As chronicled in the historian Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” the “Ten Thousand” were a motley assortment of Greek warriors contracted by Cyrus the Younger to help oust his brother King Artaxerxes II from the Persian throne. In 401 B.C., the Hellenic soldiers-for-hire—many of them hardened veterans of the Peloponnesian War—fought alongside Cyrus and his rebel army in a clash with the King’s forces near Baghdad. While the Ten Thousand held their own in combat, Cyrus was killed in the battle, and the mercenaries’ generals were double-crossed and murdered while trying to negotiate a retreat.
Under pursuit from Artaxerxes II’s troops and hostile natives alike, the surviving members of the Ten Thousand were forced to band together and fight their way out of enemy territory. After electing Xenophon as
