Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations, transliterations, and other conventions
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The march route
- Chapter 3 The army
- Chapter 4 Unit organization and community
- Chapter 5 The things they carried
- Chapter 6 Marching
- Chapter 7 Resting
- Chapter 8 Eating and drinking
- Chapter 9 The soldier's body
- Chapter 10 Slaves, servants, and companions
- Chapter 11 Beyond the battlefield
- Tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations, transliterations, and other conventions
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The march route
- Chapter 3 The army
- Chapter 4 Unit organization and community
- Chapter 5 The things they carried
- Chapter 6 Marching
- Chapter 7 Resting
- Chapter 8 Eating and drinking
- Chapter 9 The soldier's body
- Chapter 10 Slaves, servants, and companions
- Chapter 11 Beyond the battlefield
- Tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This book is about an army of Greek mercenaries who marched into Mesopotamia twenty-five centuries ago. Their objective was the fabled city of Babylon, but they never got there. In the spring of 2006, a former student of mine, once a history major and now a US Army captain, returned to campus to say hello after spending a year in Iraq with an infantry company. Ever the historian, he had wrangled a visit to the ruins of Babylon, and proudly showed me photographs. Looking at them, I was reminded that when I first started working on Xenophon's Anabasis in 1996, Mesopotamia was an abstraction for most of us. Now images of the war in Iraq appear daily. Eerie resonances between past and present occasionally emerge. For example, the mercenaries spent the night before the climactic battle of Cunaxa camped not far from the site of what is today Fallujah. As I write these lines, I am reminded again of both hometown friends and former students now serving overseas. I await their safe returns, and hope that someday soon nobody will have to become a warrior to see Babylon.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Greek Army on the MarchSoldiers and Survival in Xenophon's Anabasis, pp. ixPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008