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 follow this thread
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

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Behistun InscriptionDarius I

c. 520 BCE

Behistun Inscription

Darius I

Achaemenid Persia. Persia (Media). Written in Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian.

Trilingual rock inscription in which Darius narrates in the first person his seizure of the throne and campaigns against rebel kings; copies circulated in Aramaic.

What it handed down

To Histories (c. 430 BCE)

Disputed link, probable.

Herodotus' account of Darius' accession, the false Smerdis and the seven conspirators (3.61–88), matches the Behistun narrative in many details, including several conspirators' names. Aramaic copies circulated through the empire, but whether Herodotus drew on a version of the text or on oral Persian tradition is unsettled.

Where it came from

Letter to Ashur (Sargon II's Eighth Campaign), Anonymous (in the name of Sargon II) 714 BCE

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Letter to AshurAnonymous

714 BCE

Letter to Ashur (Sargon II's Eighth Campaign)

Anonymous (in the name of Sargon II)

Neo-Assyrian. Assyria. Written in Akkadian.

Long literary report addressed to the god Ashur describing Sargon II's march through the Zagros mountains against Urartu, stage by stage.

What it handed down

To Behistun Inscription (c. 520 BCE)

Structural model, probable.

Achaemenid royal inscriptions took over the conventions of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions such as Sargon's campaign reports: a first-person king, a sequence of named campaigns and enemies, and dated victories. Behistun's Babylonian version is written directly in that Akkadian tradition.

Where it came from

The line stops here: draws on the conventions of Assyrian royal annals, a genre of formulaic inscriptions rather than single identifiable works.

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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

What it handed down

To Behistun Inscription (c. 520 BCE)

Where it came from

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