The influences behind Anabasis

AnabasisXenophon

c. 400 BCE

Anabasis

Xenophon

Late Classical Greece. Classical Greece (written in exile at Scillus/Corinth). Written in Ancient Greek.

Xenophon's Anabasis, written probably in the 370s BCE, is a first-person account (told in the third person) of the march of Cyrus the Younger's Greek mercenaries into Mesopotamia in 401 BCE and of their retreat to the Black Sea after Cunaxa. Its tree runs back through Herodotus, Thucydides and Ctesias to Homer, and through Herodotus' Persian and archaic Greek sources to Mesopotamian and Anatolian texts.

Where it came from

Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread
Histories, Herodotus c. 430 BCE
Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread
The Persians, Aeschylus 472 BCE follow this thread
Elegies (Eunomia and martial exhortations), Tyrtaeus c. 650 BCE follow this thread
Poems (fragments), Archilochus c. 650 BCE follow this thread

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c. 430 BCE

Histories

Herodotus

Classical Greece. Ionia and Athens. Written in Ancient Greek (Ionic).

Inquiry into the Persian Wars and their background, mixing campaign narrative with ethnography and geography of the Persian empire.

What it handed down

To Anabasis (c. 400 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

Herodotus measured the Persian Royal Road in stages and parasangs (5.52–54); Xenophon structures the march of Book 1 the same way, logging each stage and parasang count. His digressions on the Carduchians, Chalybes and Mossynoeci follow Herodotus' habit of pausing the march for the customs of the peoples met.

Where it came from

Periodos Ges (Circuit of the Earth), Hecataeus of Miletus c. 500 BCE
Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread
Theogony, Hesiod c. 700 BCE follow this thread
The Persians, Aeschylus 472 BCE follow this thread
Plataea Elegy, Simonides of Ceos c. 478 BCE follow this thread
Poems (elegies and iambics), Solon c. 590 BCE follow this thread
Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread
Behistun Inscription, Darius I c. 520 BCE follow this thread

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Periodos GesHecataeus of Miletus

c. 500 BCE

Periodos Ges (Circuit of the Earth)

Hecataeus of Miletus

Late Archaic Greece. Miletus, Ionia. Written in Ancient Greek (Ionic).

Prose description of the known world, region by region, including the lands of the Persian empire; survives in fragments.

What it handed down

To Histories (c. 430 BCE)

Direct source, well documented.

Hecataeus' prose survey of the world was Herodotus' main written predecessor; Herodotus mocks circular world maps (4.36) and corrects Hecataeus' Egyptian material. Ancient critics, including Porphyry, said Herodotus copied passages of Book 2 from him.

Where it came from

The line stops here: survives only in fragments; its sources were Ionian travel, sailors' reports and maps rather than identifiable texts.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Anabasis (c. 400 BCE)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Histories (c. 430 BCE)

Where it came from

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