Ancient Historians · Part 9 · Xenophon · B1
Xenophon: The Anabasis
Part 9 of Ancient Historians: in 401 BCE, ten thousand Greek soldiers marched into the heart of the Persian Empire to help a prince seize the throne. The prince was killed, their generals were murdered, and they were left two thousand kilometres from home, surrounded by enemies. A young Athenian called Xenophon helped lead them home, through deserts, mountains and snow, until they saw the sea. The past continuous for background and interrupted actions, had to, managed to, could, and the language of journeys and survival, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s story is one of the greatest adventures ever written, and the man who wrote it was there. Ten thousand Greek soldiers were lost in the middle of the Persian Empire, without leaders, food or maps, and they walked home.
About two thousand kilometres, Marcos, through deserts, mountains full of enemies, and snow up to their waists. And at the end, when the men at the front reached the top of a mountain, they started shouting one word. Tonight’s grammar is the grammar of a journey: what was happening when something else happened.
From Sardis to Babylon, and from Babylon to the Black Sea, 401–400 BCE
Xenophon (about 430–354 BCE) was a young Athenian aristocrat and a student of Socrates. In 401 BCE he joined an army of about ten thousand Greek mercenaries hired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger, who secretly planned to overthrow his brother, King Artaxerxes II. Socrates advised him to ask the oracle at Delphi first; Xenophon asked which god to sacrifice to for a safe journey, instead of whether to go at all.
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