One Book Inspired Alexander The Great And “The Warriors”
March Of The Ten Thousand
“Let us not, in the name of the gods, wait for others to come to us and summon us to the noblest deeds, but let us take the lead ourselves and arouse the rest to valour. Show yourselves the best of the captains, and more worthy to be generals than the generals themselves. As for me, if you choose to set out upon this course, I am ready to follow you; but if you assign me the leadership, I do not plead my youth as an excuse; rather, I believe I am in the very prime of my power to ward off dangers from my own head.”
— Xenophon’s speech to the Greek mercenaries, “Anabasis” (The Long March)
Often many larger than life events in history are built upon the skeleton of events which came before.
Similarly, events within our more reachable cultural history often borrow from these events as well. Most times we don’t even notice the pieces which were borrowed to construct the larger event and the smaller cultural creations afterwards.
One of these events occurred in 401 BC in the Persian Empire. A war of succession took place between two brothers vying for the throne at a small Babylonian village named Cunaxa. The upstart Cyrus the Younger would attempt to remove his brother Artaxerxes II from power. Cyrus would…
