General of the elite Greek mercenary army 'The Ten Thousand', student of Socrates, effusive historian; Xenophon (431 - 354 BC) was a monumental figure in ancient Greek history. Here we have an extract from his Magnus Opus, 'The Anabasis' in which he describes encountering the ruins of two ancient cities as he and his men crossed Persia on their long journey home after taking part in a Persian civil war. He calls these cities Larisa and Mespila. Today they are generally assumed to have been ancient Assyrian cities, perhaps Nimrud and Nineveh, destroyed centuries earlier as the Neo-Assyrian Empire collapsed under the weight of its subject peoples, amongst them the Persian Achaemenids. Inspiring the famous Shelley poem 'Ozymandias', Xenophon describes the vast proportions of these ancient ruins; long deserted, looming large against the desert, a ruined shadow of a vast forgotten empire. How do we actually know about history? Voices of the Past is a channel dedicated to recreating the original accounts from the people who lived through events, or who lived far closer to them than we do today. We do this word for word, with an accompanying soundtrack of rousing music and images. — Thanks for watching! Don’t forget to subscribe for new videos every single week! & Let us know in the comments what you’d like to see covered in the future. — Become a patron for as little as a dollar a month & help keep this project going:- https://www.patreon.com/historytimeUK — Don’t forget to subscribe to our primary channel History Time, where we make full length historical documentaries:- https://www.youtube.com/historytime — History Time is now a podcast. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts from. —Join our community on social media:- Twitter:- https://twitter.com/HistoryTimeUK/ Facebook:- https://www.facebook.com/HistoryTimeOfficial/ Instagram:- https://www.instagram.com/historytime_ig/ — Music courtesy of:- - Epidemic Sound - Joss Edwards Mus