Thanks for downloading the in our time podcast for more details about in our time and for our terms of use

Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program

Hello in 401 BC an army of Greek mercenaries found themselves stranded more than a thousand miles from home

Deep in hostile territory and with their generals dead this band of soldiers has become known as the 10,000 and a two-year journey to

Safety is one of the most celebrated tales of ancient history among the 10,000 was an Athenian called Xenophon who later wrote a book about his

Experiences his lively kind of this disastrous military campaign the Annabasus was soon acknowledges a masterpiece today

Xenophon is remembered for an output which included not only a personal memoir but history politics and even practical subject and his book on

Horsemanship is still in print two and a half thousand years after it was written

With me to discuss the life in work of Xenophon our Paul Cartilage

A.G. Leventus professor of Greek culture at Cambridge University

Edith Hall professor of classics in English at Royal Holloway University of London and Simon Goldhill

Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and fellow of King's College Paul Cartilage

Xenophon was born about 430 BC. Could you give us a sketch of what the situation was in Greece at that time?

He's born at the beginning of what we typically call the Peloponnesian War that's to say seen from the Athenian side

It was a war against Sparta and the Peloponnesians

Xenophon was an Athenian. He was an upper-class man

He was brought up with horses and this comes out later on in his career

He is a very conservative fellow

But one thing hit him like a sort of ton of bricks in his teens and he wasn't the only one

He met Socrates and one of his claims to famous that he was a kind of pupil of Socrates

And can you feel us a bit more? I mean by we use the word aristocrat. What did that mean?

I have in the notes. I've read that in the note at all of you

...