The March Up Country: A Translation of Xenophon's Anabasis
Translated by W. H. D. Rouse
214 pages
Written ca. 380 BC; translation published 1947
Read from March 1 to March 2
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
I intend to work my way through more of the ancient and medieval classics. One of these days I want to slap together something of a roughly chronological "course" for myself, beginning with rereads of The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Iliad and so forth, making progress into Greek comedies and histories and tragedies and such that I haven't yet read, but for now I'll content myself with picking up whatever comes to mind. When Roger Hill (who played Cyrus in The Warriors) died the other day, I figured it was time to get a copy of Xenophon's Anabasis.
Writers didn't develop the technique of leaving out irrelevant detail until well after the days of Daniel Defoe. My eyes glazed over the various marching stages early in Anabasis, and the battle descriptions weren't always clear (or, at any rate, I didn't take the time to parse out each actor and movement, because I can be lazy like that). I did enjoy the various speeches and dialogues, though I found myself amused by Xenophon's increasingly self-righteous defenses of how he'd led the mercenaries. The fact that Xenophon wrote of himself in the third person, and originally under a pseudonym, adds to my snickering. Someone didn't like how his leadership was being spun by some political enemy or other, I'm guessing.
I'm glad I took the time to read Anabasis for myself; when a work has been adapted and reinterpreted in a variety of genres, it's a good idea to read the source material. Now if only I'd get on with reading The Tempest...
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