Okay, so Xenophon's Persian expedition is an entertaining read. You're basically riding shotgun alongside one of the founding endeavours, the wellspring if you will of western supremacist thinking. "Look at us, quarrelsome but for that reason resourceful, plucky, democratic bunch (never mind the wiping out of entire cities, inhabitants and all, the mass rape, slavery, the eugenic disposing of wonky babies; in short the inspiration for 2500 years of racist fascism)."

The story follows a merry band of mercenaries implicating themselves in a coup d'état and myriad war crimes in the neighbouring Achaemenid empire. They fail, and find themselves scampering home toward the Greek settlements on the Black Sea, across hostile terrain, killing and enslaving every village encountered along the way. Spoiler: They reach the sea. "Thalassa! Thalassa!" But then you're only halfway into the book.
From thereon it's mainly pedophiles bickering about money.
Truly, a shiny beacon on a hill.
(One is told not to judge our forebears by today's standards. I say absolutely yes. Yes we should. What's idolised still must be criticised relentlessly.)

(I gave up a few chapters before the end. Even iBooks had had enough. (Like a Spartan might a Theban, the software blamed other software, saying: "There is a problem with iTunes (--42408). Reinstall iTunes, then try again.) Good advice perhaps for western civilisation as a whole, which has always been at its best when it looked to its neighbours for inspiration and not for loot.