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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2015
When Alexander III of Macedon set out on campaign against the Persian Empire in 334 bc, he had little previous experience to draw on in devising the route to follow. Xenophon had covered some of the ground, but his written account took the route in reverse and was notably full of crisis management and extemporizing: it is doubtful whether Alexander made much use of it. Herodotus had described the basic topography of the Persian empire over a century before, but not in much detail. This article considers the kinds of information that Alexander had to draw on in planning his route, and the ways in which he, and Xenophon before him, acquired the information they needed on the way.
Greek translations are taken from the following editions: R. Warner (trans.), Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1954); R. Warner (trans.), Xenophon. The Persian Expedition (Harmondsworth, 2004); J. C. Yardley (trans.), Quintus Curtius Rufus. The History of Alexander (Harmondsworth, 1984); E. S. Forster (trans.), ‘Pseudo-Aristotle: “On the Universe”’, in J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, NJ, 1984); R. Stoneman (trans.), The Greek Alexander Romance (Harmondsworth, 1991).
1 West, M. L., The Epic Cycle (Oxford, 2013), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But in the Iliad (1.71 ff.) Calchas did know the way.
2 Euripides fr. 727 c. 27: see West (n. 1), 109.
3 Plut. Vit. Alc. 17.3. See also Plut. Vit. Nic. 12.1.
4 Dilke, O. A. W., Greek and Roman Maps (London, 1985), 21–35Google Scholar, remains the most succinct collection of the evidence; see also Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D. (eds.), The History of Cartography (Chicago, IL, 1987)Google Scholar, i.54–116 (with contributions by Dilke and others).
5 Ruffell, I., Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (London, 2012), 96–9Google Scholar.
6 Graf, D. F., ‘The Persian Royal Road System’, Achaemenid History 8 (1994), 167–89.Google Scholar Ctesias also wrote about it, at the end of his Persica (FGrH 688 F 33, translated in Kuhrt, A., The Persian Empire. A Corpus of Sources from the Achaemenid Period [London, 2007], 730–1Google Scholar, 15 no. 2).
7 Settis, S., Artemidoro. Un papiro dal I secolo al XXI (Turin, 2008), 64–5Google Scholar.
8 Strabo 14.2.29.
9 Dilke (n. 4), 26.
10 Plut. Vit. Alex. 5; also at de fort. Alex. 342c.
11 Lane Fox, R., Alexander the Great (London, 1973), 52Google Scholar. Murray, O., ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, CQ 22 (1972), 200–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Curiously, no rivers of Asia Minor are mentioned.
13 Lorimer, W. L., Some Notes on the Text of Pseudo-Aristotle ‘De Mundo’ (Oxford 1925), 41Google Scholar; see also his edition of De Mundo (Paris, 1933). The book was known to Maximus of Tyre, and probably dates from around ad 40–140.
14 The text goes on to compare the Great King to the ‘God who possesses the universe’, anticipating Plotinus' concept of ‘one in many’. Selden, Daniel, ‘Mapping the Alexander Romance’, in Stoneman, R., Erickson, K., and Netton, I. (eds.), The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East (Groningen, 2012), 28–32Google Scholar, develops an interesting discussion of the way in which the multicultural Persian Empire provided the conditions for the development of early Ionian ideas about the universe and the relation of its components to the whole.
15 See the systematic discussion in Engels, D. W., ‘Alexander's Intelligence System’, CQ 30 (1980), 327–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Engels, D. W., Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army (Berkeley, CA, 1978), 2Google Scholar.
17 Kuhrt (n. 6), 730–1.
18 Ibid., 733, 15 A (a) 1(i) and (iii); 797, 16 no. 36 (i)–(ii), (iv).
19 Neh. 2:7–9 = Kuhrt (n. 6), 753, 15.19. See also Graf (n. 6), 174.
20 On the use of prisoners as guides, see Engels (n. 15), 333, n. 36, citing Onasander 10.15. Arrian 4.29.4 mentions a comparable case, of a deserter rather than a captured enemy. Alexander was more likely to attract deserters than were the beleaguered Ten Thousand: Engels (n. 15), 334, nn. 40–1.
21 Engels (n. 15), 331, n. 27.
22 The guides also get lost at 2.37, but in this case without dire consequences, perhaps because they admit it.
23 Xenophon calls it the Phasis. In 1815 it was called Phasin Su: Lane Fox, R., ‘Introduction’, in Lane Fox, R. (ed.), The Long March (New Haven, CT, 2004), 44Google Scholar.
24 Ibid., 24.
25 Engels (n. 15), 332, n. 30.
26 Also in Polyaenus 1.49.4.
27 Cf. 6.5, where the sacrifice made by Xenophon prior to leaving camp is immediately followed by the favourable omen of an eagle's appearance, noted by the seer Arexion.
28 R. Parker, ‘One Man's Piety’, in Lane Fox (n. 23), 131–53.
29 Braund, D. C., ‘River Frontiers in the Environmental Psychology of the Roman World’, in Kennedy, D. (ed.), The Roman Army in the East (Ann Arbor, MI, 1996), 43–7Google Scholar.
30 Also frequently in the Iliad: 20.7, 21.193 ff., 21.380.
31 Hdt. 7.113; cf. Thuc. 5.54–5, for crossing frontiers in general.
32 Parker (n. 28), 139.
33 See the discussion in Waterfield, R., Xenophon's Retreat. Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age (London, 2006), 100–2Google Scholar, debating whether the location should be Balkis or Raqqah. Brennan, S., In the Tracks of the Ten Thousand (London, 2005), 145–6Google Scholar, notes that, if the water was low enough for fording, the date should be some time in September.
34 Floats had been used on these rivers from Assyrian times (see Brennan [n. 32], 148) and were frequently used by Alexander for his river crossings, for example on the Oxus.
35 But see Lane Fox (n. 23), 23–4.
36 Xenophon's river descriptions are not always clear, a notable case being the ‘watercourse’ in 3.4.1 which ought to be the Khazir Su, a tributary of the Great Zab, much bigger than fits the term charadra. Later the Teleboas is described simply as ‘a beautiful river but not a large one’ (4.4.3). River knowledge again falls under suspicion at 6.2.1, where Xenophon refers to several rivers as being on their route west of Sinope, even though three of them lie to the east. But perhaps as they were travelling by sea now it did not matter.
37 He refers to it at Arr. Anab. 2.7.18; see also 2.4.3 on the camp of Cyrus at the Cilician Gates.
38 Stark, F., ‘Alexander's March from Miletus to Phrygia’, in Alexander's Path (London, 1958)Google Scholar, 229 ff., reprinting an article from JHS 1958; see also ibid., 203–9, on the Cyropaedia.
39 Ibid., 236 f.; Nice, A., ‘The Reputation of the Mantis Aristander’, AClass 48 (2005), 87–102Google Scholar.
40 See also Engels (n. 15), n. 34, on Aornos.
41 Brennan (n. 33), 153–4.
42 A neglected topic. A general treatment is Franke, P. R., ‘Dolmetschen in hellenistischer Zeit’, in Müller, C. W., Sier, K., and Werner, J. (eds.), Zum Umgang mit fremden Sprachen in der griechisch-römischen Antike (Stuttgart, 1992), 85–96Google Scholar.
43 See also Xen. An. 4.5.10. Some further examples are 2.5.35, 4.2.18, and 7.2.19 (Seuthes).
44 Kuhrt (n. 6), 742, 827–8, 842–6; cf. 186.
45 Compare Fox, R. Lane, Travelling Heroes. Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer (New York, 2008)Google Scholar, on mothers and mistresses as transmitters of local lore.
46 Berve, Alexanderreich, 152.
47 Ibid., 634.
48 Arr. 4.4.1 with Bosworth HCA 2.24–5.
49 Engels (n. 15), 332, n. 28: Cophes C. 7.11.5–6; Mithrines C. 3.12.6; anonymous: C. 6.5.19, C. 8.12.9, D. 17.76.7; an interpreter of Darius: C. 5.13.7.
50 Strabo 15.1.64; cf. Arr. 7.1.5.
51 On the location, see Gawlikowski, M., ‘Thapsacus and Zeugma’, Iraq 58 (1996), 123–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Plut. Vit. Luc. 24. 6–8. A sneeze was enough for Xenophon at 3.2.8. Alexander also sacrifices after the victory on the Hydaspes (Arr 5.20.1), but that is a battle sacrifice not a river sacrifice.
53 Probably third century, as it makes use of Philostratus and Herodian: Lorimer (n. 13), 100.
54 For a survey of paradoxographers, see Dorda, E. C., De Lazzer, A., and Pellizer, E. (eds.), Plutarco. Fiumi e Monti (Naples, 2003), 46–52Google Scholar. They place Pseudo-Plutarch in the first to second centuries ad (35).
55 Lane Fox (n. 23), 36–43, shows that the reference proves that the date is late May; there is therefore a ‘snow lacuna’ of three months after crossing the River Phasis.
56 Engels (n. 16), 71–3.
57 Stark (n. 38).
58 Eunap. VS 1.1.