Walk the Anabasis, Sardis to the sea
Ten thousand Greek soldiers, stranded in the middle of the Persian Empire, walking home. Your everyday steps follow their march, and Xenophon's own account unlocks at the places it happened.
- 1,636 miles
- 9 stops
- Xenophon, c. 370 BC
The oldest step count in Europe
Ten thousand Greek mercenaries march inland on a job nobody will describe, and their employer is killed in the first battle. Stranded a thousand miles from the sea, they walk home — and Xenophon counts off every stage of it, which makes this the oldest step count in European literature.
In 401 BC a Persian prince hired ten thousand Greek mercenaries for a job nobody would describe. It was to overthrow his brother, the King. The prince died in the first battle, at Cunaxa near Babylon, the Greek generals were seized and executed at a parley, and the army found itself leaderless more than a thousand miles from the sea. They elected new commanders that night. One of them was Xenophon, who later wrote it all down.
The book counts the walk as it goes: so many stages, so many parasangs, a parasang being about three and a half miles. It climbs out of Mesopotamia into the Armenian snow and ends with the most famous arrival in ancient literature: soldiers on a mountain shouting “The sea! The sea!”, a few days' march from the Greek city of Trapezus, today's Trabzon. H. G. Dakyns's translation keeps Xenophon's soldierly plainness.
- Distance
- 1,636 miles (2,633 km)
- Stops
- 9, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- The real world, on Apple Maps
- Text
- Xenophon, translated by H. G. Dakyns; Project Gutenberg ebook #1170
Where it starts
Darius and Parysatis had two sons: the elder was named Artaxerxes, and the younger Cyrus. Now, as Darius lay sick and felt that the end of life drew near, he wished both his sons to be with him. The elder, as it chanced, was already there, but Cyrus he must needs send for from the province over which he had made him satrap.
Anabasis, Book I · translated by H. G. Dakyns
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 8 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would the Anabasis take you?
The Ten Thousand took most of a year, much of it under attack. You can take whatever you like. Choose when you'd like to reach the sea and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
9 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out for the sea.
1,636 miles of Anabasis, on the walks you already take.
- For iPhone
- No account