01.07.09
Tom Ricks and Xenophon
Among the many things I like about the U.S. military, it is one of the few places you can find a good argument nowadays about Xenophon and other ancient notables. I recall, for example, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling giving me a new perspective on Thucydides during a driving cold winter rain in the high desert outside Tal Afar one night during the winter of 2005-06.
The January-February issue of the Army’s official Military Review has an appreciative but rambling review of a new translation of Xenophon’s Anabasis that was published last year by Cornell. Lt. Col. Prisco Hernandez’s essay is most interesting for its closing sentence: “Reading Xenophon’s Anabasis as the tale of how a tactically superior, but numerically small, western force withdraws with their lives and honor intact from a dubious entanglement of an ancient Middle Eastern civilization is a profitable modern use of Xenophon’s text.”
