anabasis

Yurick wrote the novel as a contemporary take on Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” the famed war expedition of 10,000 soldiers in ancient Greece.

Maps, photographs, explanatory notes, extracts from related documents, extensive bibliographies and an encyclopedic index consequently add deep context to “Anabasis,” Xenophon’s eyewitness account of the 10,000 Greek mercenaries who, in the 5th century BCE, trekked across half of Asia Minor as they battled to return home.

That night, he remembers, “I dumped my gear in my quarters, pulled books off the shelves, and began studying campaigns in Mesopotamia, starting with Xenophon’s ‘Anabasis’ and books on Alexander the Great – working my way forward.”

Hill’s screenplay with David Shaber adapts Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name, which itself reworked Xenophon’s ancient Greek myth of Anabasis; the film condenses the Greek army’s nation-spanning trek on to a compact scale befitting a city that fosters a new, fully independent sense of identity every four blocks or so.

He based the story on “Anabasis,” written by the Greek soldier Xenophon, who helped lead the retreat of 10,000 Greek soldiers after their failed conquest of Persia about 400 B.C.