Never let me go
Aug. 24th, 2009 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbToday was my first bus commute. Ugh. Come back, train! I miss you already!
Achieved today: six more pages of Le culte d'Isis, which took me an hour and a half; a mile in 9:30 in the gym, 1.5 miles in 14:20, 2 miles in 20:30. The wall is closed for the resetting of routes - I am so looking forward to new routes, after seven months - so no climbing.
Books 2009: 71
71. Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, Penguin Classics, trans. Rex Warner, 1949.
Everyone knows about the ten thousand Greek soldiers - a mercenary army - who were hired by Cyrus during his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow his brother and take the Persian throne, right? And we all know that when that attempt failed, the Greeks had to march home across hostile and difficult terrain?
The Persian Expedition is sometimes known as The Expedition of Cyrus, or more simply, by its name in Greek, the Anabasis (literally, the 'going-up'). It's the account of Xenophon, an Athenian, who ended up as a general with the ten thousand (there were several generals), and it's very easy to read.
Xenophon is kind of a self-important arse, and - it having been, on the evidence, written at least twenty years later - the notes point out both errors of memory and conflicts with other sources. But it provides a very interesting - and quite horrifying, actually - insight into the conduct of a Greek hoplite army on the march. I recommend it.
Achieved today: six more pages of Le culte d'Isis, which took me an hour and a half; a mile in 9:30 in the gym, 1.5 miles in 14:20, 2 miles in 20:30. The wall is closed for the resetting of routes - I am so looking forward to new routes, after seven months - so no climbing.
Books 2009: 71
71. Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, Penguin Classics, trans. Rex Warner, 1949.
Everyone knows about the ten thousand Greek soldiers - a mercenary army - who were hired by Cyrus during his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow his brother and take the Persian throne, right? And we all know that when that attempt failed, the Greeks had to march home across hostile and difficult terrain?
The Persian Expedition is sometimes known as The Expedition of Cyrus, or more simply, by its name in Greek, the Anabasis (literally, the 'going-up'). It's the account of Xenophon, an Athenian, who ended up as a general with the ten thousand (there were several generals), and it's very easy to read.
Xenophon is kind of a self-important arse, and - it having been, on the evidence, written at least twenty years later - the notes point out both errors of memory and conflicts with other sources. But it provides a very interesting - and quite horrifying, actually - insight into the conduct of a Greek hoplite army on the march. I recommend it.
