Anabasis (Xenophon)

Anabasis

Author	Xenophon
Country	Greece
Language	Ancient Greek

Anabasis (/əˈnæbəsɪs/; Greek: Ἀνάβασις Greek pronunciation: [anábasis] (literally an "expedition up from") is the most famous work, published in seven books, of the Greek professional soldier and writer Xenophon. The text was composed around the year 370 BC, and in translations, Anabasis is rendered The March of the Ten Thousand or The March Up Country. The journey it narrates is his best known accomplishment and "one of the great adventures in human history", as Will Durant expressed it.

Xenophon, in his Annals of Grecian History, did not cover the retreat of Cyrus but instead referred the reader to the Anabasis by "Themistogenes of Syracuse"- the tenth-century Suda also describes Anabasis as being the work of Themistogenes, "preserved among the works of Xenophon", in the entry Θεμιστογενεης. (Θεμιστογένης, Συρακούσιος, ἱστορικός. Κύρου ἀνάβασιν, ἥτις ἐν τοῖς Ξενοφῶντος φέρεται: καὶ ἄλλα τινὰ περὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδος. J.S. Watson in his Remarks on the Authorship of Anabasis refers to the various interpretations of the word φέρεται which give rise to different interpretations, and different problems.) Aside from these two references, there is no authority for there being a contemporary Anabasis written by "Themistogenes of Syracuse", and indeed no mention of such a person in any other context.

By the end of the first century, Plutarch had said, in his Glory of the Athenians that Xenophon had attributed Anabasis to a third part in order to distance himself as a subject, from himself as a writer. While the attribution to Themistogenes has been raised many times, the view of most scholars aligns substantially with that of Plutarch, and certainly that all the volumes are written by Xenophon.

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