Xenophon led ten thousand stranded Greeks home from the heart of Persia
In 401 BC a band of Greek mercenaries hired by the Persian prince Cyrus found themselves leaderless deep in Mesopotamia after Cyrus fell in battle and their generals were seized. They elected new commanders, among them a thirty-year-old Athenian named Xenophon, who guided them north through mountains and winter snow to the Black Sea.
Xenophon was born around 430 BC in the Athenian district of Erchia into an aristocratic family, grew up during the Peloponnesian War, and spent time with Socrates, as many wealthy young men did. Invited by a Boeotian friend serving Cyrus, he asked Socrates whether to go. Sent to the Delphic oracle, he asked only which gods to sacrifice to for a safe return, and Socrates scolded him for the sly phrasing.
Cyrus had hidden his true aim, to overthrow his brother King Artaxerxes II, until the army reached Tarsus. At Cunaxa Cyrus died, and the Persian satrap Tissaphernes lured the Greek generals to a feast and captured them. On the march out, Xenophon improvised mounted archers against harassing cavalry, kept a reserve behind the phalanx to shore up weak points, and in the Carduchian mountains sent 2,000 men through a hidden pass during a rainstorm while 8,000 feinted. The military historian Theodore Dodge called him the father of the organised retreat and the greatest general before Alexander.
He told the story years later in the Anabasis, the going up. Written in plain Attic Greek, it has trained generations of language students, and Diogenes Laërtius says Xenophon was nicknamed the Attic Muse for his sweet style. His Cyropaedia described how Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon, and together the two books are said to have encouraged Alexander's invasion of Persia.
Though Athenian, he became closely tied to Sparta. His biography of King Agesilaus and his account of Spartan institutions are major sources on that society, and his Hellenica picks up exactly where Thucydides stopped, running on to the Second Battle of Mantinea in 362 BC. For much of history readers ranked him beside Plato as a philosopher; he died around 355 BC.
Source: Xenophon
