Open most any book on the Anabasis and you will find a map of the Cyreans' march. Invariably this is in stark black and white, the army's route traced decisively against a backdrop of cities, rivers, and mountains; the map in this chapter (Map 2.1) is little different. Maps enable modern readers to comprehend Xenophon's narrative visually. They show the magnitude of the trek, all 3,000 kilometers of it. They allow us to place the Cyreans geographically as no ancient reader ever could have. Little wonder that figuring out exactly what path the Cyreans took from Ionia to Cunaxa and back again has been an enduring concern of Anabasis studies. Indeed, scholars have been producing reconstructions of the army's route since at least the eighteenth century. Thanks to them, we can now trace the Cyreans' footsteps fairly precisely, although some of the most vexing topographical questions, especially for central Anatolia, can never be definitively resolved.

What maps are not so good at conveying, though, are the changing conditions the Cyreans encountered during successive stages of the campaign. To be sure, much attention has been paid to Xenophon's descriptions of weather and climate, often in attempts to fix an absolute chronology for the march. Yet, we can do more to set the Cyreans into their world. Call it an environmental rather than a topographical approach. Dividing the campaign into six stages or periods provides a clearer view of the physical realities that shaped the army's behavior.