The ten thousand a study in social organization and action in Xenophon’s Anabasis
G.B. Nussbaum

Xenophon’s Anabasis relates the story of the Ten Thousand, the Greek mercenary force that marched into the heartland of the Persian Empire against the ruling king, Artaxerxes, and those soldiers’ fraught attempts to return home after the defeat in battle of their paymaster, the king’s rebellious brother Cyrus, in 401-399 BCE. Considered variously as the first war memoir and the first travelogue. The work is also (amongst other things) a meditation on leadership that interrogates the dynamics of a community on the move, and it possesses an apologetic air. Core to this is the character Xenophon, who emerges from obscurity when the surviving generals are eliminated by the duplicitous satrap Tissaphernes to lead the men through hostile terrain from Cunaxa, near Babylon, down to the Black Sea and back to the Greek world. Although sharing in this endeavor with others, the words and deeds of Xenophon, along with expressions of his motivations and intentions, dominate.