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

Find “Anabasis” on Amazon

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
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
Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread
Behistun Inscription, Darius I c. 520 BCE follow this thread

Find “Histories” on Amazon

PoemsSolon

c. 590 BCE

Poems (elegies and iambics)

Solon

Archaic Greece. Athens. Written in Ancient Greek.

Fragmentary political and moral poems by the Athenian lawgiver on justice, wealth and the limits of human fortune.

What it handed down

To Histories (c. 430 BCE)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Herodotus cites Solon's poems at 5.113, and his Solon in the Croesus story (1.29–33) voices the moral of Solon's elegies, that no man should be counted happy before his end. The ethics of reversal of fortune that frame the whole Histories come from this archaic poetry.

Where it came from

Works and Days, Hesiod c. 700 BCE

Find “Poems (elegies and iambics)” on Amazon

c. 700 BCE

Works and Days

Hesiod

Archaic Greece. Boeotia. Written in Ancient Greek.

Didactic hexameter poem on justice, labor and the farming year, addressed to the poet's brother Perses.

What it handed down

To Poems (elegies and iambics) (c. 590 BCE)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Solon's 'Prayer to the Muses' and his Eunomia elegy rework Hesiod's teaching that Zeus' justice punishes the unjust city and that wealth gained wrongly does not last. He uses Hesiod's figures of Dike and Hybris.

Where it came from

Theogony, Hesiod c. 700 BCE

Find “Works and Days” on Amazon

c. 700 BCE

Theogony

Hesiod

Archaic Greece. Boeotia. Written in Ancient Greek.

Hexameter poem on the birth of the gods and the succession of divine kings from Ouranos to Zeus.

What it handed down

To Histories (c. 430 BCE)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

At 2.53 Herodotus credits Homer and Hesiod with giving the Greeks their theogony, naming the gods and their titles. He uses this as the basis for his argument about the Egyptian origin of Greek gods.

To Works and Days (c. 700 BCE)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Works and Days opens by correcting the Theogony: there is not one Eris (Strife) but two, a destructive and a productive one. Its Prometheus and Pandora story retells the Theogony's version with a different emphasis.

Where it came from

Song of Kumarbi (Kingship in Heaven), Anonymous c. 14th–13th century BCE
Enuma Elish, Anonymous c. 1100 BCE follow this thread

Find “Theogony” on Amazon

Song of KumarbiAnonymous

c. 14th–13th century BCE

Song of Kumarbi (Kingship in Heaven)

Anonymous

Hittite New Kingdom. Hattusa, Anatolia. Written in Hittite.

Hittite version of a Hurrian myth of successive divine kings, in which Kumarbi castrates Anu and is overthrown by the storm god.

What it handed down

To Theogony (c. 700 BCE)

Structural model, probable.

The Hittite Song of Kumarbi tells a succession of sky gods in which a father is castrated by his son and a storm god finally rules. Hesiod's sequence of Ouranos, Kronos and Zeus has the same pattern and the same motif of a swallowed stone, and most scholars accept a route from Anatolia to Greece.

Where it came from

The line stops here: translated from lost Hurrian oral and written sources.

Find “Song of Kumarbi (Kingship in Heaven)” on Amazon

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 Poems (elegies and iambics) (c. 590 BCE)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Histories (c. 430 BCE)

To Works and Days (c. 700 BCE)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Theogony (c. 700 BCE)

Where it came from

Share this