Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Xenophon was born around 430 BC, near the city of Athens, to Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens. His father's family were a wealthy equestrian family. The history of his youth is little attested before 401 BC, when he was convinced by his Boeotian friend Proxenus (Anabasis 3.1.9) to participate in the military expedition led by Cyrus the Younger against his elder brother, King Artaxerxes II of Persia. . . . Written years after these events, Xenophon's book Anabasis ...is his record of the entire expedition of Cyrus against the Persians and the Greek mercenaries’ journey home. Xenophon writes that he had asked the veteran Socrates for advice on whether to go with Cyrus, and that Socrates referred him to the divinely inspired Pythia. Xenophon's query to the oracle, however, was not whether or not to accept Cyrus' invitation, but "to which of the gods he must pray and do sacrifice, so that he might best accomplish his intended journey and return in safety, with good fortune". The oracle answered his question and told him to which gods to pray and sacrifice. When Xenophon returned to Athens and told Socrates of the oracle's advice, Socrates chastised him for asking so disingenuous a question (Anabasis 3.1.5–7). . . . The mercenaries, known as the Ten Thousand, found themselves without leadership far from the sea, deep in hostile territory near the heart of Mesopotamia. They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north along the Tigris through hostile Persians and Medes to Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea (Anabasis 4.8.22). They then made their way westward back to Greece via Chrysopolis (Anabasis 6.3.16). Once there, they helped Seuthes II make himself king of Thrace, before being recruited into the army of the Spartan general Thibron." [Wikipedia]