The Ten Thousand were a band of Greek mercenaries hired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger to wage a civil war against his brother, King Artaxerxes II. The soldiers of fortune arrived near modern-day Baghdad in 401 B.C. and fought valiantly at the Battle of Cunaxa, but after Cyrus was killed, they were left stranded on enemy turf. The historian and soldier Xenophon later described their flight to safety in his legendary work “Anabasis.” Rather than turning on one another or surrendering, the gang of toughs elected new leaders and began an epic fighting retreat out of Persia, often doing battle by day and traveling by night. The 1,500-mile journey pitted them against bands of hostile natives and a bitterly cold winter, but after nine months of running they finally sighted the Black Sea to celebratory cries of “Thalatta! Thalatta!” (“The sea! The sea!”) Amazingly, more than three-quarters of the original mercenary army later returned home to Greece.
