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The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand

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A dozen specialists assemble to discuss their speciality. They write papers and read them to one another. The papers repeat what they know and a few things that are new. These are published in a book.

They remind each other that a parasang was a unit of time, not space; that Xenophon was often self-serving; and that motives of Greeks on the march were mixed. These are worth being reminded of, but not new. Recent discoveries in Persian studies are mentioned, but not examined. None realizes that the Cyropaedea is as much a treatise on an ideal curriculum, an issue that was on Plato's mind, as it is an encomium for Cyrus. Many, based on their own attention spans, are certain that Xenophon could not possibly have reported long speeches verbatim, decades after the fact, without contemporaneous notes. None speculates that Xenophon's name, "foreign voice," might have significance.

The book covers important issues and reports current directions of scholarship for specialists in other fields as well as laity. But its most interesting aspect may be the character of examiners themselves. Their intellectual style, strategies, and speculations reveal the pathology of those who dedicate themselves to knowing more and more about less and less. This makes it diverting, as well as improving, for the careful reader.