The ''staircase'' of Alexander

[system1988]

to be continued...

[mavra22]

Wow! Where is it located?

[system1988]

In Greece , Tessalia .But wait the text tomorrow please

[system1988]

After his proclamation as King of the Macedonians Alexander in 336 began his descent with his army towards central and southern Greece , and the first hegemonic region was Thessaly He found the passage to it guarded by strong army and the Thessalians told him to wait there until they decided whether to let him pass .Of course Alexander had other ideas ,and decided to cross Mount Ossa (1978 m.high) and find himself behind them .He succeded.How ? Only Polyaenus (2th AD, Στρατηγήματα IV N 3,23) tell us about the way he managed to accomplish such an adventure

To be continued ...

[system1988]

i am really very sorry my compiuter refuses to cooperate. In the photo the same route Alexander took ,the path made by the odiern locals for their safety .The historian Friedrich Stahlin located the exact point of the crossing of Alexander .6,5 kl, 900 height.
HΧΑΔΙΝ 2016 , Υanis Pikoulas

[Alexias]

Thank you for this photo. Am I right in thinking that the photo shows a built up pathway on the right slope? I know Alexander had, certainly later on, excellent engineers, but this looks too big a construction to have been done rapidly, and speed was Alexander's intention. Maybe therefore the construction is Mycenean? It also looks to have collapsed further up the slope.

[chris_taylor]

That's an amazing photo and assuming this is a pass between Olympus and Dion, then it is a possible location for the crossing. Apparently, Friedrich Staehlin was an expert on ancient Thessaly, so his views are not to be discarded lightly. I'd be keen to match this to an exact location. did you get the photo and the description from this book?

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/ ... edir_esc=y

[chris_taylor]

Thank you for this photo. Am I right in thinking that the photo shows a built up pathway on the right slope? I know Alexander had, certainly later on, excellent engineers, but this looks too big a construction to have been done rapidly, and speed was Alexander's intention. Maybe therefore the construction is Mycenean? It also looks to have collapsed further up the slope.

oh, now I see what you mean: the huge blocks that line the valley on the right of the photo might be Mycenean cyclops architecture, with the modern wall made of much smaller stones leaning onto it?

you're quite right: Alexander couldn't possibly have built a real staircase out of stone in the course of one night - the Thessalians would have heard the hammering and drilling from miles away and gone to investigate.

I thought the "ladder" was simply the valley in the photo, and Alexander had his soldiers hack a serpentine path through the vegetation and line it with a makeshift stone covering to get to the top.

[Alexias]

Sorry, I don't see any smaller stones. That is fairly uniform in construction. You could probably get a mule up that pathway.

I am unclear though whether the upright piece of stone in the dead centre of the photo is an upright stone (shaped rather like a man in a long robe) or whether it is a continuation of the path further up the valley.

[Alexias]

Where I think the path runs, though I have lost it at the top.

Thessaly path.2.jpg (140.89 KiB) Viewed 13896 times

[system1988]

The underline as designed by Alexias ,is the correct one , except that it does non include the modern (1970 ?) built path by the current residens -those who want to bypass the modern roads,The path made by the engineers of the army of Alexander is indeed in the center- it was a zig-zag .It took one day for the army to climb
My compiuter suddenly shuts down so i can t write more

[Sweetmemory41]

Thank you, System1988! Your post made me do some research as it is very intriguing.

Here’s an interesting academic article on the topic, which raises some interesting questions about ‘Alexander’s Ladder’ - https://www.academia.edu/1570294/Alexan ... _Roman_era. (The reference in APA - Sprawski, S. (2017). Alexander at Tempe: Polyaenus," Strategemata" 4.3. 23.)

Abstract of the article from https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/handle/item/56443 - “In Polyaenus’ Strategemata, there is a story of Alexander outfoxing the Thessalians who, trying to stop his march, blocked the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly. This anecdote is very interesting as it is a rare account of military operations in the Vale of Tempe in the period before the wars between the Romans and the Macedonians in the first half of the second century BC. Every attempt at a more thorough analysis of the account results in a series of questions that are difficult to answer. It is difficult not only to explain what Alexander’s stratagem involved and to identify the route he used to bypass Tempe, but also to place it in a historical reality.”

A description of the valley can be found at - https://www.britannica.com/place/Vale-of-Tempe

(Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2019, November 13). Vale of Tempe. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Vale-of-Tempe)

YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggn75d-C_Jc

[chris_taylor]

Sorry, I don't see any smaller stones. That is fairly uniform in construction. You could probably get a mule up that pathway.

I was wondering whether these square blocks outlined in black are manmade, to clad the mountain side to prevent rock fall.
the wall outlined in red is new, but I agree with the rest of the path. fascinating stuff!

chris.

[Alexias]

I was wondering whether these square blocks outlined in black are manmade, to clad the mountain side to prevent rock fall.
the wall outlined in red is new, but I agree with the rest of the path. fascinating stuff!

I think the square blocks are part of the mountain. They are not concrete and far too big to have been positioned by hand. I don't think the bit outlined in red is necessarily new. To be clear I think this photo is early 20th century. If I have the right Freidrich Stahlin, he died in 1936, so this photo cannot show the new path bult by the locals in the 1970s as mentioned by System1988.

The stonework doesn't look regular enough to be high Mycenean, but with that big a construction, perhaps they didn't bother to shape the blocks.

Thanks for the links, Sweetmemory. Do any of the articles actually mention this photo, because it would be interesting to see if anyone has tried to date the construction. It may not have been spotted as Mycenean before it was perhaps camouflaged by the more modern path, but if Alexander did use this path, who else is likely to have built it? Unless we are talking about the time of the Persian invasion and the battle of Thermopylae (480 BC).