Xenephon's ANABASIS : Or, The March Up-Country. Iraq & environs, as it was in 400 B.C.

[Ed Augusts]

Xenophon's "ANABASIS : Or, The March Up-Country". Modern translation
by W H. D. Rouse [from manuscript copies of this ancient work dating
from the 1600's and 1300's, copied from an original of the 9th
Century. The Vatican library has a 10th C. copy.] Mentor / New
American Library, New York. No date given. Third Edtion. Softcover.
160 pgs.

--- An Ultimate War Story of Survival, and: Battle, On
the March! ---

Of ancient works that have been rediscovered after many ages, this
must rank as one of the best and most useful for studying military
strategy. Written by Xenophon (b. 431 B.C.), W.H.D. Rouse's
translation of about 100 years ago brought this useful book up into
modern times.

What do you do if you're amid hostile barbarians, trapped a 1,500
miles inside enemy territory? You know you're among a heartless enemy
because your commander and a number of his captains have just been
lured into friendly talks, under cover of truce, and then had their
heads and hands cut off and displayed on pikes. You have a sizeable
force of perhaps the world's best warriors, but they are hated and
feared inside the country you're in. All you want to do is get home,
but as you move, you are harried on every side by cavalry and
infantry, by arrow and slingshot. Thanks to enemy action, you are low
on supplies and so far from home that you have to literally pillage
villages and grab all the food supplies you can find as you march
along, just to survive. This does not endear you to the locals! To
make things even worse, your horses were stolen, too, so you've got to
WALK home! Now, that's a long walk!

THAT is the dilemma faced by Xenophon the Athenian who made the
mistake of adventurously going along, as a kind of "reporter", with an
expedition of 12,000 Greek mercenaries and 100,000 other fighters put
together by Cyros, younger brother of the King of Persia, whose desire
was to topple his older brother and take over a vast empire which
included all of present day Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Arabia. When they
got to Babylon, the Hellenic contingent fought unopposed against the
Persian king's forces, but unfortunately Cyros went for the kill
against his brother and instead, took a spear through the eye and was
himself killed. The rest of the invading army evaporated or came under
the control of the Persian King, leaving the Greeks in a precarious
position, their camp wrecked and provisions stolen by one wing of the
Persian army while the Hellenes were chasing another wing, and
thereupon surrounded by jealous and angry forces.

This true story is laid in 401 to 399 B.C., a strange internicene
world, 80 years after the Greeks vanquished the Persian fleet at
Salamis, and 60 to 70 years before Alexander the Great would conquer
Persia completely. These were the children and grandchildren of the
Hellenes who had bested the Persians, and didn't the Persians know it,
and hate them all the more! The deeper they marched into Mesopotamia,
the more these Greeks were looked-upon with great suspicion and
hatred. The Persian king, finding these Greeks acting as mercenaries
to topple him from the throne, gladly would have killed every last one
of them, as he did those of them whom he could get a hold of through
his lies. He couldn't quite do this with total impunity because there
are about 12,000 Greek warriors facing him, and the Greeks won't be
tricked into laying down their arms a second time, not after their
leaders were, (under a flag of truce), captured and beheaded.

What follows is quite inspiring, as soldiers from a hundred different
Hellenic city states pick a new leader, who has a strategy for their
success... Xenophon! The various players' home towns are always
mentioned in the same breath in their first names, and if we did so
nowadays we'd have "Barack of Chicago", "Harry of Independence", "John
of Phoenix", etc, trying to influence the others through inspired
speech. At crucial moments when big decisions are necessary,
democratic round tables are held, in the camp or in the field, as any
soldier expresses what he feels and gives his advicem, then sits down
and asks someone else to speak. Xenophon turns out to be a genius of
the first order, according to his narrative of the events, at least,
and when things look worst, he is lifted from obscurity to leadership
through bringing people over to his clever and positive advice, and in
this we again see a lesson in what real democracy is all about.
Xenophon was no dummy, he was a friend and perhaps a student of
Socrates himself, who advised him to get a 'reading' from the Oracle
at Delphi before proceeding on this dangerous venture.

We also see practical methods evolve on a day-by-day, mile by mile
basis, on how to move 'up country', ford or avoid deep-running rivers,
get through blocked passes and over snowy mountain ranges, and attack
fortresses and towns. The specific maneuvers needed to defend and
attack the foe in various situations, such as fighting up the side of
a hill or mountain, or by the edge of a river, or when retreating
across a river, or forced to march in a line, but do the least harm to
one's forces and the most harm to the enemy appear here, on just about
every other page, as all the time, the army continues to move forward,
striving to go home!

Familiar places, whether we recognize them or not, occur in these
pages, for the Greek army marches along the Tigris and Euphrates up
past what was ancient, even then: Nineveh and Babylon, oases, some
already long abandoned, that are now called Basra and Baghdad, then up
through the country of the Kurds. We are rather amazed to find the
Kurds here, occupying the same place they will occupy 2,400 years
later, and acting just as fiercely. And then the Hellenes go across
the spine of mountains and Armenia, and finally, down to the sea. But
THAT doesn't end their problems, they are still a long ways from
home! And the closer they get to Greece, the more ornery and
discontented they get. Once there is no enemy, they becom quite
cantankerous among themselves. Will they EVER get home? To find
out, you must read this amazing book.

No matter how we feel about climate change before we read this
valuable book, we soon sense the climate in that whole part of the
world has significantly changed in the past 2,400 years. For one
thing, no shortage of water is ever noted, in fact, there are too many
wide and deep rivers running through the region in those days, from
the coast of modern Turkey, across what is now Syria or perhaps the
border between modern Iraq and Saudi Arabia, most of the way down
through what is now implacable desert. As they were returning home
again, the Greeks marched north, toward the source of the big rivers,
just to get upstream far enough that crossing them might be possible.
Towns are villages all along the Hellenic route are well-supplied with
all kinds of livestock and the granaries are rich with various kinds
of harvested grains. The entire region is wealthy, prosperous, and
healthy. It gives one pause to realize that general prosperity has
gone down hill in that region over the past 24 centuries to the bleak
world we see today in many parts of Asia Minor and the Middle East.

There are curious cultural elements common to the Greeks of the 5th
and 4th Century B.C. which we would look upon with a raised eyebrow
nowadays, such as at least 3 instances when fondness of these Greeks
for young men and boys is noted without being said in any kind of
critical way; it is stated in exactly the same way --without shame or
surprise--, as the soldierly desire for women and girls is also
reported... flatly and without emotion. These tendencies seem to run
parallel to each other but are not really quantified or qualified. At
one point, when the Hellenes are clearing-out of a town, after a short
visit, it is mentioned that some of the men take with them "either a
woman or a boy", as a stolen prize, for their pleasure. Another
"boy" (no ages are given), who is taken along as a prisoner so that
his noble father will help guide the army across the mountains,
becomes a "beloved companion" to a certain Greek soldier when the
father deserts at night and leaves his son behind. He could well have
been killed when the father deserted, but instead Xenophon informs us
that the boy is taken as a long-term companion and lover. But the
whole race here call themselves 'Hellenes', we today would call them
Hellenic, and the land is 'Hellas', after all, and this surely is
derived from Helen, the 'face that launched a thousand ships', which
shows the ancient Greek men were extraordinarily fond of beautiful
women, too. They were still carrying off beauties as trophies and
prizes of war, 500 or 600 years after the deeds sung of in the Illiad.
And as for coming home again after much time, and from a great
distance, portions of The Odyssey would surely have been recited in
their camps at night.

Not quite a century earlier, well-recorded by Herodotus, prides of
lions came down at night and feasted on the marching Persian army and
its horses and camels in a wild region just north of Greece and
Thessaly. But in Xenophon's account, no threat from any wild animals
is mentioned at all, as if the whole countryside is devoid of lurking
predators. We know there were still many big wild animals because the
Romans, 300 and 400 years later, were able to import hundreds of
thousands of them for slaughter in the Coliseum, Circus Maximus and
other venues. This is in accord with Bible narratives from perhaps a
hundred years earlier which also give little play to lions or other
wild beasts, so that we are left with the impression of a world which
is firmly under the control of mankind by midway through the First
Millennium, B.C. The only animals mentioned at all are domesticated
animals slaughtered for food by the passing Greek army, and wild birds
of several kinds that are brought down by bowmen, and, strange to
say: bees of a certain province in Armenia that fed on a poisonous
plant and therefore made (and still make!) honey that causes temporary
symptoms of stuporous intoxication verging on coma.

The book was written so long ago, that CALENDAR DATES seem not to have
been in use yet, since months and days are never given. We know
calendar dates were in place a few hundred years later during the
Roman Republic and later, the Roman Empire, and days of the week also
occur later on in classical antiquity. Also, note that days of the
week do have ROMAN names. But not a single day of the week is ever
mentioned by Xenophon. Later, dates of great battles would certainly
have been remembered, but it doesn't seem the Hellenes in this account
needed this kind of data. They weren't used to it on a daily basis,
at least, so they didn't need it. It is likely that Full Moons and
New Moons may have been all the ancients of the 4th and 5th Century
B.C. had to go by, or ever used, just the same as pagans in
Northwestern Europe have been using the lunar cycle to keep track of
time for many thousands of years.

Even more curiously, the author is not even sensitive about what the
SEASONS are as the story moves along. The snows of the mountain
ranges and passes between the Kurdish and Armenian lands are noted,
but nowhere is it said "winter" was upon them, nor are any hot days of
"summer" mentioned, as they moved through what is now Southern Iraq.
The heat is never actually mentioned, only the scarcity of game in one
certain portion of Southern Iraq where a great wasteland of sand
exists today, dessicated desert region where very high temperatures
are common, but I don't believe there is a single mention of "heat".
This suggests the portion of the journey "Up Country" that took place
in Babylonia took place at some time OTHER than mid-summer, although
it is very possible his is because it really was quite a bit more
temperate in those days than it is today. More than a year goes by
during the course of the story... 1,500 miles is a long, long walk...
and the only real extremes we see are the snowy fields encountered in
the mountainous Kurdish regions. Many rivers, not just the Tigris and
Euphrates, but names whose names are unknown to the world today, which
are given in terms of their widths of 50, 100, 200, or 400 feet, are
given; rivers where sometimes the bottom cannot be found with a 15-
foot pole, that may well be dry most of the year nowadays, if they
have not long-since filled with blown sand and dust in changes wrought
during the past 24 centuries. So let it not be said that long term
climate change does not take place!

Perhaps Xenophon inspired others who marched or who were forced to
march, from Napoleon traversing the Russian steppe, to the "Long
March" of Mao's forces in the 1930's, and anyone else who finds
themselves cut-off and vulnerable, from Americans at Bataan or British
on the Burma Road, or marching to victory, like the G.I.'s going up
the boot of Italy in 1944.

One thing these Hellenes had, no matter how many different city-states
they came from, was a common battle song or chant which, once invoked
at the start of a battle, seems to have roused their spirit for battle
at the same time as it terrified their enemies, who had nothing to
match it! If only this chant had come down to us, today! Perhaps it
is recounted in some other ancient work.

I recommend this foray into battle... survival... and the long, long
trek home... set in an ancient forerunner of modern Iraq and Turkey
that no one today would ever recognize.

Best, -----Ed

http://stores.lulu.com/edaugusts
www.edaugusts.com