Xenophon & The Ruins of Assyria // Ancient Greek Primary Source

General of the elite Greek mercenary army 'The Ten Thousand', student of Socrates, effusive historian; Xenophon (431 - 354 BC) was a monumental figure in ancient Greek history. Here we have an extract from his Magnus Opus, 'The Anabasis' in which he describes encountering the ruins of two ancient cities as he and his men crossed Persia on their long journey home after taking part in a Persian civil war. He calls these cities Larisa and Mespila. Today they are generally assumed to have been ancient Assyrian cities, perhaps Nimrud and Nineveh, destroyed centuries earlier as the Neo-Assyrian Empire collapsed under the weight of its subject peoples, amongst them the Persian Achaemenids. Inspiring the famous Shelley poem 'Ozymandias', Xenophon describes the vast proportions of these ancient ruins; long deserted, looming large against the desert, a ruined shadow of a vast forgotten empire.

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[VoicesofthePast]

Hey guys! Thanks for watching! Don’t forget to subscribe for new videos every single week! & Let us know in the comments what you’d like to see covered in the future.

[jackwalters]

Hearing Xenophon call something ancient, that just puts time into perspective, doesn't it?

[ninjarider]

Watching this video, I became so immersed in the ancient world that when it ended, I felt as if I had suddenly awakened from a lucid dream. It's so intriguing that I'm going to do that again...

[reidysmeidy]

Whats truly interesting here is the subtext of this. He stood in a city no one knew its original name. No one knew who built it. A nation that used to be the most powerful in the world no one remembers. Every great nation comes to an end.

[kaloarepo]

The Anabasis of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand was definitely an inspiration for Phillip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great in their plan to conquer the Persian Empire -the Anabasis demonstrated how relatively simple such an undertaking could be.

[AbbeyRoadkill]

I'm surprised no one's made a movie about Xenophon and the March of the Ten Thousand.
(Or maybe there is one and I'm just not aware of it?)

[assyriannahrin]

Wow he calls the site misbela, , the same way its inhabitants the Assyrian called their city, which is called today Mosul

[مدرسةالماس-كخ]

The city you wonder about was the ancient city of Nineveh, it was destroyed by the Medes and the Babylonians, its people were nearly obliterated and rest fled to the city of Har-ran in north of Syria but also were almost obliterated, so the Assyrian city of Nineveh was deserted until one hundred years ago.

opposite to city of Nineveh, the city which was named as missbila or missila, actually it is the city of Mossil of today in north of Iraq. And the ruins belong to the Assyrian castle, which became the city of mossil.

[soralb]

Up until the twentieth century "parsang" or "farsang" was still used as a unit of length in Persia. The word also entered Arabic as "Farsakh". By the way, I like how Xenophon cleverly disses Persians. They could not take any city on their own. Gods, who for some reason were at odds with the Medes, had to intervene every time.

[emmetsweeney]

The Medes, whom Xenophon referred to, have left no trace in the so-called 'Iron Age' strata in which they have been sought, but are very much present in the earlier 'Bronze Age' strata in Mesopotamia, where they are called Mita or Mitanni. See the work of Professor Gunnar Heinsohn on this question. Also, emmetsweeney.org for a full discussion.

[Bus_Driver_Jay]

Can we have something about early Roman thoughts on Brittania please?

[redveinborneo]

Funny to here someone use the word "barbarian" to describe the people in the area that he finds ancient ruins that where far more sophisticated than anything being built in his homeland some (at least) 200 years after the ruined city was abandoned...

[domcasmurro]

Could not be Larsa or it was more at the east?

[MrAwsomenoob]

That moment you you march several furlongs and come to a land full of many good things, but the locals do not wish to be good friends or provide a fair market for their goods.

[florinivan]

The attempt by Cyrus the Younger to usurp the throne showed the greeks that Anatolia was an unruly land. With limited loyalty to the Persian Empire. Ie an invading force is likely to not meet too much resistance outside of whatever local garrisons exist. This was further confirmed by the great satrapal revolt in the 360s also in Anatolia.

[martinavaslovik]

So many things wrong in this I don't know where to start.

[isaacshultz]

I remember reading this and think hey that's a ziggguraut

[viraloracle]

if he said Medians lived there how it can be assyria, must have been in Iran.

[josephhebert]

Interesting take, totally wrong, but interesting.