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Alexander's March from Miletus to Phrygia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Freya Stark
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Extract

The march of Alexander from the Granicus to Issus is given by Arrian in less than a dozen pages scattered among various sieges that are more fully described; Plutarch, Diodorus and Quintus Curtius do less, and no more than a page or two apiece has come down to us on the whole of these movements.

Although his first meeting with Asia was probably the most important experience in Alexander's adult life, and though the Anatolian campaigns lasted a year and a half, or even a little more, out of the short total of eleven years that were left him, the poverty of the sources has imposed its brevity on modern historians also. Professor Tarn—who is as much a bedside book to modern devotees as the Iliad was to their hero—describes the marches and countermarches of Asia Minor in little more than three pages; and there is a great gap left us from classical times between Xanthus and Phaselis in Lycia. It would be absurd to think of filling it. But after sailing down the coast, I believed that some evidence might be gathered by comparing the written scraps left us with the nature of the places recorded, provided this were done before the road-building policy of modern Turkey succeeds in changing the pace of living in these mountains. Hitherto their ruins have scarcely been altered except by a natural decay; and the methods of travel being as slow as ever they were before, except along a very few roads, the flavour of their past is preserved.

In this essay the geography is attempted, with the problems and such answers to them as my rather intermittent journeys seemed able to provide. Someone better equipped than I am may find the outline useful and venture more profitably, before too much time goes by; for the interest is not one of geography merely. By visualising the routes which were chosen, the motives and processes by which that choice was made become clearer; and behind these motives and processes is the most dynamic being that the world has perhaps ever known.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 78 , November 1958 , pp. 102 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1958

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References

1 The following works have been used and are quoted by the names of their authors: Arrian, Anabasis (Loeb); Plutarch, Life of Alexander and Moralia (Loeb); Strabo, xiii and xiv (Bohn); Q. Curtius, Alexander (Loeb); Diodorus Siculus, anon. translation (London, 1700); Tarn, W. W., Alexander (Cambridge, 1948)Google Scholar and in CAH vi (1927), cc. 12–15; Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton, 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bevan, E. R., House of Seleucus (1902)Google Scholar; Leake, W. M., Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor (London, 1824)Google Scholar; Spratt, T. A. B. and Forbes, E., Travels in Lycia, Milyas and Cibyritis (London, 1847)Google Scholar; Fellows, Charles, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor (London, 1852)Google Scholar; Ritter, Carl, Die Erdkunde von Asien, ix. pt. 2 (Berlin, 1859).Google Scholar

I wish to express my especial thanks to Dr. G. T. Griffith for his kindness in reading this paper, checking references and correcting mistakes, and to Prof. Gomme and Mr. G. Bean too for their help.

2 Arrian, i. 17.3 to ii. 7.3; Plutarch, , Alex. 17–19Google Scholar; Curtius, iii. 1 and 4–7; Diodorus, xvii. 21.7–31.

3 From p. 17 to 24 of his Alexander, and in CAH.

4 CAH 360. Cf. Plutarch, 17.3.

5 Fellows, 276; Magie, 85.

6 Plutarch, 10.1–4.

7 Moralia, 180a (Alexander, No. 9).

8 Magie, 1375, n. 15; also Kalinka, E., Zur historischen Topographie Lykiens, Vienna, 1884, p. 39Google Scholar, for copy of inscription.

9 Polyaenus, , Strat. v. 35Google Scholar; CAH vi. 364.

10 Plutarch, 52.2.

11 P.761; cf. Bevan, i. 83 and 93 (quoting Forbiger, , Handb. der alten Geographie, ii. 323).Google Scholar

12 Suggested by Spratt, i. 266. (It should be added that in Ptolemy is an emendation, though almost certain, of )

13 Tarn, , Alexander, ii. 177.Google Scholar

14 Historical Geography, 45–6; cf. Magie, 241 and 1138.

15 Strabo, xiv. 3.4, p. 665. Cf. Magie, note on p. 762.

16 Magie, p. 1122, quoting G. Bean's inscription.

17 Magie, 522.

18 Jones, A. H. M., The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford, 1937), 105.Google Scholar

19 Spratt, 252; cf. Magie, 1374; Mr. G. Bean is publishing a paper in BSA which I have not yet been able to see. He points out that the so-called ‘Lycian’ tombs, overlapping into Caria and Pisidia, need not necessarily be of Lycian origin.

20 ‘Pisidian’ is Stein's conjecture, to fill an obvious lacuna; and λυκιοεργέας is an old conjecture found in Athenaeus, v. 486. (Both are accepted by Powell in his translation.)

21 Magie, 519.

22 Isium, according to Fellows, 363.

23 This place-name, Φоινίκη, is correctly translat by Langhorne, but the Everyman edition (which is taken from Dryden) gives ‘Phoenicia’, which is impossible; so does the Loeb translation, with the order ‘Cilicia and Phoenicia’. Plutarch's ‘as far as Phoenice and Cilicia’ is a natural way, I think, of describing a route which went via Finike to Sidé on the Cilician border (below, p. 118–19); the Phoenician coast was far away and the capture of Tyre a year ahead with Issus in between. Prof. Gomme, however, suggests that there is some doubt whether Phoenice, i.e. the town on the site of Finike, or Phoenicia was intended by Plutarch (or his authority). Alexander's march led him from Phoenice—little known in his day—to the borders of Cilicia; but this detail might easily have been overlooked in Plutarch's time and the well-known Phoenicia be taken for granted. [Plutarch's words are ]

24 Schönborn, A. work, Der Zug Alexanders durch Lykien, published in 1949 in PosenGoogle Scholar, I have not been able to see. But the account of his travels in Ritter, C.Erdkunde von Asien, ix, part ii. 560 ff.Google Scholar, show that he also, though with misgiving, brought the Macedonians down from Elmali and Arycanda.

25 See Spratt, ii. 11–12 for Daniell's view; and ibid., i. 203–7. For Schönborn see previous note.

26 Strabo, xiv. 4.1 mentions a Thebe and a Lyrnessus between Phaselis and Attaleia, but apparently in Pamphylia. Their sites have not yet been discovered.

27 Arrian, i. 25.9.

28 Plutarch, 17.6–8; Arrian, i. 26.1–2; Strabo, xiv. 3.9. (The sentence in the text is a combination of these passages; for the three give different versions, the picturesque detail coming from Plutarch and Strabo. Arrian's account as usual is the most sober. It was obviously a small incident which, because of its colourful setting, lent itself to later embroidery.)

29 Telmissus in the translation, and the MSS. of Arrian give it too.

30 The Loeb translation has ‘up to the road’, which may mislead. I am told that ‘as far as’ is in fact the meaning.

31 Heberdey, in RE v. A (1934)Google Scholar, s.v. Termessos, 739; Spratt, i. 233–8.