Anabasis (Xenophon)

Anabasis ( ə-NAB-ə-sis; Ancient Greek: Ἀνάβασις [anábasis]; lit. 'An Ascent') is the most famous work of the Ancient Greek professional soldier and writer Xenophon. It gives an account of the expedition of the Ten Thousand, an army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger to help him seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II, in 401 BC.

The seven books making up the Anabasis were composed c. 370 BC. Although as an Ancient Greek vocabulary word (ᾰ̓νᾰ́βᾰσῐς) meaning 'embarkation', 'ascent' or 'mounting up', the title Anabasis has been rendered by some translators as The March Up Country or as The March of the Ten Thousand. The story of the army's journey across Asia Minor and Mesopotamia is Xenophon's best known work and "one of the great adventures in human history".

Authorship

Xenophon, in his Hellenica, did not cover the retreat of Cyrus but instead referred the reader to the Anabasis by "Themistogenes of Syracuse"—the tenth-century Suda also describes Anabasis as being the work of Themistogenes, "preserved among the works of Xenophon", in the entry Θεμιστογένεης. (Θεμιστογένης, Συρακούσιος, ἱστορικός. Κύρου ἀνάβασιν, ἥτις ἐν τοῖς Ξενοφῶντος φέρεται: καὶ ἄλλα τινὰ περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδος. J.S. Watson in his Remarks on the Authorship of Anabasis refers to the various interpretations of the word "φέρεται", which give rise to different interpretations and different problems.) Aside from these two references, there is no authority for there being a contemporary Anabasis written by "Themistogenes of Syracuse" and no mention of such a person in any other context.

By the end of the 1st century, Plutarch had said, in his Glory of the Athenians, that Xenophon had attributed Anabasis to a third party to distance himself as a subject from himself as a writer. While the attribution to Themistogenes has been raised many times, the view of most scholars aligns substantially with that of Plutarch and certainly that all the volumes were written by Xenophon himself.

Content

Xenophon accompanied the Ten Thousand (words that Xenophon does not use), a large army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger, who intended to seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II. Although Cyrus' mixed army fought to a tactical victory at Cunaxa in Babylon (401 BC), Cyrus was killed, rendering the actions of the Greeks irrelevant and the expedition a failure.