Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T17:23:14.491Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Xenophon's parasangs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2010

Tim Rood
Affiliation:
St Hugh's College, Oxford

Abstract

This paper analyses one aspect of Xenophon's representation of space, focusing on the famous stages-and-parasangs formula employed by Xenophon in the Anabasis. It starts by discussing the meaning of his terms, and then explores patterns of repetition and variation in his account of the march, split into three sections (the marches upcountry, to the sea and along the coast). Rather than explaining Xenophon's usage in terms of sources, it suggests that variations in the marching formula elaborate the successive stages of the Greeks' encounter with the spaces of the Achaemenid Empire.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bertrand, A.C. (1997) ‘Stumbling through Gaul: maps, intelligence, and Caesar's Bellum Gallicum’, AHB 11, 107–22Google Scholar
Beye, C.R. (1964) ‘Homeric battle narratives and catalogues’, HSCPh 68, 345–73Google Scholar
Bickerman, E.J. (1980) Chronology of the Ancient World (London)Google Scholar
Bosworth, A.B. (1988) From Arrian to Alexander: Studies in Historical Interpretation (Oxford)Google Scholar
Bosworth, A.B. (1993) ‘Arrian and Rome: the minor works’, ANRW 2/34/1, 226–75Google Scholar
Breitenbach, H.R. (1967) ‘Xenophon von Athen’, RE IX.A.2, 15672052Google Scholar
Buijs, M. (2007) ‘Aspectual differences and narrative technique: Xenophon's Hellenica & Agesilaus’, in Allan, R.J. and Buijs, M. (eds), The Language of Literature: Linguistic Approaches to Classical Texts (Leiden and Boston) 122–53Google Scholar
Bunbury, E.H. (1879) A History of Ancient Geography (2 vols) (London)Google Scholar
Burn, A.R. (1977) ‘Thermopylae revisited, and some topographical notes on Marathon and Plataiai’, in Kinzl, K.H. (ed.), Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History and Prehistory (Berlin) 89105Google Scholar
Bury, J.B. and Meiggs, R. (1956) A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (Oxford)Google Scholar
Byl, S. (1980) ‘Review of E. Goerlandt, Griekse Resultaten van een Frequentieonderzoek op de Anabasis van Xenofoon’, AC 49, 331–32.Google Scholar
Byron, R. (1981) The Road to Oxiana (London)Google Scholar
Cawkwell, G.L. (1972) ‘Introduction’, in Warner, R. (tr.), Xenophon: The Persian Expedition (Harmondsworth) 948Google Scholar
Chesney, F.R. (1850) The Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris Carried on by Order of the British Government in the Years 1835, 1836 and 1837 (London)Google Scholar
Cousin, G. (1905) Kyros le jeune en Asie Mineure (Printemps 408—Juillet 401 avant Jésus-Christ) (Paris and Nancy)Google Scholar
Delebecque, E. (tr.) (1978) Xénophon: Cyropédie iii (Paris)Google Scholar
Dihle, O.A.W. (1985) Greek and Roman Maps (London)Google Scholar
Due, B. (1989) The Cyropaedia: Xenophon's Aims and Methods (Copenhagen)Google Scholar
Edelstein, L. and Kidd, I.G. (eds) (19721999) Posidonius (3 vols) (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Edwards, M.W. (1980) ‘The structure of Homeric catalogues’, TAPhA 110, 81105Google Scholar
Erbse, H. (1966) ‘Xenophons Anabasis’, Gymnasium 73, 485505Google Scholar
Flower, M.A. (2000) ‘From Simonides to Isocrates: the fifth-century origins of fourth-century panhellenism’, ClAnt 19, 65101Google Scholar
Geiger, J. (1992) ‘Julian of Ascalon’, JHS 112, 3143CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbon, E. (1994) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (3 vols) (Harmondsworth)Google Scholar
Gray, V.J. (1991) ‘Continuous history and Xenophon's Hellenica 1–2.3.10’, AJPh 112, 201–28Google Scholar
Grote, G. (18461856) A History of Greece (12 vols) (London)Google Scholar
Grundy, G.B. (1926) A History of the Greek and Roman World (London)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, E. (1989) Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy (Oxford)Google Scholar
Havell, H.L. (1910) Stories from Xenophon Retold (London)Google Scholar
Higgins, W.E. (1977) Xenophon the Athenian: The Problem of the Individual and the Society of the Polis (Albany)Google Scholar
Høeg, C. (1950), ‘: Oeuvre anonyme ou pseudonyme ou orthonyme?’, C&M 11, 151–79Google Scholar
Koch, K.H.E. (1850) Der Zug der Zehntausend, nach Xenophons Anabasis, geographisch erläutert (Leipzig)Google Scholar
Layard, A.H. (1853) Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert (London)Google Scholar
Lendle, O. (1995) Kommentar zu Xenophons Anabasis (Bücher 1–7) (Darmstadt)Google Scholar
Lloyd, A.B. (19751988) Herodotus: Book II (3 vols) (Leiden)Google Scholar
Luccioni, J. (1948) Les Idées politiques et sociales de Xénophon (Ophrys)Google Scholar
Manfredi, V. (1986) La Strada dei Diecimila: topografia e geografia dell'Oriente di Senofonte (Milan)Google Scholar
Mitford, W. (18081818) The History of Greece (London)Google Scholar
Pearson, A.C. (1917) The Fragments of Sophocles (3 vols) (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Porter, R.K. (18211822) Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c, During the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820 (London)Google Scholar
Pretor, A. (ed.) (1880) The Anabasis of Xenophon: Book VII (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Purves, A.C. (2010) Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative (New York)Google Scholar
Rennell, J. (1800) The Geographical System of Herodotus (London)Google Scholar
Rennell, J. (1816) Illustrations (Chiefly Geographical) of the History of the Expedition of Cyrus, from Sardis to Babylonia, and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks, from thence to Trebisonde and Lydia (London)Google Scholar
Robinson, C.A. (1932) The Ephemerides of Alexander's Expedition (Providence)Google Scholar
Rood, T.C.B. (2004a) The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination (London)Google Scholar
Rood, T.C.B. (2004b) ‘Panhellenism and self-presentation: Xenophon's speeches’, in Lane Fox, R. (ed.), The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand (New Haven) 305–29Google Scholar
Russell, F.S. (1999) Information Gathering in Classical Greece (Ann Arbor)Google Scholar
Stadter, P.A. (1991) ‘Fictional narrative in the Cyropaideia’, AJPh 112, 461–91Google Scholar
Stewart, R. (2004) The Places In Between (London)Google Scholar
Stronk, J.P. (1995) The Ten Thousand in Thrace: An Archaeological and Historical Commentary on Xenophon's Anabasis, Books VI.iii-vi-VII (Amsterdam)Google Scholar
Tarn, W.W. (1927) ‘Persia, from Xerxes to Alexander’, in Bury, J.B., Cook, S.A., Adcock, F.E. (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History, VI: Macedon: 401–301 BC (Cambridge) 124Google Scholar
Tuplin, C.J. (1991) ‘Modern and ancient travellers in the Achaemenid Empire: Byron's Road to Oxiana and Xenophon's Anabasis’, in Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. and Drijvers, J.W. (eds), Achaemenid History VII. Through Travellers’ Eyes: European Travellers on the Iranian Monuments (Leiden) 3757Google Scholar
Tuplin, C.J. (1997) ‘Achaemenid arithmetic: numerical problems in Persian history’, Topoi Supplement 1, 365421Google Scholar
Tuplin, C.J. (1999) ‘On the track of the Ten Thousand’, REA 101, 331–66Google Scholar
von Gutschmid, A. (1887) Untersuchungen über die Geschichte des Königreichs Osroëne (Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, 7th series, vol. 35) (St Petersburg)Google Scholar
Warner, R. (tr.) (1972) Xenophon: The Persian Expedition (Harmondsworth)Google Scholar
Williams, F. (1996) ‘Xenophon's Dana and the passage of Cyrus' armyHistoria 45, 284314Google Scholar