his friends; his own name would be greater when he should arrive in the city; and perchance he could become the cause of some good to the army.”

Leadership often brings with it opportunity, and by nature, leaders tend to be people who have in their characters, an ample amount of ambition. Most people tend to lose their heads when such opportunities arise and permit their ego satisfaction become a driver of their decision-making process. That stupid but ambitious officers are dangerous is an oft remarked truism, variously attributed to a constellation of German generals and field marshals. Xenophon was anything but stupid. Instead he had an intuitive, statesmanlike, grasp of the larger political realities of the Greek world even as he discerned the temper of the hoplite and peltast soldiers in the army to be one of shortsighted enthusiasm for his leadership that could wane when it created difficulties or danger.

Xenophon’s response to the soldiers also demonstrated the keen calculation of self-interest along with political realism:

“Now such considerations stirred him to desire to become co-ruler with sole command. But when on the other hand, he reflected that it was unclear to every human being how the future would go, and because of this there was danger of throwing away even the reputation he had already earned, he was at a loss.”

Xenophon decided to “consult the gods” in order to end his quandry. The sacrifice ( the reading of the entrails) warned against accepting sole command. To refuse the offer of rule from the predominantly Peloponnesian soldiers, it was certainly convenient for Xenophon to do so from a position of unimpeachably pious ground:

“When it seemed clear that they would elect him if someone would put it to a vote, he stood up and said the following: ” I am pleased, men, since I am a human being, to be honored by you, and I am grateful and pray that the gods grant that I may become the cause of some good to you. However, my being chosen ruler by you, when there is a Lacedaemonian man present, does not seem to me to be advantageous to you, but on account of this you would obtain less, if you should need anything from the Lacedaemonians. And as for me,, in turn, I do not believe this to be very safe at all. For I see that the Lacedaemonians did not cease making war on my fatherland until they made the entire city agree that they were their leaders. When they agreed to this, the Lacedaemonians stopped making war right away and no longer continued to beseige the city. So if I, in spite of having seen all this, should seem – wherever I might have the power to do so – to be undermining their authority of their position, I am concerned that I would quickly be brought to moderation. As for what you have in mind, that there would be less faction when one rules rather than when many do, know well that if you choose someone else, you will not find me being factious. For I believe that whoever is at war and is factious against his ruler, this one is factious against his own safety. But if you elect me me, I would not be amazed if you should find someone being vexed at both you and me.”

Xenophon’s wisdom and oratory carried the day and Cheirisophus was elected ruler of the Ten Thousand in his place. There is much to sift through here.

Xenophon was a relatively young aristocrat who struck out for the East, for greener pastures because any ambitions were likely to be thwarted at home. Athens was a broken empire,just defeated at the hands of Sparta in classical antiquity’s equivalent to WWI. The opportunities for service abroad in the name of Athens were nonexistent. Chances for leadership within the city itself were likewise grim. Xenophon came from a notorious circle in Athens, the followers of Socrates, who were in disfavor with the ruling democrats, being suspected of “factious” inclinations and oligarchical sympathies. Two of their number, Alcibiades and Critias were reckoned as infamous traitors and usurpers. Furthermore, Socrates’ continued lack of participation in the Assembly and the private symposia held by his aristocratic students, appeared to indicate a latent political opposition to Athenian democracy itself.

The reputation that Xenophon returned to Athens with could have very serious consequences for him and this uncertainty tempers his ambition. Xenophon does not take command of the army nor does he found any city in his own name, as his critics charged he intended to do. This passage can be read as more than political advice to rough and ready soldiery; it’s an assurance to Athenian democrats that Xenophon, now a proven leader, eschews factionalism and conspiracy. That he is, unlike Alcibiades or Critias, the master of his ambition, rather than being mastered by it, a cautious and loyal man who seeks the common good. Wayne Ambler, the translator of our edition, remarks in the Historical Note section that it was “…the unsettled politics of Athens, especially for a student of Socrates, may have influenced Xenophon’s decision to accept Proxenus’ suggestion that he get to know Cyrus”.

With that hope having come to grief, Xenophon had to make his peace with Athens.

Cyrus, as shown by the spectacles that he repeatedly puts on as motivation exercises for his reluctant mercenaries during the descent to Babylon, is a showman. Many citizens of modern liberal democracies miss the subtlety of manufacturing consent in a traditional hereditary monarchy. Monarchy relies on spectacle as much or in fact more so than a liberal democracy. Masters of the form, whether continent spanning tyrants like Louis XIV or petty princelings of the Holy Roman Empire, rely on symbol, spectacle, and sacralizing as much as the naked violence to which they often resorted. Traditional state violence, whether it be an execution, a military campaign, or jousting, served a theatrical, educational, and propagandizing purpose on top of its pure manifestation of brute force. Cyrus was putting on a performance intended to symbolically and morally knife Artaxerxes almost as much as he was seeking to literally shove eight inches of wrought iron into his own brother’s chest. That Cyrus signally failed in his attempt is no argument against the fundamentally political nature of his warfare. Failure is as much a part of politics as success. If Cyrus failed in his aspiration to become a potent symbol of political success in life, through the freshly rendered pieces of Cyrus meat conspicuously displayed by his brother, Cyrus became a potent symbol of political failure in death.

The remainder of the Anabasis is devoted to a political community whose war is waged for that most naked of political motives: survival. As Victor David Hanson pointed out in one of his more lucid moments, in the Anabasis we are presented with another species of political spectacle from the monarchial pomp and circumstance that Cyrus greets us with at the beginning of Book I. The Ten Thousand are a movable polis, the raw incarnation of Plato’s political animal. Artaxerxes and his minions attempt a decapitation strike on the Ten Thousand, expecting the loss of such high quality individuals as Proxenus, Menon, and Clearchus to reduce the Ten Thousand to the milling peasant rabble. In an Oriental context this strategy made sense: most Asiatic armies were composed of impressed peasants who would eagerly flee the scene of battle if their kings and lords were slain. But the Greeks of this time, before the Persian virus of autocracy transferred through the medium of Macedon hegemony rendered free Greece into slavish Byzantium, were different. Being a distributed command of more or less free men, they selected new leaders including the silver tongued Xenophon, debated their options, and retreated into the mountains of the Kurds and Armenians.

The entire ascent of the Ten Thousand is marked by the intensely political nature of its organizational structure. Leaders such as Xenophon go to great lengths, summoning all of the power of the century old art of sophistry, created just for such occasions of political deliberations by bodies of citizens, to keep the troops together. Discipline seems in many cases to be only imposed when the Ten Thousand want it. Xenophon, for example, is notably called to account for striking a soldier, something the soldiers found appalling. Much of the discipline imposed on the march up to the Euxine is imposed by the pressure of marching through hostile territory but much of it is imposed because the troops have heard the various options, discussed them openly, voted on them, and agreed that that vote is binding upon all. Those that deviate from the agreed consensus are not only scorned by the officers leading them but by their fellow soldiers. The Greeks practiced majoritarian tyranny in its purest form in a state where political questions were at their most stark: one road survival, one road death. Convinced that deviation from the general consensus physically threatened the survival of all, slackers were dealt with harshly.

After the Greeks reach the sea, Xenophon’s strategy has a clear political purpose: the Ten Thousand must acquit themselves in such a way that they can be easily reintegrated into the contemporary Greek world. Not only that, but they had to be able to be reintegrated into a contemporary Greek world ruled by Sparta. This meant the Ten Thousand had to conduct themselves in a manner that fit Greek norms and accommodated Spartan interests. This meant that if they pillaged other Greeks they would draw the hatred of the entire Hellenosphere and if they got on the wrong side of the surly Spartans, they not only couldn’t go home but they might be attacked by the Spartans. In accommodation there was the possibility of pay and provisions. In crossing the Spartans, there was the possibility of poverty and starvation, the common lot of the ancient world. Relations with barbarians were less important but the Ten Thousand politically exploited local disputes to win themselves provisions and passage as they hacked, slashed, sailed, and marched their way across northern Asia Minor. Even when Xenophon plays with the notion of founding a city he clearly is expecting to found a city that would be well integrated with the Greek world. Military operations contrary to that goal of integration are contrary to the political end that Xenophon consistently seeks.

The denouement of the Anabasis with its petty squabbles with the Spartans and Thracian warlords can sometimes seem anticlimactic after the drama of the initial descent and the retreat up to the sea. However, in micro, they present the close intertwining of politics and its servant war. Watch the fun of Xenophon seeking to gain leverage with the Spartans by keeping the Ten Thousand together even if it means slumming with the Thracians. Witness the Thracians maneuvering for political advantage even while they are fighting in the field. See Seuthes try and cozy up to the Spartans while attacking the reputation of the Ten Thousand. In the end the Spartans accommodate the Ten Thousand for their own political purpose: they want to loose them upon the Persians. The Ten Thousand march off to fight in another hazy war under yet another Spartan general.

Politics is nothing if not circular.

The theme of this story continues to reappear down through history when circumstance has found a sizable military force faced with the decision to surrender, or make a fighting retreat, against man and nature.

Earlier, the names of Epaminondas, Sherman and Patton were advanced to show how the rhythm of Xenophon’s Anabasis had resonated with these generals as they prepared, and led their armies in successful campaigns. There are other generals in history whose leadership and tasks more closely mirrored the march of the Ten Thousand. Men like Moore, Slim, Stillwell and Alessandri, are less known because their achievements have faded in the passage of time and still carry the faint stench of defeat.

Few people, other than students of the Napoleonic Wars remember Major General Sir John Moore who in 1808 led a British Army of 23,000 into the heart of Spain in an attempt to stop Napoleon from installing his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain. The British force was attempting to join up with the Spanish and confront Napoleon and his army of 130,000 in Madrid. Moore soon learned as he approached Madrid, that the Spanish armies had been defeated and Napoleon was bearing down on him. Outnumbered two to one, Moore chose to retreat back to port of Corunna, where British ships would be standing by to evacuate his army. Napoleon, like the Persian army before, believed that the weather and the mountains would destroy the British, so he dispatched a smaller force of 25,000 to overtake the faltering British.

The march of several hundred miles took place in the dead of winter and wound through the mountains of northwest Spain. The retreat was punctuated with brilliant rearguard actions and total breakdowns in discipline. Over 4,000 men had been lost by the time the dispirited army reached Corunna. Finding the promised ships absent, Moore was forced to fight the Battle of Corunna which ended when the French were driven back, allowing the British to evacuate by ship. The battle was won at the cost of Moore’s life. He was buried in the ramparts and later, the commander of the French army would build a monument over his grave to honor his courage.

134 years and a continent away, two columns, one a large British force and the other, a tiny group of Anglo-Americans, would make a fighting retreat through hundreds of miles of jungle, constantly harassed by the pursuing Japanese and decimated by disease. Outgunned and outnumbered, the British force under General William Slim made history by making an epic withdrawal under the harshest of conditions fighting as the rearguard in the longest retreat in the history of the British Army.

Japanese forces invaded British Burma in late 1941, with two reinforced divisions. The British force consisted of two under-strength divisions of mostly Indian and Burmese and the famed Desert Rats of the 7th Armored Brigade. A small American force led by General Joseph Stillwell had been sent south from China to lead Chinese forces deployed to assist the British. By March, the Japanese had all but defeated the Allies and a mad scramble ensued to escape to Indian and China.

Duncan Anderson wrote this about Slim, in Churchill’s Generals.

Alexander’s responsibility as army commander now lay in maintaining the efficient functioning of the rear areas for as long as possible, supervising an orderly withdrawal, and ensuring the successful demolition of access routes. It was Slim’s task to keep the frontline forces intact and conduct rearguard operations. The conduct of these two aspects of the retreat is instructive. The rear areas rapidly fell apart, the administrative troops degenerating into bands of pillaging brigands. Confusion reigned supreme. Major Michael Calvert waited for days for Alexander’s order to demolish a vital railway bridge – an order which never came. Conversely, Major Tony Mains, acting under Alexander’s explicit orders, destroyed a stockpile of fuel outside Mandalay which was almost essential for the successful withdrawal of Slim’s 7th Armored Brigade. Years later Slim had still not forgiven the unfortunate Mains.

The retreat of the frontline forces, however, proceeded with almost clockwork precision. A brilliant rearguard action at Kyaukse delayed the Japanese, and at Monywa and Shwegyin, Slim extricated his forces from near disaster with considerable skill. Once contact was broken with the Japanese at Shwegyin, the retreat became as much a race against the monsoon as against the advancing Japanese. Slim marched back with his exhausted and now disease-ridden columns up the Kebaw Valley to the relative safety of Tamu on the India – Burma border. Thin and ragged as they were, they still carried their weapons like soldiers.

Slim like Xenophon, commanded the rearguard and held back the enemy, while assisting the stragglers to safety.

American General Joseph Stillwell carried off an even more unbelievable feat. As Slim was fighting his way across a more southerly route, Stillwell led a small group consisting of American, British and Chinese soldiers as well as 19 Burmese nurses and a few civilians in a daring retreat across mountains and jungles to the safety of India. Remarkably, Stillwell brought everyone of his party of 117, out alive. Stillwell, like Xenophon, carried his personal weapon, in this case a Springfield rifle, and marched alongside his small party making sure each person made it out alive.

There is one final example, less known even among military history buffs. In the spring of 1945 the Japanese had grown suspicious of the Vichy French, with whom they had shared power in the governance of Indo-China since November 1941. On March 9, 1945 the Japanese took control in a bloody coup that forced the surrender of all French forces. Several thousand military and civilian French citizens were killed in cold blood, including the two senior Vichy officials who were publicly beheaded in Saigon. Most of the French garrisons were quickly overrun, but one French officer, Brigadier General Marcel Allassandri of the Foreign Legion got wind of the coup and led his command, consisting of three battalions of the Fifth Foreign Legion Regiment and a few Annamite battalions, for a total of 5,700, in a desperate attempt to reach the Chinese border.

A few days on the trail, short of food and ammunition, Allassandri ordered the local Vietnamese troops to disband and return to their villages, while the 5th Regiment would continue on in an attempt to reach China and safety. What resulted was an epic march, fighting against a Japanese force of 10,000 and covering over 700 miles of mountains and jungles.

On May 2, 1945, the last of the rearguard crossed the Chinese frontier after 98 days of fighting and struggling without a rest. Only about 1,000 men stood for roll call when they assembled in China. Column Allassandri as it was called was met with disregard by the Allies since there was little sympathy for soldiers who had a few months earlier been on the side of the Japanese. As a result, this epic march is almost forgotten. An account can be found in Patrick Trumbell’s Foreign Legion: A History of the French Foreign Legion, Here is a short excerpt.

Ten days later, Captain Gaucher’s 1st Battalion was called upon to resist a major Japanese attack at Ban-Na-Ngha. From then on, each day, repeated attacks on the exhausted rearguard. A company of the 1st Battalion marched forty-three miles in sixteen hours, their march ending in a furious struggle to clear the Meos Pass, a struggle, often hand-to-hand, which lasted all that night and the following day. On 1 April, another successful rearguard action was fought by the 6th Company, 2nd Battalion, under Captain Komaroff, who was killed just as he received orders to fall back. It was during this action that Captain de Cockborne, armed only with a light riding-switch, led a counter-attack, riding at the head of his men on a grey charger.

These small vignettes are included in this discussion of The Anabasis and the march of the Ten Thousand because they serve to illustrate that faced with death, men will follow inspired leaders and presevere against terrible conditions to reach safety and a chance to fight again. Most of those soldiers, who survived these ordeals went on to fight again. The Spartans soon came to dominate Athens and the other city-states. Many of the British, like the famed 42nd Regiment of Foot, The Blackwatch went on to help defeat Napoleon at Waterloo. Generals Slim and Stillwell both returned to the battlefield and led successful campaigns against the Japanese. After the war, General Marcel Allassandri became the head of the French forces in Indo-China as they battled the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh.

There have been thousands of retreats since the Ten Thousand made their way out of Asia. These few examples stand out for the hardships endured, and similarity in leadership skills that mirrored many of the same tactics Xenophon demonstrated so long ago.

The lessons taught in The Anabasis of Cyrus are still relevant. Organization, battle tactics, adjusting to the unexpected, and leadership by example, still rule the day. History may never record great fighting retreats as these again. The last great fighting retreat was preformed by the U.S. Marines as them battled out of the Chosen Reservoir in Korea in 1950. Even in that battle, air support played a major role. Air superiority now holds the key, as shown by the destroyed men and arms at the Falaise Gap in 1944 and on the Road of Death out of Kuwait in 1991. Given the level of technology today, the likelihood that anyone will ever again read of great fighting retreats against a superior foe is almost zero.

The examples of leadership and oratory contained within this ancient tome carries a lasting legacy that continued to rhyme for 2,500 years, when men would rise to the challenge and use their skill of reason and nobility to lead other men to safety.

However, it is also the case that there is a symbolic element in the book, in which Xenophon is using the narrative to illuminate some “big picture” issues. To do that, he uses some artistic devices, woven into the narrative. One of these, which I mentioned in my previous post is the mixing of the literal and metaphorical “ascent” and “descent” of the army, and of Xenophon himself.

This theme becomes more muted after the army reaches the summit of Mt. Eches, at the end of book 4. From that point, the army descends to level ground, and begins to decay as an army and as a quasi-political community. We see in the beginning of Book V, ch. 1, that the discipline and hardihood that carried the army to the sea begins to break down. The first thing they do is gather together to “deliberate about the rest of their journey”. As always with this army, the soldiers themselves must be consulted and agree to any major course of action. The soldiers resist the necessity of marching and carrying heavy loads. The first person to speak, says “I for my part, men, am by now tired of this packing up, walking, running, bearing heavy arms, marching in order, standing guard, and fighting. I now desire to cease from these labors, since we have the sea, to sail the rest of the way stretched out like Odysseus, and to arrive in Greece.” In other words, everything that makes this group of armed men an army, and makes them individually soldiers, is too onerous to keep on doing. In effect, this is a motion to the meeting to dissolve the army and turn it into a group of tourists. The army, like any democratic community presented with a seemingly easy, costless and pleasant course acclaims this proposal.

Of course, the selection of Odysseus as an example tells us how poor an idea this is – Odysseus’s warriors all died, and only he reached Ithaca. The apparent safety of “having the sea” is largely illusory, as the remaining three books show. Once there is any easing of the danger, the impulse of people who have struggled hard and reached any point where the risks or hardship or demands are reduced, is to slack off entirely. This is true of armies, democratic communities, and even of teams of people in the workplace.

Xenophon speaks to the army cleverly, in response. He spends most of his time talking about how they will move by sea, but ends by saying that while they should try to arrange for travel by sea, they must also make prudent provision for travel by land. Repairing the roads is, no doubt, hard, dirty work. This proposal is accepted, but it is greeted with more than grumbling.

You get the sense that Xenophon knew perfectly well that adequate shipping was not going to be available, and he talked about those measures first to placate the crowd. But Xenophon’s standing in the army is still high at this point, and the army accepts his proposal, including the unpopular but necessary preparations to march out by land. As it happens, the various measures to obtain shipping do indeed fail, and because the army is no longer moving, it begins to eat out all the sustenance to be obtained in the area. As a result, they need to go farther and farther afield, to plunder the locals for provisions.

The army, at the beginning of Book V had established contact with the Trapezuntians, who are Greek colonists on the coast of the Pontus – i.e. the Black Sea. This “contact” with a remote outpost of Greece, however, is not the end of the army’s problems. The Trapezuntians manage to turn the army against their local enemies, the Drilae. This shows that the needs of the army can only be satisfied in exchange for something of value, and the only thing the army has to trade is its fighting power.

In Chapter 2, the army fails, because it is foraging in disunited groups, fails to capture the town of the Drilae, and ends up being defeated badly, nearly disastrously. The army burns the town, and barely manages to steal some provisions. It is not an exemplary performance. Further the army only gets away by fleeing. After this battle, the army is “fearful of the descent to Trapezus, for it is steep and narrow”. Again, the descent symbolism is matched by a decline in the army’s professional and moral character.

In Chapter 3, some ships arrive, and “onto the ships were put the sick, those over forty years of age, children, women, and such of the baggage as necessity did not require them to keep with them. … The others began marching.” The army reachess the Greek city of Cerasus. If “Greece” is “home” for the army, it has now reached at least the outermost edge of “home”. At this point, having sent off everyone not a soldier, “there was a review under arms and a counting of the troops, and there were eight thousand six hundred. These had survived from about ten thousand.” The army also “divided the money that had arisen from the sale of the captives.” The generals also took a share as a tithe for Apollo and Artemis.

This episode ends the “march out” of Persia. Now the march would continue into and among Greeks, or at least Greek colonists. The march would occur on more or less level ground along the seacoast.

At this point, Xenophon gives us a “flash forward” to his life once he has settled down in Greece. It is a sort of idyllic life of a rural Greek gentleman. So, he seems to be telling us, whatever happens in the rest of the book, and whatever happens to the army, at least I, Xenophon, will make it “home” go Greece, with the wealth and esteem needed to enjoy being there. Xenophon ends Ch. 3 on this note. It is marks the end of one phase of the army’s life, the march in and out of Persia, and the return “home”. It marks the beginning of a new phase. Up to this point, it had been “a Greek army among barbarians”, and from this point it becomes, mostly, “a Greek army among Greeks” or “a Greek army employed by Greeks” or “a Greek army in search of a purpose or an employer”.

The new phase does not get off to an auspicious start. The first thing that happens in ch. 4 is the army suffers its first unambiguous defeat.

Xenophon shows himself to be a leader for all occasions, as usual. He makes a speech to the beaten army, and uses the defeat to teach the army some “lessons learned”. He tells them that those who were “heedless of staying in order with us” have paid the penalty and will be disinclined to do so again. In other words, disunity and ill-discipline have led to defeat, and everyone can see that. He also notes that it is important that the army be seen by its supposed friends as well as its enemies to be “better than they are” and that “they will not be fighting the same sort of men now as when they fought those that were in disorder”. In other words, the army must preserve its reputation, and this defeat must be seen – by the army itself and its enemies – as an exception. So, the army prepares itself, makes its offerings to the gods, and tries again. The enemy fights hard, but “the Greeks would not yield and kept advancing all together, the barbarians began to run away.” The army regains its unity, defeats the enemy completely, and captures and plunders their town. Xenophon has prevented the army from unraveling, and regained its reputation and self-respect, as well as necessary provisions.

Some of the lessons from this part of the book are pretty clear. First, any community is going to be more cohesive, united, brave, tough — if it is facing a serious threat – real or imagined or even one whipped up by politicians or others. Once the pressure is off, the desire of all the persons in the community to seek an easier path becomes very difficult to keep in check, even if ongoing dangers still exist. Keeping the army, or any group, together, under these circumstances, is harder, and requires a more subtle (and even dishonest) form of leadership than leadership in the face of unambiguous mortal danger. Second, no community (that is not annihilated) ever reaches a final “goal”. There is always a next deal of the cards. There is going to be some letdown when any real-world end-point is reached. Everything falls short of what is hoped for, and disappointment and disillusionment are the necessary corollaries of any success, let alone any failure. Keeping things going after this deflation requires leadership, and setting new goals, perhaps smaller, simpler ones, is necessary. Third, defeat which is not total and decisive, can lead to dissolution, if leadership is lacking, but it can also be used by a good commander / coach / boss / teacher as a way to energize and motivate a better performance in the next go-around.

Finally, for now, I will return to the ascent / descent metaphor. We see in the rest of the book that the army’s professional and moral descent will follow a jagged downward pattern in the remaining three Books. However, under the more ambiguous and in some ways more challenging conditions of command, where there is no desperate struggle to keep the army united, where the goals are less compelling and obvious, where material factors like getting paid, and who gets to command, come up repeatedly, Xenophon continues to succeed as a commander. His ascent in terms of skill and practical wisdom continues.

I hope to have two more posts – one on the rest of the book, and one on the theme of Xenophon through the lens of Clausewitz. We shall see how that plays out.

I will add here as a grumbling footnote, that Oscar Wilde was correct that youth is wasted on the young. Getting up at “0 Dark 30” to work on this before the kids get up, reading it haphazardly between various obligations, knowing that Xenophon deserves better from me, but being unable to give him what he merits – this all reminds that a college student who has the luxury to spend several uninterrupted hours in a quiet library with the sunlight streaming in (Winter afternoons in Harper Library come nostalgically to mind) has a priceless treasure that he will not appreciate until long after it is gone – and long after it has probably been squandered. But it is better to do our poor best, and spend as much time as we can with Xenophon and his army.

Not much discussed in the forgoing posts, has been Xenophon’s speech to the assembled soldiers before setting out on their march to the sea. Reading the speech, one will note several themes that have a familiar ring to any student of American military history. This account of how Xenophon dressed for the occasion has a twin in the way one American General outfitted himself for battle.

“After this, as Xenophon stood up, having equipped himself for war as nobly as he could, for he believed that if the gods should grant victory, the noblest of adornment was fitting for being victorious, but if there should be the need for his life to come to an end, he believed it was right that considering himself worthy of the most noble thing, he meet his end in these noble arms.”

Reading this passage brings to mind General George S. Patton, who in the 1920’s, read and annotated his copy of Anabasis among his many other readings of ancient history. One can begin to understand Patton’s theatre and how he might have been influenced to create his noble image in the shadow of Xenophon.

Patton’s shiny helmet, bedecked chest of medals and ivory handled pistols served to fashion the image of noble leadership that not only fed Patton’s sense of history, but an image equal to the Prussian foe’s taste for martial dress.

Xenophon’s speech could be characterized as the first example of marching orders; complete with composition, movement, logistics and order of battle. He cautioned against the alternatives, then lays out a plan of attack enlisting those in favor to vote to follow the leaders they had selected. In true democratic fashion, Cheirisophus seconds Xenophon’s plan and calls for a confirming vote that is followed by a vote to endorse the tactical deployment of the hollow square to protect the baggage train.

In closing, Xenophon exalted every man to do his duty. “For the victorious kill, the defeated are killed.” This phrase is again echoed by General Patton with these bellicose words; “…no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” This excerpt from a speech given by Patton to the Third Army prior to D-Day has a tone much like Xenophon’s reference to being remembered as brave men when they return to their families.

“Now, there’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, “What did you do in the great World War Two?” You won’t have to say, “Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”
General George Patton, May 31, 1944

Patton’s coarse oratory was aimed to reach his yeoman soldiers, born of the cities, towns and farms of a country just past the grip of the Great Depression. We cannot know verbatim, the language used by Xenophon to inspire the Ten Thousand; it has been left to his hand to transmit. What we can surmise, is how it affected Patton and his leadership style, planning and execution.

Patton fame has been colored by the famous slapping incidents that almost ended his career. Xenophon has a similar brush with fate, when he was accused of abusing a soldier. Xenophon avoided losing his command by proving his behavior was motivated after the man had fallen behind in the snow and had given up. Xenophon’s harsh treatment saved the man’s life and by the end of the trial, gained his gratitude.

Other military leaders have come to employ Xenophon’s tactics. Think back to General William T Sherman as his army stood poised in Atlanta in the fall of 1864. He not only employed similar logistics, but began a campaign that also led to the sea. When one examines Sherman’s tactics after the Battle of Atlanta, the stories begin to rhyme.

After the fall of Atlanta Sherman faced a dilemma, if he remained with his large force encamped around Atlanta and winter coming on he could expect to lose more men to illness than battle. His army would become complacent to hold territory and lose their fighting edge. This sounds vaguely familiar to Xenophon’s caution about remaining among the Persians, who after a time would accept them. Xenophon worried that once they became comfortable among the worldly pleasure of Persia, they would; “Forget our way home.”

General Sherman then made a decision to follow the same tactics, advanced by Xenophon 2400 years earlier. He chose the fittest of his army, 62,000 strong and sent the others north. Then he destroyed the rail links out of Atlanta, burned all the non-essential material and marched off towards the sea. His army took only enough ammunition for each man to have 200 rounds, and enough food to begin the trek, the rest like the larder of the Ten Thousand would be filled with plunder as they marched.

When Sherman’s Army reached Savannah on December 21, 1864, the campaign was dubbed “March to the Sea.” The event as noted by historian Victor Davis Hanson in his book, Soul of Battle, was reminiscent of Xenophon’s Anabasis where they cried out upon reaching the sea, these immortal words; The Sea! The Sea!

Marching up country, has another lesser know thread that comes courtesy of Hanson’s book, Soul of Battle. Thirty years after the return of the Ten Thousand, Theban General Epaminondas led an expedition into the heart of the Spartan empire, using many of the tactics first used by the Ten Thousand in their march across hostile territory. It is ironic that Xenophon, by this time an admirer of Spartan life, would grudgingly admit to Epaminondas’s ability to prepare and lead his army. Even more ironic is that Xenophon’s son Gryllos was believed by Athenians to have killed Epaminondas in the Battle of Mantinea.

These vignettes are but a few, who seem to have a rhythm first sung by the actions of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand in their long march up country.

In the coming weeks I will add a few more examples of how history’s chimes sometimes ring on the same note.

First, I am looking at this specifically from Clausewitz’s concept of cohesion which I have defined as his theory of politics.  This is not the only aspect of his concept of cohesion, but the main one that I will be dealing with here.  This was laid out in my “Clausewitz, On War, Book VIII, Chapter 3, The Concept of Cohesion”:

Cohesion as the moral (think tribalism, nationalism) and material (think constitution, institutions, shared views of how to define “civilization”) elements that make up the communal/social organizations of political communities, including the three ideal types discussed below. Moral cohesion can be seen as the traditional communal values of a political community, whereas material cohesion (in its most developed form) is the complexus of modern cosmopolitan values associated with society. The two types exist is a certain state of constant stress and tension with modern values actually being destructive to the retention of traditional values (following Weber). Cohesion here is Clausewitz’s theory of politics which also includes the abstract concept of money.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6849.html#more-6849

It should be pointed out that Clausewitz sees war as a type of human interaction and part of the realm of political relations.  One of the three elements of war which provides the capstone of Clausewitz’s general theory of war (the overall theory which covers all wars) is the subordination to politics (see On War, Book I, Chapter 1, Section 28).  Why should be make a distinction between moral and material cohesion?  Because the interaction between the two can be to strengthen the overall cohesion of the political community or contrarily to weaken it.  For instance Xenophon appeals to religious or spiritual values – moral cohesion – (The Anabasis, Book III, Ch 2, verse 9) while later appealing to monetary values (III, 3, 18) which can be contradictory.  Also more modern political organizations (states) can be counter to the interests of pre-modern ones (tribes and clans), that is the material cohesion of states can be corrosive to the moral cohesion of a tribe.

In “Cohesion: Exploring the Myths and Opening the Veil”, LtCol CD Donnell states that social cohesion has four fundamental components: ideas, relationships, values and communication. 

 The reader will notice that there is a timeless quality to what I have introduced so far.  Clausewitz is talking about general concepts which pertain to conflict and Donnell’s components have representation in all communities regardless of the level of development.  It is my assumption here that Xenophon’s Anabasis lends itself to Clausewitzian strategic theory analysis and that the insights that exist in Anabasis concerning the formation of a political community are in turn timeless.

We start with the Greek army marching through Asia Minor east, but with no actual idea of their real goal.  It is only after they have advanced a considerable distance that their benefactor, Cyrus of Persia, tells all the Greek generals the true goal of their expedition – the defeat of his brother the King of Persia and his own establishment as new king.  The Greeks do not react positively to this and demand more money to continue.  Xenophon remarks that the mass of the Greeks continue on out of a sense of shame, that is more a sense of inertia and vague material interest drives the army on (III, 1, 10).  Their military professionalism and sense of belonging to “Greece” can be seen as elements of material cohesion, whereas their sense of belonging to specific city states or tribes and their individual loyalties to their specific generals can be seen as moral cohesion.  Both types of cohesion are weakened at specific instances during the advance by the actions of for instance Menon when he convinces his army to advance first across the Euphrates River and thus gain the favour of Cyrus at the expense of the other Greeks (I, 4 15).

The moral and material cohesion of the Greek Army is sufficient to get them to the battle of  Cunaxa and allow them to make a good accounting of themselves, but the battle ends in disaster for the Greeks since Cyrus is killed and his body mutilated by his brother the Great King.  Cyrus’s death removes the political support and purpose that holds the Greek army together and unites it with its Persian allies.  Without Cyrus there is also no source of monetary funds to pay the soldiers who are now without a patron.  Xenophon is also well aware of the new political situation and how the Greek Army poses a threat to the Great King by its very continued existence (II, 4, 3-4).

At this point the Greeks are in a very difficult position in terms of both political support and organizational cohesion, and Clearchus takes command by mutual assent (II, 2, 5).  Clearchus while extremely capable is a transition figure imo since he was the only Greek general who had known Cyrus’s original intention, not telling the others and he was as Xenophon tells us “fond of war” to the exclusion of peace.(II, 6)  To lead this army home is going to require a different sort of leader, one who can harness his sense of panic for the overall good of the Army as a whole and build a political community by increasing both moral and material cohesion.  Xenophon knows that fear can act as a source of strength providing the intellect is able to keep it in check (III, 1, 14).  Clearchus is a capable commander and able to deceive the Persians as to his true strength (II, 3, 3) as well as operating within the logistic, geographic and tactical restraints he finds himself in, but without the outside and overwhelming pressure of the now hostile and united Persians, Clearchus’s focus would have been lost and his tendency to go looking for trouble and risk taking would have needlessly endangered the Greek Army.

 In this way the betrayal of the Greek leadership by Tissaphernes is a turning point in Greek fortunes, for whereas most of their established leadership is wiped out, so too are sources of friction and disharmony that plague them as an organization.  The way that the Greek leadership is despicably betrayed adds to the cohesion of the group, reminding the Greeks of the hardships and triumphs of their ancestors against the descendents of their very same traditional enemies (III, 2, 11-14).  The Greek Army transforms itself from a loose band of mercenary groups in to a national army with higher levels of material and moral cohesion.  Xenophon expertly appeals to all components of social cohesion: ideas, relationships, values and communication to build this political community.  He is quick to use any event in supporting his goal (III, 2, 9) of forming this community, where the survival of the whole, not the instinct of the individual, is the guiding concept.

Throughout the text Xenophon gives contrasting examples of leadership in the narrative, and as with Cyrus and Clearchus, his explicit commentary. Xenophon’s conception of leadership goes beyond that of command and embraces political acumen, foresight and the moral example provided by Greek and Persian rulers ( used here in the same sense as Ambler’s translation, of anyone holding authority over others). In this conception of leadership, I think the teachings of Socrates lies heavily on Xenophon and the passages about Xenophon pressing forward to go East with Proxenus were included mainly to assert the independence of his judgment to his fellow Athenians.

How did Xenophon present the notable “rulers” in The Anabasis? A few examples:


Clearchus the Spartan: Clearchus is presented by Xenophon as a competent and fearless commander but one lacking in wisdom, deeply flawed by a character that was given over to wrath. Xenophon, who was an admirer of Spartan military prowess, nevertheless portrays Clearchus as a martinet and something of a fool:

“Clearchus, was agreed by all those who had experience of him, to have seemed to be a man who was both war-like and war-loving to an extreme….When it is possible to be at peace without shame or harm, he chooses to make war; when it is possible for him to turn to an easygoing life, he wishes to do hard labor, so long as it be in making war….
….He was also said to be fit to rule, as far as this is possible with a character such as he had. For he was competent as any other in thinking out how his army might have provisions and in providing them; and he was competent also to impress it upon those who were with him that he, Clearchus, had to be obeyed. This he used to do by being severe. For he was stern to behold and harsh in his voice; and he always punished with severity, sometimes in anger, so that there were times when even he regretted it.
….Amid dangers, therefore, his soldiers were exceedingly willing to listen to him, and they would choose no other. For they said that his sternness….and severity seemed to be a strength against the enemy, so that it seemed to betoken safety and be severity no longer. But when they were out of danger and it was possible to go away and be ruled by others, many would leave him; for he had no charm but was always severe and fierce. The soldiers consequently were disposed toward him as boys toward a teacher.”

Xenophon’s assessment comes after Clearchus is beheaded by the Great King, having been betrayed by the treacherous Tissaphernes, to whom Clearchus stubbornly went under truce and unarmed, against all advice. Hotheaded and suspicious, he provokes a brawl with the soldiers of Menon, fear of whose intrigues causes Clearchus to trust his enemy, Tissaphernes, more than his fellow Greeks. Clearchus, despite his physical bravery and military skill lacks both the judgment and justice required of a true leader.

Cyrus: Xenophon lavishes extensive praise on Cyrus, more so than on any other figure in the book. To some extent this is an apologia for a deceased man in whose cause the Ten Thousand marched, justifying their expedition to posterity. What Xenophon stressed foremost, was not the generalship of Cyrus –perhaps understandably – but his propensity as a ruler for generosity, mercy and justice. Qualities necessary for a legitimate basileus and that contrast handsomely with those of his brother the Great King, whom Cyrus sought to depose:

“Thus did Cyrus end his life, a man who, of all the Persians born since Cyrus the Elder, was both most kingly and most worthy to rule, as agreed by all those reputed to have had direct experience of Cyrus.
….if he made a treaty with someone, if he made an agreement with someone, or if he promised something to someone – not to be false in any respect. And therefore the cities that turned to him, trusted him, and men trusted him. When Cyrus made a treaty, even if someone was an enemy, he trusted that he would not suffer anything contrary to the treaty. Accordingly, when he made war against Tissaphernes, all the cities voluntarily chose Cyrus instead of Tissaphernes, except the Milesians…
….Nor yet could anyone say that he allowed malefactors and the unjust to laugh, but punished them most unspariungly of all….Consequently, it became possible in Cyrus’ realm for both Greek and Barbarian, if he did no injustice, to travel without fear wherever he might wish, while having with him whatever suited him”

Cyrus looks particularly good next to his enemy Tissaphernes, an intriguing betrayer without honor, and the Great King, who appears both vindictive and rather cowardly in facing the Ten Thousand with vastly superior forces. What goes unremarked by Xenophon, was how colossal a failure of military-political judgment it was that led Cyrus to challenge his brother with greatly inferior forces and then, with battle engaged, to be unable to prevent his own Persians from breaking while the Ten Thousand advanced. Cyrus, who brought his Greek mercenaries to war initially under false pretenses, could not deliver as a warlord and paid the ultimate price. A ruler must be able at war before he can demonstrate his mastery in peace and Cyrus was not able, Xenophon’s praise notwithstanding.

The other rulers, Menon etc. look worse in their short descriptions than did Clearchus.

Xenophon, though he does not stoop often to openly praise himself, demonstrates the fusion of martial abilities, judgment, justice, foresight and moral example as The Anabasis unfolds. One could say that Xenophon’s leadership exemplifies a Socratic balance – and in case we missed that point, “Theopompus” (i.e. Xenophon) is compared to a philosopher in an exchange by a Greek herald of the enemy.

Of course, Xenophon is our reporter. He has the luxury of writing the history and neither Clearchus nor Tissaphernes, who ultimately came to a very bad end, are there to dispute his account. That said, fact or fiction or self-promoting “spin”, Xenophon is using the story of the Ten Thousand to present a political subtext on leadership that is at odds with that of the ruling democratic faction of his day in Athens.

Perhaps that was always his motive.

In Clearchus’s obituary, Xenophon describes a ruthless officer who is feared by all, respected by all, and liked by none(II,6).  Clearchus was also the only Greek general who knew from the outset what Cyrus intended to do with the army he was raising(III, 1 (10)). Two questions are very much worth contemplating:

For whom was Clearchus working? And: who is responsible for his death?

The simple answer to the first is that Clearchus was working for Cyrus, as the narrative recounts.  The narrative also allows the following interpretation: that Clearchus was using Cyrus to obtain sufficient treasure and military power to install himself as a King somewhere in the Hellenic world. There is a third possibility however: that Clearchus was in the employ of Artaxerxes, charged with tempting Cyrus to attempt a coup, and, if successful, delivering him to Persia and his death.  If you imagine that this was his mission, he succeeded in this as well.

At Tarsus and then Thapsacus, the Greeks assembled by Clearchus finally realize that they (I,3 and I,4) are on expedition to overthrow the king of Persia, not to raid his westernmost Satraps.  At this juncture, the disaster that has befallen them is evident to most of them, but not laid out in detail for the reader.  It’s worthy of some reflection.  First, you cannot, as a mercenary, withdraw from employment without badly damaging your subsequent prospects.  The rulers of Greece would never have allowed a large number of Greeks to participate in such an expedition, for fear of punitive war from the Persians should it fail. If the expedition failed, the Greek troops were likely to perish en masse in Mesopotamia or Persia proper. Orderly retreat from such a disaster over such an immense distance through hostile territory is highly improbable.  In defeat, few or none of the Greeks would return home.  If Cyrus had prevailed, he would have required the Greeks to remain in Persia, to help solidify his control of his empire.  In this instance, the Greeks are stuck in Persia indefinitely, and Clearchus is the power behind the throne. Worse, the Greek generals are likely to become caught up in Persian palace intrigues, and divided and slaughtered over time.  It is certain that Cyrus will honor his promises of rich compensation for his Greek mercenaries; his survival in the short term depends upon them.  If and when the Greeks were released from Cyrus’s service, the Spartans would not welcome an army of such power back into Greece. Rather, they would destroy it so that it did not destabilize the balance of power and initiate a downward spiral into another civil war.  Clearchus played his fellow Greeks, and put them in a situation where it was very unlikely that they would ever return to Greece.

Fast forward to the end of the day at Cunaxa. Cyrus is dead.  Clearchus is still the leader of the Greeks, but is much a dead man as his patron Cyrus.  If Clearchus was in fact an agent of Artaxerxes, then Artaxerxes would want him dead ASAP to prevent him from leveraging this knowledge with other Persian nobility.  If you are Artaxerxes and you regard Clearchus as the genius behind Cyrus’s campaign and his most trusted confidant, then you want him dead for the role he played in attempting to overthrow you.  As the narrative suggests, the slaughter of Clearchus and the other senior leaders would appear to make the subsequent destruction of the remaining leaderless Greek forces much less problematic.  There are no upsides for Artaxerxes to allow Clearchus to live.  If you are any of the Greeks, you hearken back to Tarsus and Thapsacus, and realize that Clearchus’s treachery is responsible for the disastrous position you are now in.  You want him dead, and everyone he identifies as a trustworthy lieutenant too.  You have no doubt that he will sell any or all of you out to anyone to preserve his hide or advance his fortunes, as he has already done so once.  It makes one wonder: did any of the surviving Greek leaders have anything to do with the death of Clearchus?

When Cyrus dies at Cunaxa, the destruction of Clearchus becomes a certainty.

Tigris River

[Jonathan adds: A larger version of this image is below the "Read the rest" link.]

The opening phase of this discussion of Greek soldier, historian Xenophon’s account of the expedition to unseat Artaxerxes King of Persia by his brother Cyrus, has touched on several important elements. First, most important to any great undertaking was logistics, aptly covered in the first post by Fringe. Next, Steven Pressfield introduced the route and how it influenced Alexander the Great, who used the Anabasis of Cyrus as a guidebook in his conquest of Persia decades later. Lexington Green then offered up an overview of the each chapter, laying out the story line in concise detail. Most recently, Joseph Fouche took pen to point out important distinctions between Xenophon’s writing style and that of Herodotus.

The book that most of us have chosen to base our discussion is the translation by Wayne Ambler. In the introduction, Eric Buzzetti writes, “The Anabasis has the makings of a great Hollywood movie.” This statement along should stimulate the most benign reader to pursue the book further. Inside, they will not be disappointed; the story unfolds like a travel log detailing distance traveled, people encountered, battles fought and the unfolding loose republican democracy that formed after the death of their generals at the hand of Artaxerxes. Then becomes what could be described as the one of the great epics combining battles with political intrigue and lessons in leadership.

Anyone who sets out to read this book would do well to prepare themselves by carefully reading the introduction. Then turn to the back and make one’s self familiar with the Historical notes and the Glossary where they will find not only a definition of terms, but an explanation of the scale of measurements which is elementary to follow the journey up country and the escape to safety.

Tigris River

The opening pages of book I, contain two maps tracing the journey into Persia, the retreat north to the Black Sea and back across the Hellespont to Greece. The maps are simple, but can be enhanced, courtesy of Google Earth and 21st century technology, for a true look at the lay of the land. Here are some of the highlights to be discovered when perusing the route in this manner.

As one looks at the first part of the journey up country across today’s Turkey, they will note that the land contains sustainable resources that Cyrus’s expedition could harvest by trade or pillage. Each stage, five parasangs, (3.3 miles) of the journey is logged in the text, giving amateur geographers a chance to demonstrate their skills. Rivers are noted for their width and potential bounty of fish, and towns, for their accommodation or resistance.

Tracing the journey with the help of Google Earth allows for a birds eye view of the challenges that await the Ten Thousand. For example, the five stages, (115 miles) that led from Araxes River across the Syrian Desert to the Mascas River were described as barren and devoid of life. The view today reveals that little has changed in 2500 years. The Euphrates River, a dam now blocking its upper reaches, still stretches like a green ribbon across the breadth of western Babylon. The route soon to be followed by the Ten Thousand up the Tigris traces a green line of irrigated farmland. This land along the Tigris was the lifeline that the Ten Thousand followed as they fought north to the relative safety of the mountains, home of the Carduchoi, ancestors of today’s Kurdish people.

Looking down on this route, one sees the logic of why Xenophon convinced the army to take this route. Going back across the desert would expose them to two dangers. The land just traversed was still feeling the footprints of all who traveled with Cyrus, 110,000 strong, (including the 10,000 Greek hoplites). Second, it was a flat table land that gave the advantage to the Persian cavalry. The mountains however unknown, offered the Greeks a chance to alter their tactics by changing the formation to a hollow square to guard their baggage train. They added more sling throwers, (peltastai) who used lead pellets, for longer distance to stave off the approach of the Persians. As they entered the mountains most of the Persian army stopped pursuing in the belief that the winter would destroy the Greek army.

Looking down on those mountains today from the lens of Google Earth, one can zoom into observe the valleys and gain an appreciation of the challenge of finding a route across the mountains to the sea and the Greek Colonies along its shore. Scouting parties were formed to range ahead to find routes and warn of potential enemies. The army was beginning to resemble what we today would call a combined arms force, with heavy infantry, cavalry, scouts, artillery (sling throwers) and support (camp followers) all arrayed together to accomplish their goal.

The Greek colonies found along the Black Sea offered no sure guarantee of safety, since feeding and supporting ten thousand uninvited soldiers strained even the most affluent colonies larders. The unfolding story of this part of the journey waits to be discussed.

Stepping back to the first book, understanding the tone of the author requires the reader to know that it is being written in the voice of Theopompus, the pseudonym for Xenophon. His viewpoint, although detailed in matters of logistics, geography and military matters is that of a Greek who views all others as Barbarians whose social habits fall below the station of any Greek. The author’s note that Theopompus means “God-sent” is a sign that Xenophon holds his own self-worth in the highest degree, even when writing in the third person.

As we prepare to leave book I, the Greek Hoplites and their generals, basking in the tactical victory of the Battle of Cunaxa are unaware of the fate that awaits them. Book II will open the reader’s eyes to new dangers, tales of audacity and examples of oratory that still echo down through the ages.

Xenophon was no exception. The Anabasis almost reads like a strange mirror version of the Histories. Instead of the Ascent of Darius, Xerxes, or Mardonius into the heart of Hellas, it’s the descent of the Greeks into the heart of Achaemenid power. The squabbling Greeks, under the less than inspired figures of Clearchus, Proxenus, and Menon, appear rather shabby compared to the heroic generation of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Pausanias. Cyrus in his foolish death and disfigured body and Artaxerxes II in his pettiness and undignified scramble to keep his throne fall far short of the power and majesty of Darius and Xerxes, so exalted that Herodotus portrayed them as living embodiments of hubris, pride that not only rivaled but threatened that of the gods themselves.

Herodotus portrays the mighty Xerxes, in the full flower of his pride, flogging the Hellespont as punishment for destroying his first pontoon bridge from Asia into Europe. Artaxerxes II, on the other hand, barely escapes with his life and throne, blusters at the Ten Thousand, flees cravenly when the Ten Thousand post him up, and proceeds to engage in all sorts of gutter intrigue. With great insight, Xenophon convinces the leaderless Greeks that the Great King would never negotiate with them in good faith. Artaxerxes II knew he looked pathetic. If I were Artaxerxes II, I wouldn’t want my vulnerabilities broadcast to all the world either, especially when I’d been shown up by a bunch of country bumpkins from Arcadia, the armpit of Greece. I would kill every last man, woman, child, beast of burden, or slave of the Ten Thousand. Being routed is one depth of humiliation. Being routed by rednecks, however, is a depth of humiliation that Persians hadn’t faced since the Spartans reacted to a demand for earth and water by throwing the Great King’s emissaries down a well into the bowels of Mother Earth.

Xenophon continues Herodotus’s amateur anthropology by observing the Oriental Other. However Xenophon lacks the cosmic depths of Herodotus’s cosmopolitanism. Xenophon goes up country a Greek and comes down it a Greek. The locals are primarily defined by their non-Greekness, suffering from the irreversible disease of original high barbarity. Bar bar they all say. Bar we are shifty. Bar we are treacherous. Bar we betray even the gods with our lies. Bar we are unable to rule ourselves. Bar we are slaves. Bar we are sheep. Bar we are strange. Some of the Oriental world is familiar, a terrain populated by agrarian villages bursting with provisions and ripe for plunder. Some of it lies behind an iron cage that Xenophon, trapped in his Greekness, is barred from opening.

Everything Xenophon does is in deadly earnest. While this is largely because Xenophon’s fate and the fate of the Ten Thousand were delicately balanced on the edge of a knife blade, Xenophon doesn’t strike me as a bon vivant in any of his other works. In contrast, Herodotus is a damned hippie, cheerfully imbibing and inhaling whatever the locals would offer. Herodotus is Mr. Fun, painting the world in bright fun Deluxe Crayola colors, a literary Expressionist for all time. Xenophon is more like Thucydides, a gloomy and bitter exile justifying the vagaries of his career by pouring out apologia galore. Like Seurat, he paints the world as a summation of pinpricks, with himself cast as the most prominent prick.

I’m more sympathetic with Herodotus, who toiled away making his living through readings before a democratic mob, than with Xenophon, who spent much of his career as a literary Vyshinsky for the totalitarian Spartans. But with his descent into Mesopotamia, the birthplace of autocracy, Xenophon demonstrates that there are differing degrees of tyranny and even the citizens of Sparta had not fallen to the depths of the Great King’s slaves, driven into battle and corvee with whips. Of course tyranny, like influenza, is catching and the Ten Thousand may have brought the virus back with them from Mesopotamia, setting the scene for the passing of vigorous Greek liberty at Chaeronea a mere 63 years later. It is not without a touch of truth that the great historian Arrian’s history of the first flowering of Oriental despotism in the free soil of Greece is called the Anabasis of Alexander.

The identity of Cyrus is unambiguous. We know Cyrus was the younger brother of the King of Persia (really an emperor of many kingdoms). Cyrus was the satrap of Lydia and Phrygia, but he aspired to seize the throne of his brother the King for himself. Cyrus raised an army, led it against the King, and died in battle at Cunaxa, in 401 BC.

The other key word in the title is “Anabasis”, which is transliterated, but not translated, from the Greek. The translator tells us this about the word:

This noun has the root meaning of “a going up,” and it is used to indicate such ordinary ascents as the mounting of a horse or a way of going up a hill. In the sense of a march upcountry, it is used first by Xenophon, only in this work, and only in [certain passages] … It is used three times in Plato’s Republic to indicate the ascent from the cave. The related verb anabaino is used of an “ascent” from the coast to the interior by Herodotus … and by Plato … as well as by Xenophon. I generally translated the verb as “to ascend” and its opposite as “to descend”.

Book I contains the tale of the assembly of the army, and its “march upcountry”, from coastal Ionia, where the Greek mercenary portion of the host came ashore into Asia, and its march into the interior, upcountry from Sardis, Cyrus’s capital, until the two armies meet at the battle of Cunaxa. At the battle, the Persian King’s army in part was defeated, on the section of the battlefield where it faced the Greek mercenaries. The Greek mercenaries “won” their part of the battle of Cunaxa. But elsewhere on the battlefield, due in part to the rashness of Cyrus, and his resulting death, the King’s army defeated the rest of Cyrus’s army. At that point, the Greeks, despite tactical success, were marooned in the middle of a hostile country.

Thus we are faced with a bit of a puzzle from the outset.

The Anabasis of Cyrus is composed of seven “books”. Yet, the literal “anabasis of Cyrus” ends at the end of Book I. His anabasis was terminated abruptly by his death at Cunaxa.

If that is so, what about the rest of the book? It can’t be about Cyrus, or his anabasis, since he is dead. But it can still be about some other anabasis, or someone else’s anabasis, an ascent for some or all of the Greek survivors.

Book II consists of the period of hostile truce between the Greek army and the Persians. The Persians demand that the Greeks lay down their weapons, but the Greek wisely refuse, and encamp near the Persians, in a show of strength.

(As an aside, I wonder if the refusal of a Greek army, composed mostly of Peloponnesians (Spartans) to hand over their arms to a Persian King, even in the face of apparently hopeless odds, would have been understood by Xenophon’s readers as an echo of the Spartan response of “come and take them” to a similar demand before the battle of Thermopylae.)

Book II It ends with the treacherous murder of the Greek commanders who were parleying with the Persians, supposedly under a truce.

At the beginning of the Book III the author tells us that when word reached the Greek troops that their commanders had been killed they were dispirited, and believed that they would never escape. They thought about their homes and families, whom they thought they would never see again. At this point, Xenophon, the author, introduces Xenophon, the character in the history, his own younger self: “In the army there was a certain Xenophon, an Athenian, who followed along even though he was neither a general nor a captain nor a soldier … .” This is an important point. Xenophon will prove to have the competence of a military professional, but he is not one at the time he assumes command. He “followed along” — he was a non-combatant camp-follower.

Xenophon tells us in a flashback that he had decided to march with army at the suggestion of a friend, and in defiance of the advice of Socrates. He had met up with the army at Sardis, “when they were about to set out on their upward journey” – I presume the word here in Greek is anabasis. He also tells us that he had been misled, and that he and many others would not have marched against the King if they had know that was Cyrus’ plan, but “the majority nonetheless followed along out of shame both before each other and before Cyrus. Xenophon too was one of these.” So, he is not only a follower, but an unwilling and shame-faced follower.

Xenophon then flashes forward and tells us that he has a dream, which he finds ambiguous. Lacking clear guidance from a supernatural source, he examines himself, asking “why am I lying here”? And he realizes that if someone does not take command he and the rest of the army will die. “After this, Xenophon stood up … .” I looked at the Greek text, and Xenophon “standing up” does not seem to be the same word as anabaino, so it is not a direct cognate of anabasis. Nonetheless, at the beginning of Book III, after the end of the ascent of Cyrus in Book I, and a period of stasis while the two armies are having a sort of Mexican standoff (Mesopotamian standoff?) in Book II, an anabasis-within-the-Anabasis begins.

Having stood up, Xenophon makes a speech to the a group of officers, and convinces them that they need to march out without any further negotiations. He then makes a different speech to the assembled, surviving, officers of the army. Xenophon succeeds in being acclaimed the commander of the army. In chapter 2 of Book III, he speaks to the entire army and begins to exercise command. This has been a steep ascent indeed, from non-combatant and non-soldier to commander of the army, in a single bound. But assuming command and exercising it are two different things.

At the beginning of Book III, the army is on the plains of Mesopotamia, level ground, flatland; and Xenophon is literally lying on the ground, asleep. Both of Xenophon and the army begin an ascent. Xenophon begins an ascent to the leadership of the army and the exercise of command. The army begins an ascent into the hilly country to the north. The rest of Books III and IV recount the adventures of the army on its march, fighting both the elements and the terrain, as well as the people whose land they are invading and passing through. This is in many ways the heart of the book, and contains much of the action and excitement – but perhaps perversely, I will leave that aside for now.

During this period, the army and its officers are united by a common danger and a common purpose. They fight with skill and energy and cleverness, and Xenophon shows remarkable ability as well as insight into the necessity of leading by example. Clausewitz tells us that a seasoned army composed of soldiers that have been in battle together and know each other and trust their officers has a uniquely formidable power. The army Xenophon commanded was forged into such an army on its march northward.

The end of Book IV is the famous passage where the army, having come through terrible hardship and danger, reaches a mountain, and from the mountain, they can see the waters of the Black Sea. The first soldiers to reach the mountain raise a shout. Xenophon is near the rear of the marching column, and at first thinks they are under attack. But they are shouting “The sea! The sea!” The author tells us: “When all arrived at the summit, here, of course, they began to embrace one another, both generals and captains as well, with tears flowing.” The Greeks make offerings, raise a cairn (which, remarkably, is still there!) and they have athletic games.

It may perhaps be unclear to the reader why merely sighting the sea elicits such enthusiasm. The Greeks in that day and age ruled the seas. Wherever there was salt water, there would be ships, and the ships would be manned by Greeks. So, to the army, the sight of the sea means they will soon be in touch with their countrymen and fellow Greeks. Whatever hazards that may present, they are of a different order from being surrounded in a hostile barbarian land.

So, the ascent, the anabasis, of the army has culminated when it “arrived at the summit”. The army had ascended not just topographically, but morally and professionally. Despite exhaustion and hunger and losses of men, the fighting power of the army, its character as an army, had peaked. Until that point the vision of reaching safety and reaching home had provided a shared goal. The unity and cohesion and moral strength of the army had also peaked, with the mutual embraces of comradeship. For all the material hardships they endured, the march up and out of Mesopotamia, the anabasis from Cunaxa to the summit of Mount Eches, were the days of glory for the army.

The anabasis of the army had ended on the mountain summit. Its route thereafter would be downhill, topographically, and morally, and in terms of unity and a shared vision.

But we have three books to go. Is half the book an ascent, the second half a descent? Yes, in part. But the whole book is called the anabasis, the ascent. It is not called the ascent and descent. But is there any further ascent? That is more ambiguous, but I have some ideas.

(I have about a week to get them typed up.)

Great initial post about logistics!  Here’s a related piece–a comparison between Alexander the Great and Cyrus the Younger and their different strategic/logistical solutions to a similar problem: how to bring an invading army to bear against a defending army awaiting the assault in the vicinity of Babylon, in what was then Mesopotamia (today Syria and Iraq.)

Some of what follows is speculative, as no one knows for certain what Alexander was thinking at every juncture.  But it’s based on my research for The Virtues of War, a novel about Alexander.  Here’s my take on how the great Macedonian, invading Persia seventy years after Cyrus (and armed with Xenophon’s Anabasis, which he and his generals studied in great depth) chose a different route and strategy than that taken by his predecessor, bound for Cunaxa.

Both Cyrus’ army and Alexander’s crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, three or four hundred miles north of Babylon (see map in our Anabasis).  Cyrus was coming from the north, Alexander from the south, via Damascus–from Egypt, where he had been crowned Pharaoh and son of Ammon.  Alexander was marching to confront Darius III, (grandson of Artaxerxes II, against whom Cyrus and Xenophon campaigned) who was raising an army of a million men.  Contingents of horse and foot had been summoned from all over the empire, from as far away as Afghanistan.  Alexander’s force numbered about 50,000.  Alexander had previously defeated Persian forces twice–at the Granicus River, near Troy, with Darius absent; and at Issus with Darius present and commanding.  This coming fight would be for all the marbles.

Alexander held up at Thapsacus and debated with his generals whether they should follow the Cyrus/Xenophon route straight down the Euphrates.  Alexander decided against it for a number of reasons.  First (here’s where it starts to get speculative), such a choice was expected.  Darius would have time to prepare a field that tilted in favor of the Persians’ preferred weapons, their massive numbers of infantry and cavalry and their scythed chariots.  Second, the Euphrates route would not compel Darius to move.  The Great King could simply sit tight and await Alexander, secure in his bastion at Babylon, with an abundance of riverborne supplies for his troops.  Third, the Euphrates route would bring the two armies together too soon for Alexander’s taste.  He wanted to stall.  He was banking on impatience and discontent gnawing at the morale of Darius’ eager tribal levies, who were not a disciplined modern army but rather horseborne raiders and pillagers.

Alexander’s concept of operations was different from Cyrus’s.  Babylon (Cunaxa) was not his ultimate goal.  Babylon wasn’t even Persia, it was Mesopotamia, a province.  Alexander’s aim was Persepolis in modern Iran, the royal capital of the empire–and the lands further east.

What Alexander feared, entering the heartland of the Persian empire, was having to fight his way across two great and defendable rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris.  He also had no taste for besieging Babylon, which had walls 150 feet high and fifty feet thick and a circuit of forty miles.

Alexander went north and east from Thapsacus instead of south.  He didn’t follow the Euphrates.  Instead he struck for the foothills of the mountains of southern Armenia.  The season was summer coming into fall.  Alexander preferred to get provisions for his army by sacking unwalled villages, where the harvest would be stored in garners, rather than cities where the year’s grain would be fortified behind walls.  He wanted his horses and pack animals to drink water from mountain streams rather than the silty, unwholesome Euphrates.  And he didn’t want his men and beasts marching in 110-degree heat.  He also feared the dikes and irrigation channels of the country north of Babylon, by which he must approach his enemy.  This kind of terrain could  be flooded easily by the defenders, which would create hellish problems for an army advancing across it.

Alexander wanted to get on the far side of the Tigris (to the east of the Euphrates) without having to make a crossing under fire.  Once across, he reasoned, Darius would be compelled to come out to meet him, thus fighting according to Alexander’s timetable and on unprepared turf.  If Darius failed to face Alexander, he would leave  Persepolis and the eastern empire open to the invader’s depredations.  More importantly, he would lose prestige in the eyes of his own troops and those of the subject nations serving under him.

The final objective Alexander hoped to achieve by taking the northern route was to vanish off Darius’s scope.  He wanted to make the Great King sweat.  Where was Alexander?  What was he up to?  Surely, Alexander reasoned, Darius would be holding many war councils with the impatient, hot-blooded tribal contingents of his empire.  Let them sweat too.  Let them second-guess Darius.  Let them complain about pay and food.  Let them demand action.

In the end, Alexander’s plan worked out a little better than Cyrus’s.  The Macedonian’s tactics did indeed force Darius to march out from his bastion at Babylon.  Darius was compelled to cross the Tigris himself, march his army north some two or three hundred miles to Gaugamela, where he faced Alexander on turf of his own choosing, yes, but not the favored manicured field he was hoping for, at Cunaxa or some other arena closer to home.

Gaugamela became one of the epochal battles of history.  Darius’ defeat made him, in the end, the last Great King of Persia.  The Achaemenid line as rulers ended with him, as did the Persian empire.

While we have no real idea how much insight Xenophon possessed when he joined the invasion of Persia, the Anabasis is written by a professional with a profound appreciation of the issues of logistics (as is the Agesilaus). From beginning to end, the Anabasis is replete with not just the story of the Persian expedition, but how the Greek forces managed to maintain themselves in supply, from the time of their entry into Persia, until their retreat is complete. Xenophon understands that other professionals will be interested in this as much as in anything else that he relates. It is likely that Alexander read these logistical details with great attention. For instance, if you re-read the Anabasis from the perspective of a logistician, you will find that it serves as a nearly complete narrative of the logistics of the Persian expedition. In most instances, you are far more certain of how the Greeks remained in supply than of what happened to them in battle. If you compare it to other histories you have read, you may well find that there is, well, no comparison.

“Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.” – US Army dictum

Logistic considerations are a principal determinant of the route Cyrus chooses for his army as he advances into Persia to engage his brother’s army.  While he hopes to delay the detection of his advance until his army is in Babylon, his choices are limited to those that can keep his army in supply.  Logistics also constrains the route of retreat selected by the Greeks under Xenophon. What constitutes a suitable route for egress? The land must be rich enough to provide for the Greeks; whether they purchase their supplies at market or loot the land as its inhabitants flee before them.  It must be passable to the wagons and animals of the baggage train that accompany the Greek army.  As the Greeks seek to avoid war with every Satrapy they traverse, they negotiate the purchase of supplies at market, or limit their looting to their minimum needs.  Others with more specialized expertise might have more to say about this, but to this reader this policy seems like a prescient and radical departure from the custom of war for most of the past three thousand years.  For most of history, advancing armies stripped the land of food, fodder, and loot; to the occupants, the only thing that distinguished ‘friendly’ forces from their foes was the uniform of the troops wreaking destruction.  It is likely that their reputation preceded the Greeks, and that several of the Satraps conducted only token operations against the Greeks as they passed through; enough to fulfill their obligation to their king, not so much that they got a large number of their soldiers killed.  Similarly, Xenophon understood that the Greek army could not endure pitched battles with the army of every Satrapy they crossed; avoiding battle whenever possible was synonymous with avoiding destruction.  Ironically, it also seems inevitable that the Greeks paid for their supplies with the loot from Satraps that had chosen to oppose their retreat.  If all of the Satrapies had opened their markets to the Greeks, they would have run out of money long before they got back to Greek territory.

As long as there have been armies, there have been camp followers. Camp followers enable infantry to deploy with the maximum combination of fighting power and mobility. Camp followers enable infantry to patrol and to fight, and an army to move with more speed and safety that it would otherwise.  Soldiers marching into battle will carry whatever equipment they believe will increase their chances of surviving and prevailing, and as little of everything else that they can.  Given a choice between carrying the bedding, the squads cooking utensils, or their tent, and increased mobility, infantry have always chosen in favor of more mobility.  At times in history, some armies have used their own soldiers to operate and guard their camps, but this has been the exception, not the rule.  Why leave perfectly good infantry behind to run and guard the camp, when you could use them to bolster your ranks? Thus, in history, most camps have been run by camp followers, who, by virtue of their physical ability, age, ethnicity, lack of skill-at-arms and training, or gender, were less useful or completely useless for combat.

At one point, Xenophon exhorts his army to abandon everything that might slow their movement, an ancient version of modern attempts to reduce the tooth-to-tail ratio.  No success.  The Anabasis makes the vital role of camp followers clear: in spite of a potentially existential benefit to leaving them behind, the Greek army finds itself unable to continue reduce the tail by much. Modern economists would be completely unsurprised that an ancient army would benefit from this kind of specialization, matching expertise with role in a larger organization; but at the time, it was likely difficult to understand or articulate, at least until after you had worked through it and figured out how poorly it would work out. History is replete with account of battles in which troops break away from their battlefield deployments when their baggage train or encampment is threatened by enemy forces.  Amateurs attribute this concern to base greed on the part of the masses of troops; professionals understand that an army that has lost its baggage train has lost a substantial amount of its power.  The fate of an army that has lost its camp followers is not much different than the fate of camp followers who have last their army.  Xenophon understood this, and throughout the retreat deploys his army in such a way to not only insure the safety of his baggage train, but also make certain that all of the troops of his army understand this as well.  At points, his deployments and evolutions risk his army to protect his baggage train.

Xenophon’s narrative emphasizes logistics, the mark of a true professional.  Xenophon understood that logistics considerations shape military operations. He also understood that the lower the price he paid in blood to fulfill his logistic requirements, the greater the chances were that he would see Greece again.  He understood the critical role that his camp followers played in producing the military power that he was controlling.  Aristotle tutored Alexander, and many experts believe that Alexander studied Xenophon’s work with professional interest.  Alexander’s subsequent campaign in Persia was either shaped by the same forces that Xenophon describes, or by the narrative that he read.

Our Xenophon Roundtable begins this week.

Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus was written roughly 2,400 years ago. Yet it is still of interest and value today, for many reasons. It is an exciting tale of adventure. It is the first war memoir. It is a firsthand account of a military campaign that goes badly wrong, and of a man taking command and saving himself and his army from destruction. It is a travel book about exotic locales and natives. It depicts leadership under life and death circumstances. It contains remarkable examples of oratory and persuasion, where Xenophon had to convince because he could not compel. It is a portrait of conditions in the era following the victory of Sparta in the Peloponessian War. It is a comparison between the Greek way of political and military organization, and that of the Persians and other “barbarians”.

There is a lot in this very old book. I and the other participants will be putting up several posts in the next three weeks about it. I look forward to what the others will have to say.

UPDATE: Zenpundit’s announcement has some good comments about the translation we are using.

Our distinguished roundtable participants are the following:

Disraeli1867 is a graduate of the College and the Business School at the University of Chicago. He works in venture capital and equity research. He was a European History major, and he is a Certified Mongolian Warrior (for real) and spends his spare time curling, sailing and reading history.

“josephfouche” is a software engineer and system administrator slaving away for a technology startup somewhere in flyover country. He’s been reading military history since age nine and talking about it since his fourth grade teacher, asking a pro forma question, inquired if any student in the class knew anything about the Crimean War. (She got more than she bargained for.) He blogs at The Committee of Public Safety, a group blog dedicated to understanding the subtle interplay of human nature, culture, war, and power.

Fringe is a University of Chicago Alum, and is employed as an academic. He has been a student of military history and military affairs since his childhood. He knows strategists, and understands the difference between a strategist and a student of strategy. He has published on many topics and in many venues, including articles about modern warfare.

Lexington Green is a lawyer in Chicago. His common core humanities class freshman year at the University of Chicago was Greek Thought and Literature. It was the only A he got that year. He blogs at ChicagoBoyz.

HistoryGuy99 is a historian, and U.S. Army veteran of the war in Vietnam. After having a 30 year career in global logistics, he earned an advanced degree in history and began to teach. Currently he is an adjunct history professor with the University of Phoenix and Axia College. He blogs as historyguy99 and hosts HG’s World, a blog devoted to history, connectivity, and commentary. He is a co-author of soon to be published, Activist Women of the American West and contributing author to The John Boyd Roundtable.

Steve Pressfield is the author of “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” “Gates of Fire,” “The Afghan Campaign” and other historical fiction set in the Greco-Macedonian era–but nothing about Xenophon! Currently blogging about mil/pol issues in Afghanistan on It’s the Tribes, Stupid

Purpleslog is a Milwaukee-area blogger looking to enjoy and learn from an ancient true-life adventure story. He blogs at PurpleSlog.

Mark Safranski was the editor of The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War, and a contribution author to Threats in the Age of Obama, both published by Nimble Books. Mark blogs at Zenpundit. Mark can also be found at several well-regarded group blogs including, ChicagoBoyz, Progressive Historians and at a U.K. academic site, The Complex Terrain Laboratory. Mark is a free-lance contributor to Pajamas Media.

Seydlitz89 He is a former Marine Corps officer and US Army intelligence officer who served in a civilian capacity in Berlin during the last decade of the Cold War. He was involved as both an intelligence operations specialist and an operations officer in strategic overt humint collection. This experience sparked his serious interest in strategic theory. He is now involved in education. He participated in the Clausewitz Roundtable on ChicagoBoyz. He blogs at MilPub.

Dr Helen Szamuely is a political researcher and writer. She edits the Conservative History Journal and writes its blog. She also blogs on EUReferendum and Your Freedom and Ours, as well as writing occasionally for Chicagoboyz.

Mitchell Townsend says “I majored in English as an undergraduate. I didn’t know any better, since this was the first time one of us had gone to college. I got a low-level government job during the Carter administration, which turned me into a knuckle-dragging, kitten-torturing, right-wing death beast. While this hideous transformation was in process, I went to remedial education classes to learn accounting and eventually became a CPA. I grew up in Connecticut (not the Gold Coast, the part where they hate the Yankees) and live in Massachusetts. I have no connection with Chicago at all; I just joined ChicagoBoyz because I liked reading it. In fact, every time I go, I am amazed at how flat and rectilinear the place is. Chicago, that is, not the blog, which is flat and rectilinear because it has to be.”

The revised schedule is for our roundtable on Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus is as follows:

Week of September 13, 2009: Posts re: Books I, II, III and IV
Week of September 20, 2009: Posts re: Books V, VI and VII
Week of September 27, 2009: “Wrap up” Posts: Opinions, Analysis, Conclusions.

Late in August I will post the list of contributors.

I am starting to think about what I am going to write, having recently finished my first read-through of the Anabasis.

I have been looking at two books on background, which I am finding of interest: Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age by Robin Waterfield, and Xenophon and the Art of Command by Godfrey Hutchinson. I also hope to read at least some portions of Xenophon’s The Education of Cyrus, also translated by Prof. Wayne Ambler.

(I linked earlier to this review of the Anabasis from Military Review. StrategyPage has a positive review of the Ambler translation here (though it manages to get his translation methodology precisely backward)).

ALSO: A “distant early warning” for our readers. The current thinking is that we will have roundtable discussion of The Federalist Papers in the Winter of 2010, and we will have a roundtable discussion of selections from the Arthashastra of Kautilya (The Clausewitz, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli of India all in one) in the Fall of 2010.

Two good articles about Kautilya’s Arthashastra.

We will be using the translation of Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus by Wayne Ambler. Mr. Ambler’s translation received several good reviews, including this one in Military Review.

I will post our list of contributors, and the “mission order” for the roundtable closer to the start date.

The schedule for posts will be as follows:

Week of September 13, 2009: Posts re: Books I, II, III and IV
Week of September 20, 2009: Posts re:Books V, VI and VII
Week of September 27, 2009: “Wrap up” Posts: Opinions, Analysis, Conclusions.

Xenophon’s Anabasis.