Xenophon wrote the Anabasis, his account of the Ten Thousand — Greek mercenaries stranded in Mesopotamia, today's Iraq. This is Book 3. Cyrus the Younger had died trying to seize the Persian throne; in Book 2 the remaining generals went to the tent of Tissaphernes, a Persian governor, and did not return.

Despair at dawn; they elect new officers by noon. Xenophon, an Athenian volunteer who came because a friend asked, is made a general. They burn the wagons, form a square against cavalry, and hire slingers from Rhodes. Mithradates, a Persian who had ridden with them, learns a few horsemen cannot break a phalanx, a dense block of spearmen, once the Greeks have missile troops of their own. Then the Carduchian mountains: no roads, villages on the rock, stones rolled down in the dark. Tissaphernes is left behind. Six generals replace the murdered. The square moves north before the Great King can finish the hunt.