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Updated: June 7, 2025
The liquor is very strong, unless one mixed water with it, and a very pleasant drink to those accustomed to it. Translated by J. S. Watson. The "Anabasis" has made Xenophon perhaps the most prominent figure of ancient classical literature, largely because every schoolboy who studies Greek knows at least this book.
One or two have been books such as mature men rarely read at all books which it is one's habit to "take as read"; to presume sufficiently known to speak of, but never to open. Thus, one day my hand fell upon the Anabasis, the little Oxford edition which I used at school, with its boyish sign-manual on the fly-leaf, its blots and underlinings and marginal scrawls.
Of course there is an initial difficulty in the case of the classics, that there is very little in either Greek or Latin which really appeals to an immature taste at all; and such books as might appeal to inquisitive and inexperienced minds, such as Homer or the Anabasis of Xenophon, are made unattractive by the method of giving such short snippets, and insisting on what used to be called thorough parsing.
Then take up ancient history in the detail, reading the following books in the following order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophontis Hellenica, Xenophontis Anabasis, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin. This shall form the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need mention to you now. The next, will be of Roman history.* From that we will come down to modern history.
The principal object in this caravan was a richly-gilded, four-wheeled carriage, closed in at the sides by curtains, and above by a roof supported on wooden pillars. In this vehicle, called the Harmamaxa, resting on rich cushions of gold brocade, sat our Egyptian Princess. The first mention of these is in Xenophon's Anabasis, where we find a queen travelling in such a vehicle.
Many a single line of the Anabasis presents a picture which deeply stirs the emotions. A good instance occurs in the fourth book, where a delightful passage of unsurpassable narrative tells how the Greeks rewarded and dismissed a guide who had led them through dangerous country. To my mind, words of wonderful suggestiveness. You see the wild, eastern landscape, upon which the sun has set.
He evidently regards himself as a very great man, not to be disturbed by insignificant Greek scholars." "What do you mean by insignificant, Mr. Stoute?" asked the lean professor, solemnly. "Why, the minister had never even heard of you, of your Greek Grammar, Greek Reader, and Anabasis. Such is fame!" chuckled the good-natured instructor.
To the small boy looking round the room it seemed as though twenty awful grownups were waiting in a dead silence to eat him up. He rushed upon his answer. "I I'm reading the Anabasis," he said, desperately. The false quantity sent a shock through the room. Nobody laughed, out of sympathy with the boy, who already knew that something dreadful had happened.
Xenophon, their chosen leader, has told the story of this wonderful march in a book called the "Anabasis," and from this book we take what we have here to say. First, how came these Greeks so far away from their home and friends? We have told elsewhere how the Persians several times invaded Greece. We have now to tell how the Greeks first invaded Persia. It happened many years afterwards.
It was a day of summer, and perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page, viewed with childish tremor, half apprehension and half delight, a mellow sunshine, which was to linger for ever in my mind. But I am thinking of the Anabasis. Were this the sole book existing in Greek, it would be abundantly worth while to learn the language in order to read it.
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