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Elyv posted:2) Reading the army descriptions before the big battle, it was funny/startling to hear that the Great King's army was 1.2 million. Wikipedia says 40,000 at Cunaxa so I guess that's Xenophon basically saying "They had a shitton of guys." Would his readers actually have believed that number, or would they have understood as "Their army was really really big"? Hrm. Tracking back the source for that wikipedia # I'm kinda suspicious of it; it seems like the source is modern revision, not contemporary . When I looked that section up on Perseus earlier, the quote I found was "The number is probably overstated. Ctesias, the King's Greek physician (see viii. 26), is said by Plutarch (Artax. 13) to have given it as 400,000." So contemporary sources give a range between four hundred thousand and a million, and that's a similar range of troops given by other contemporary historical records for other Persian armies at other similar points in history (i.e., against Alexander at Gaugamela a generation later, etc). Cutting that down to a mere forty thousand would require none of the contemporary Greeks be able to count, not even the ones hired by the Persians on the other side. Of course that's possible but i'm hesitant to discard contemporary sources without really, really strong evidence. Anyone around who can give us a more authoritative analysis than Wikipedia? EDIT: For comparison, here's the wikipedia entry on the army sizes at the battle of Gaugamela, where Alexander fought the Persian army a generation later under the subsequent Emperor, Darius. quote:Some ancient Greek historians suggest that the main Persian army numbered between 200,000 and 300,000, but some modern scholars, such as Delbruck and a number of his students, suggest that it was no larger than 50,000 because of the logistical difficulty of fielding more than 50,000 soldiers in battle at the time. However, it is possible that the Persian army could have numbered over 100,000 men.[2] One estimate is that there were 25,000 peltasts,[2] 10,000 Immortals,[26] 2,000 Greek hoplites,[5] 1,000 Bactrians,[5] and 40,000 cavalry,[4] 200 scythed chariots,[27] and 15 war elephants.[28] Hans Delbrück estimates Persian cavalry at 12,000 because of management issues, Persian infantry (peltast) less than that of the Greek heavy infantry, and Greek mercenaries at 8,000.[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaugamela#Size_of_Persian_army Personally I'm inclined to lean towards the range set by the ancient sources because, you know, first hand sources vs. tenth hand analysis. Every decade or so there's a new article that comes out that finds that ancient sources were actually right about something after all, from Schliemann actually finding Troy on down to Herodotus's gold-digging giant ants. But I also havent' read any of the articles by the modern scholars explaining why they think the numbers are really so much smaller. Maybe the eggheads are right after all. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Feb 14, 2016 |
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Feb 14, 2016 11:05
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The ancient Greeks seemed to find the sheer size of the Persian Empire quite intimidating. Which is pretty understandable.
BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Feb 14, 2016 |
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Feb 14, 2016 11:26
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Some further contextual notes. A few people (notably, the people who wrote the intro to the Landmark Hellenica) have noted that his description of the coup in Athens overthrowing the Spartan installed regime is written more or less from the perspective of a cavalryman in the Oligarchic faction. Their theory, then, is that this was Xenophon's own perspective. Socrates and his students (Alcibiades, Xenophon) seem to have had, or were at least perceived to have, anti-democratic leanings which, at least in Socrates' case, proved fatal. People thus theorize that at least part of why Xenophon took off was because Athens was going through a rough patch and he'd pick the wrong side to be on. Of course, after the events of Anabasis the Ten Thousand are going to end up circling back to Greece and fighting under the Spartans. This leads to Xenophon's exile from Athens proper for at least a while. I find this interesting because from the start the Spartans have a fair amount of sway in the Ten Thousand and afterwards they get scooped up by Derkylidas, yet another Spartan, and folded more or less into part of their overall war effort. So, although comprised of Greeks, it seems a lot of the basic ground work for this force was managed by Lysander, whose personal friendship with Cyrus at the end of the Peloponnesian War famously ended the Persian policy of backing whichever side was weakest in that fight. It's possible that some people at the top of the Greek food chain knew exactly what Cyrus was up to before word filtered down to the likes of Xenophon. Tao Jones posted:Promising safety and then attacking was a taboo for the Greeks. The idea of guest-friendship is based on mitigating it. Guest-friendship was a sort-of ritual where someone in a desperate situation pledges to enter into a guest-friend relationship with someone else who can protect them and keep them safe until danger passes. This creates a tie between the descendants of the guest-friend and host. As an example of the power of guest-friendship, in the Iliad, the hero Diomedes is possessed by Athena and on a killing rampage, but when he encounters someone whose ancestor his own ancestor was guest-friends with, he snaps out of it. One of the things Zeus rules over is the guest-friendship relationship, and breaking it is the kind of thing that gets the Furies sent after you. So this book is, I think, meant to evoke a primal "THOSE PERSIAN FUCKERS!" emotional beat that isn't there so much for us. IIRC guest-friendship was also a general Med/Levantine thing as well. Maybe not to the same level, but it wasn't seen as lovely to just the Greeks. Xander77 posted:In the rest of his works Xenophon is really big on the importance of omens and sacrifices. It's kind of interesting just how conventional he is in his thinking, for a student of Socrates. I think it's very interesting, especially because Xenophon, when he gets back from this whole mess, takes it upon himself to write an alternate apology. Despite not actually having been in Athens at the time he felt so strongly that Plato must have gotten the story wrong that he puts together his own counter narrative. It raises some interesting points (was Plato embellishing Socrates to... give credence to his theories? Or did he put his own theories in the mouth of a man already executed for thoughtcrime to give himself a legal safety net? Perhaps Plato's Socrates was the 'real' Socrates and all the cool kids mocked poor Xenophon behind his back because he was too much of a jock to understand their metaphors and analogies.) Xander77 posted:"Xenophon's perspective on visionary / transformative leadership notes the importance of intrinsic motivation, but also emphasizes the value of external rewards". golden bubble posted:That's not surprising, coming from a mercenary captain. But, as the Sack of Antwerp attests, people still failed to pay their mercenaries for at least 2000 years after Xenophon. I think it's really interesting that Xenophon really doesn't see this as a mercenary perspective. He weaves it through all his political theory. Cyrus-of-the-Cyropedia does it for his loyal soldiers, rewarding generals with the best divisions, who are supposed to reward captains with the best subdivisions, who are supposed to reward NCO's who are supposed to reward etc. etc. In return the plebs are supposed to obey the aristocrats in every which way. Hell, in his Oeconomicus he goes on about how the ideal wife has the power to and responsibility of reward and recognition within the ideal household.* Xenophon seems to me to be one of nature's followers (be it to Socrates, Cyrus, Derkylidias,  ) and yet is constantly disappointed that neither those above nor below him perform as he expects.*This, and an incident in the Hellenika where the Ten Thousand come across a female satraap who would more or less Xenophon's dream employer is why I rank him as Greece's most surprising feminist thinker. quote:
100% yes. quote:Related to these: Is he going to be contrasting Cyrus as a "Persian" leader with "Greek" leadership? I don't think so. At the time, while there's still a divide between Greek/not-Greek, there are still huge conflicts within Greece about what leadership should be. Oligarchy/Monarchy vs. democracy was a running sub-theme of the Athenian vs. Sparta conflict. quote:Xenophon mentions that people took Cyrus's crossing of the river at Thapsacus as being an omen of his destiny to become king. But Cyrus fails; is this a criticism of omens? Prior to the battle scene at the climax, Cyrus tells Xenophon that omens and sacrifices were made and favorable, but those aren't mentioned in the text otherwise. In other works Xenophon goes on about the omens as being very important. I think he saw it less as a 'woo we're going to win' as 'woo, the gods have consented to let us prove ourselves.' In other words, acting under good omens meant a chance of success, acting under bad omens guaranteed failure.
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Feb 17, 2016 09:30
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What can I say, I write a pretty good book  no but in all seriousness I came here looking for something else and y'all have chosen a fine book to read
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Feb 17, 2016 23:09
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Personally I'm inclined to lean towards the range set by the ancient sources because, you know, first hand sources vs. tenth hand analysis. Every decade or so there's a new article that comes out that finds that ancient sources were actually right about something after all, from Schliemann actually finding Troy on down to Herodotus's gold-digging giant ants. I just finished my first read of it the other day and I'm no expert but I don't think the large numbers given are too incredible to believe. Xenophon gives as an explanation at one point that the ten thousand are very mobile compared to such a large army. If I didn't miss anything, they deal with a lot of harassment and attempts to block their way but don't actually fight the entire king's army again after the truce is broken.
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Feb 19, 2016 00:01
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For anyone else reading on Perseus, I got annoyed jumping up and down the page for the footnotes, and adapted a little user-script that makes the footnote links hoverable so you can just see the note right by the relevant passage. It should actually work on any Perseus text, I believe.
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Feb 19, 2016 01:45
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Xenophon posted:What can I say, I write a pretty good book Awww, you're just saying that because you want to found a colony in our subforum! More seriously though it's getting to be time for suggestions for next month's book. Based on the relative success we've had the past couple months, it seems that being a free ebook is a big plus. The "ideal" BotM selection is probably 1) free on kindle, 2) intelligent to at least some degree (so taht there's something to talk about) 3) relatively accessible, and 4) entertaining and not too long. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 06:57
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I have to say, I think it's a waste that The March of the Ten Thosand wasn't reserved for, you know, March. 
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Feb 19, 2016 09:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Awww, you're just saying that because you want to found a colony in our subforum! How about The Man Who Was Thursday
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Feb 19, 2016 22:10
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Hat Thoughts posted:How about The Man Who Was Thursday Lol
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Feb 19, 2016 23:42
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Hat Thoughts posted:How about The Man Who Was Thursday It was already selected as a BotM in January of 2012. I can put Napoleon of Notting Hill on the list though.
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Feb 19, 2016 23:52
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my dad posted:I have to say, I think it's a waste that The March of the Ten Thosand wasn't reserved for, you know, March. 
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Feb 20, 2016 01:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It was already selected as a BotM in January of 2012. I can put Napoleon of Notting Hill on the list though. I wasn't even alive then...
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Feb 20, 2016 02:01
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I'm interested in reading Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima. I've never read it so I don't know how well it meets any criteria other than "it's a book I want to read and might be able to have interesting thoughts about". As another possibility, if we want another month of ancient war stuff, March seems like the appropriate time to read Caesar's commentaries.
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Feb 20, 2016 03:54
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How about some Joseph Conrad? I'll nominate The Secret Agent because I'm evil.
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Feb 20, 2016 08:47
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How about an Eco book? Doesn't have to be Name of the Rose, but it could be.
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Feb 20, 2016 09:01
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Billy Budd, Sailor.
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Feb 20, 2016 09:21
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I like Eco but no way in Hell will I have time to get through Name of the Rose again.
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Feb 20, 2016 17:04
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I'm very down to read some Eco.
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Feb 20, 2016 19:44
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I finally got hold of the Oxford translation of Anabasis from the library a few days ago and am really digging this translation so far. Definitely using the Perseus plugin that someone here made (thanks by the way, it's rad) for supplemental footnotes though because they're all in the back in this book and my bookmarks keep falling out.  Also yes to Eco!
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Feb 20, 2016 23:56
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Name of the Rose!
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Feb 21, 2016 03:42
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Did we have a Three Musketeers month at some archived point? If not, that's what I'd like to see.
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Feb 21, 2016 05:12
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Name of the Rose is a tough read, and even if you are following the meta-textual interconnections of classical, medieval and modern world-views, you'll still get bogged down in stories within stories that have no apparent point. I'm not saying it's not worth reading, but that's just something to consider for discussion.
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Feb 21, 2016 06:36
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poisonpill posted:Name of the Rose is a tough read, Nah.
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Feb 22, 2016 00:04
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Only if you're a big baby. Name of the Rose is just a smart, dressed up detective story. I was thinking it was going to be some towering incomprehensible brain-buster but it's really not. The March of the 10,000 is still cracking me up. Every time Xenophon gets challenged he shuts everyone down with his super cool smarts, and he's always noble and right. I just got to the part where they're paying reparations for past misdeeds and someone tries to call him out, and it basically leads to a "and then the whole audience stood up and cheered" moment.
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Feb 23, 2016 04:22
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drat sorry I missed this. I'd be up for some Eco but seeing as I just started chapter 3 of Gravity's Rainbow don't think I'll be finished on time (with 400 pages still to go)
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Feb 23, 2016 05:52
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Bilirubin posted:drat sorry I missed this. I'd be up for some Eco but seeing as I just started chapter 3 of Gravity's Rainbow don't think I'll be finished on time (with 400 pages still to go) The discussion doesn't have to end just because the month does! If people aren't posting because they feel it's "over", don't worry, jump in. There are always people who get started late.
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Feb 29, 2016 15:03
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A note before the next thread goes up: Was reading the introduction to the Landmark edition of Xenophon's Hellenika and Strassler had an interesting comment on Xenophon's religion. He pointed out that other contemporary writers of Xenophon are nothing like as religious and don't show anything approaching Xenophon's desire to show piety rewarded and evil doings punished. Herodotus portrays the gods as flawed and envious and jealous, and good people are as likely to be punished as bad; Thucydides is deistic at best if not atheistic. Strassler's theory seems to be that Xenophon's religious piety might be due to the influence of Socrates.
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Mar 4, 2016 00:17
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