V.D. Hanson on crucifixion and decimation.

[yiannis]

Plus, "where there's a will, there's a way"!Sorry, couldn't help it...

[jan]

Hi Linda, I will argue this one through as first of all the main difference between the Greeks and the Persians is that the Greeks did not perform such atrocities against their enemies as mutilation, grotesque acts. This is a Roman style of torture, not a Greek. Furthermore, the building of the moles was a challenge, not an afterthought of excessive punishment as in the crucifixion tale. Having spent that much time in such a battle would mean that once the offending parties had been properly punished, excessive and Persian style would not be a credit to Alexander. Alexander is a strategist, and knows how to use his time well.

[jan]

Guy MacLean Rogers does a wonderful response to the HItler analogies in his final chapters. It is quite thoughtfully and respectfully done.

[jan]

Kenny, You must read Arthur Weigalls' book about Alexander as he makes it rather clear that the Greeks form of punishment is distinctly different from the Persian who were the offending terrorists in that day and age. The Greeks were a practiced style of humane treatment in an age of bad mistreatment. Also, the extant sources are all primarily Romans who obviously dressed up the texts whenever it served their purposes to please their readers and fans. You have to think about those things when sorting out the truth about Alexander.

[jan]

Hi Linda Ann, The line that caught my attention is "Alexander is a fraud". I suspect that Hanson likes to be controversial amidst the furor of pro Alexander sentiment. The reviews of each of the books is most worthwhile and I am interested in the Claude Mosse and Janet Lloyd book but have not seen it here in this region.I bought the Commanders magazine since it is devoted only to Alexander. I browsed through it and have not returned to it as is the case with a couple of books yet, Cummings and Ullrich. I have been reading Killer of Men which is mostly about the battles, tactics, and strategies in which the author overuses the word astute. Another book on the shelves is one by Rogers which I like especially well. One or the other of these two books is trying to prove that Alexander is who is the greatest story ever told instead of Jesus. Rogers is interesting in his foreword about what difference any of this makes to any but a few Oxford scholars. He is a Princeton fellow.I appreciated the link to Hanson's page. I happened to one day read a NYTimes frontpage article of when Hitler was marching across Europe. It is interesting to see the proportion of weight given to the story about HItler along with the other news stories of the day. I wonder how Alexander's march would have looked in a newspaper which was reporting the daily news in that age. What other things were happening that were probably considered far more important than Alexander's invasions. After Tyre was sacked, was Gaza crying out Alexander is coming! It is fascinating to me to imagine that. So maybe Hanson is worth some thought after all.I believe that Alexander would have loved it believing that word has already passed to warn them of his arrival. Don't you?

[jan]

Thanks to this post, I read the Hanson article all the way through that is in the Great Commander's magazine. Since death is his theme, I wonder what he believes would have happened had Alexander let all those people live. Also, in his this same magazine is an article on the Battle of Tyre which does not mention the crucifixion scenes at all. In other author's articles, I have read that 200 men were hanged, but in Hanson's article, he describes 2,000 as having been crucified. A unique French 15th century painting depicts Alexander as a Musselman, using scythe and blade, and this portrait displays both decapitation and crucifixion, proving that the 15th century French fostered errors in thinking in their retelling of this old tale. Perhaps this explains why it is that King Louis XIV seemed to support the Turks in his own time period. I noticed again the comparison between the struggle between the problem of two kings: Louis and Nicolas Foucquet, and Alexander and Philotas. Nobody can escape the fact that Philotas thought himself to be better than Alexander, which is probably the real basis for his eventual trial and verdict.

[ruthaki]

I'm trying to recall whether I've read about the victims of Tyre being "crucified" or simply "Hung" on the walls in which case finding ropes would be
q uicker than building crosses. And yes, I do believe crucifying was an old Persian method. Anyway it was an execution style that was around for some time in that part of the world. The figures I seem to recall about Tyre were around 1000 men were executed.

[lucian]

Bitter island, population = Hanson

[amyntoros]

I had a thought about these crucifixions, though it may well have been addressed elsewhere. If we take the crucifixions as a given (they were recorded in a Greek source) then there are one or two possibilities. Ruth mentions in a later response that crucifixion may indeed have been a Persian form of punishment. (I miss Jona so, he would know the answer to this!) In that case Alexander was using a Persian punishment on Persian territory - something he was also to do later with Bessus. But Justin records Pausanias has having been hung on a cross: "she (Olympias) put a crown of gold, the same night that she arrived, on the head of Pausanias as he was hanging on a cross..." Now Pausanias was obviously already dead. Could it be possible that the men crucified at Tyre had already been killed in battle, and it was just their bodies that were hung on the crosses as a warning to everyone else not to thwart Alexander?Best regards,Amyntoros

[Kit]

Hi Amyntoros,I had a look in the Oxford Classical Dictionary to see what it had to say on the subject of crucifixion and punishment in the Greek world.It indicated that the Romans learned of crucifixion from the Carthaginians. Now Carthage was of course a colony of Tyre, so maybe it was the Phoenician cities where the practice of crucifixion originated rather than Persia?Did Alexander first encounter this form of punishment from the Tyrians themselves, and then impose it on them in turn (though admittedly to a greater extent- how like him!)?Just a thought.Kit.

[amyntoros]

Hi Kit:Interesting thought - thanks for the info. The plot thickens... :-)Best regardsAmyntoros

[marcus]

Indeed - and anyway, he was held up afterwards at Gaza for at least 2 months ... so there's even less reason for time being an argument against the crucifixions.ATBMarcus

[ancientlibrary]

"Alexander severed Lycia from Caria, attaching it
instead to Pamphylia. By getting rid of the
Carian domination he no doubt won local favor.
There was apparently no resistance in Lycia
itself, and he appears to have helped the
Lycians by conducting a long biter winter
campaign against he Pisidians in the highlands
of Lycia. Arrian tells us that Alexander
demolished ...Over Lycia and Pamphylia Alexander appointed
Nearchus, a good friend of his from Crete, who
later headed the expedition in the Indian ocean
recorded in the Indica. By appointing Nearchus
and joining Lycia to Pamphylia, Alexander
stressed its naval importance. Denying Persian
ships a port and (possibly) controlling grain
shipments to Attica were on AlexanderGÇÖs mind.
You can also see this in the route that Alexander
took through Pamphylia. (show on board)Robin Lane Fox suggests Nearchus had Lycian
connections. We know from a passage in
Polyaenus that while he was Satrap he took
over a coastal city in Lycia from a friend. Badian
passes this off in a footnote, and its just as
likely that some Cretan pirate friend of Nearchus
captured a Lycian city and turned tyrant. ThereGÇÖs
good evidence that the line between pirate and
dynast was pretty thin.By 330/29 the Alexander had won the Aegean
war from the land. Lycia/Pamphylia was no
longer as crucial. It is no surpise that when
Alexander recalled Nearchus at that time, that
no replacement was sent. In fact, the whole
area seems to have falled to Antigonus, satrap
of Phrygia, further enlarging his power."

[ancientlibrary]

"Alexander severed Lycia from Caria, attaching it
instead to Pamphylia. By getting rid of the
Carian domination he no doubt won local favor.
There was apparently no resistance in Lycia
itself, and he appears to have helped the
Lycians by conducting a long biter winter
campaign against he Pisidians in the highlands
of Lycia. Arrian tells us that Alexander
demolished ...Over Lycia and Pamphylia Alexander appointed
Nearchus, a good friend of his from Crete, who
later headed the expedition in the Indian ocean
recorded in the Indica. By appointing Nearchus
and joining Lycia to Pamphylia, Alexander
stressed its naval importance. Denying Persian
ships a port and (possibly) controlling grain
shipments to Attica were on AlexanderGÇÖs mind.
You can also see this in the route that Alexander
took through Pamphylia. (show on board)Robin Lane Fox suggests Nearchus had Lycian
connections. We know from a passage in
Polyaenus that while he was Satrap he took
over a coastal city in Lycia from a friend. Badian
passes this off in a footnote, and its just as
likely that some Cretan pirate friend of Nearchus
captured a Lycian city and turned tyrant. ThereGÇÖs
good evidence that the line between pirate and
dynast was pretty thin.By 330/29 the Alexander had won the Aegean
war from the land. Lycia/Pamphylia was no
longer as crucial. It is no surpise that when
Alexander recalled Nearchus at that time, that
no replacement was sent. In fact, the whole
area seems to have falled to Antigonus, satrap
of Phrygia, further enlarging his power."