Among the many things I like about the U.S. military, it is one of the few
places you can find a good argument nowadays about Xenophon and other
ancient notables. I recall, for example, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling giving me a new
perspective on Thucydides during a driving cold winter rain in the high desert
outside Tal Afar one night during the winter of 2005-06.
The January-February issue of the
Army's official Military
Review has an appreciative but rambling review of a new translation of
Xenophon's Anabasis
that was published last year by Cornell.
Lt. Col. Prisco Hernandez's essay is most interesting for its closing sentence:
"Reading Xenophon's Anabasis as the tale of how a tactically superior,
but numerically small, western force withdraws with their lives and honor intact from a dubious entanglement of
an ancient Middle Eastern civilization is a profitable modern use of Xenophon's
text."
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