Der Zug der Zehntausend aus der Perspektive einer Frau in Valerio Massimo Manfredis L’armata perduta

The article focuses on an example of the genre of the historical novel, which continues to enjoy great popularity, dealing with the reception of the expedition of the Ten Thousand, which Manfredi retold from the perspective of a young woman in his novel L'armata perduta. To this end, the testimony of reception is understood as a provocation to literary studies in order to examine the remarkably rare and indeterminate female figures in Xenophon's Anabasis, to whom Manfredi's novel is able to lend its own voice, on the basis of the striking gender-based shift in Manfredi's narrative perspective. The fact that such a text also remains open to hybridization is shown by the reception of the Antigone myth within the novel, which impressively demonstrates the interweaving of the historical material with mythical narratives.