Following a sacrifice to Zeus in his aspect as the giver of wealth, which an oracle tells Xenophon he has been neglecting, the nearly-broke Xenophon finally receives some rewards for his efforts. Friends even buy back the horse he had to sell, which is good because his campaigns are not finished. They then go to Pergamon in what is now Turkey, where their hostess Hellas suggests they capture a Persian warlord and his household while they wait for the main army. Omens suggest that this will be the source of further rewards.
Xenophon takes about three hundred men on the raid. He encounters an enemy that turns out to be fortified in a tower that is described as eight brick-layers thick. In an overnight assault, Xenophon's men break through the tower but are unable to seize the occupants who are well-armed and defended. Fearing themselves near rout due to injury and exhaustion, they form up into the hollow-square formation they used on a much larger scale in Persia and retreat with captured cattle and members of the household who were caught outside (mostly slaves I gather).
However, this assault provoked the warlord and his family to decamp from the fortification. Intending to evacuate the area, they were instead captured by the main army of Thibron now arriving. Xenophon is awarded his choice of the captured wealth of this man and his family given that his raid was the proximate cause of the easy capture. Xenophon takes his choice and generously distributes it among his friends and supporters who have fought with him for so long.
The book closes with Xenophon's yielding of command to Thibron, who takes the whole force to battle their old enemy Tissaphernes.
That is the last thing we learn from Xenophon about his time with the Myriad. There are a few other sources for what happened during that period, and for what happened afterwards, but for the next five years we really don't know what Xenophon was doing. Many assume he spent the whole period in Spartan service given what we know of his success, life, and position afterwards. He may have stayed with his old companions for a long time; he may have been one of the last of them still in service when he gained a new friend the Spartan King Agesilaus with whom Xenophon shared mutual admiration and support.
Despite the traditional secrecy fostered by the Spartiates, the reign of Agesilaus is particularly well-known thanks to the works of his friend Xenophon, who wrote a large history of Greece (the Hellenica) covering the years 411 to 362 BC, therefore extensively dealing with Agesilaus' rule. Xenophon furthermore composed a panegyric biography of his friend, perhaps to clean his memory from the criticisms voiced against him. Another historical tradition—much more hostile to Agesilaus than Xenophon's writings—has been preserved in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, and later continued by Diodorus of Sicily. Moreover, Plutarch wrote a biography of Agesilaus in his Parallel Lives, which contains many elements deliberately omitted by Xenophon.
It was Agesilaus who established Xenophon with the estate near Scillus that he mentioned earlier in the Anabasis as a pleasant place with all sorts of game. With the goodwill of the Spartans who, for the moment, controlled this region, he can enjoy the good life and have time to become the prolific writer that he did. In the introduction to the Warner edition I have been reading, George Cawkwell writes:
Like the typical Peloponnesian gentleman, he looked to Sparta as the inspiration of the good life, and sent his sons there for the best education that he deemed Greece could offer; he visited the city at its chief festivals; he was entertained by Agesilaus, meeting in his company along with other aristocratic clients.... At the Olympic festival, he was well placed to return hospitality, and we may picture him and his guests nodding sage approval of the Panhellenic speeches.... Altogether it was a time of happiness, and of leisure to reflect and to begin to write. [Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. Rex Wagner (London & New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 15.]
The Anabasis was not his most famous book anywhere near his lifetime. His works pertaining to Agesilaus had more interest to his contemporaries, as did his work on horsemanship. His Education of Cyrus was far more famous during the Roman period; Caesar was said to keep a copy with him. His accounts of Socrates have been of more interest to philosophers throughout the times during which we have had access to them. The Anabasis' fame may chiefly arise, in fact, from the period when every educated man had to learn to read Classical Greek: it is fairly straightforward grammatically, and contains an interesting story to which young men could be relied upon to devote their attention. It was thus ideal for students, generations of whom followed the Ten Thousand to "The Sea! The Sea!"
I hope you've enjoyed working through this book with me. As the winter ends and the spring brings better weather for new adventures, let us bring this series to a close.
UPDATE: For those who requested that I add the series to the sidebar, this has been done.
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