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Xenophon, Greek Historian

 
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Xenophon was a soldier, mercenary and Athenian student of Socrates and is known for his writings on the history of his own times, the sayings of Socrates, and the life of Greece. While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by Cyrus the Younger against his older brother, the emperor Artaxerxes II of Persia, in 401 BC. In this effort, Cyrus used many Greek mercenaries left unemployed by the cessation of the Peloponnesian War. Cyrus fought Artaxerxes at Cunaxa: the Greeks were victorious but Cyrus was killed, and shortly thereafter their general, Clearchus of Sparta, was invited to a peace conference, betrayed, and executed. The mercenaries, the Ten Thousand Greeks, found themselves deep in hostile territory, near the heart of Mesopotamia, far from the sea, and without leadership. They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north through hostile Persians, Armenians, and Kurds to Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea and then sailed westward and back to Greece. In Thrace, they helped Seuthes II make himself king. Xenophon's record of this expedition and the journey home was titled Anabasis ("The Expedition" or "The March Up Country" ).

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