'Thalatta! Thalatta!' ('The Sea! The Sea'), was the shout first uttered on a mountain in eastern Turkey by the famous Ten Thousand, the army of Greek mercenaries whose adventures in what are now Turkey, Syria and Iraq were described by the Athenian historian and philosopher Xenophon, himself a participant in their long march to the coast. Their shout has had an extraordinary afterlife, playing a persistent part in Western cultural tradition over the last two hundred years.