Author(s): Muzaffer DEMÄ°R
Xenophon, the preeminent Athenian writer, is known to have written works during the first half of the 4th century BC in various fields including history, philosophy, biography as well as technics and tactics. As related to the Ancient Anatolian History, his two significant works, Anabasis and Cyropaedia, take the center stage. The theme of Anabasis, starting from Sardeis, is the voyage of more than ten thousand of Greek mercenary soldiers who participated in the battle of Cunaxa near Babylon in 401 BC for the Persian throne between Cyrus the Young and Artaxerxes II on behalf of Cyrus. Yet Cyrus was defeated and killed. As a result of this, these soldiers who survived the battle including Xenophon as one of their leader, followed the route up the Tigris (Dicle) valley and arrived at Trapezus on the coast of Black Sea and then marched as far as Thrace to return to their home. Xenophon, in this work consisting of VII books, tells us his personal observations concerning the Greek military organisation, the communities or ethnic tribes from where they passed through and their relations with them as well as the historical geography of the regions along which they travelled. In his Cyropaedia, written in a style of didactic pamphlet and composed of VIII books, he narrates the subject of the life of Cyrus the Great during the second half of the 6th century, who established the dynasty of Achaemenids and strenghtened it to the level of an Empire; he is also idealised as an examplary leader. Within this conjecture, it is important that Cyrus’s conquests in Anatolia should be explained. In this study we shall try to explain the importance of these two works of Xenophon as for the history and the historiography of Ancient Anatolia.
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