The Ironist

Differing Perspectives

Rowing with Imagination – On Xenophon

Nigel writes an encomium for the Cost of Glory…
A wooden ship with sails AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Rowing with Imagination: On Xenophon

Twenty minutes on the rowing machine and the display will dutifully say I have rowed 3.7 kilometres. But that is not really where I am. In my mind, memories merge.

I am rowing from Miletus on the Maeander to Lesbos. The seat beneath me is cedar, made by Lydians. I miss the sweet scent of sandalwood from Cappadocian craft, but this one will do. The trireme is fast, built by Ameinocles of Corinth, and we surge forward as though our sails were black before Troy, bound for Ilium’s treasures, hurrying to join Agesilaus’ men with Lysander. The Notus wind rises from Egypt, heavy with clouds; the dolphins leap in graceful curves, swimming alongside, laughing at our futile attempt to outrun the approaching storm; and the pines, carobs, and olives blur as we sweep past the Carian shore….

Why indulge such daydreams on a gym floor? Because rowing is not just exercise; it is an act of memory. It is a way of reaching backward into an ancient world where courage, imagination, and endurance were bound together. To row on a machine is repetition; to row in one’s mind with Xenophon’s mercenaries is remembrance.

When the Ten Thousand crested the mountain and cried out “Thalatta! Thalatta!”—The sea! The sea! —they weren’t merely cheering survival. They were affirming that in the bleakest conditions, leadership and memory can give direction when none seems possible. I first read Xenophon’s Anabasis as a teenager. Then I picked up his Oeconomicus. Expecting tales of battle, I found instead a meditation on order, duty, and the management of life’s essentials. The lesson has remained: history rewards not only the victorious general, but the one who cultivates his household, his city, even his soul.

We live in an age that pretends leadership is a toolkit—networking skills, communication hacks, productivity tricks. The ancients knew better. Leadership was character tested in practice, endurance made meaningful by memory. The man who could inspire mercenaries on the march or a wife in the vineyard was not relying on technique but on the integrity of a life.

That is why Alex Petkas’ Cost of Glory resonates. Like an invitation to row with the ancients, to feel the storms of the Notus, to hear the cry of “The sea!” and know why it mattered. The podcast does what my rowing daydreams attempt: it makes the past immediate, embodied, instructive. It teaches that to “Be Ancient” is not to escape modernity, but to recover memory as a guide.

On the machine, I row kilometres. In imagination, I row centuries. And in doing so, I remember that cultivation – of mind, of soul, of history – is itself a kind of leadership.

Please check out: https://www.costofglory.com/about. You’ll be glad you did.

“…Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Petkas speak out loud and bold…”[1]

[1] With apologies to John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.

–

Nigel Scotchmer

Author

  • Nigel Scotchmer

    Nigel’s peripatetic path in life gives him, he believes, a unique perspective on the world around him. He has worked at many occupations over the years from driving a truck, writing welding standards, to being an international salesman,\ accountant and business owner. Brought up in a family that believed that Antigone in the Greek myth was correct to stand up and die for her belief that fairness and truth were more important than the ranting raves of the unthinking mob – his father accepted the consequences of refusing to fire a homosexual in the 1950s – Nigel believes irony is the greatest tool for both encouraging equity and our enjoyment of life. Since irony involves the interplay between emotions, reality and chance, its appreciation can provide meaning to the often inexplicable world in which we live. He said, when interviewed for this summary: “No, we can’t all be heroes, and too often we make the wrong choice, for the wrong reasons – but at least irony can bring peace to us by helping reconcile the warring elements.”

    Nigel loves literature – especially books and poems that deal with universal themes such as love, war, and justice – and is now happily retired from the world of business. Ironically, (like countless retirees before him!), he says he has the ambition to be a great writer and is currently writing fiction full-time….

    Visit him at https://nigelscotchmer.com/

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