Xenophon

The most well-known writer of the professional soldier and author from Ancient Greece named Xenophons Anabasis. It describes the journey of a sizable army of Greek mercenaries sent by Cyrus the Younger to assist him in removing his brother Artaxerxes II from the throne of Persia in 401 BC. The Anabasis which consists of seven books was written around 370 BC. The title Anabasis is translated as The March Up Country or as The March of the Ten Thousand even though the Ancient Greek word v signifies embarkation ascent or mounting up. The best-known of Xenophons works and one of the great adventures in human history is the account of the armys travels across Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. Because of its straightforward prose form and relatively pure Attic dialect Anabasis is typically one of the first unabridged texts read by students of classical Greek. This is similar to Caesars Commentarii de Bello Gallico for Latin students. They are both third-person autobiographical stories of military adventure which may not be a coincidence. Xenophon traveled with the Ten Thousand a sizable force of Greek mercenaries that Cyrus the Younger had hired in order to assassinate his brother Artaxerxes II from the throne of Persia.