A Trip To The Coast
The term katabasis can refer to a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast (for example, following a river), while the term anabasis refers to an expedition from a coastline up into the interior of a country.
This is the main meaning given for katabasis by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which it describes as "A going down; a military retreat, in allusion to that of the ten thousand Greeks under Xenophon, related by him in his Anabasis." and quote:
1837 DE QUINCEY Revolt Tartars Wks. 1862 IV. 112 The Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon. 1899 Westm. Gaz. 17 May 4/1 Little space is devoted to the Anabasis; it is, as in the story of Xenophon, the Katabasis which fills the larger part.
— OED - katabasis
In the opening of Plato's Republic, Socrates recounts "going down" to the port city of Piraeus, located South of his native Athens. Several scholars, most notably Allan Bloom, have read this first word, kateben ("I went down") as an allusion to Odysseus' journey into the underworld.
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