A powerful expeditionary force is despatched from the West, tasked with effecting regime change in a Middle Eastern state … It is spring 401 BC, and a vast army of Greek mercenary soldiers travels to Persia to aid the satrap Cyrus in his attempt to overthrow his brother and take the Persian throne. When Cyrus is killed, the expedition turns to disaster. Stranded in enemy territory, betrayed by its Persian allies, the army is in mortal danger, until its commanders, including the Athenian Xenophon, take charge and lead the men on a perilous retreat. This is Xenophon’s eyewitness account of those events.

The march of the Ten Thousand was one of the most famous and gruelling military journeys in all history. The foot-soldiers travelled 1,500 miles across enemy terrain, through present-day Iraq, Syria and Turkey, towards the shores of the Black Sea. They faced terrible hunger, six-foot snowdrifts, attacks from the Persian military and from local inhabitants, and the threat of mutiny and division. Yet this ragged army was a democracy on the move. Rallied by the brilliant Xenophon, the soldiers elected officers, debated strategy and resolved disputes through arbitration. Their fortitude was finally rewarded by the sight of the coast, which they greeted with the triumphant, and now famous cry, ‘The sea, the sea!’

The Persian Expedition is one of the best surviving portraits both of the Persian Empire, antiquity’s first genuine superpower, and of the ancient Greek character in all its valour and complexity. It has thrilled the imagination for centuries, and inspired countless commanders from Julius Caesar to the Duke of Wellington. Eunapius of Sardis wrote that ‘Alexander would never have become “great” without Xenophon’. In the classic translation by Rex Warner, it remains an enthralling account of an epic adventure. Our specially commissioned preface by acclaimed historian Theodore K. Rabb reveals why writers and historians alike ‘still look to Xenophon as a master of his craft’.