A Question on Ochus' Death, and the Haemon River...

[Nicator]

Hello all,Did Artaxerxes III, Ochus die before or after Chaeronea? Also, any clues as to the type of poison used?Does anyone know how the Haemon got its name..."blood river"?later Nicator

[Jeanne]

If I remember right, he died AFTER Chaeroneia, and after ATG and friends went to Athens, while Philip was in Corinth.

[Nicator]

Hello Jeanne,Nice to meet you, and thanks for your input. Green, Bosworth, and Hammond seem to agree that it was after Chaeronea. The Haemon River was mentioned in Green as a small river which the Macedonian phalanx backed up against during the Athenian charge at Chaeronea. With such a tantalizing name (the blood river) I was wondering how it came to be called? Maybe it was from this battle itself?later Nicator

[smittysmitty]

Hi Nicator,Plutarch (Demosthenes 19:2) implies the Haemon river was named so after the battle of Chaeronea; i.e. the corpses and blood that filled the river gave the river its name, and that perhaps the very same river was known as the Thermodon previously.
cheers!

[susan]

I'm always sceptical of names given to geographical places on the basis of a historical event.Historians used to like to assign one-off historical events to explain geographical names, but if you live by a river I can't see why you'd change its name just because of one event. It's more likely that it derived its name "haemon" from a reddish colour that happened sometimes from natural occurrences - for instance iron ores in the water.Geographical names of rivers & hills tend to be very old; during the successive invasions of England, there are many examples of rivers & hills being given names that are just the generic word in the previous inhabitants' language : so, invader B asks local A " what's the name of this place?" and the local says "the river", or "AAA" in his own language. The invader then calls it "river AAA". There's one hill called "hill hill hill" in three different languages.
Susan

[marcus]

He he! I rather like that, Susan.I can imagine a lovely little village in the Cotswolds, called Hill-by-Hill... it has a certain ring to it...Marcus

[bla blah]

i think it was charnoea and the posion used was nitorgenic acid