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I'm trying to understand how Alexander got from the Granicus to Sardis: most maps show him going via Dascylium and then south, through the mountains. Peter Sommers (who advised on the BBC programme) and who walked the entire route himself seems to agree.

But D Engels says that Alexander is much more likely to have gone along the coast and his arguments make a lot of sense, despite the fact that the route is nearly 200 km longer.

I tried to get an impression of the terrain for both routes by "driving" them using the 3D facility in Google maps, but the rendering isn't good enough to show smaller rivers, differences in vegetation or give a sense of the difficulty of mountain passes.

Is there a modern scholarly consensus on the issue?

Thanks,

Chris.

Not to my knowledge, Chris! But it is an interesting controversy.

When I get home, and over the weekend, I shall have a look to see what I can dig up. I shall need to check the places he visited!

Off the top of my head, however, I would imagine that the coastal route was posited because of Alexander's previous coastal route, and the fact that all the towns in Lycia that he approached were, basically, coastal (or very nearly). Certainly he would have had to approach Termessos from the coast, and when one looks at the mountains in the area, anyone with any sense would choose the lower, coastal route around Lycia!

ATB

marcus wrote: Off the top of my head, however, I would imagine that the coastal route was posited because of Alexander's previous coastal route, and the fact that all the towns in Lycia that he approached were, basically, coastal (or very nearly). Certainly he would have had to approach Termessos from the coast, and when one looks at the mountains in the area, anyone with any sense would choose the lower, coastal route around Lycia!"

Thanks for your interest & offer to help. I was referring to Alexander's march through Lydia, not through Lycia (although I'm equally stuck with that part of the route). The reason I'm keen to establish his actual route is that I'm hoping to persuade my partner to do our next annual trip from the Hellespont to Issus, retracing Alexander's footsteps.

D. Engels says that Alexander's route went:

Sestos (Hellepont, European side)
takes a contingent of his army to Eleaus (Shrine of Protiselaus on the tip of the Thracian Chersonese), while main army remains at Sestos
Returns to Sestos and transfers with his army to Abydos (ie the spear-won-prize incident happens at Abydos, not Cape Sigeum and he did NOT go to Troy before the Granicus)
Lampsacus
Battle of Granicus
THEN to Troy
Founds Alexandria in Troas
Moves south along the coast
Turns inland either at Pergamon or Myrina to Sardis


Although that isn't standard interpretation, looking at the map (and reading Arrian's obvious uncertainty about his own sources regarding the crossing of the Hellespont), Engel's reconstruction of the route makes more sense to me than any other. As to the section Granicus - Sardis, here is a summary of what I've tried to piece together so far:

(1) Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus and Plutarch all agree that Alexander went from Granicus to Sardis, but no one mentions anything inbetween that would allow to reconstruct the route. Arrian mentions that Alexander sent Parmenio to capture Dascylium (modern Ergili), which is east of the battlefield.

(2) Typing "Granicus Sardis" into the search box of JSTOR gives 52 results. I have no access to the full texts, but scanning titles & first pages, none explore the issue.

(3) Our own Scott Ogden of "Memnon" fame has done a lot of research the section of road between Dascylium and Sardis, which is embedded in his book. Basically, yes, there was a spur of the Royal Road linking the two cities since Darius I.

Donald Engels argues:

(1) no source states explicity that Alexander personally passed through Dascylium, and it makes no sense to assume he did: why send Parmenio ahead if he follows shortly after.

(2) the road from Dascylium to Sardis is unsuitable for a marching army - it's too mountainous and there's not enough food for an army of 46000, their horses and pack animals

(3) every other army before and since Alexander traversing between Greece and Asia Minor used the coastal route (Xerxes, Xenophon, Scipio Africanus, Maslama, Second Crusade ect).

(4) Alexander's stated aim was to free the coastal cities, so why would he want to proceed through the mountains?

(5) Alexandria in Troas is south of Troy and it is unreasonable to assume he founded it *before* the battle.


Personally, I think Engels is right and I'd like to add to his argument: after the battle, BOTH armies went south - Memnon reappears at Miletus.

There are only two possible routes from Granicus to Sardis: along the coast or the Royal Road, and two hostile armies couldn't possibly both have used the same route - the preceeding army would have eaten everything in sight and burnt what was left. And it can't have been Memnon who picked the coastal route, because he would have had to sneak his army past Alexander, who now controlled the Hellespont, both on land and at sea.

=> Alexander went the coastal route, Memnon the Royal Road.

I transferred my current thinking on his route to my "Alexander map" on Google maps.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/myplaces ... &abauth=50
5c3fefMAs3O_ZcQWpU6sZ3oVn4KMg8R-k&vps=1&num=10

unfortunately, Google doesn't have a wiki engine which would allow public editing of the map. to be able to edit it, you need an "invitation" from me. happy to give anyone here editing rights (for anything on the map). just message me with the email address you use for your google account.

Thanks,

Chris.

chris_taylor wrote:I was referring to Alexander's march through Lydia, not through Lycia (although I'm equally stuck with that part of the route). The reason I'm keen to establish his actual route is that I'm hoping to persuade my partner to do our next annual trip from the Hellespont to Issus, retracing Alexander's footsteps.

Oops! Misread that - sorry. (I was also in the middle of teaching, so I shouldn't have been writing posts here anyway! I was just so surprised that the school system allowed me to post ...).

Still, I can still see what I can find out.

Cheers

I think the logistical argument is pretty incontestable; previously it had been ignored; Engel's slim tome is very important - I expect Paralus to post a quizzical 'But where are the carts?'

chris_taylor wrote: I transferred my current thinking on his route to my "Alexander map" on Google maps.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/myplaces ... &abauth=50
5c3fefMAs3O_ZcQWpU6sZ3oVn4KMg8R-k&vps=1&num=10

Sorry, I'm being dumb and can't get that link to work.

chris_taylor wrote:...Battle of Granicus
THEN to Troy...

Engels sometimes gets it right, as when he has Alexander travel back north up the Levantine coast as far as possible before cutting inland to Thapsacus. In that case there is no source evidence to contradict him and the traditional view that Alexander cut inland from Tyre was only ever speculation.

However, at other times he flies in the face of explicit source evidence and his conclusions are very doubtful: e.g. his location of Artacana near Kalat-i-Nadiri, when the sources put it near Herat; and Engels makes Alexander visit Merv based on an unnecessary emendation of the manuscripts of Curtius (marginiam/marganiam tweaked arbitrarily to read margianam).

Nor is Engels on the side of the Angels in the matter of the timing of the visit to Troy. The sources, Justin, Arrian, Plutarch and Diodorus, all put Troy before the Granicus. Diodorus describes Alexander's arrival in a way that makes it sound like a deliberate re-enactment of the arrival of the Myrmidons at Troy (i.e. by ship), which would have been impossible if Engels were correct. It is also rather illogical to make Alexander retreat from the site of a battle he had won! It is not a good basis for contradicting the sources to say that Alexander cannot have taken a difficult route when an easier route existed, because there are many instances of him taking difficult routes (most famously across the Gedrosian desert). All in all Engels' route to the Troad and thence to Sardis is fairly preposterous.

Best wishes,

Andrew

Taphoi wrote:Nor is Engels on the side of the Angels in the matter of the timing of the visit to Troy. The sources, Justin, Arrian, Plutarch and Diodorus, all put Troy before the Granicus. Diodorus describes Alexander's arrival in a way that makes it sound like a deliberate re-enactment of the arrival of the Myrmidons at Troy (i.e. by ship), which would have been impossible if Engels were correct. It is also rather illogical to make Alexander retreat from the site of a battle he had won! It is not a good basis for contradicting the sources to say that Alexander cannot have taken a difficult route when an easier route existed, because there are many instances of him taking difficult routes (most famously across the Gedrosian desert). All in all Engels' route to the Troad and thence to Sardis is fairly preposterous.

I have to agree that it doesn't really make sense to me that Alexander would make his visit to Troy after the Granicus. There are a number of reasons why it would make sense for him to go to Troy first - your point about a re-enactment of the Myrmidons' arrival, his choice of crossing point (noting that Alexander deliberately chose to cross the Hellespont to arrive at the Achaeans' Harbour, while the main army crossed further east), the fact that his pilot was Menoitios, his sacrifices at the temples of Zeus of Enclosures and his visit to the temple of Athena, etc. etc. All these things would make a lot more sense to do on his first arrival on the Troad, in anticipation of the fighting to come; they make less sense after the first battle has been won.

Once the battle had been fought and won, Alexander sent Parmenion to capture Dascylium, while he made straight for Sardis. Having defeated the Persians at the Granicus, it was imperative to capture and secure the two main seats of power in the region, and it would have been rather foolish to return to what was essentially a one-horse town, closer to the Hellespont and his ships, leaving the Persian capital in the region (Sardis) with enough time to prepare and strengthen their defences should they be so inclined to do so.

One of Alexander's 'weapons' was the speed with which he moved his army and took measures to shore up his gains. It might be argued that the still young and relatively untried Alexander might have made a mistake in his fanaticism towards Homer, but I can see too many reasons why this was not the case.

ATB

I put the visit to Troy into the route for completeness sake, but really I wish I hadn't now.

Troy is an illuminating anecdote, how he moved from Granicus to Sardis is basic military stragegy. I'm not interested in the former until I understand the latter.

Donald Engels, Agesilaus and me are a formidable group of propenents for the Coastal Route, but we don't really count as scholarly consensus.

And I couldn't find anyone except Engels who even addresses the issue, which obviously can't be right. "Which way did he go?" is the most basic question of them all and there must be hundreds of papers on it. I was hoping for a link to a review article summarizing the arguments for both sides.

Chris.

Alexias wrote:

chris_taylor wrote: I transferred my current thinking on his route to my "Alexander map" on Google maps.

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/myplaces ... &abauth=50
5c3fefMAs3O_ZcQWpU6sZ3oVn4KMg8R-k&vps=1&num=10

Sorry, I'm being dumb and can't get that link to work.

It's not you. I spent most of the night trying to figure out what's wrong. It's a bug in Google Maps, which has been reported by lots of people since November last year. "The developers are working on a fix". In the meantime, try this link. It only shows about 30% of the whole map of his route, but most of the section under discussion is on it.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF& ... be99051307

It is not yet pin-point accurate. It still only maps the general direction of the march, given terrain and the known course of ancient routes. F.e., we know that in Roman times, there were two routes north-south through the Troad. The western one was larger and better established. So what's down on the map is the rough course of that western route.

I thought it'd be easy to find the ancient course of roads, but the information is scattered across the internet. I got so fed up, I bought an original 1884 Heinrich Kiepert map of the area instead. Once it arrives, I'll transfer all the points to the Google map.

Chris.

Right, Engels does not say that Alexander did not move from Troy to meet the army at Arisbe he confirms that, p33. His point is that to get to the site of Alexandria Troas would have necessitated a two day excursion away from his reunion with the main army, two days his rations and the situation could not readily accomodate. He therefore suggests that it was founded on the return coastal trip.

Taphoi, thank the gods you have never had an army to command! Napoleon, a recognised military demi-god, recognised that a desert was the most secure frontier because any army attacking through it would be crippled by its losses crossing the waste. Alexander lost men hand over fist in Gedrosia but wisely was proceeding to a friendly satrapy not to enemy territory. The inland route to Sardis is across barren, ravine strewn uplands devoid of cultivation. Alexander's army would have wasted away for want of provisions; seems that this is the 'preposterous' option. There is a world of difference between a line on a map and a viable military route, Nor is it unusual to retrace ones steps, 'retreat', when one has won a battle away from the main theatre. Alexander destroyed the enemy's main army in the field, a general's prime goal, and then returned to the Aegean theatre to reap the benefits, the fall of the Northern seaboard and the denial of bases to the potentially dangerous Persian fleet. No Marshal's baton in your knapsack I fear (unless you are exceptionally lucky - always the Emperor's first consideration )

chris_taylor wrote:...Donald Engels, Agesilaus and me are a formidable group of propenents for the Coastal Route, but we don't really count as scholarly consensus.

And I couldn't find anyone except Engels who even addresses the issue, which obviously can't be right. "Which way did he go?" is the most basic question of them all and there must be hundreds of papers on it. I was hoping for a link to a review article summarizing the arguments for both sides.

Unfortunately, there are even more basic questions, such as, "Where were the places that he went to?" and the source evidence and geographical evidence are interlinked, such that there is no obvious starting point or absolute primacy. However, in addition to the standard sources on Alexander (Justin, Arrian, Diodorus, Curtius, Plutarch...) you need to pay a lot of attention to the ancient geographies (especially to the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemaeus) and to the so-called Stathmoi. A cursory glance at Ptolemy would reveal that the direct route from the vicinity of the Granicus to Sardis is thick with ancient towns and there must have been tracks between most of them even in Alexander's day. Ptolemy also has a town called "Articaudna" very close to Alexandria in Aria (Herat) - I wonder whether Engels even noticed this, since he too seems to have thought that the terrain and logistical issues should decide the route in advance of consulting this type of evidence.

Best wishes,

Andrew

(Lovely rhetoric from Agesilaos - pity it's not relevant to the evidence on the matter.)

agesilaos wrote:Right, Engels does not say that Alexander did not move from Troy to meet the army at Arisbe he confirms that, p33. His point is that to get to the site of Alexandria Troas would have necessitated a two day excursion away from his reunion with the main army, two days his rations and the situation could not readily accomodate. He therefore suggests that it was founded on the return coastal trip.

You're right, I misread him. So the route would have been

Arrives Sestos with Army. Splits

* Parmenio & main army go Sestos - across Hellespont - Abydos - Arisbe
* Alexander takes smaller contingent and goes Sestos - Elaeus - Cape Sigeum (Archean Harbour) - Troy - Arisbe (app 70 km, plus time for crossing and stay at Troy) .

From now on, the entire army moves together, marching alongside the fleet
* Arisbe - Percote - Lamspacus - Granicus (80 km)
* Wins battle
* Back from Granicus - Lampsacus - past Abydos - across the plain of Troia to the coast - sees the spot for Alexandria in Troas, founds city. That's about 140 km, ie 6 -7 days of an easy march, with secure water supplies (at least 3 named rivers) and food provided by the fleet - important in an area ravaged by 2 massive armies just before the harvest.

Then on down the coast.

That now makes sense all around. It would even explain why Arrian had difficulties reconciling the conflicing accounts within his own sources. "The prevailing account is..." "They also say ...". Reading his text, you can almost see him trying to connect dots on a map in a logical order, and failing.

Once you assume Alexander went to Troy twice, everything just falls into place.

Yes?

Chris

chris_taylor wrote:

agesilaos wrote:Right, Engels does not say that Alexander did not move from Troy to meet the army at Arisbe he confirms that, p33. His point is that to get to the site of Alexandria Troas would have necessitated a two day excursion away from his reunion with the main army, two days his rations and the situation could not readily accomodate. He therefore suggests that it was founded on the return coastal trip.

You're right, I misread him. So the route would have been

Arrives Sestos with Army. Splits

* Parmenio & main army go Sestos - across Hellespont - Abydos - Arisbe
* Alexander takes smaller contingent and goes Sestos - Elaeus - Cape Sigeum (Archean Harbour) - Troy - Arisbe (app 70 km, plus time for crossing and stay at Troy) .

That was always my understanding, and it makes sense.

chris_taylor wrote:From now on, the entire army moves together, marching alongside the fleet
* Arisbe - Percote - Lamspacus - Granicus (80 km)
* Wins battle
* Back from Granicus - Lampsacus - past Abydos - across the plain of Troia to the coast - sees the spot for Alexandria in Troas, founds city. That's about 140 km, ie 6 -7 days of an easy march, with secure water supplies (at least 3 named rivers) and food provided by the fleet - important in an area ravaged by 2 massive armies just before the harvest.

Then on down the coast.

That now makes sense all around. It would even explain why Arrian had difficulties reconciling the conflicing accounts within his own sources. "The prevailing account is..." "They also say ...". Reading his text, you can almost see him trying to connect dots on a map in a logical order, and failing.

Once you assume Alexander went to Troy twice, everything just falls into place.

I don't think he needed to "go" to Troy twice, though, although I also favour the coastal route. The Troad is not small, and he didn't need to go all the way back to Troy in order to cut across and then go to Sardis.

That's not to say that he didn't go back to Troy, but my thought is that he would not have stopped there - this was the thrust of my earlier post, in that he did all the sacrificing, games, etc. that he needed to do before the Granicus. He might have sacrificed there, but I bet he didn't stop for long.

Founding Alexandria Troas - and I don't know exactly where it was supposed to be - was it actually the "new" Troy, built over the old one? - required nothing more than an order to "build me a new city", and therefore does not presuppose that Alexander spent any longer at Troy than was necessary. Getting to Sardis must surely have been his main aim.

ATB

marcus wrote: That was always my understanding, and it makes sense.

so sorry. I'm very slow .

chris_taylor wrote: * Back from Granicus - Lampsacus - past Abydos - across the plain of Troia to the coast - sees the spot for Alexandria in Troas

marcus wrote: I don't think he needed to "go" to Troy twice, though, although I also favour the coastal route. The Troad is not small, and he didn't need to go all the way back to Troy in order to cut across and then go to Sardis.

.

I agree entirely, which is what I tried to convey by calling it "across the plain of Troia".

marcus wrote:Founding Alexandria Troas - and I don't know exactly where it was supposed to be - was it actually the "new" Troy, built over the old one? - required nothing more than an order to "build me a new city", and therefore does not presuppose that Alexander spent any longer at Troy than was necessary. Getting to Sardis must surely have been his main aim.

Indeed, but him founding a city didn't need to slow down the march at all: the speed of his approach to Sardis was determined by a sustainable marching speed of infantry. When you look at the topography of the plain, Alexander & a group of engineers on horseback could survey the entire coast-line while the army marches along the main road 15km inland.

Alexandria in Troas is near modern day Dalyan, opposite Tenedos. The best website I could find on it is from the University of Muenster. They've excavated the site for 20 years, so I presume they're the world experts on the city. The article is in German, but in summary:

They think that it was founded as "Antigonea" in 310 by Antigonos Monopthalmus through the relocation & merger of 5 or 6 surrounding villages onto the site. Archeologically or from the hellenistic literature, it's not clear whether the merger was onto a new site, or onto the site of an existing settlement. Lysimacchus renamed it "Alexandria in Troas" around 300. The site only really starts to be mentioned in text during Roman times.

http://www.uni-muenster.de/AsiaMinor/pr ... rabung-at/

It has nice pictures under the link "Projekte und Stadtplan".

Chris.