Dissatisfaction with the end of the Anabasis

New readers may approach the end of the Anabasis with some relief. Our protagonist of Books 3–7 has survived the months-long march from the battle of Cunaxa. And there have been some recent cheering events. Xenophon has just successfully defended himself (7.6.11–38) against an accusation of corruption (7.6.8–10) that could have resulted in his execution (7.6.10; 7.6.36). Having been informed by a seer that his current lack of funds to return home is the result of his having failed to sacrifice to Zeus Meilichios (7.8.4), Zeus the Compassionate, bestower of riches,Footnote ¹ Xenophon gets favourable omens the very next day after sacrificing to that aspect of Zeus (‘a burnt offering of whole piglets according to his paternal custom’ [7.8.5]).Footnote ² On that same day some representatives of Thibron, a general preparing to employ the approximately 5,300 soldiers that remain from the Ten Thousand,Footnote ³ arrive with advance pay for the soldiers. These representatives of Thibron also bring to Xenophon a horse (7.8.6: ‘since they had heard that he delighted in the horse’) that he had sold for fifty darics (7.8.6.), and ‘they did not want to be paid back’ (7.8.6). So, he now has the horse as well as the fifty darics. Fifty darics is a substantial sum equivalent to four years’ pay for an ordinary soldier, surely enough for the journey home that Xenophon has in mind (7.1.4–6; 7.1.8; 7.1.38–40).Footnote ⁴ Xenophon and the group of 5,300 then go to Pergamum. There his hostess is Hellas.

Here, however, for many readers, the saga deteriorates. Hellas advises Xenophon to attack her wealthy Persian neighbour, Asidates, in order to kidnap him and his family and seize his possessions. Xenophon's consultation with a seer yields favourable omens, and Xenophon takes 300 foot soldiers to make the attack. His attack fails. Half of his men are wounded. Others come to their rescue. Then the next day the entire army of 5,300 encounters Asidates and family by chance. The family is seized; ‘thus the previous omens turned out’ (7.8.23). The army votes to give Xenophon his choice of the booty. He is now wealthy enough to do well for others (7.8.24).

Dissatisfied readers charge Xenophon's final action with multiple faults. His act is ‘banditry’.Footnote ⁵ It is close to being an ‘assault of brigands’.Footnote ⁶ His plunder of an unknown person is ‘true hypocrisy’, since Xenophon purports to be a pious person.Footnote ⁷ It is unprovoked.Footnote ⁸ It is a cold attack done solely for profit.Footnote ⁹ It is thereby inconsistent with Xenophon's previous disclaimers of personal profit.Footnote ¹⁰ It is militarily a ‘botched attempt’.Footnote ¹¹ It is a ‘debacle’ because of an absence of cavalry ensuing from lack of careful planning.Footnote ¹² Xenophon's pronouncing that the later accidental encounter with Asidates for capture bears out the seer's prophecy manipulates religion to excuse Xenophon's mistake.Footnote ¹³

A few scholars do not express disappointment or at least give more neutral assessments of the Asidates episode. I cite these in a note.Footnote ¹⁴ My essay argues for a fresh appreciation of Xenophon's account of the episode by dwelling on some details so far insufficiently considered.

Exploration of two charges

The charge that Xenophon's raid on Asidates is inconsistent with his professed indifference to personal profit is worth exploring. Previously, Xenophon has several times refused payment (for example, 7.1.6; 7.2.10; 7.5.3) from the Thracian Seuthes whom the Cyreans eventually serve for a time. To one meeting with Seuthes, Xenophon brings witnesses, apparently to make it publicly clear that he is not doing any personal profit-making dealings (7.2.24–8). When he speaks to defend himself against accusations that he has been getting pay from Seuthes, he explains to the soldiers that he has received nothing (7.6.16–19). Later on, speaking to Seuthes to move Seuthes to pay what Seuthes owes the soldiers, Xenophon begins by saying that he is asking nothing for himself (7.7.20). His saying that it would have been disgraceful for him to profit when the soldiers were not getting anything and they held him in honour (7.7.39–40) implies that an honoured leader should think primarily of his group's well-being. He refuses to stay with Seuthes for a reward (7.7.51).

Xenophon did not, on the other hand, object to private profit by others in the form of plundering expeditions by independent subgroups of the Cyreans. In their case he objected to private plundering that might have been disastrous for the other Cyreans. Evidence is 5.1.8, where Xenophon advises those that are going off privately for plunder ‘to inform us’ so that the others will know the number absent; the others may assist preparation; the others will know where to go if help is needed; and the others may give advice about the size of the target for plunder. At 6.6.2 a decision to distribute among everyone anything acquired privately implies previous private raids tolerated.

The fact that he allows the soldiers to get profit where they can but disclaims personal profit for himself perhaps suggests that, as their leader, he considers it necessary to focus on more important issues such as the safe management of his group. Similarly, when scorning another's interest in money (7.7.41) he says that no acquisition (ktêma) is finer than virtue, justice, and generosity for a man (andri), especially for a leader. Perhaps in the Asidates episode Xenophon no longer considers himself the leader with the leader's special responsibilities.Footnote ¹⁵ In that case, the narrator may intend to convey that Xenophon's raid is not inconsistent with his previous disclaimers of personal profit. On the other hand, that the phrase ‘especially to a leader’ qualifies ‘for a man’ at 7.4.41 implies that profit should rank below virtue and justice for any man. Perhaps with that phrase the narrator gives us the material to infer later that the Asidates raid is inconsistent with Xenophon's implied view of how any decent man should act.

The charge of brigandage, that is, seizing booty, is also worth exploring. Booty is distinct from pay. Pay implies subservience.Footnote ¹⁶ The word often translated ‘booty’ is chrêmata. The range of uses that LSJ records for chrêmata differs somewhat from the range for the relevant sense of the English word ‘booty’.Footnote ¹⁷ The word ‘booty’ has more of the connotation of stolen material objects. In some uses chrêmata approximates to the English word ‘stuff’. ‘Stuff’ covers any collection of miscellaneous inanimate items. Chrêmata, however, also can refer more widely to collections including animals, both non-human and human (e.g. 7.8.17). Although when we read ‘booty’, we may think of gold, jewellery, and silver teapots, it is important to remember that it includes people kidnapped and sold into slavery. For example, at 6.3.2–4 groups of Cyreans seize many andrapoda (‘captives’Footnote ¹⁸; ‘slaves’Footnote ¹⁹).Footnote ²⁰

To say, for example, that ‘booty is a highly positive mode of wealth acquisition’Footnote ²¹ includes the implicit qualification ‘according to the conventions of Xenophon's setting’. Without the qualification, it is more natural to say of an attack such as Xenophon's on Asidates that it was theft no worse than many previous actions of the Cyreans.

For accuracy it seems to me necessary, though it is not customary, to observe that the march of the Cyreans was in significant part a massive human trafficking operation. From the start, the Cyreans’ march involved acquiring human booty, and it continued to do so when conditions permitted.Footnote ²² The acquisition of slaves was a major aim of the Cyreans immediately after the murder of their generals.Footnote ²³ As they moved into more difficult territory, however, it was unmanageable to herd slaves along, so they kept only a few as personal favourites. Late in their march, on the Black Sea coast and in Thrace, they collected slaves and sold them soon after acquiring to buyers in Asia.Footnote ²⁴ The sale gave them the more portable wealth of money.Footnote ²⁵ Their buyers might convey their purchases for sale elsewhere.Footnote ²⁶

Xenophon was then acting like other Cyreans in making the raid on Asidates’ household solely for profit. Brigandage was an expected part of a military campaign. The fact that Asidates and household had done nothing to provoke the attack puts them in company with the targets of previous raids in the expedition of the Cyreans. All along Xenophon acted in perfect accord with the principles that allowed human trafficking. As someone or something quite other than the compatriots whom Xenophon would acknowledge as worthy of his respect, Asidates did not matter. Xenophon felt no obligation of decency toward seizable stuff. (Nor did his contemporaries: at 7.2.6 Aristarchos, the new Spartan official in charge of Byzantium, sells 400 Cyreans that remain in Byzantium into slavery.Footnote ²⁷)

Questions about some details of the final passage of the Anabasis: tentative answers

I now select some details of the Asidates passage that raise questions for me. Where possible, I will offer tentative answers to my questions. I will later draw some conclusions from my answers. The episode begins when Xenophon and his troops ‘occupy’ (7.8.8: katalambanousi) Pergamum. Here my question is: does ‘occupy’ mean they impose their presence upon the regular inhabitants and require from them at least food and possibly services? My question arises because the group of Cyreans that remains with Xenophon now numbers about 5,300.Footnote ²⁸ It seems to me that a military force of 5,300 men cannot in the mildest sense ‘occupy’ a town (elsewhere the army sometimes prefers to bivouac outdoors instead of in homes).

At Pergamum Xenophon is entertained (7.8.8: xenoutai)Footnote ²⁹ by ‘Hellas, the wife of Gongylos…and mother of Gorgion and Gongylos’. Xenophon describes Hellas only as ‘wife’ (or ‘woman’) and ‘mother’. Hellas is the widow of Gongylus II, whose land was a grant to an ancestor of her husband for favours to Xerxes.Footnote ³⁰ The secondary literature adds ‘dynast’ and ‘matriarch’ to her description.Footnote ³¹ Some authors propose that Hellas was a daughter of Themistocles,Footnote ³² who died in 459 bc. If so, I infer, from the date 459 and from the possible ages for her sons who are not too old to join Thibron's military campaign in 399 (Hell. 3.1.6), the further description that Hellas was about sixty years old.Footnote ³³

Here one question that arises for me is: is it not unusual that Xenophon identifies the woman Hellas as host for his entertainment? Ordinarily one would more expect a son to be host, as head of the household. The verb xenoutai at 7.8.8 (‘was entertained’Footnote ³⁴) primarily means ‘entered into guest-friendship with’. The verb seems non-standard in connection with a female host. A little earlier at 7.8.5 Xenophon uses xenountai to refer to his reception of the representatives of Thibron. Thomas translates ‘they entered into guest-friendship with’ where ‘guest-friendship’ is a somewhat formal or technical term.Footnote ³⁵ His ‘Glossary’ entry for ‘guest-friend’Footnote ³⁶ (xenos) mentions only that men enter into the relationship. If women are not qualified to enter into formal xenia relationships, then the verb in connection with a female host must have a less formal sense, perhaps merely ‘to treat as a guest’. Thomas translates xenoutai by ‘is warmly welcomed’.Footnote ³⁷ Perhaps the explanation for Hellas acting as hostess is that she is an elder and that she had her own household at Pergamon, while the sons’ households were in other cities of which they were the rulers (Hell. 3.1.6). The verb suggests at least that Hellas and household received Xenophon (and perhaps some subgroup) willingly. Given that an army is now ‘occupying’ her town, it seems unlikely that she had much choice.

Hellas ‘advises him that Asidates, a Persian man, lived in the plain, and she said that if Xenophon went by night with three hundred men [it is possible] to capture him, and not only him but his wife and children and store of wealth – and there was a lot of it’ (7.8.9). ‘She advises him that…to capture’ translates hautê autô(i) phrazei…labein. Thomas translates at 7.8.8: ‘She pointed out to him that Asidates lived in the plain…and she said that if Xenophon went by night with three hundred men, he would capture him’.Footnote ³⁸ But Thomas paraphrases as, ‘She…advised him to kidnap’.Footnote ³⁹ See LSJ sense I.3.c for the meaning ‘advise’ for phrazei. With dative of person and infinitive it means ‘advise to…’. If phrazei governs the infinitive labein, Hellas advises him to seize Asidates. Understanding phrazei as ‘advises to’ (rather than ‘points out’ or ‘advises that’) more strongly places Hellas as the first mover of the idea of kidnap.Footnote ⁴⁰ Here my questions are: what are her credentials for giving such military advice? What military experience does she have? Further, does she have her own motives for depriving her neighbour Asidates of his riches? Though she is a subject of the Persian king,Footnote ⁴¹ she has Greek connections (‘continuing self-identification as Greeks’Footnote ⁴²). Does she object to Persians? Does she want Asidates out of the way? Because Xenophon does not mention her military credentials or experience, I conclude in answer to my first questions about her that she had none.Footnote ⁴³ In answer to my other questions, I propose that she may well have wanted to deprive Asidates of his riches; her Greek background may influence her to view Persians as simply insignificant Others; if Asidates is out of the way, she may have more ability to do as she wishes in the area.

As usual, before taking action, Xenophon consults the gods about the future with a sacrifice: ‘Basias the Eleian, who was there acting as seer, said that the sacred signs were very favorable toward him and the man should be easy to capture’ (7.8.10). We are not told what question Xenophon asked of the divination. Obviously, he would not ask: ‘Is this a just and decent thing to do?’ Was his question a simple question, such as: ‘Is it easily possible for me to kidnap Asidates?’ That is what the report of the seer suggests.

The next question-provoking detail is that Xenophon went out for the attack ‘having dined’, taking a subgroup from the army consisting of his closest associates and reliable people he wished to reward (7.8.11). It strikes me as oddly superfluous for the author to say ‘Having dined (deipnêsas)’, he set out. It seems obvious that no one would set out for an unprovoked attack mid-dinner. Previous banquets in the Anabasis involve much wine (7.3.24–35). The narrator describes Xenophon as ‘already somewhat drunk’ (hupopepôkôs, 7.3.29) when he speaks at Seuthes’ banquet.Footnote ⁴⁴ And when Xenophon mentions that Seuthes proposed an attack after a dinner (7.3.35), Xenophon makes a point of saying that Seuthes did not seem drunk (ouden ti methuonti eoikôs): that attack takes place after they have rested (7.3.39: anepauonto). It is natural for the question to arise: is the author suggesting that Xenophon set out after having consumed much wine? My answer is yes (I grant, on the other hand, that the Anabasis often specifies someone's having acted after a meal, for example: 3.5.18; 4.1.14; 4.2.1; 4.2.4; 4.3.9; 4.6.9; 4.6.21; 4.6.22; 5.4.22; 5.4.30; 6.3.21; 6.3.24; 6.4.10).

Next, we read that Xenophon set off with the group of 300 suggested by Hellas: ‘About six hundred other people forced themselves on him and tried to come along too, but the captains drove them off, thinking it was ready money (hôs hetoimôn chrêmatôn) and not wanting to have to divide their own share’ (7.8.11). The Brownson and Dillery translation is ‘as though the property was already in hand’.Footnote ⁴⁵ This seems to be the author's indication that the group is overconfidently assuming too much – ‘counting its chickens before they are hatched’.

The initial attack by Xenophon's hoplites involves time-consuming tunnelling through thick brick walls (7.8.13–14). ‘What with their shouts and lighting of beacons’ (7.8.15), a neighbouring force comes to help Asidates, plus ‘Assyrian hoplites, and Hyrcanian cavalry from Komania, about eighty of them, these being in the King's pay, and in addition about eight hundred peltasts’ and also other troops nearby ‘including cavalry’ (7.8.12–15). Here it is natural to ask if it was not careless of Xenophon, given his sharpened soldiering skills of the last many months, to fail to anticipate that Asidates might get reinforcements. And the natural answer is that it was careless.

Xenophon's group retreats, taking with them some cattle, sheep, and slaves protected by a rectangle of hoplites; ‘They did this not because they still had their minds on the booty (chrêmasin)’ (7.8.16). Rather, they wanted to avoid simply running away, ‘as the enemy would be bolder and the soldiers would be disheartened’ (7.8.16). Here Xenophon informs us that the retreat was a humiliation.Footnote ⁴⁶

The author next informs us: ‘When Gongylos saw how few were the Greeks and how many those attacking them, he came out himself, against his mother's will (bia(i) tês mêtros), wishing to take part in the action, and Prokles…also brought help…With difficulty they crossed the river Karkasos, about half of them wounded’ (7.8.17–18). Does the fact that Gongylus comes out to help ‘against his mother's will’ indicate that Hellas had foreseen substantial risk and wanted to keep him out of it? Or did she want the son not in evidence during the raid because, after Xenophon has left, she is going to excuse herself to her Persian neighbours for having been an unwitting facilitator of Xenophon's raid? (‘I had no idea they would do that after dinner!’). I am inclined to think that the answer to these questions is yes.

The account continues with the information that, after having sacrificed, Xenophon's group goes off in another direction to conceal his intentions from Asidates, but ‘they by chance run into him [Asidates] and they take him and his woman and children and horses and all belonging to him’ (7.8. 21–3).Footnote ⁴⁷ ‘And in this way (houtô), the previous omens turned out (apebê)’ (7.8.22). One might take the wording ‘turned out’ to indicate that, of course, things turned out well.Footnote ⁴⁸ Or one might take it to indicate that, in this odd and unexpected way, the omens were literally fulfilled. I think the latter gives the intended spirit of the remark. The narrator makes a wry comment rather than a congratulatory one.

I will now use my answers to my questions to draw some fresh conclusions about Xenophon's account of the Asidates episode. One feature of Xenophon's writing especially guides me as I draw my conclusions: the narrator does not identify himself. The conspicuously rare self-references to this unidentified narrator appear only in the first two books.Footnote ⁴⁹ This narrator presents the events of the months of the march through the perspective of the young participant-observer Xenophon, except for a look into the distant future at 5.3.7–8.

The assessment of the Asidates raid that the reader infers

Xenophon's narrator gives an unvarnished account of the youthful Xenophon's raid. The account wastes no words of evaluation, either of disapproval or of praise.Footnote ⁵⁰ It provides certain bare or brute facts of that youthful experience. These brute facts provide the reader with the material for some natural inferences about the young Xenophon's foolishness on this occasion. These inferences could not have escaped the mature author or his narrator. The mature author thus implies his own assessment of his youthful behaviour.Footnote ⁵¹

From the little we are told about Hellas we may infer that Xenophon takes advice from someone that does not clearly have credentials to give it and that may have doubts about its safety.

From the account of consultation with the seer, we may infer that Xenophon is careless with his divinatory question. If he asked the imprecise and unelaborated question ‘Is it easy for me to seize Asidates?’, he should have taken no encouragement from a divinatory affirmative answer. Unless such a question to a seer includes careful qualifications such as ‘under exactly the conditions I propose’, as for example in this case, ‘with merely my force of 300 hoplites’, the answer ‘Yes’ is no basis for confidence.

From the qualifications ‘having dined’ and ‘as though it was ready money’, we may infer that Xenophon sets out with overconfidence, possibly wine-induced.

From the account of the raid, we may infer that Xenophon neglected to use his military expertise to anticipate the obvious problem that Asidates might get reinforcements. From the account of the retreat and the mention of the wounding of half (150) of the group, we may infer that Xenophon unprofessionally put his group at risk.

From the author's – as I take it, wry – comment that the omens were fulfilled ‘in this way’, we may infer that the author sees that the signs were borne out only in that literal way that divine messages such as oracles are sometimes dreadfully fulfilled.

From all of this, the reader may infer in summary that the young Xenophon acted very foolishly. Were the author more effusive, he might have summed up by adding explicit commentary to the spare, stark, indeed deadpanFootnote ⁵² description in the Anabasis. He might have added, ‘Good grief! What was Xenophon thinking to undertake this raid?! Its final result was a classic example of dumb luck’.

The new view of the final episode of the Anabasis that I advocate is that we may acknowledge that the mature Xenophon is quite willing to acknowledge the youthful error that the narrator so clearly describes.Footnote ⁵³ We may thus appreciate the final episode for its self-criticism.Footnote ⁵⁴

That willingness to be self-critical is perhaps a Socratic inheritance.Footnote ⁵⁵

The final two details of the Asidates episode

The final two details that Xenophon provides of his youthful experience in the Asidates episode do not provide such material to infer criticism of the youth. First, back at Pergamum Xenophon ‘saluted the god’ (7.8.23), for (gar) the entire group (‘the Laconians, the captains, the other generals, and the soldiers’) acted together so that Xenophon has his choice of the booty (7.8.23). And then ‘there was enough [for him] now to do well for someone else’ (7.8.24).Footnote ⁵⁶