Xenophon's Retreat. Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age

It is 401 BC. In a battle at Cunaxa on the River Euphrates, the Persian king Artaxerxes II defeats a challenge to his throne by his brother Cyrus the Younger. Among Cyrus' troops is a contingent of Greek mercenaries known as The Ten Thousand. In the wake of the defeat, Xenophon, a former pupil of Socrates, is elected a general and must lead the men on a fraught journey back to Greece - a journey of hundreds of miles, north from modern-day Iraq into the mountains of Kurdistan and Armenia, and down to the coast of the Black Sea, fighting all the way, harried on all sides by Persian forces, wild mountain tribesmen, and a bitter winter… Xenophon's Retreat is the epic story of a band of Greek mercenaries stranded in Persia, forced to fight their way home across deadly terrain. In Robin Waterfield's telling, this epic journey is a gripping adventure full of drama, human interest, strong characters, pathos and triumph.