Xenophon and the March of the Ten Thousand to the sea.

The second of these two poems was written in direct response to the first.

A.E.Houseman (1859-1936) was one of the leading classical scholars of his day. Today he’s remembered as the author of ‘The Shropshire Lad’, one of the most well known collections of poems from the first quarter of the last century. I suspect his mercenary army owes a lot to Xenophon’s classic account of how ten thousand Greek soldiers marched to the sea after their Persian paymaster was killed in battle.
Hugh MacDairmid (1892-1978), one of the significant Scottish poets of the twentieth century, had a less romantic view of Mercenaries. which i suspect might be shared by those unlucky enough to have encountered them.