The Length of His Reign

[Paralus]

Innumerable reasons might be postulated for the simultaneous announcement of Alexander’s birth and the Olympic victory despite the former preceding the latter by about 8 days. Here are some (not exhaustive) examples: a) we don’t know exactly where Alexander was born – if it was somewhere remote or isolated then news might have been delayed; b) a weather event might have flooded or otherwise damaged the highways in Macedonia; c) Olympias may have wished to wait to ensure that the child was healthy before sending a messenger or some post-natal crisis may have delayed the dispatch of a messenger; d) Philip may have wished to await confirmation that the child was healthy before announcing its birth (since the announcement would also have constituted his official acknowledgement of the boy as his heir – he may have had a bad experience with Arrhidaeus); e) Philip may have expected good news from the Olympics and deliberately delayed announcing Alexander’s birth and his other victory for a few days in the hope of having a triple good news story for the sake of the extra boost to morale; f) something untoward may have befallen the first messenger carrying the news of Alexander’s birth…

• A: It is most likely that the birth took place at court. Epirus is a lower probability. That it ocurred somwhere "remote or isolated"( "miles from nowhere" to quote Cat Stevens) and largely incommunicado is extraordinarily unlikely since announcement of this birth "would also have constituted his official acknowledgement of the boy as his heir".

• C: Most children died within the first year or two. Records pre-penicilin demonstrate this. Eight days is hardly significant. Nothing in the source material indicates anything at all untoward with the birth.

• D: See above.

• E: Expecting does not guarantee getting. Perhaps Philip was a punter and wagered away much Macedonian silver on GreekTab?

• F: Possible but then that was found out in Pella just how?

I've left "B" to last for such displays a poor understanding of just how transport and travel worked in these days. There were no "highways"; they, in any modern conception, would come with Rome. The overwhelming and vast majority of people traveled on foot. Those who could afford so on horse. The army of Philip and Alexander utilised both wagons and pack animals. The latter generally predominated due to the difficulties of utilising wagons where roads were simply worn ruts and wound through passes and mountain defiles. We can be fairly certain that the Macedonian army utilised precisely the same system of messaging as did the Persians: dispatch riders on horseback. Philip V, after Cynoschephalae, sends one of his closest guards (a hypaspist) ahead to Larisa to burn his correspondence. Although Polybios does not write that he is mounted, this fellow can hardly be seen as taking his time on foot. Whilst it is often fraught to draw conclusions from Antigonid practice, there is no reason to assume Philip II operated any differently with his dispatches. It should have taken an almighty "weather incident" to stop such rider (or riders) tasked with the king's business.

[agesilaos]

I know English can be a complicated language and wikipedia cannot be trusted but

It came to Greece initially as early as the middle of the 4th century BCE, and then around the late 2nd or early 1st century BCE after the Alexandrian conquests this Babylonian astrology was mixed with the Egyptian tradition of Decanic astrology to create horoscopic astrology. This system is labeled as "horoscopic astrology" because, unlike the previous traditions, it employed the use of the ascendant, otherwise known as the horoskopos ("hour marker") in Greek, and the twelve celestial houses which are derived from it.

This is quite clear that horoscopes came into fashion in 'the late 2nd or early 1st century' BC, simples; not emboldening the phrase does not invalidate it, if you really don't understand the language and from many replies I can see evidence for such to be the case one of the educational establishment on site might be able to point you to a good course. Nice Caesarian touch 'Andrew Chugg writes...' why not, I wrote since it is you, Taphoi; disingenous simulacrum of supporting authority? Or natural modesty?

The Amazon Queen is simply fiction and rationalisation is irrelevant here, Onesikritos simply invented it because Alexander was near where the Amazons ought to be; Lysimachos does not say, 'No, she was a Scythian Princess.' but 'I wonder where I was when this was going on!' The Warrior women of the Steppe are in all likelihood the basis for the Amazon myth but it is simply the myth that informs the story of Alexander's meeting with Thalestris.

Since you still insist on mentioning Timaios, whom I have demonstrated is totally irrelevant, I will set you a little research challenge which will actually help you in your 'debate' with Amyntoros ; there are over one hundred fragments of Timaios, does any of them even mention a birthday? And how many give day/month dates? I have not got Jacoby FGrH so this is an honest enquiry rather than an ambush; you have a good library I believe and perhaps access to an academic one do scan and post the evidence though and tell me how to do it, my pdf s are just rejected! Hence the transcription of Hammond, still bis legit qui scripsit.

And the source for the triple coincidence is unknown nothing connects it to Kleitarchos other than the 'school', more 'kindergarten', of thought which says what is not in Arrian is Vulgate and all vulgate is ultimately Kleitarchos.

Notice you fail to answer my point that the full moon in the eighth Elean month should be 28 August not 30 July; in fact you seem to have not answered any points at all. Feel free to misconstrue any of the above.

[Taphoi]

I haven't had much time to spend on Pothos recently, so apologies if I have missed any vital posts, but with a few minutes to spare I have to wade in on this.

I would put it to you that your argument here is exactly like saying that modern accounts of Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster etc are "deliberate mythologising" and "deliberate fiction". Is that what you believe? Amazon tales were to the Greeks very like these modern myths, which in fact many serious researchers have taken very seriously (and have believed, with fewer excuses than could be applied in the case of Cleitarchus), because "sightings" and other "evidence" keep on springing up.

I don't really see that there is any comparison between Amyntoros' comments and the 'sightings' of Bigfoot, et al. With those there are, as you say, "sightings" and other "evidence" that keep on springing up (and the size of the pinch of salt with which people take them is infinitely variable, as we know).

The key point about the Amazon women is that there is no such recurring evidence. The plain fact is that Ptolemy and Aristobulus "and several other reliable sources" never mentioned the Amazonian visit, and Lysimachus clearly indicated that it didn't happen. There is no "evidence" or "sighting" of Amazons anywhere else, except in the pages of literature, which anyway - in the case of Herodotus - pre-dates Alexander by a good century or so.

There's no mixing of sources - it's made up.

ATB

Hi Marcus,

Recalling that my point was specific to Cleitarchus and noting that Plutarch says that Onesicritus told the story of Alexander's meeting with the Amazons and also noting that Onesicritus wrote before Cleitarchus and that there is copious evidence that Onesicritus was one of Cleitarchus' main sources, how exactly do you deduce that Cleitarchus made the story up? What Onesicritus wrote was a "sighting" of Amazons as far as Cleitarchus was concerned. As I have also said, there were female Scythian warriors living a nomadic life across the whole north Asian region in Alexander's time (their frozen mummies complete with weaponry have been excavated and carbon dated - there is a TV documentary about it that has aired very widely.)

Best regards,

Andrew

[agesilaos]

Coillons! What Kleitarchos did was lift a fiction from Onesikritos and probably embellished it; he was a derivative author. I doubt he chalked up another notch on his Amazon Watch bedpost and actually believed the story. As I have said before the Scythian warrior women are probably the source of the myth not Alexander's putative encounter which lies wholly in the mind of its author; quite how much of the lie should be attributed to each author is somewhat moot as we do not have Onesikritos' version, although if we can trust the story of Lysimachos' scoffing it would seem he left Kleitarchos more than a mere mention to embroider.

[marcus]

Hi Marcus,

Recalling that my point was specific to Cleitarchus and noting that Plutarch says that Onesicritus told the story of Alexander's meeting with the Amazons and also noting that Onesicritus wrote before Cleitarchus and that there is copious evidence that Onesicritus was one of Cleitarchus' main sources, how exactly do you deduce that Cleitarchus made the story up? What Onesicritus wrote was a "sighting" of Amazons as far as Cleitarchus was concerned. As I have also said, there were female Scythian warriors living a nomadic life across the whole north Asian region in Alexander's time (their frozen mummies complete with weaponry have been excavated and carbon dated - there is a TV documentary about it that has aired very widely.)

Best regards,

Andrew

Andrew, I don't think I said that Cleitarchus made it up - but please show me where I did, if I did. What I said was that the story was made up. There's a difference there - although I do concede that the way I phrased it all might suggest that I was criticising Cleitarchus. In which case, that wasn't my intention; but the fact still stands that at least two people who were undoubtedly closer to Alexander than Onesicritus was either made no mention of it (and it is difficult to believe that Ptolemy and Aristobulus wouldn't have mentioned it if it happened), and a third person who was undoubtedly closer to A. than O. was, responded to the story with what was tantamount to denial.

ATB

[agesilaos]

I have now analysed the fragments of Timaeus, as collected by Karl Mueller in ‘Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum’, Paris 1841.

There are 160 fragments of which a bare 11 contain chronological data. These are (using Mueller’s numbering):-

1. 21. Dionysius of Halikarnassos. Roman Antiquities .I 74
The foundation of Rome and Carthage is dated to 38 years before the first Olympiad. [814 BC]

2. 21a Syncellus Chron. P155 in Corpus Script. Byz. Vol VII
Rome was founded about the first Olympiad. [c.776 BC]

3. 40. Skymn. Of Chios description of the World v208ff
Massalia founded 120 years before the battle of Salamis. [599BC]

4. 47 Plutarch. Life of Lykourgos. 31
Lykourgos not much later than Homer.

5. 53. Schol. ap Appollonios of Rhodes. IV 1216
Chersikrates expelled Bacchiades from Korinth 600 years after the Trojan War. [603BC beginning of war or 593BC to end of war]

6. 91a Schol ap Pindar Ol V 19
Kamarina was refounded by Gelon in the 79th Olympiad. [460-56BC]

7. 92. Clement of Alexandra, Stromateis p355 Oxon
Xenophanes of Colophon lived at the time of Hiero and the poet Epicharmis, Apollodoros says he was born in the 40th (616-12BC) Olympiad and lived until the era of Darius and Cyrus.

8. 93. Diogesnes Laertius VIII 51 v ‘Empedokles’
Timaeus also reports that Empedokles was the son of Meton of Agrigentum...Eratosthenes says that Meton was alive in the 71st Olympiad.(492-488BC)

9. 119 Plutarch VIII Sympos. Quaest i
Euripides was born on the same day as the battle of Salamis and dies when Dionysius the Elder took power.

10. 148 Clement of Alexandria
Gave 820 years from Return of the Heraklidai to Alexander’s expedition [Return 1153BC]

11. 152 Censorinus On Birthdays 21
Gave 417 years between Fall of Troy and first Olympic Games. [Fall of Troy 1193BC]

So two events dated by Olympiad (foundations of Kamarina, Carthage and Rome{twice}) but no more specific than the four year range in the case of Kamarina; and it must be noted that the dates for Rome are in one case inaccurate, c.776 and in the other the source criticises his date. So much for the glowing reputation of Timaios’ work on the Olympic victors; in two cases it is other authors who give the Olympiad dating (Empedokles, where Timaios is adduced to support his patronage and citizenship not his dates and Xenophanes where Timaios only gave a context not a date). Likewise Lykourgos gets only a vague context and three further events are dated by the myths of Troy. Leaving one dated by a historical event, Salamis and the other, the lifespan of Euripides, seemingly tied to two specific days; and one of them a birthday! The problem is, that aside from no specific date being given, the purpose of the conjunctions seems to be the opportunity for a witticism, that the author of tragedy was born on an occasion of rejoicing and died on the day that the cause of so much tragedy came to power; the opposition of author and actor doesn’t quite work in Modern English (no, this is not evidence for Timaios’ lame sense of humour).

What is demonstrated is that more than nine out of ten cats preferred to reference his ethnology, history or geography than his chronology and that none of the references we have give a month, let alone a day. Maybe someone will insist that Timaios’ mention of Euripides lifespan indicates a lifelong interest in birthdays and that the accompanying play on words is a link to the ‘apt remark’ of Cicero and the ‘frigid’ one of Plutarch....there be the air, go build your castles. I’m staying on terra firma.