Cunaxa and the Anabasis: ten thousand Greeks march to the sea

In 401 BCE Cyrus the Younger, the younger son of Darius II, leads an army against his brother, King Artaxerxes II. With him are more than ten thousand Greek mercenaries. At Cunaxa, not far from Babylon, the Greeks win on their wing, but Cyrus is killed and the campaign loses its point. The Persians lure the Greek generals to talks and kill them; the army elects new ones, among them the Athenian Xenophon, and for a year and a half marches north through Assyria, Armenia and the mountains of the Kurds until from a summit it sees the Black Sea. Xenophon described the journey in the Anabasis—and showed the Greeks that the Persian empire was vulnerable: seventy years later Alexander will take the same roads. Artaxerxes II reigns until 358; in his days Judea is a quiet province "beyond the River".