Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, And The End Of The Golden Age, by Robin Waterfield

What is the value of a book like this, which seeks to summarize Anabasis by Xenophon, a classic work that had world-historical importance in showing to other Greeks that Persia was vulnerable to Greek hoplite tactics, which would serve to inspire later Greek leaders (most notably Alexander the Great) who would then take advantage of this supposed Persian weakness against heavy infantry tactics in order to conquer the Persian empire? The prose of Xenophon’s Anabasis (and to a lesser extent, his other works) can hardly be improved by contemporary classicists. What this book does, and does well, is providing the context of Xenophon’s writing, the perspective from which he wrote, as well as the experience in Greek and Persian life that informed the book and its perspective and also the somewhat tragic experience of Xenophon and those of his generation who came of age at the tail end of Greece’s golden age and yet who lived into the more cynical fourth century, where Greek society took a decided nose dive into corruption and tyranny, and lost the freedom that it had jealously guarded during its period of peak cultural power and achievement. The fact that this particular perspective has a great deal of relevance to our own generation as being a similar transition period between a great past and a present that looks very much like a cultural decline of drastic proportions makes it an even better book.

This book is a bit more than 200 pages and it is divided into eleven chapters. The book begins with a list of illustrations and maps as well as a preface and acknowledgements. After that, the author describes the battle of Cunaxa, where the Greeks were placed on the right and were distracted from their task of wheeling into the center by the skilled retreat of the Persian commander, and where as a result Cyrus the Younger was defeated and killed in the center (1). The author then goes back to explaining the history of Greeks and Persians and their interactions with each other (2). This is followed by a look at Xenophon and his times (3), as well as the intrigues of the young Cyrus (4). After this there is a discussion of the mustering of Cyrus’ army of rebellion (5) as well as the march to the east (6) that would lead them to Cunaxa. At this point the author discusses the situation that led Xenophon to take command of the surviving Greek forces (7) as well as the fearful odds that they faced with enemies on all sides as they sought to reach the safety of Greek communities (8). At long last, they reach the sea (9) in the area of Pontus, while having to retreat and suffer grave losses due to the collapse of the morale and character of the frustrated mercenary forces in the area (9), before the author discusses the larger legacy of the battle (11). The book then ends with a timeline, maps, weights and measures, references, a bibliography, and then an index.

In reading this book, I felt the same sort of nostalgia and yearning that I felt when I first read the Anabasis myself as a student of military history. Xenophon was a student of Socrates, a young man from a wealthy Athenian background whose elite upbringing in a time of social turmoil led to his eventual exile from his homeland and his unsuccessful attempts to find a lasting home for himself within the world of his time. Knowing that the Anabasis was written about a formative period of Xenophon’s life where he showed himself, perhaps surprisingly to himself and others, as a leader of men in difficult circumstances, from the point of view of an older and wiser and sadder person who had seen the futility and lack of success of being a good man in evil times brings with it more than a little bit of sadness at the fate suffered by Xenophon as well as the fate of those in our own time who are good and thoughtful people despite the evil of this present age. This larger context informs the smaller context of the battle of Cunaxa that begins this account, with a battle where the Greeks are distracted from winning the battle and find themselves stranded deep in the heart of the Persian empire when their paymaster and employer finds himself cut down by his brother after an unsuccessful coup attempt, where they have to fight their way to survival. If this book is by no means as classic as the work it is about, it is at least very good at explaining the contexts of the Anabasis in a way that will help others to understand Xenophon’s classic and be able to relate to it on a deeper level than merely the surface understanding of that great retreat of thousands of stranded but armed men towards a less than welcoming homeland that few of them live to return to.