American Anabasis: Xenophon and the Idea of America from the Mexican War to Iraq (review)

Tim Rood of St Hugh's College, Oxford, a classicist focusing on the literary techniques of ancient Greek historians, has branched out into classical reception studies with two books on the remarkable afterlife of Xenophon's Anabasis. His first book, The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Western Imagination (2004), looked at European, mainly British, and American echoes of the famous cry of "Thalassa! Thalassa!" when the Greeks first saw the Black Sea after their march out of the interior of Persia. Now, American Anabasis concentrates on the influence of Xenophon's iconic narrative in the United States. The book is a fascinating and erudite exploration of the numerous, often contradictory ways that Americans have employed the image of the expedition of the Ten Thousand and their march to the sea. Authors such as Carl Richard and Caroline Winterer have briefly noted the widespread use of Xenophon in the classical education of nineteenth-century Americans. Xenophon appears in a similar role in Classical Antiquity and the Politics of America: From George Washington to George W. Bush (2006), a collection of essays edited by Michael Meckler. Rood has uncovered a wealth of American historical materials—speeches, newspaper articles, memoirs, fiction—alluding to the March of the Ten Thousand, producing a book in which he traces with skill and aplomb American engagement with the Anabasis from the Mexican War through the Civil War to the second Iraq war. Moreover, Rood convincingly argues that these popular allusions over the last 150 years offer a useful tool for understanding American self-perceptions.

Rood starts with the war in Iraq in order to give his book more immediacy and topicality. His Introduction and first chapter ("Dubya Anabasis: Xenophon and the Iraq War") demonstrate the unexpected and curious resonance in contemporary America of Xenophon's story of the march up country and out of Persia by an army of over ten thousand Greek mercenaries in 401 BC. Rood starts off with contemporary events, notably the 2001 "Anabasis project," a CIA plan to undermine Saddam Hussein's regime, and books on the second Iraq war with telling titles such as The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1^st Marine Division (2003) by embedded Vietnam veterans Bing West and Ray Smith. Rood uses a variety of sources to show that American Marines take pride in their "Spartan" training and their similarities to Xenophon's Greek hoplites, though these parallels are misleading or, at best, superficial. What is clear is that the aura of classical Greek warriors is important for American soldiers. Important, too, is the construction of a continuous line of decisive struggles between what is perceived as the democratic, manly West and the despotic, effeminate East, a conflict in which the role of the main Western power has shifted from Greece and Rome to America. The stated aim of the book is "to read the story of America through Xenophon and to read Xenophon through the story of America." Rood deploys this double perspective by skillfully retelling the story of the Anabasis while discussing the various and tendentious ways in which 20^th and 19^th-century Americans make use of Xenophon's history. The book oscillates between non-fiction and literary works, from pieces by well-known poets such as Allen Tate and W.S. Merwin to more obscure ones, such as the 2003 anti-war prose poem "Dubya Anabasis" by Richard Peabody, from the novels of James Fenimore Cooper to Sol Yurick's novel of New York gangs The Warriors (1966) and the 1979 film based on it. Rood also discusses Cy Twombly's Anabasis sculpture and series of drawings on paper, thus expanding the Xenophontic allusions to encompass the visual arts as well. It is not entirely clear, however, if Rood's selection is idiosyncratic or whether he aims at a comprehensive survey. The second chapter is Rood's...