Anabasis ("going up") is the story of how the Ten Thousand Hellenes survived and made it ever-closer to Greece, through hostile Persian territory. Xenophon's prose is straight-forward, even somewhat terse. Though he can clearly deliver a stirring oration with the best, when it comes to relating an army's actions or the account of a march, Xenophon is all economy. One gets the sense that, while the settings and challenges are to be accounted for, what matters most is the right way to respond. Settings, particularities: these change. Right thinking and action transcend.
Xenophon makes a different kind of protagonist: he answers to what the world gives him. He is a marked departure from the mythological basileus; a very classical Greek hero. Achilles was all rage, destruction, petulance, and mayhem. Odysseus was the man of many talents, the skilled and learned, crafty and able. Xenophon is the honorable, the right-thinking, the philosopher-soldier. He provides a new kind of Greek ideal.
Xenophon's influence redounds. It is said that Alexander the Great carried the Anabasis as a field manual. Christiaan de Wet had a copy always at hand as he rode and hid in the veld during the Boer War. Xenophon espouses a particular philosophy of leadership: a transparency, a straight-forward practicality, a soldier's ethic. One wonders what it would mean to adopt it beyond the campaign. Maybe there is nothing beyond it. Much as the Ten Thousand seek a way home, we too wish to lay our burden down. Maybe there is no rest.
"thálatta, thálatta"
