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    The Exploits of Xenophon
    The Exploits of Xenophon
    The Exploits of Xenophon
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    The Exploits of Xenophon

    By Geoffrey Household

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    Thousands of miles from home, one soldier leads an army to safety

    The war with Sparta is over, and Athens is at peace for the first time in thirty years. Their Greek enemies subdued, the generals of Athens turn their eyes to the East, where the Persian Empire stretches to the edge of the known world. Never before have Greek soldiers marched into Persia. Xenophon will be among the first. A warrior whose bravery is matched only by his intelligence, Xenophon is a natural leader. When his army of ten thousand men is stranded far from home, it is up to him to lead them back to Greece without sacrificing the principles of democracy that they hold so dear.
     
    A retelling of Xenophon’s classic Anabasis, this is a thrilling tale of bravery and survival, in which the mind is as valuable a weapon as the sword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMay 5, 2015
    ISBN9781504010504
    The Exploits of Xenophon
    Author

    Geoffrey Household

    Geoffrey Household (1900–1988) was born in England. In 1922 he earned a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from the University of Oxford. After graduation, he worked at a bank in Romania before moving to Spain in 1926 and selling bananas as a marketing manager for the United Fruit Company. In 1929 Household moved to the United States, where he wrote children’s encyclopedia content and children’s radio plays for CBS. From 1933 to 1939, he traveled internationally as a printer’s-ink sales rep. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer for the British army, with posts in Romania, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and Persia. After the war, he returned to England and wrote full time until his death. He married twice, the second time in 1942 to Ilona Zsoldos-Gutmán, with whom he had three children, a son and two daughters. Household began writing in the 1920s and sold his first story to the Atlantic Monthly in 1936. His first novel, The Terror of Villadonga, was published during the same year. His first short story collection, The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories, appeared in 1938. Altogether, Household wrote twenty-eight novels, including four for young adults; seven short story collections; and a volume of autobiography, Against the Wind (1958). Most of his novels are thrillers, and he is best known for Rogue Male (1939), which was filmed as Man Hunt in 1941 and as a TV movie under the novel’s original title in 1976.

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      Book preview

      The Exploits of Xenophon - Geoffrey Household

      Preface

      THIS story of battle and adventure was first published about the year 371 B.C., but it remains as vivid as if it had been written by a colonel in the last war. This is because Xenophon is describing at first hand what he did, what he suffered and what he saw.

      He was born, probably, about 431 B.C. and died about 354 B.C. His chief interests were farming, soldiering and horsemanship, but he had had the most glorious education that the world has ever known: he was schooled in Athens at the time of her greatest splendour, and had Socrates as his teacher. So writing was a natural amusement for his hours of leisure.

      He has left us a history of the revolutionary years in Athens; essays on cavalry, the training of youth and economics; his recollections of Socrates; and this great story which is called the Anabasis. If you learn Greek, you will probably begin your reading with extracts from it.

      It is the very first book of war reminiscences which has come down to us, and it gives a superb picture of a lively Greek army and its impact upon the ancient civilization of the East. Though the adventure was only a heroic retreat, it did show the Greeks that they need not be frightened by the immense spaces of Asia, and that they could march wherever they chose, provided they learned to use cavalry and archers as well as the Persians did.

      Xenophon passed on his experience to the Spartan King, Agesilaus, who employed him to raise and train squadrons of regular cavalry for the invasion of Asia Minor. Their new tactics were developed still further by Alexander the Great, who conquered and governed the whole Persian Empire. So the fact that Greek culture and language spread as far east as India—and, incidentally, that the New Testament was written in Greek—is partly due to the expedition which Xenophon describes and the lessons which he and his fellow commanders learned on the long march.

      I have cut down Xenophon’s book to a quarter of its length, and I have given him a more modern style than he really has. Also I have made him speak of himself in the first person as I, though he chose to write in the third person—Xenophon said this and Xenophon did that.

      Apart from those changes, I have added nothing at all that he does not say or imply; so you will be reading very nearly what boys and men read in Athens 2,320 years ago.

      Geoffrey Household

      THE ROUTE OF THE GREEK ARMY

      1. The Camp

      Xenophon’s story begins in the spring of 401 B.C., when he was about twenty-nine years old. The thirty years of war in which Sparta at last defeated Athens were over. All the independent states of Greece—some of them cities, some of them islands, some just groups of country towns—were at peace; but they were poor, uneasy and full of displaced persons, many of whom were experienced soldiers.

      All the rest of the civilized world, as it was then known to the Greeks, was united into a single, immense, fabulously wealthy empire. It stretched from Turkey to India, and from the Caspian Sea to Egypt. This empire was governed and organized by the Persians, who were at that time a people of pure European stock, often fair-haired and of great physical beauty. Greeks were always impressed by their height and splendid clothes and courtly manners; but they had no respect at all for the Persian political system.

      The Greeks invented government by the vote, and they were very proud of it. Their little states used it in many different ways. In Sparta, for example, the form of government was close to what we now call fascism. In Athens, especially during the war, it was more like socialism. But all the Greeks were of one opinion in despising the peoples of the Persian Empire, who simply obeyed an all-powerful king.

      They had no respect for the Persian armies either, which they had soundly defeated when King Darius and King Xerxes invaded Greece. Still, no general had dared to dream of marching into the heart of the Empire; for a little Greek army, however efficient, was bound to be surrounded and starved out by the uncountable hordes of Persian troops.

      I am an Athenian, but I cannot say that I was very happy in Athens after the war. Revolution, state trials, party dictatorship—we went through them all. So when one day I got a letter from my friend Proxenus, asking me to join his staff in Asia Minor, I must admit I was tempted.

      Proxenus was a citizen of Boeotia who had spent a lot of money on his own education and was determined to win wealth and fame. So he had gone over to Asia, and was living at the court of a Persian prince named Cyrus.

      He wrote to me that he was recruiting troops for a regiment of his own in Cyrus’ army, and asked me to join him—not as an officer or enlisted man, but simply as a personal friend. He said that Cyrus had the finest type of Persian character—honourable, generous and very fond of horses and hunting—that he was sure to like me and that I had a very good chance of making my fortune.

      Times were hard for a plain country gentleman like myself, and the offer was just what I wanted; but I decided first to ask the advice of my old teacher, Socrates. He was doubtful. He pointed out that Cyrus had favoured the Spartans against Athens, and that I should find myself very unpopular if I made a friend of him. He advised me to make a pilgrimage to the temple at Delphi, where I should pray to the god Apollo for guidance.

      So there I went, and asked the priestess of Apollo the following question:

      ‘To what gods ought I to pray and sacrifice in order to set out with honour and return in safety?’

      I received the answer that I should sacrifice to Zeus the King. This I told Socrates when I got home to Athens, but he was not pleased with me. He said I had cheated. I had not prayed for divine guidance on whether I should go or not; I had just announced that I was going and asked which of the gods would look after me.

      ‘However, it’s done now,’ he said. ‘And so long as you pay some attention to what Apollo told you, I think you might as well go.’

      I made the proper sacrifices and then embarked for Asia with my arms and armour and a few of my favourite horses. From the port I travelled up-country to Sardis, where I found Proxenus and Cyrus and the army.

      This Cyrus was a son of the Great King; but it was his brother, Artaxerxes, who inherited the empire. Cyrus was pretty lucky that he didn’t have his head cut off, for his brother had heard that he was plotting against him. However, thanks to his mother, Cyrus escaped, and was appointed one of the imperial governors of Asia Minor. He made himself very powerful in his own province, and had raised several brigades of first-class Greek infantry. They got good pay and got it regularly, too. So they were quite happy to do Cyrus’ fighting for him.

      At Sardis we were some seven thousand infantry of the line, of whom Proxenus had raised fifteen hundred. Other Greek contingents, each under its own commander, were coming in; and we heard that Clearchus, a tough Spartan who was under sentence of death in his own country, was marching south with his own picked regiment.

      The expeditionary force, so Cyrus told us, was to strike at Tissaphernes, the Governor of Ionia. That sounded reasonable, for the Great King did not bother much about wars between his governors so long as he received his taxes—and those Cyrus was very careful to remit. But the fact is we didn’t inquire too closely. Cyrus was a very great commander and one of the most charming men I have ever met.

      In little things he was delightful. I remember him making us a present of a jar of wine, with the message: ‘I am sending you this because it’s the best stuff I have come across for a long time. It’s worth while giving a party to drink it up.’

      Or he would send along a dish of

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