Anabasis - Xenophon

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Résumé :
Stranded deep in Persia, after their leader Cyrus and other Greek senior officers were killed or captured, Xenophon, one of three remaining leaders elected by the soldiers, played an instrumental role in encouraging his army of 10,000 to march north across foodless deserts and snow-filled mountain passes, towards the Black Sea and the comparative security of its Greek shoreline cities. Now abandoned in northern Mesopotamia, without supplies, the 10,000 had to fight their way northwards, making ad hoc decisions about their leadership, tactics, provender and destiny, while the King's army and hostile natives barred their way and attacked their flanks. Anabasis is the most famous book of the Ancient Greek professional soldier and writer Xenophon. Anabasis is rendered in translation as The March of the Ten Thousand. The narration of the journey is Xenophon's best known work, and one of the great adventures in human history. Besides military history, the Anabasis has found use as a tool for the teaching of classical philosophy...

Biographie:
Xenophon of Athens was a Greek military captain, philosopher, and historian who was born in Athens, most likely in 355 or 354 BC. At the age of 30, Xenophon was chosen to lead the Ten Thousand, one of the largest Greek mercenary armies of the Achaemenid Empire, as they advanced into and nearly conquered Babylon in 401 BC. Theodore Ayrault Dodge, a military historian, stated that nothing has been invented centuries afterward to surpass the ingenuity of this warrior. Xenophon was one of the first to discuss tactical flanking moves and feints in battle, and he created precedents for many logistical operations. In his Anabasis, Xenophon describes his experiences with the Ten Thousand while serving Cyrus the Younger. He also describes Cyrus's unsuccessful attempt to usurp Artaxerxes II of Persia's throne and the Greek mercenaries' subsequent return to Greece following Cyrus's defeat at the Battle of Cunaxa. The first-person, modest, and introspective description of an ancient military commander's experiences is called Anabasis. Xenophon produced Cyropaedia on the subject of wars in Asia Minor and Babylon, explaining the military and political strategies employed by Cyrus the Great to subdue the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC.

Sommaire:
the principles of leadership and government exhibited by the army can be seen as exemplifying Socratic philosophy....