Greeks abroad: social organisation and food among the ten thousand

Abstract

This study of the Ten Thousand on their way home will consider, with regard to some important aspects of their social behaviour, whether they were adopting and adapting the Greek city way of life, or that of a mercenary army, and whether other possible models may help us to understand their problems and their success. The Ten Thousand had been part of an army and many of them would form part of one again. The assumption that in the meanwhile they were really just like an army justifies the space given to them by Parke, by Marinovich and by Griffith in books which are studies of Greek mercenary warfare. Of course the men's aim when they were Cyrus's mercenaries (like the aims of other mercenaries) had been to follow what instructions had come to them from above and to take home, individually, what pay and profit they could. But once Cyrus was killed they were no longer mercenaries nor employed by any authority, and their aim, decided by themselves, was to find a way home. Their entirely different status, and their ability to succeed in these new circumstances, mean that it is unwise in investigating the patterns of behaviour either of mercenaries or of the Ten Thousand to assume without question that the two patterns will be the same.

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