The Ten Thousand
Hoi Myrioi
The Greek mercenary corps Cyrus the Younger assembled in 401 BC for his attempted coup against his brother Artaxerxes II: 10,400 hoplites and 2,500 light-armed peltasts and Cretan archers (Xen. *Anab.* 1.2.9 + 1.7.10), drawn from the Peloponnese, Boeotia, Thessaly, Aetolia and the Aegean — veterans of the Peloponnesian War just ended (404 BC) who had no home market for their services. Commanded initially under Cyrus by five senior generals (Clearchus of Sparta, Proxenus of Boeotia, Menon of Thessaly, Sophainetos of Stymphalus, Socrates of Achaea). After Cyrus's death at Cunaxa and the treacherous murder of the generals by Tissaphernes, they elected a new command from the junior officers — Xenophon, Chirisophus of Sparta, Cleanor, Philesios, Timasion — and marched home under it, reaching Trapezus in winter 400 and Byzantium in summer 399. The survivors served under the Thracian king Seuthes II and then under Sparta in the opening campaign of Agesilaus's Asian war. Their story — the mercenary logistics of a 3,000-km land march through hostile territory, the council-democracy of the army deliberating in assembly at each impasse — became the founding text of Greek mercenary self-consciousness and, via Alexander's close reading of Xenophon on the march, a practical handbook of the invasion-of-Persia that would follow sixty years later.