The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination

This book tells the story of 'Thalatta! Thalatta! (The sea! The sea!), the shout first uttered on a mountain in eastern Turkey by the army of 10,000 greek mercenaries whose adventures in what are now Turkey, Syria and Iraq were described by the Athenian historian and philosopher Xenophon, who also participated in the long march to the coast. This story has played a persistent part in the European and American cultural tradition over the last two hundred years. Rood tells its story, taking in literary masterpieces by writers such as Heine, Shelley and Joyce, books of travel and adventure set in the Middle East and elsewhere, articles in Victorian periodicals, popular romantic novels, newpaper editorials at the time of the British evacuation from Dunkirk, a painting by the 19th century artist Benjamin Robert Haydon, an unpublished radio play by Louis MacNeice, and a modern novel and film which transfer Xenophon's story to New York.