Review: The Persian Expedition, by Xenophon

The story of the Ten Thousand, as told in this book (aka the Anabasis), used to be one of the most commonly taught in British schools, and it’s not hard to see why. Ten thousand Greek mercenaries are hired by Cyrus, younger brother of the Persian king Artaxerxes, to defeat his brother and put Cyrus on the throne. Although the battle of Cunaxa is won by Cyrus’ forces, Cyrus himself ends up dead.

The Greeks are a thousand miles from home and surrounded by enemy troops who vastly outnumber them. Going back the way they came is impossible because the supply situation, even with Cyrus helping, was dangerously difficult.

The Persian Expedition, written by Xenophon (one of the army’s leaders), is the story of how the army got back to safety. It’s thought (perhaps along with no longer extant versions by other writers) to have been the geographical and moral inspiration behind dreams of invading Persia, which eventually bloomed under Philip II and Alexander of Macedon.

As well as fending off some Persian attacks, the army grapples with unfamiliar territories and peoples, keeping itself fed and watered, and, perhaps most dangerously, internal political wrangling and the threat of disintegrating obedience once safety seems to have been reached.

It is not in the top rank of classical history. Xenophon lacks the rigour of a Polybius or Thucydides (although he also tends to avoid eight clause sentences...), and has a bias similar to Josephus, but not balanced by the same level of detail and insight. This may be because Xenophon wrote of the journey decades after it happened.

However, it is an interesting book. The failure of Persia (to be fair, they didn’t try as hard as they could’ve) to prevent the Greeks from leaving led those across the Aegean to believe that moral decay had made the orientals weak as well as decadent. The army hung together very well so long as it felt in danger, but as safety seemed at hand, things started to splinter and there was seemingly little gratitude to those who had helped lead the men out of the fire.

The innkeeper considers this to be three and a half out of five pints.

Thaddeus

The Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter

[Originally posted on Thaddeus the Sixth in September 2015]

Word that water may well flow on Mars (periodically) was met with great excitement by many people. Water makes it easier to land and live there, as well as dramatically increasing the potential for life on Mars.

However, a few people were dismayed by the hugely significant discovery, which seems a little odd. Until you learn about the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter [before yesterday, I knew of the former but not the latter].

Concisely, the Fermi Paradox wonders why we haven’t encountered any other aliens (yes, space is enormous, but species could have been developing for billions of years more than us, so where are they?). The Great Filter is a reference to a theoretical barrier that is very difficult to surpass, and prevents species reaching a certain technological height (hence why we haven’t encountered any).

A very interesting and lengthier explanation is available here [some fruity language so perhaps NSFW]: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

The issue with the Great Filter, as well as potentially not existing, is that nobody knows where it is. It might be an extremely early evolutionary barrier, at the unicellular level, or it could be in our distant (or immediate) future.

The human race is inherently unstable, to some degree. It might be that high intelligence (which, on an individual level, has high co-morbidity with many psychological conditions) in a species naturally coincides with instability. It’s not hard to think of the numerous wars we’ve made on ourselves. If we keep doing that, the chances of nukes or biological agents (or weapons yet undeveloped) getting used on a global level will shorten (perhaps to a terminal extent).

We’re also very near the Singularity, a moment when artificial intelligence will exceed that of ourselves. This is significant because we could create a machine, which then designs a more intelligent machine, and so on. As this moment approaches, we’re also developing ever more effective robotic forms of death, which has led scientists to call for laws governing autonomous killing machines.

Inventing autonomous killer robots with superior intelligence to our own would be a very human way to commit species-wide suicide.

Drifting back to Mars and the Martians: if there is life on Mars, then that removes the earliest instances of the Great Filter, and makes it a bit more likely the Great Filter (which may well be an apocalypse of some variety) lies in our future, rather than our past.

Cheery thought. And all because some salty deposits were found several million miles away.

Thaddeus