“Thalatta! Thalatta!" means "The sea! The sea!”
Xenophon's Anabasis, written in the first decades
of the 4th century BC, records this cry of a Greek army upon
seeing the Black Sea. It expressed their relief and exultation
at escaping near-certain death.
The word anabasis refers to a military expedition,
literally “a march up from the coast” or “a march up country.”
Xenophon took part in such an expedition in 401, as one of
10,000 Greek mercenaries who, along with a much greater number
of Persians, agreed to follow Cyrus the Younger from the
Aegean Sea up into Ionia (western Turkey today) to attack a
Persian tributary who ruled Ionia. The real target of Cyrus’
massive army, however, was his older brother Artaxerxes II,
the emperor of Persia. Near Tarsus (in what is now south
central Turkey), the Greek soldiers discovered this appalling
deception and refused to go further east, but were convinced
to do so by a Spartan general named Clearchus. After surviving
battle with Artaxerxes’ army in what is now the heart of Iraq,
Clearchus was invited to a peace conference by Artaxerxes, who
betrayed and murdered him. Far from the sea and surrounded by
hostile forces, the Ten Thousand elected new leaders (Xenophon
one of them) and fought their way out of Persia, north to the
Black Sea. From there they made their way home via the
Bosporus.
Added to the Homeric references,
the evocation of this heroic feat deepens our impression that
the events of Ulysses are somehow recapitulating or
echoing the world of ancient Greece. And they foreground one
particular aspect of that world: armed conflict. Mulligan
speaks the triumphant words of Xenophon, and his relation to
Stephen makes him Antinous, the leader of the suitors whom
Telemachus must outwit and
kill. Along with the knives that figure often in this episode,
these stories seem to predict an archaic narrative of violent
struggle. But Ulysses will complicate these
expectations. In the following episode, Nestor, the
Homeric analogues begin to function less straightforwardly,
assuming parodic forms. The book as a whole will undermine notions of heroism based on strength
and aggression.
