pothos.org

I was hoping someone could tell me if when Alexander's army crossed the Danube in pursuit of the Thracians they crossed on rafts or what?

And when they crossed Robin Lane Fox said in his Alexander The Great book that they came up in cover of a cornfield.

I made this statement to a group and someone told me that they didn't even have corn in Europe at that time and that no one could have crossed the Danube on rafts.

Can anyone tell me about this event?

Hello,

And when they crossed Robin Lane Fox said in his Alexander The Great book that they came up in cover of a cornfield.

Arrian- mentions that the troops went through a cornfield and in the translation the word "boat" and "ship" is used frequently in the subsequent section.

So, we can assume that Alexander used boats in this case and wasn't reduced to using animal skins or chaff as was seen in the later crossings near India.

Dean.

Actually, there is mention of hides and animal skins as well as boats and ships - I do believe this is the first time that Alexander used them. The following translation is from Alexander Sources.

Arrian 1.3.5-6 Alexander therefore led back his ships, and determined to cross the Ister (and march) against the Getae, who dwelt on the other side of that river; for he observed that many of them had collected on the bank of the river for the purpose of barring his way, if he should try to cross. There were of them about 4,000 cavalry and more than 10,000 infantry. At the same time a strong desire seized him to advance beyond the Ister. He therefore went on board the fleet himself. He also filled with hay the hides which served them as tent-coverings, and collected from the Country around all the boats made from single trunks of trees. Of these there was a great abundance, because the people who dwell near the Ister use them for fishing in the river, sometimes also for journeying to each other for traffic up the river; and most of them carry on piracy with them. Having collected as many of these as he could, upon them he conveyed across as many of his soldiers as was possible in such a fashion. Those who crossed with Alexander amounted in number to 1,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry.

As for there being no corn in ancient Europe, I think this is just a matter of interpretation. On checking various dictionaries such as answers.com, I found this under corn:

Chiefly British Any of various cereal plants or grains, especially the principal crop cultivated in a particular region, such as wheat in England or oats in Scotland.

I don't know which ancient Greek word was used in Arrian, but I'm fairly certain the meaning in the English translation is the same as above. Now, wheat or barely doesn't grow anywhere near the height of American corn, but it can exceed 50 inches or more and could still hide a man if he was crouched down, especially at night.

Best regards,

The term corn is generic. Athens' fixation with the "corn" route through the Hellespont is not meant to imply that Athenian citizens could not do without their popped corn at the theatre.

In this useage, corn denotes (normally) wheat and barley. Hence Athens' lust in classical times for Sicily and Egypt: the biggest "corn" (wheat/barley) baskets of the ancient world.

Amyntoros wrote.

Actually, there is mention of hides and animal skins as well as boats and ships - I do believe this is the first time that Alexander used them.

Well bless my cotton socks! I must have been burning the midnight oil a little too much when I looked up the crossing of the Danube.I stand corrected!

You would have thought that in that area getting wood wouldn't have been a problem to avoid having to use the tents. Crossing the Oxus was done using skins and chaff due to Bessus having burned all the boats in the area- there wasn't much wood either so it was either that or nothing else.The technique of crossing an army in this fashion over rivers just shows you the limits their ingenuity reached! Impressive stuff.
But this was all thanks to Alexander's literacy and having read anabasis by Xenophon- who had been the first to use this crossing method three quarters of a century earlier.

Greek mercenaries supporting Cyrus the younger in his attempt to gain the Persian throne had reached a point on the Euphrates opposite the large and flourishing city of Charmande its site is near the modern hite notable for its bitumen wells. Provisions were on the verge of exhaustion so the Greeks took the skins which they used as tent coverings and filled them with light grass they then stitched them and compressed them tightly together by the ends so that the water might not touch the hay. On these they crossed and got provisions...

and God knows who they had seen before doing it!!!

Best regards,
Dean

dean wrote:You would have thought that in that area getting wood wouldn't have been a problem to avoid having to use the tents. Crossing the Oxus was done using skins and chaff due to Bessus having burned all the boats in the area- there wasn't much wood either so it was either that or nothing else. .

I believe the reason behind the use of skins at the Danube was speed and secrecy. It would have been much quicker to lash together the skins (which they already had) rather than chop down trees to build an armada of small boats.

But this was all thanks to Alexander's literacy and having read anabasis by Xenophon- who had been the first to use this crossing method three quarters of a century earlier. . . and God knows who they had seen before doing it!!!

I found an online link to a PDF on historical raft building, but one has to pay for the download. However, the cached html version still seems to be available! This is the link, but it may not work for everyone so IGÇÖll quote below the information on the rafts which followed a description of their use by both Xenophon and Alexander.

It is unlikely that these bales of dry grass were used singly; to ensure stability and more rapid transport they would probably be combined into small groups, linked together into a temporary raft by means of ropes, tent-poles and the like. A raft of this kind would resemble closely the wool-stuffed raft support still in use on the upper waters of the Huang-ho in China.

The Abyssinian jundi is a modern survival of the prototype of these Greek military floats, which, however, are not likely to have been the invention of any Greek commander. Someone among them must have seen the device in use elsewhere, employed for the peaceful transport as we see in Abyssinia today. In that country this curious craft is still found indispensable by the Gallas of the Gojam Province in Southern Abyssinia, for transporting themselves and their goods across the Blue Nile or Abai. Accoring to Rey (1927.II), the jandi has to be dismantled and remade after each crossing. His description enables us to understand how the Greek soldiers transformed their tents into serviceable ferryboats. He says:

"A large tanned ox-skin, with holes perforated all round the edges, is laid on the ground, dry grass is piled on it and the whole lashed into a sort of package by means of hide ropes passed through the holes round the edge of the skin. If goods are to be transported, they are put inside; if human beings, they squat a la torque, or let their legs dangle in the water; in either case, swimmers pull and push the unwieldly craft, which rocks and rolls like a Channel steamer on a bad day."

Although this exceedingly primitive means for crossing a river is now restricted to a single small area, it seems probable that it had wider distribution in ancient times, otherwise it is not likely that Xenophon would have countenanced its use, for he and the other commanders were extremely cautious about accepting any untried device - witness their rejection of the plan proposed by a Khodian for the construction of a floating bridge across the Tigris when the Ten Thousand, after the defeat and death of Cyms at Cunaxa (401 B.C.), they found themselves stranded on the wrong side of the river. . . .

Even before reading the above I've wondered if Alexander had prepared in advance for the eventuality of using these rafts. Think about it - if you'd never done it before, would you know how to lash together tent coverings and stuff them with just the right amount of hay to make them both buoyant and stable enough to support several men on a wide river crossing? If they weren't made just right and water got in then the hay would compress, the rafts would become unstable and sink from the weight of the occupants, and lives could be lost. Somehow I can't imagine that the army built these on a trial and error basis when speed and surprise were so important. (This wasn't the case with Xenophon.) I think it likely that the Macedonians had known in advance how to make the rafts, implying that Alexander had decided it was a skill worth teaching his men. So rather than being an example of spontaneous ingenuity on Alexander's part, it could have been an example of his equally excellent foresight. Either way it remains, as you said, a demonstration of his literacy.

Hi Amyntoros,

I often have wondered about the weight issue-. I mean to take horses over and everything is unbelievable.

I don't know but I think that Alexander plundered the books at his disposal- picking up details and I guess that this one was especially dear to him- It was more or less in recent memory. The whole expedition must have impressed the young Alexander- and proved that it was possible to move around successfully on Persian territory.

The crossing on the aforementioned rafts was used twice- the first mention is in Book 1 chapter V. As you say it was a skill certainly useful for the men to learn- it allowed them to cross rivers about 6000 kilometres away. where there was no other means available.

Best regards,
Dean

Unfortunately the crew of Michael Woods' In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great didn't have either the knowhow or ingenuity, it seems....... they sank almost as soon as they set off

The Persian Journal today has an article Iran, King Kong and Paradise Lost. I was alerted to it by a reference to Alexander the Great although it is actually an article about film director Merian C. Cooper, the creator of the original King Kong. Before King Kong he made a dcoumentary called Grass: A Nation's Battle For Life (1925). It's a (silent) film about the Bakhtiari nomads and includes the crossing of the half-mile wide Karun river where, like Alexander, they constructed rafts from goatskins. It seems as dangerous as I thought, witness this from another site about the movie:

The journey begins around the 21st of March (Persian New Year), near the city of Ahwaz. The first hurdle is the Karun River that is about half a mile wide. Women, children and young animals cross on puffed-up goatskins made into a raft. Others use single or double skins to cross themselves and their animals, which number about half a million.

To cross the river, the Bakhtiaris throw themselves and their livestock into the whirlpools. There they mill around until the centrifugal force of the water throws them out towards the opposite shore. Some men cross the river more than eight times a day to help others carry their flock, children and household utensils over to the other shore.

Crossing the river takes five or six days usually accompanied by many casualties. These include sheep and other livestock being swept away in the whirlpools, as well as the young men who drown trying to save them. Some elderly who decide against crossing the river stay behind. They have to fend for themselves alone.

Not exactly the same as with Alexander and his men, although they did have to get the horses across (and there was no mention of whirlpools). Still, this is a DVD that I have to purchase. I want to see how it was done! - and the film sounds fascinating anyway.

Best regards,

Hi Amyntoros,

just reading the account it sounds like the natives were risking life and limb in the crossing and it is hard to imagine that such a crossing was still being made in the past century just as Alexander had done 2300 years ago.

The film "Grass" seems to be quite an interesting flick-reading the review on the link you provided you can see that crossing an immense river on flimsy inflated goat skins was not the only dangerous thing they did during their "migration"-

the idea of using the centrifugal force in a whirlpool of the river is interesting- I was curious as to how the "sailors" could propel the boat if not using a rudamentary type of "oar".and it certainly makes you wonder, at a river as important as the Oxus ,which accroding tothe livius site was known in ancient times as "the wild one" . With no available timber etc etc how Alexander managed it?- the river was not standing still and in constant motion- towards the sea- so, with horses and baggage, etc how were the boats "steered"?

Best regards,
Dean

dean wrote:just reading the account it sounds like the natives were risking life and limb in the crossing and it is hard to imagine that such a crossing was still being made in the past century just as Alexander had done 2300 years ago.

Puts some things into perspective doesn't it? the sources are replete with river crossings and the like - from the Danube to the Jhelum. They tell of Alexander's armies crossing this and that river and surprising all sorts of foes, generally leading to their rout. What these descriptions generally lack is detail. Yes the Ox-hide rafts and tents stuffed with hay are mentioned. Yes we can assume boat bridges. The commonality amongst the descriptions is the surprise - generally - of the enemy at the crossing. It almost reeks of artifice - almost like a novelist.

All of which is not to suggest that the crossings did not ocurr - they demonstrably did. Just that the losses in man and beast seem not to be mentioned - much. Then again, Parmenion did lose a son to the Nile did he not?

Perhaps there may have been one or two watery (mini) Gedrosias before that march or possibly this is just a little more of Alexander's taming of the natural world a-la Callisthenes?

Hello,
Paralus says,
"It reeks of artifice"-

It does sound like the sort of thing you'd find James "shaken not stirred" Bond or Mcgiver doing- crossing major rivers on goat skins filled with chaff- but also like you say the crossings did take place(Callisthenes had already bitten the bullet so to speak by this stage- so it wasn't just his imagination)

According to Michael Wood in "footsteps" he says that a similar method of crossing was used even in WWII in the "Burma Campaign" some 70 years ago.

Amazin' in it?

Best wishes,
Dean

I quite recently saw a picture of an Assyrian wall relief, where soldiers were paddling across a river by lying on skins. It was probably a fairly routine manouevre by Alexander's time.

Paralus wrote:All of which is not to suggest that the crossings did not ocurr - they demonstrably did. Just that the losses in man and beast seem not to be mentioned - much. Then again, Parmenion did lose a son to the Nile did he not?

I suspect that we only hear of these particular crossings because they occur in the context of an important battle. What we think of today as man against nature experiences would probably have been just everyday life when on a campaign and not worth recording to the later Greeks and Romans who reported on Alexander's history.

IGÇÖve come to this conclusion after viewing the documentary A Nation's Battle for Life(1925) yesterday which must come closer to illustrating the trials and tribulations of campaign travel than any other fictional movie or documentary including Michael Wood's. Although we tend to think only in terms of Alexander's army, there would have been all manner of noncombatants and camp followers in their wake and to my mind Grass demonstrates what the experience must have been like. Although the film follows only one group of the Bakhtiari tribe, there were 50 thousand of them plus half a million animals that made this trek every year - goats, mules, cows, horses (small horses too, not unlike those of the Macedonians), women and children. Watching these people climb incredibly steep mountains, ford icy streams, break waist-to-shoulder-high trails through the snow, and cross that half-mile-wide river on goatskins is incredible to modern day eyes, yet they did it every single year as a matter of course. And that's what it must have been like for Alexander's men too - if there was a river or a mountain range to cross then they just did it! After all, it's not as if they could say it's too difficult and go home.

(I did wonder why, when they own so many goats, the Bakhtiaris didn't make shoes of leather. All they wore were thin cotton shoes which they removed when breaking trails through the snow. Made me ponder on the Macedonians too, as to why they apparently continued to wear open-toed-boots in similar environments. Go figure.)

As for the river crossing using skins, well, the Bakhtiaris blew into their goatskins and filled them with air rather than chaff, but other than that the method of crossing the river must be similar. With the Bakhtiaris, only supplies, women in charge of infants, and goats who could not swim were put (or tied) upon goatskin rafts to cross the raging Karun river. Everyone else hung onto an individual skin and swam, kicking their legs like a frog. And the animals - poor beasts - were just pushed into the river until they met the current in the middle and then left to their own devices. And what a current! This is imagery never to be forgotten - thousands of people and animals being swept down the middle of a raging river for long distances until they meet the whirlpool and are "whipped" to the opposite shore.

Apparently, it took 7 days and nights for everyone to cross. Sound familiar?

Best regards,

One has to wonder what Alexander's motives were in having ships arrive from Byzantium along the Danube. A pre-meditated move from what I can gather; and it is this very occassion that Arrian employs the word 'pothos' for the first time. Hardly seems a scenario where a 'yearning' was the basis for his crossing - given the pressence of ships?

A bit of poetic license from Arrian perhaps?