March of the Ten Thousand (401 BC): Xenophon's Anabasis

The March of the Ten Thousand was the retreat of a Greek mercenary army from Babylonia to the Black Sea in 401-400 BC, after the failure of Cyrus the Younger’s attempt to seize the Persian throne. Leaderless, deep in enemy territory and far from home, the Greeks elected new generals and fought their way north through the mountains of Kurdistan and the snows of Armenia. The story is known almost entirely from the Anabasis of Xenophon, one of the commanders, which became a classic of Greek literature.

Stranded after Cunaxa

In 401 BC Cyrus the Younger led an army including more than 10,000 Greek mercenaries from western Anatolia into Mesopotamia to overthrow his brother, King Artaxerxes II. At the Battle of Cunaxa, north of Babylon, the Greeks routed the troops facing them, but Cyrus was killed. His rebellion died with him.

The Greeks were now in a desperate position, some 1,500-2,000 kilometres from the Aegean coast. Many were veterans of the Peloponnesian War, which had ended only three years earlier. They refused the king’s demand to surrender their weapons, and Cyrus’ Persian commander Ariaeus made his peace with Artaxerxes.

Treachery at the Zab

The satrap Tissaphernes offered to guide the Greeks home and led them north along the Tigris. The two armies camped near each other, and suspicion grew on both sides. At the Greater Zab river, Tissaphernes invited the Greek commander Clearchus and the other senior generals to a meeting to clear up the mistrust.

It was a trap. Clearchus and four other generals, Proxenus, Menon, Agias and Socrates the Achaean, were seized and later put to death, and their escorts were killed. The Persians expected the leaderless army to give up.

Xenophon and the new leaders

That night, Xenophon tells us, he could not sleep. He was a young Athenian who had joined the expedition at the invitation of his friend Proxenus, without holding any command. Before leaving Athens he had asked the advice of his teacher Socrates, who warned that serving Cyrus might make him unpopular at home and sent him to consult the oracle at Delphi. Xenophon instead asked the god only to which deities he should sacrifice for a safe journey, and set out. He gathered the officers and urged them to choose new generals at once and to fight on rather than surrender.

The army elected new leaders, among them Xenophon himself and the Spartan Cheirisophus, who took the vanguard while Xenophon commanded the rear. They burned surplus wagons and tents, formed the troops into a hollow square with the baggage inside, and organised slingers from Rhodes and a small cavalry force to answer Persian missile attacks.

Through the mountains of the Carduchians

Unable to cross the Tigris, the Greeks turned north into the mountains of the Carduchians, a fierce independent people who lived in what is now south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq. For seven days they fought their way through narrow passes under showers of arrows and boulders. Xenophon says the Greeks suffered more in those seven days than in all their fighting with the Persian king.

At the Centrites river, the border of Armenia, they found Persian troops waiting on the far bank and Carduchians behind them. They forced a crossing at a ford and entered the Armenian highlands.

Winter in Armenia

It was now winter. On the high plateau the army struggled through deep snow and bitter wind. Men lost toes to frostbite, suffered snow blindness and died of exhaustion and hunger. The Persian governor of western Armenia, Tiribazus, shadowed them, and they had to drive off his attacks.

The Greeks found shelter in Armenian villages built partly underground, with stores of grain and livestock. Xenophon describes a strong barley drink served in large bowls and sipped through reeds, an early description of beer drinking through straws. Further on they fought the Taochi and the Chalybes, warlike mountain peoples, and hired a local guide.

“The sea! The sea!”

Early in 400 BC, on a mountain called Theches, the soldiers at the front began to shout. Xenophon, at the rear, thought they were under attack. As more men reached the summit the shouting grew, until he could make out the words: “Thalatta! Thalatta!”, “The sea! The sea!”. The soldiers embraced one another, generals and officers alike, and built a great cairn of stones.

A few days later they reached Trapezus (modern Trabzon), a Greek colony on the Black Sea coast. Near the city many soldiers fell ill after eating wild honey, which made them vomit and collapse for a day or more. This “mad honey”, made from rhododendron nectar, is still known in the region today.

Along the coast and after

The march did not end at the sea. With too few ships available, the army moved west along the coast, partly by land and partly by boat, through Cerasus, Cotyora and Sinope. Quarrels broke out over leadership and money, and the army split into groups. Xenophon even considered founding a new city on the Black Sea, but the soldiers wanted to go home.

The survivors crossed to Byzantium in 400 BC and then served the Thracian prince Seuthes. In 399 BC most of them were hired by the Spartan commander Thibron for a war against the Persian governors of Asia Minor. Xenophon himself was exiled from Athens, probably for his service with Cyrus and later with Sparta, and spent many years on an estate near Olympia, where he wrote his books.

Legacy

The march made a deep impression on the Greeks. It seemed to prove that a small, disciplined Greek army could cross the Persian Empire and survive. Fourth-century writers such as Isocrates used the episode to argue that Persia was weak, and some ancient historians thought it encouraged Agesilaus of Sparta and later Alexander the Great to invade Asia.

The Anabasis, written in clear, simple Attic Greek, became a standard school text for learning the language, and generations of European students read it. Arrian later called his history of Alexander’s campaigns the Anabasis of Alexander in conscious imitation. In modern times the story inspired Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel The Warriors and its 1979 film adaptation, about a New York gang fighting its way home across the city.

Timeline

• 401 BC, spring: Cyrus the Younger marches from Sardis with his Greek mercenaries.
• 401 BC, late summer or autumn: Cyrus is killed at Cunaxa.
• 401 BC, autumn: The Greek generals are seized at the Greater Zab; new leaders, including Xenophon, are elected.
• 401 BC, late autumn: Seven days of fighting in the land of the Carduchians.
• 401-400 BC, winter: The army crosses the snowbound Armenian highlands.
• 400 BC, early in the year: The Greeks see the sea from Mount Theches and reach Trapezus.
• 400 BC, autumn: The army crosses to Byzantium and enters Thracian service.
• 399 BC, spring: The survivors join the Spartan campaign in Asia Minor.

Why it matters

The March of the Ten Thousand is one of the great survival stories of the ancient world and a rare eyewitness account of the Persian Empire’s interior. It showed the Greek world both the courage of its citizen soldiers and the vulnerability of Persia, a lesson that helped shape the age of Alexander.