One [thing that stood out for him] is how important sacrifices and studying omens was in their activity. At one point they delay action for an almost disastrously long time because the omens weren't favorable. The recorded speeches emphasize how important it is to be honest, because the gods hated evil oathbreakers.
In yesterday's post I mentioned this insight, and added that what really impresses me is the efficacy of these religious practices. Anabasis is a prose work and a kind of public history, but it does contain a lot of Ancient Greek ritual. I am impressed by their apparent efficacy.
There is something about the process itself that may be effective. They’re praying to Zeus and Heracles and Apollo, whom very few today believe are real; but it works. There’s something about the process, and maybe it’s in the ritual or the attitude of prayer or of gratitude, that seems effective.
Or it could be that, somehow, their understanding of virtue "tuned" their prayers to the right listeners, in a way we wouldn't understand. Jewish, Indian and Chinese history also contain various -- quite varied, actually -- methods of communing with the divine, and all of them have at times produced good results. That's strange given how different their metaphysical claims ultimately are, especially the Hindu and Buddhist claims about the basic reality that differ quite widely from either the Ancient Greek or Christian ones.
Major decisions have to be voted on by the soldiers, not just the generals--who can be similarly gotten rid of. I don't mean to disparage Xenophon, but that brought to mind the not entirely dissimilar democracy on pirate ships. (I don't know if privateers, who'd be more like mercenaries, were run along lines similar to pirates.)
Some were, and some weren't; a lot of privateers in the Golden Age of Piracy were pirates sometimes and privateers other times, like Henry Morgan or Stede Bonnet. Morgan ran his crew like a pirate, but Bonnet paid his crew wages rather than plunder (and also paid for the construction of his ship). Other privateers were businessmen who were in the service of a country to which they were loyal all the time, particularly American privateers. There was a joint stock company or a wealthy man who outfitted the vessel, hired a captain, and ran it like a business.
However, the analogy between pirates and Greek soldiers is not novel.
When we are going to talk about pirates, well, we already are: most of those early Vikings were in fact pirates, and not kings in their own land. We will return to how little a distinction there is between piracy and "legitimate government" in a while, but the concept was not new even then: no less than St. Augustine relates a story about a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked the pirate how he dared molest peaceful shipping. The pirate asked him, "How dare you molest the whole world?"
It is a much fairer point than people admit. If we look at our own American notions of legitimacy in government, the pirates look far more legitimate than the kings: they made compacts to which the people who joined those compacts actually gave their consent. Iceland's government looks like the only one that we would find legitimate on anything like the American model; even Scotland's doesn't have the legitimacy of the Declaration of Arbroath until 1320, much later.
Xenophon's army started as a force of mercenaries, and after the death of their employer they became an unemployed force who initially just tried to see if one of the Persians would like to hire them instead. After the deaths of their generals through Persian treachery, however, they became something else.
The Ten Thousand are at this point in the story a kind of marching Republic. They elected their leaders and could replace them; and they no longer serve any higher authority but themselves. Their purpose is indeed like a nation's purpose: to protect their citizenry against the dangers of the world, while keeping each other as free as possible.
Now that they have returned to a Hellenic city, they have to decide what to do. At first they continue to act like a Republic, waging war against the neighbors who had chosen to wage war against them during their passage. (How much wiser the Macrones' decision to trade with them and help them pass looks now!)
They are no longer in the Wild, or what was the Wild to them. They have to now figure out how to come to terms with their society of Hellenic fellows. The city they came to gave them gifts and let them use it as a base for raiding, but in time they will need to do something else. They could dissolve and all sail home, keeping such money and slaves as they took on the march. Or they could retain this power that they built by coming together and building mutual trust and camaraderie. They have loyalty to each other now, which as James notes they didn't at first. That's powerful too.
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