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'The Ten Thousand' by Michael Curtis Ford
In 404 B.C. Sparta defeated Athens in the 27-year Peloponnesian War and, with it, an entire civilization was crushed. With the economy of Athens in ruins, young Greeks of the area with military training sustained themselves by going abroad as mercenaries. Persia, the wealthiest civilization of the time, was involved in a civil war. The Greeks hired themselves out to Cyrus the Younger who sought the Persian crown from his older brother, the emperor Artaxerxes II. The philosopher / soldier Xenophon (the individual who recorded the story of this adventure in his work Anabasis and upon which Ford's novel is based) is the main character of the novel. Xenophon was the son of the nobleman Gryllus and a calvary officer by training. In the political turmoil that followed the defeat of Athens, Xenophon found himself exiled from the city. The gist of the tale is as follows:
In 401 BC, * * * Cyrus used many Greek mercenaries left unemployed by the cessation of the Peloponnesian War [against] Artaxerxes at Cunaxa: the Greeks were victorious but Cyrus was killed, and shortly thereafter their general, Clearchus of Sparta, was invited to a peace conference, betrayed, and executed. The mercenaries, the Ten Thousand Greeks, found themselves deep in hostile territory, near the heart of Mesopotamia, far from the sea, and without leadership. They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north through hostile Persians, Armenians, and Kurds to Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea and then sailed westward and back to Greece. In Thrace, they helped Seuthes II make himself king. Xenophon's record of this expedition and the journey home was titled Anabasis ("The Expedition" or "The March Up Country" ).
Wikipedia link. After the death of their Spartan general Clearchus, The Ten Thousand found themselves leaderless (all the top generals had been killed) and without provisions stranded in a distant desert. The Ten Thousand elected new leaders from among the junior officers (Xenophon among them), and marched 1000 miles through western Asia (modern Turkey and Iraq) and over the Armenian mountains in the dead of winter until finally reaching the Black Sea.
It's a great story of determination in the face severe adversity and Ford is well versed in the history (and ethos) of the period. I liked the poetic device of telling the story through the narration of Xenophon's squire, Themostigenes (nicknamed Theo), born of a slave family from Syracuse (in Sicily). This book is written in the genre of, and is often compared to, Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire (about the Spartan stand at Thermopylae) and Tides of War (focuses on the historical figure Alcibiades in the Peloponnesian War); however, I find Pressfield's works superior. But that is no grand slight given the high esteem in which I (and most reviewers) hold Pressfield's aforementioned works. I fancy myself as something of a self-taught student of ancient western history but was unaware of the long, desperate march of the 10,000 Greek mercenaries. Thus, I thank Ford for acquainting me with this moving tale.
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