March of the Ten Thousand

The March of the Ten Thousand followed the death of Cyrus the Younger at Cunaxa. Greek mercenaries who had marched into the Persian Empire found themselves without their patron, exposed to political danger and forced to retreat through unfamiliar territory.

The retreat matters because it turned a failed dynastic expedition into one of antiquity’s best-known accounts of military survival. Leadership, discipline, negotiation, terrain, weather and morale become the central forces in the story.

Xenophon’s Persian Expedition is the primary source for the march. The retreat brings the route, places, decisions and pressures faced by the Greek army into unusually sharp focus.