So I finished this Landmark history book last night, and I really found it absorbing. Apparently, it’s a famous story that comes from the Anabasis by Xenophon, but my ancient Greek history is a little rusty. I’ve heard of Xenophon, but I didn’t know anything about this little incident. It’s really all about this orphaned Greek army marching all over Asia Minor and trying to survive and get back home. They encounter multiple enemies, raging rivers, treachery, harsh winter weather, and more treachery and finally the army does make it back to Greece, or at least near-Greece, maybe Thrace/Bulgaria, just across the Dardanelles from Constantinople?

I needed a better map in my head to follow all of the wanderings of the Greek army called the “Ten Thousand” because supposedly there were that many Greek soldiers in this super-duper Greek fighting force of mercenaries who were tricked into fighting for the younger brother, Cyrus, of the Persian emperor, Ataxerxes, in Cyrus’s attempt to take over his brother’s throne. The Greeks won the battle for Cyrus, but while they were enjoying a little plundering, Artaxerxes managed to kill Cyrus. So they became an army without a mission, trapped deep in enemy territory, with no way to get home safely. Artaxerxes just wanted to get rid of them, and so he allowed them to march north through Kurdistan and Armenia and then west to the Black Sea. Not that the Persians didn’t harass the Ten Thousand as much as possible, and then the Kurds were another problem, and the rivers and snows and mountains, and then more Persians and other “wild tribes.”

Xenophon apparently wrote the Anabasis, the story of the March of the Ten Thousand, in the third person, writing about how “Xenophon did this” and “Xenophon decided that”. He probably wrote his masterpiece that way to “distance himself as a subject, from himself as a writer,” according to Wikipedia. Mr. Household chose to put the whole story into first person and write it from Xenophon’s point of view, a perspective that is already in the original, just disguised a bit. I’m not sure why Household switches the narrative to first person, but it does make the story more immediate and modern-sounding. We’re rather fond of first person memoir in our day and time.

Household also says in the preface to the book that he modernizes some of Xenophon’s style and cut the story for this juvenile edition to quarter of its original length. However, all of the content is pure Xenophon. I think it would be fascinating to follow the Ten Thousand on their journey on a map of ancient Mesopotamia, Turkey, and Greece, and read this slimmed down version of the Anabasis aloud as a family—especially if you have a family of adventurers.

A few random facts, courtesy of Wikipedia:

“Traditionally Anabasis is one of the first unabridged texts studied by students of classical Greek, because of its clear and unadorned style.”

“The cry of Xenophon’s soldiers when they meet the sea is mentioned by the narrator of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), when their expedition discovers an underground ocean. The famous cry also provides the title of Iris Murdoch’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sea, the Sea (1978).”

Author Geoffrey Household served in British Intelligence during World War II in Romania, Greece and the Middle East. He was best known for his suspense novels, especially one called Rogue Male. Between the World Wars, he worked in the banking business in Romania, moved to Spain to sell bananas for United Fruit Company, and came to New York and wrote radio plays for children for CBS.

I really wish I knew more about how Bennett Cerf found and assigned different authors to write the books in the Landmark history series. Cerf on hiring authors: “I decided not to get authors of children’s books, but the most important authors in the country.” How did Mr. Household come to Cerf’s and Random House’s attention, I wonder?

Oh, by the way, Exploits of Xenophon is one of the more rare titles in the Landmark history series. It’s listed at anywhere from $30.00 to $80.00, used, at Amazon.

To learn more about the Landmark series of biographies and history books for young people, check out this podcast episode, Parts 1 and 2, of Plumfield Moms, What Are Landmark Books? Why Do They Matter?