Xenophon of Athens marched with this army and later wrote the Anabasis, the inland march of the Ten Thousand: Greek heavy infantry hired to put a Persian prince on the throne. This is Book 1, set in the late 400s BC, from western Anatolia (today’s Turkey) toward Babylon in what is now Iraq.

Cyrus the Younger, brother of Artaxerxes II, the Great King of Persia, hires the Greeks under Clearchus, a Spartan living in exile, and calls it a war on Pisidian raiders until the men see they are walking toward Babylon. Xenophon comes because his friend Proxenus asked; Socrates had warned him not to go. At Cunaxa, near Babylon, the Greeks break the line in front of them. Cyrus charges the center, wounds the King, and is cut down. They have won their fight, but their employer is dead, and a king now has every reason to erase them.