Editing Xenophon (section)

==== Conflicts ====
[[File:Xenophon Anabasis.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Xenophon's ''[[Anabasis (Xenophon)|Anabasis]]''<ref>{{cite book |last1=Brownson |first1=Carlson L. (Carleton Lewis) |title=Xenophon; |date=1886 |publisher=Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press |url=https://archive.org/details/xenophon03xeno/page/n5}}</ref>]]
The Ten Thousand eventually made their way into the land of the [[Carduchii|Carduchians]], a wild tribe inhabiting the mountains of modern southeastern Turkey. "Once the Great King had sent into their country an army of 120,000 men, to subdue them, but of all that great host not one had ever seen his home again."<ref>Witt, p. 136</ref> The Ten Thousand were shot at with stones and arrows for several days before they reached a defile where the main Carduchian host sat. Xenophon had 8,000 men feint and marched the other 2,000 to a pass revealed by a prisoner under the cover of a rainstorm, and at daylight, they pushed in.<ref>Dodge, p. 109</ref>

After the fighting, the Greeks went to the northern foothills of the mountains at the Centrites River, later finding a Persian force blocking the route north. Xenophon's scouts found another ford, but the Persians blocked this as well. Xenophon sent a small force back toward the other ford, causing the Persians to detach a major part of their force parallel. Xenophon overwhelmed the force at his ford.

[[File:Xenophon bust.jpg|thumb|Xenophon, [[Aphrodisias Museum]]]]
Winter has arrived as the Greeks marched through Armenia "absolutely unprovided with clothing suitable for such weather".<ref>Witt, p. 166</ref> The Greeks decided to attack a wooden castle known to have had storage. The castle was stationed on a hill surrounded by forest. Xenophon ordered small parties of his men to appear on the hill road, and when the defenders shot at them, one soldier would leap into the trees. Then, "the other men followed his example [...] When the stones were almost exhausted, the soldiers raced one another over the exposed part of the road", storming the fortress with most of the garrison now neutralized.<ref>Witt, pp. 175–176</ref>

Soon after, Xenophon's men reached [[Trabzon|Trapezus]] on the coast of the [[Black Sea]] (''Anabasis'' 4.8.22). Before their departure, the Greeks made an alliance with the locals and fought one last battle against the [[Colchis|Colchians]], vassals of the Persians. Xenophon ordered his men to deploy the line extremely thin so as to overlap the enemy. The Colchians divided their army to check the Greek deployment, opening a gap in their line through which Xenophon rushed in his reserves.<ref>Witt, pp. 181–184</ref> They then made their way westward back to Greek territory via [[Üsküdar#Chrysopolis|Chrysopolis]] (''Anabasis'' 6.3.16). Once there, they helped [[Seuthes II]] make himself king of [[Thrace]] before being recruited into the army of the Spartan general [[Thimbron (fl. 400–391 BC)|Thimbron]] (whom Xenophon refers to as Thibron).

Xenophon's conduct of the retreat caused Dodge to name the Athenian knight the greatest general that preceded Alexander the Great.<ref>Dodge, Theodore Ayrault. Great Captains: A Course of Six Lectures on the Art of War. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York: 1890. p. 7</ref>