Anabasis

by Xenophon

The Anabasis (composed at Scillus between 379 and 371) is a work of singular interest, and is brightly and pleasantly written. Xenophon, like Caesar, tells the story in the third person, and there is a straightforward manliness about the style, with a distinct flavour of a cheerful lightheartedness, which at once enlists our sympathies. His description of places and of relative distances is very minute and painstaking. The researches of modern travellers attest his general accuracy. It is expressly stated by Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius that the Anabasis was the work of Xenophon, and the evidence from style is conclusive. The allusion (Hellenica,' iii. I, 2) to Themistogenes of Syracuse as the author shows that Xenophon published it under an assumed name.