[SunkenCiv]

Here's another blast from the past that's still online.

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The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[jimtorr]

.... a Greek army first sighted the Black Sea during its flight from the forces of the Persian king Artaxerxes II....

This was a case not so much of flight, but of advancing to the rear.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Billthedrill]

One of the great adventure stories in literature. The Anabasis was used for many years as a Greek primer due to its purity of construction, or so goes the tale. I suspect it was used because it is one hell of a story and the target audience was British schoolboys.

They were screwed, the Greeks were, a post-Peloponnesian-War mercenary army hired by one Persian faction and very nearly winning the day until their Persian boss got himself killed. Their generals and senior officers were lured into a banquet by the victor and murdered. The army elected new officers - Xenophon was one - and began their trek to the sea. And frankly, if the culmination of the Anabasis, where they cry "The sea! The sea!" isn't among the most stirring moments in any literature, anywhere, then the reader has no soul.

It didn't end there. The army embarked and was used in different ways on its long journey back to Greece. That's an afterthought, though. What matters for students of military history is the solidarity, the unit cohesion, and the sheer determination of this group of foreigners to cut their way through a strange and hostile land. Great stuff.

It is a highly interesting note that the march route was so very similar to the one made by the forces of the United States Army in the second Gulf War. Bing West and "E-tool" Smith have a wonderfully entertaining book about it entitled The March Up. Which translates to "Anabasis".