Modern Applications of Xenophon’s Persian Expedition

Hi, so good evening. Welcome to SOPS, sponsored by the Institute of World Politics. For those of you that are new, IWP is a graduate school of international security, intelligence, and international affairs. We offer a doctoral program, seven master's degree programs, including two online MAs, and an 18 certificate of graduate study. If you are interested in learning more about us, please feel welcome to speak to one of our staff at the To support the work of IWP, please visit iwp.edu. Today we'll be hearing from Mr. Sean Honesty, who will deliver a lecture entitled, Modern Applications of Xenophon's Persian Expedition, as part of IWP's student speaker series. Sean Honesty is an MA candidate in the Statecraft and National Security Affairs program, with a concentration of diplomacy and strategic influence. His primary interest of study centers around Mediterranean geopolitics, particularly concerning the cross-cultural challenges facing Europe and MENA, and the efforts on U.S. national security consideration for the region. With that, please welcome Sean Honesty. Thank you, Joshua, and thank you everybody for coming. Before I begin, I also want to thank Dr. Williams for nominating me to speak and allow me to share my work with the IWP community. So again, as Joshua mentioned, I'll be speaking on the Modern Applications of Xenophon's Persian Expedition, also known as the Anabasis. But again, before we begin, to get into the substance of the discussion, I do want to say that I'm in no means an expert on this subject or ancient Greeks, but I do have a healthy fascination and appreciation of classical antiquity and civilizations that surround themselves around the Mediterranean, and believe that the history of these civilizations reveals to us stories otherwise overlooked. And through these stories, we as students become much more attuned to the world and attitudes around us that we might not be familiar with. A common saying that's said throughout the school is, we do not mirror image or we should not mirror image. So this is kind of an application of that as well. In saying that, none of the lessons I've gleaned from Xenophon's account are new or novel, but they are gravely underappreciated and underutilized in American foreign policy today. So I hope that this presentation makes a good example of why these things should be at the forefront. So the overall overview of the discussion will follow a historical contextualization of the story, as well as a quick synopsis of the Anabasis, because I know it is not a very widely read book, as well as following the lessons from antiquity that we take and the applications to modernity that we can take, and then we will end with or conclude with a quick Q&A. So as you see here, for the historical contextualization, this is the Achaemenid Empire, or the first Persian empire, circa 500 BCE, and this is at the height of their power. And so you can see that their expanse stretches from Egypt and Libya, or modern-day Egypt and Libya, all the way to the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Indus River Valley, with everything in between from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and a lot of modern-day Persia. And also a chronological contextualization at its height, this was 166 years before Alexander's conquest, about two and a half centuries before the Parthians, who were the perennial rivals of the Roman Republic and later Roman Empire, and about 1800 years before the Ottoman Empire. So this civilization was long-standing, long before a lot of the empires and civilizations that we generally learn about in class. And this, again, is just to show the sheer size and weight of this powerhouse within antiquity. And so this is a more up-to-date view of the Achaemenid Empire in and around the narrative. So this is them at 402 BCE, and as you can see, they've lost Egypt and Libya, as well as Macedonia, Thrace, and the western coast of Anatolia. And these were due to a lot of internal rebellions and revolts against the king of kings, or the great king of Persia. So while, again, while, going back to the last slide really quick, while the territories were lost on the western periphery, forgot to mention, it was still a massive state and a powerful entity, and definitely controlled a lot of the political intrigue that happened in and around this age, which Xenophon makes ample note of throughout his narrative. So as we move into the synopsis of the Anabasis, this is a more zoomed-in view of where the story takes place, mainly in the Anatolian Peninsula, as well as parts of the Syrian desert and Arabia, and Mesopotamia, excuse me. So I've characterized the march up, as it's called, or the Anabasis in three different segments. First, you see the first leg here, which is where the 10,000 mercenaries from different Greek city states marched with Cyrus the Younger, who was the younger brother of the then-current ruling king at the time, Ataxerxes II. Then the second leg is their march up to the sea, which is probably the most famous part of the Anabasis, and that can be delineated into two sections. 2a is their escape from the desert into the Armenian highlands, and then 2b is their trek from the Armenian highlands to the Black Sea. And the third and final leg is their coastal journey across the Black Sea and northern Anatolian Peninsula, and this is their trek back to Byzantium, which is up here in modern-day Istanbul. And so this kind of characterizes this long, arduous journey throughout an otherwise foreign land to the Greeks. And then, obviously, this green section here in the middle of the Anatolian Peninsula, that is a satrapy or an administrative unit of the Achaemenid Empire, and this is where Cyrus held a lot of sway and was the, essentially, governor, would be the term that we use. And so saying that and seeing that key, and most of the initial part of the journey was through this central satrapy, this is where Cyrus was able to not only gain a lot of allies, but also deceive the king of kings down here in Babylon, which is the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, and cover his story by saying, oh, I'm just putting down rebellions in my satrapy, or I am ensuring the borders are secure, or I'm aiding other satraps in neighboring satrapies. So for most of the journey, up until maybe Miryandas here near modern-day Antioch, he was able to move undetected. So this is a good element of statecraft by deceiving your enemy or your perceived adversary. So we'll move on to the first leg of the journey, the marching with Cyrus to Babylon. So this expedition begins with Xenophon and his Greek mercenaries when they arrive in Ephesus, which is on the western coast of Anatolia, and they meet up with Cyrus and his army, and which will build over time in Sardis, and as you saw on the map, move throughout Anatolia up until Babylon. Now this image, which I'll get to in just a minute, is the retreat of the 10,000 at the Battle of Canoxa. And Canoxa is a city just north of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire in Babylon, and as you can see by the depiction, it was a total rout for the Greeks, both the Greeks and Cyrus's army, who were defeated here and allowed for Atazerxes II, the great king of Persia, to basically expel them from his territory and start the whole Anabasis. So word quickly spread amongst the Greeks as they were marching to Canoxa, because when they arrived, they thought they were just aiding Cyrus in protecting his satrapy as they were vassals of the Achaemenid Empire, and you're not going to refuse the younger brother of the king of kings, because that would just spell destruction for your city-state or your community. So they traveled across the Aegean Sea to aid him in putting down rebellions, because there were tensions rising within and around his satrapy, but they were never told about what the actual goal of the mission was. And for Cyrus, that was usurping his brother and becoming the king of kings or the king of Persia. And because they didn't know what the goal was, they didn't have any great stake in the overall mission. And as word quickly spread amongst the Greeks that Cyrus planned to usurp his brother, they grew hesitant because you wouldn't want to go against this, like we saw in one of the first slides, this massive entity and bring down the weight of the Achaemenid Empire on your city-state back in the Greek heartland. But these allegations were pushed aside and said, oh no, we're just putting down further rebellions because my satrapy extends deep into the Anatolian Peninsula. So that worked for a while, and as the further they got in, I think a really important thing to note is that, you know, you're getting further away from the coast, you're getting further away from your supply lines, you're getting further away from things that are familiar to you. And if you just leave and abandoned basically the camps or the army, you're going to be left without guides that you can find your way home. So in a sense, they were almost hostages, but at the same time business partners in a very loose sense of the word. But at this battle, it was fairly evenly matched at the beginning because Cyrus had swelled up his numbers with a lot of troops and tribes that he had picked up along the way, as well as the 10,000 Greek mercenaries that were from throughout the city-states, which included Xenophon of Athens. But the great king had the advantage of establishing where the battle would be. And I know if you've taken any military history classes, establishing where having the battle be on your terms is definitely a big important part of having a decisive edge in military conflicts. And so as you see in this painting, I think it does a really well job of depicting what the area looked like. Obviously it was in the desert near Babylon, but it also had these rocky outcrops where archers could mount as well as agents to tell either side of formations that happened within the battle. And basically the Persian king's side was able to utilize that more effectively and then rout Cyrus's army. And in the, I guess, hectic battle, Cyrus was also killed, which definitely brought down morale for Cyrus's army, which then later disbanded. And so after the Battle of Cunoxa, you saw Persian troops that were once loyal to Cyrus bend the knee to Ataxerxes for fear of reprisals. You also had some Greeks that didn't come with the mercenaries bend the knee or try to evade capture. So it was a wholesale slaughter or they capitulated. But the 10,000 didn't want to capitulate to the great king. They just wanted to return home. Because as I've noted, this was never their intention to usurp the Persian dynasty in favor of Cyrus. So in their attempt to flee this gruesome battle, they were subsequently given an ultimatum by Tissaphernes, who is one of Ataxerxes' generals, who was at the site of the battle and commanded his armies. Essentially, lay down your weapons and come with us on the promise, with fingers crossed, that we won't harm you or you can attempt to escape and we will kill you and then death will be certain. And obviously they chose the latter or else there would be no story. And this is where you see them truly fight for their lives in fleeing from both the desert and an adversarial army. So that brings us to the second and third leg of the journey. The picture on the left-hand side is H. Vogel's The Return of the 10,000 under Xenophon. And this is at the culmination or end of the second leg of the journey when they finally reach the Yuksan Sea or the Black Sea after moving through a good part of the desert in modern-day northern Iraq and then through the Armenian highlands. And the culmination of this second leg is so important because it does depict a return to a quote-unquote Greek way of life. Because along the Black Sea is where you find a lot of Greek colonies at that time and where they will land is Trabzon, which was a Greek colony. And this third leg of the journey is an aerial view of the Bosphorus Strait taken from the perspective of the Black Sea. So you see the Sea of Marmara up here and then the Bosphorus Strait that basically bisects Asia and Europe. So this would be their final crossing and across to the Greek heartland where you have Thrace, Macedonia, and the rest of the city-states. So this would have been not only the culminating factor of their journey back home into familiar territory, but also away from external danger. And so I want to redirect you to the map we saw earlier. Again, the view of the entire march up, as it's called, throughout the Anatolian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and along the Black Sea coast. But I do want to point out that this is only a 2D map, so you're only seeing a journey through and not a journey across, over, under, things like that. And it doesn't even, it does have the names of different tribes that they encounter, especially the Karduchi, the Teleboas, the Mosinoeci, but it doesn't really give you a sense of what type of topographical and geographical elements that they faced. So this is a slightly better depiction of that. So in their landings over here on western Anatolia, through the Taurus Mountains, down into the desert, they followed the Euphrates, where they made pontoon boats and made the best of what they can, down all the way to where the Euphrates and Tigris nearly meet, where you have Babylon, at the Battle of Canoxa, which is down in this bottom right-hand corner, and then all the way back again through the deserts, being harassed by the Great King's armies the entire way, up into the Armenian Heightlands, where they escape the imperial center but are still within enemy territory. And so you have, in this mountainous range, and they just meet the mountains around late fall, going into winter, so that's never a good combination, especially when you're low on rations, low on supplies, and don't really have enough clothing and wares to get you through. So while they didn't lose the 10,000 mercenaries specifically, lose many soldiers during the Battle of Canoxa, they did lose a significant portion of their host when they were marching through the highlands. And this came more in more of the fact of disease and cold, rather than in their dealings with native tribes. So I've overlaid the the route map on the geographical map, and this just gives you a better sense of what they traverse through, both geographically, as well as the different tribes that are noted on that. So I'll give you guys just a second, because I know it's a bit difficult to see with the lights. So that takes us to the lessons learned from the story of Anabasis that Xenophon gives us. And these are the three most salient that I pulled from the text. The first one, the ends need to be fully realized and anchored in the virtues of one's mission. This is inherently the most important lesson that is taken from the Anabasis, and the most important mission, I think, that any modern student of statecraft should know when they are strategizing or even depicting or trying to illustrate a strategy. So one must know what the goal is that you're trying to achieve, and effectively ensure that all others that you are leading know and understand the ends and means to achieve it. Without that, you're going to have dissension, you're going to have confusion, and that's going to spell difficulties for you on your march up or within your mission. So the Anabasis takes place over two years, about 401 to 399 BCE, a little less, and they had three main leaders throughout their track. Two Spartans, Clericus and Curasophus, and Xenophon, who is an Athenian who finished the mission. So strategy changed not only based on situational endeavors, but also shifted under the weight of differing personalities and outlooks derived from their home city-state. So the Spartans were doing something one way, the Athenians were doing another thing. Throughout the text, they talk about the Arcadians, the Rhodians, and different denizens of city-states, and how they would approach a problem. However, even with this, each of the Greek commanders, so again two Spartans and one Athenians, put the army and their well-being above themselves, and almost appealed to a proto-pan-Hellenistic manner, even if it was only to maintain control or ensure survival of the host. So Clericus, who is the commander from when they land in Western Anatolia to just after the Battle of Cunaxa, was decisive and valued the input of his subordinates, even if they were from a different city-state. Now he certainly, you know, had his own way being a Spartan, but he listened to, when they were being initially harassed by the Athenians, he listened to Xenophon and his other subordinates from different city-states to change up the order of their units, to better repel attacks and raids on their rearguard. Chirosophus, also a Spartan, was less dynamic than his predecessor Clericus, and even arguably less so than Xenophon, but he knew what it meant to survive, and that was sticking together. And so again, he appealed to this quote-unquote Greekness shared among the Greek troops. And for those that aren't too familiar with Greek antiquity, there was no Greek state, there were just a peppering of city-states throughout, with Sparta and Athens being the most powerful. And at this time, Sparta being the most powerful just after about four or five years after the Peloponnesian War. And Xenophon, who led the rest of the host back to Greece, or the Greece heartland, led from the front and spoke to his soldiers as a fellow troop. So on long marches or on forced marches, he would walk alongside them and not just on his horse, and he would also tailor the success of his predecessors, so keeping everybody together for a means of survival, as well as appealing to cultural affinities that only the Greeks knew in that land to keep them alive and together. In essence, all three generals utilized and established, again, a sense of cultural affinity to maintain social cohesion, as well as discipline among the Hellenes as they traversed adversarial territories. The second one is understanding the cultural affinities and indigenous customs of the region, so kind of alluded to with the generals and how they approach things. And this came both externally and internally, so understanding who we're up against and also understanding ourselves. So the external part, after escaping the Persian army, the Hellenes were left with no official guides and no means to resupply. And so, as noted in the map, I'll go back to this, they did encounter several different tribes and groups throughout their march. So you see the Karduchi right here, just as they make it out of the desert in the Armenian highlands. That was the first major tribe that they dealt with, and they didn't know anything about this tribe, so they just marched in in battle formation because they were still trying to escape the Persian army, but didn't know that this tribe had basically been at war, an internal struggle, with the Persian overlords for as long as they'd been overlorded. And so they saw this as a direct provocation against their sovereignty, their territory, and their ancestral homeland. So they were constantly attacked, raided, and harassed, basically this entire stretch of the journey until they get to the Teleboas within this alpine fighting situation. And thankfully they stayed in battle formation the entire way. They couldn't really break out of it or else they would all be slaughtered by the Karduchi that had, you know, the advantage of being in the hills and are taking the summits, while the Greeks were trapped in the valleys. Further on, the Mosinoeci, who are just by Trappistus, or modern-day Trabzon, near the Black Sea. Again, by this time, they'd gone through several different tribes and learned how to deal with them, at least on a better footing than they had when they just started. And so they knew that some tribes are weaker than others, as the Karduchi were one of the stronger tribes because they had built up such resilience to the imperial center. But people further out on the periphery didn't have much need to rebel against the King of Kings because just of the proximity. So they did march in battle formation, and this worked as a deterrent to repel any thought of, you know, raiding against that or harassing their troops. Other troops included the Tauchi and the Armenians. I know this region is called Armenia, but there was a smaller tribe mentioned by Xenophon as just the Armenians. So learning to pick up guides along the way, and because this is classical antiquity, of course, they took them as slaves. These weren't just volunteers, or you had some people within the host of the 10,000 mercenaries that knew little faint anecdotes about the people that they were going to. So they made the most of that through their journey. So using that cultural intelligence as well as scouting ahead with the people that had knew that. So they were able to understand the vulnerabilities of their adversaries as well as how to induce potential allies to give them resupplies or give them shelter or just allow them safe passage through their lands. The internal part of understanding cultural affinities is important to note that their mercenaries were, again, from across the Greek world. So you had Athenians, Spartans, Corinthians, Cretans, Rhodians, Arcadians, Achaeans, etc. So you had this widespread of people across the Aegean Sea, and of course people from colonies as well. And while they were all culturally Greek, each polis or city-state had its own identity and history, which often came into conflict with each other, especially between the Athenians and the Spartans, again, because the Peloponnesian War had just been fought and concluded about four or five years before this journey began, with Sparta taking victory and establishing their self as the hegemon of the Greek world. And so one type of cultural affinity that things came up with was because as you're force-marching through adversarial lands, you can't always stop, take your dead, carry them along with you, bury them, and give them proper rights. So this was something very unusual and spoke to the very, not awkward, but disturbing time that the 10,000 found themselves in. Because this is something that they knew war, but they were fighting mainly against Greeks before this, and not necessarily against tribesmen throughout the Armenian highlands. So allowing for social norms to continue where they were allowed, so in camps or in friendlier territory, should I say, and this included allowing the men and the troops to perform sports and games, not necessarily Olympic level, but something that they were familiar with, as well as slaves and non-combatant liaisons throughout the camp was something that was able to increase morale and increase a sense of community, camaraderie, and things of that nature in this unknown and foreign territory. And so the third lesson from Antiquity that we take is understanding the geographical and topographical constraints. So again, this is ranging from hot, arid wastelands of the Al-Hajra Desert, which is just in the north of Iraq, during the height of the summer months, because this was planned in classical antiquity, we see a lot of military campaigns taking place in the spring and summer, and the concluding in mid-fall, because you have to return to sow your crops. So by the time they were trying to escape the imperial center of Persia, it was the height of summer in an unknown desert, while you're low on water and rations. So not a great combination, but it gets better. They were also in the height of winter in the Armenian highlands up in the summits and mountain peaks, and this is where a lot of soldiers died of cold exposure and disease, as well as the occasional raid from an agri-tribesman that sees you wandering through their ancestral homelands. So while they followed the Tigris River, which is a good guide, once the Tigris stops and it fragments into its tributary rivers, that's when they took advantage of the local guides, both the ones that they had on hand as already, as well as ones that they either captured or again found along the way. In relation to strategy in the face of geography, the Greek army's plan was basically twofold, yet simple. Utilize the land to shake off the trail in Persian forces, which they were able to do for the majority after they crossed into the highlands. You had a couple raids, scouting parties from the Persian king continue to try to track them, but once they were deep into the Armenian highlands, they pretty much shook them off. So that's good that they did one of their goals, but also to reach familiar lands of Asia Minor by any means necessary. So that's where you have the culminating aspect of getting to the Black Sea, because as noted earlier, there's a lot of colonies along the Black Sea coast of Anatolia that they could negotiate, better negotiate and parlay with, as well as resupply. So this meant adapting the tactics suited for Alpine conditions. This came in handy for the Carducci. So again, the massive tribe right here. And while the Carducci were very acclaimed for their Alpine fighting and able to last throughout the winters there, the Greeks were not. And so they had to quickly adapt a strategy to take mountain summits, to not allow themselves to be trapped in ravines or valleys and things of that nature, to again escape to familiar territory. And this also meant force marching through harsh winter conditions. So winter set in just past this lake right here when they meet the Teleboas. And so you have to cross through all of this mountainous terrain. And they knew they couldn't stay in a single place for that long, either because they would be attacked, or they didn't have enough rations to feed everybody, and they need to move on to quote-unquote greener pastures. And this also, again, a dark spot for classical antiquity, but often pillaging local tribes. And this did not help their, I guess, public relations with neighboring tribes as well when they tried to seek provisions, but pillaging hostile or neutral parties to gain these rations that they otherwise would have starved without. But the most important decision was not to retrace the original route that Cyrus took them on. And this was because while southern Anatolia would be bountiful by the time that they reached it, the Syrian desert that they would have had to cross was massive compared to the relatively smaller desert that they would have to cross into the Armenian highlands with so few supplies. But also Adesirxes believed that they would try to escape with this route already, so it already blocked off that route after the Battle of Canoxa with his own forces, so that wasn't going to be an option. And again, they made use of local guides and acquisition maps from areas that they either pillaged, made friends in, or they just picked up along the way. So in exchange, these inducements with potential allies would be pledging not to pillage further tribes when eventually receiving transport vessels once they got to the Black Sea. So these three lessons from Antiquity directly relate, and I promise not as long-winded, to applications to modernity. So the first one is the strategy of mission orientation, second, cultural intelligence, and geostrategic awareness. I think these are all buzzwords or phrases that we're well versed in here at IWP, so just to make it a little easier to follow. Again, if you're not too interested in classical Antiquity or that much of a fan of Xenophon, which there are some people that are not, so I'm glad you guys laughed. I was working on that one. So strategy of mission orientation. So this is doing what must be done to ensure mission completion. However, that does not mean that you violate or compromise the core principles that you set forth at the beginning of the mission. So this includes any type of virtues or values that a society, a civilization, or a people enshrine within themselves to do that with. So these are different than preferences, which are often temporal and exist as only beneficial within the state of affairs that they are, that they exist before the mission begins. So they are subject to change given how the mission goes. So this is a more change at the operational level. However, strategy can change as mentioned with Clericus, Curiosophus, and Xenophon later on in the journey, but the goal is the thing that is rooted in one's virtue that is not going to change. And the second one, cultural intelligence. So this is how the permanent features of the physical world around you can serve as meaningful purpose for strategy. And so while the cultural intelligence is key in dealing with people, geo-strategic, excuse me, awareness is crucial. Unless you are completely in a remote and isolated region of the world with zero human contact, these two are going to be complementary. And so the strategy, oh I'm sorry, I skipped ahead to geo-strategic awareness. So that part is for the third one. Cultural intelligence, again complementary to geo-strategic awareness, is understanding the people around you, their cultural affinities, their practices, customs, languages, religions, and things like that. So again, for Xenophon, his 10,000, marching up in battle formation with the Carducci was not a good means of or use of cultural intelligence because they said, hey you guys hate the Persians too, so we'll just march on through. But they actually hated everybody that wasn't them. But through their march, they were able to utilize guides as well as learn from their past experiences and changing leadership to better utilize cultural intelligence. So throughout giving inducements to local tribes by saying, we're not going to pillage you or we promise not to pillage you if you give us rations, or there was one with the Tauchi which is just before the Black Sea, and they basically promised one faction that we're going to help you destroy your rival faction if you let us go through and give us food. And it worked. Again, not the prettiest circumstances, but this is 2,300 years ago, so I don't think they had the same social infrastructure as we did there. So cultural intelligence and geo-strategic awareness are complementary in that sense. And just to simmer it down even more, strategy of mission orientation is knowing yourself and knowing what you value and what you bring to the table. Cultural intelligence is knowing your adversary, and this extends to knowing your allies as well. I feel like if you know your adversary, you're better able to distinguish between friends, allies, adversaries, potential allies, potential adversaries, and things like that. So if you know what to look for, it's easy to find that. And geo-strategic awareness is obviously knowing your surroundings, both the people as well as the geographical constraints that you're left with. But that concludes my talk, so thank you, and open to any questions. Wow, tough crowd, no questions. I spoke too soon. Sean, thank you very much. Sorry for my ignorance, but do we know much about the transitions between the three commanders? Why we go to number two and then Xenophon is number three? Yep, great question. So I'll go back to the map, because that's how I remember. I love a good map for people that know me. So the first leader was Clericus, who is a Spartan, and basically led the 10,000 mercenaries all the way here to Scythicae, which is just outside of Canoxa. And basically he tried to parlay and negotiate with the Persians that gave them the ultimatum of, drop your weapons and come with us back to Babylon, or we're going to kill you. And he thought him, as well as the other top generals within the 10,000, and a couple surviving Persian generals from Cyrus's army, basically took them at face value for that. And when they went to the negotiating table, they were either kidnapped or killed. And so a lot of the ones that survived were carted back to Babylon and summarily executed. Xenophon's pretty graphic, he just says beheadings. But that's how Clericus gets out of the picture, because he's taken away and killed. So that's when Kirasophis, another Spartan, and then his lieutenant takes over. And Kirasophis is basically the leader up until they meet the Black Sea at Trapezus. And he tells Xenophon, I need you to be in charge while I go to my contact in Byzantium to try to get a ship to cross the Bosporus and the Aegean. So until they reach from Trapezus to Sinope, Xenophon is in charge temporarily. But then Kirasophis returns. But basically, the men don't like him as much as Xenophon in a boiled down version. And he abdicates authority to Xenophon, who leads them the rest of the way. So that's kind of the transition between the three leaders. Cool, no more questions. That was easy. Oh, yes, Professor Tierney. Those are excellent questions. Yes, I don't, I missed the first part of your presentation. Those lessons that you outlined, and they're very accurate, very great. Do they come from the battle itself? Or are they across the board from military history itself? Because those are lessons that Vladimir Putin should have memorized, plus many others throughout history, like Lyndon Johnson, and they're universal. Were they articulated from the battle? Or are they a summary of your understanding of military history, per se? Thank you. I think they're more of a summary. But back in antiquity, generals would have heavily studied the past much more than we do today. And so they would have had a clear understanding of those three lessons, as well as many more that I just didn't choose for this presentation. But like I mentioned in the beginning of the lecture, I think these lessons, as well as others that we can take from history, are underutilized and underappreciated in today's American foreign policy. I agree. Cool. Oh, there we go. Thought I was out of it for a second. So I can only phrase this as a layman would, sort of ties into Dr. Tierney's question, especially speaking to cultural intelligence. As a country, we're large and we're extremely culturally varied. And I'm wondering what you see today, or where you see today, in particular, this lesson being applied, or maybe a place where we don't take full opportunity of the lessons that St. Afon teaches us in terms of, I suppose, applying a knowledge of ourselves, but also applying a knowledge of the fact that we are extremely varied in tradition. Thank you. I'd say from the text itself, it gives a pretty clear picture that you need to know for the cultural intelligence aspect, being able to take use of guides. And that can be applied to if we have people on the ground that know the area, know the language, know the culture, know the geography, know the religion, and things like that. But shifting it back to the U.S., because we are so varied, and I'm from the Midwest, so I think differently than somebody from the West Coast, or the South, or even New England. But Xenophon and the Anabasis itself keeps going back to this sense of Greek culture. And for us, I think that would extend to an American culture that only we know and only can appreciate. And one of the, I guess, really poignant points of the book is when they finally make it to the Black Sea, they yell, Thalata, Thalata. And I'm sorry for anybody that knows Greek. My pronunciation is probably really bad, but it means the Sea of the Sea. And immediately after that, they don't continue the march. They put all their stuff down, and they celebrate with each other with sports, games, and leisure activities that are only that the Greeks would know in this land. I hope that answered your question. Yes? Well, it's really easy. Well, certainly, we need to pay more attention to the lessons the Anabasis teaches. Do you believe there are any instances where U.S. foreign policy, U.S. military operations actually embodied positively the lessons learned, either in whole or in part? I think so. I don't have any contemporary examples of that, but there are certainly aspects where, if we're in a foreign country, we do make use of local guides and local informants that help us understand what we're getting into and make sure we don't cross boundaries within a religious context or a cultural context or gender roles or something to that extent. So there are certainly examples where the U.S. military has done that. I'm just not familiar with anything exactly that they do. I'm sure we did it in Afghanistan when we first got there. Maybe not so much as time progressed over the two decades, given how badly it ended up, not only for our exit out, but also for the Afghan people that are still there. But it was, I think, really well done in the case of both Japan and Germany post-World War II, when you have this nation-building effort, but still understanding how that was going to go about within the context of a cultural scope. So how are we going to rebuild this country so they are not only aligned to our strategic goals, but also how they're not going to be so isolated from their cultural foundations that they think of us as wiping clean any sort of history that they have. All right, so give another hand, a round of applause. So I'd like to thank Mr. Honesty and all of you who joined us today. If you're interested in attending other upcoming events, making a gift to IWP, or applying to some of our graduate programs, please visit iwp.edu and have a good rest of your evening.