Xenophon of Athens marched with the Ten Thousand and later wrote the Anabasis, the story of that Greek army hired to put a Persian prince on the throne. This is Book 2. After the battle of Cunaxa, near Babylon in what is now Iraq, Cyrus the Younger is dead. The Greeks have no employer, and Artaxerxes II, the Great King, has every reason to wipe them out.

Artaxerxes offers guides and a market. Tissaphernes, his satrap — a provincial governor — swears it is safe. Clearchus and the other remaining generals go to his tent and do not come back. Ariaeus, Cyrus's Persian lieutenant, has already made his peace. The Greeks keep their arms and debate like a city that happens to be an army. Xenophon, not yet a general, dreams of his father's house struck by lightning and stands up in the night to speak. Home is north through people who have never heard of a truce.