Xenophon, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
It is the account of an army that marched up from the coast with a prince and had to find its own way home. Cyrus, the younger brother of the Persian king, gathered Hellenic mercenaries and led them inland against his brother. Hoplites came from Lacedaemon and Arcadia, from Syracuse and Megara, until the Hellenes numbered eleven thousand hoplites and about two thousand peltasts.1
The part the book dwells on first is the deception: the soldiers were told they were marching against one enemy, Abrocomas, and when they suspected the truth they were met with fine words and a rise in pay, a daric and a half a month instead of a daric.2 Not even then was anyone told openly that the king was the object.2 Cyrus is the first subject of the book.
He could not conceal his vexation when pay fell three months in arrear, for it was not his fashion to stint payment when he had the means.3 He gave back the wives and children of men who had abandoned him, saying that his behaviour to them was better than theirs to him, and the Hellenes who had been out of heart at the march up country were happier and more eager to follow him when they heard of his nobleness.4
I wrote him as a man whom others follow willingly, and I was no less exact about what that cost him in promises. The book also records how an army is held together or comes apart. Men demand a bribe before they will cross the Euphrates to fight a battle they were never promised.4 Generals like Xenias and Pasion slip off on a trader with their valuables, and the rest wonder whether to pity them or hope they are caught.5
Menon tries to win Cyrus's favour by splitting his own troops from the rest.4 Then the day comes when Cyrus is told to keep to the rear of his men and answers that the prize will not be won without a battle. The king's host is reported at over a million men against Cyrus's hundred thousand barbarians and ten thousand four hundred Hellenic hoplites.6
What happens after that, how an army with no prince and no map got itself to the sea, is the longer part of the story, and the passages before me stop short of it. But from the march up you can see what the whole book is about: what men owe a leader, what a leader owes them, and how a body of mercenaries becomes one army.
found that they amounted in all to eleven thousand hoplites and about two thousand peltasts.Anabasis
Cyrus promised to give them half as much again as they had hitherto received--that is to say, a daric and a half a month to each man, instead of a daric. Was he really leading them to attack the king? Not even at this moment was any one apprised of the factAnabasis
Cyrus put them off with fine words and expectations, but could not conceal his vexation, for it was not his fashion to stint payment, when he had the means.Anabasis
when they heard of the nobleness of Cyrus, were happier and more eager to follow him on his path.Anabasis
Xenias the Arcadian general, and Pasion the Megarian got on board a trader, and having stowed away their most valuable effects, set sail for homeAnabasis
Of Hellenes there were ten thousand four hundred heavy infantry with two thousand five hundred targeteers, while the barbarians with Cyrus reached a total of one hundred thousand.Anabasis