ODYSSEY OF THE TEN THOUSAND

“The sea! The sea!” The jubilant cry from thousands of throats swelled as the ragged line of soldiers ascended the summit. Those behind them on the mountainside ran forward, driving baggage animals and horses at full speed. Assuming enemies were attacking the front of the column, the rearguard commander rushed forward with the cavalry to give support—but he encountered no foes. Instead, he saw the expanse of water stretching out before them and was similarly moved. These stalwart men of war, who had suffered and conquered all manner of hardships and danger, embraced each other tearfully with shouts of joy. Here, at long last, was their road home.

Known to history as the Ten Thousand, these Greeks had marched across barren, waterless steppes and through snow-choked mountain passes. Along the way they’d fought a succession of enemies and suffered various maladies, including battle wounds, frostbite, malnutrition, thirst and illness. Their extraordinary journey is related in Anabasis (Greek for “upward journey”), by Xenophon, a professional soldier who was the rearguard commander mentioned above and traversed the same arduous road. The Greeks’ two-year (401–399 bc), nearly 3,000-mile campaign—from Ephesus on the Aegean Sea east to the heart of the Persian empire, north to the shore of the Black Sea and back west to Byzantium (present-day Istanbul)—is a remarkable narrative of endurance and discipline.

By 401 BC Greece lay bruised and battered from 27 years of civil war among Spartans, Athenians and their respective allies. The Peloponnesian War had ended, yet a fighting spirit remained. Enterprising mercenaries from across the Hellenic world found an outlet for their martial talents within the sprawling Persian empire to the east.

Following the 404 bc death of Persia’s King Darius II, tensions flared between his sons Artaxerxes and Cyrus. Although Cyrus was favored by his mother, the line of succession fell to his older brother, who became King Artaxerxes II.