The map of his empire?

[Nicator]

Hello fellow Pothosians,
My question is concerning the map of Alexander's empire. Did Alexander have this map made during his own lifetime, or was it done later by historians to mark the extent of his kingdom?
later Nicator

[susa]

HiI think that an important consequence of such expeditions was to map unknown areas. Therefore why not think that the reaches of the conquered places were outlined while they were advancing thru Asia? And completed when they reached Babylon again?susa

[davej]

I can't claim to be an expert. In fact i only know two things about maps. In herodotus there is the story of a brass map being show to Clemonese of Sparta by Aristogoras. Persia had a well planned and set out series of Royal roads, which I imagine were mapped. Alexander would surely have had access to these from his Persian Noble courtiers. It is difficult to know how far he intended to go when he set out, so I would'nt have thought he had map al the way to India. I would suspect that he at least had the Royal roads map before setting out. They included distances if I recall correctly.

[luc]

Hey all!Well, I'm pretty sure that Alexander would have had some idea of where to go, either by means of a map (most likely) though probably not 100% accurate, or by means of travelers. Michael Wood seems to believe that Alexander did have access to maps of the Persian Empire. But one must also remember that as far as Alexander knew, or at least a good portion of the Greeks knew - the world wasn't as big as Alexander later found out. Besides, it seems to me that Alexander stumbled onto some areas that he probably didn't imagine existed. My guess, is that a map of his empire, was made after his death for reasons of splitting his empire, setting boundaries etc etc. Just my thought,Luc

[yiannis]

I'm also sure that there were existing maps and that they were constantly being updated. For example Nearchus had to map the Persian Gulf coast and take speciments of wildlife. The ancient Greeks believed that the world ended at the Gates of Herakles (Gibraltar) to the west although there's evidence of them traveling to Albiona (England) and a legend of a trip to Thule (Iceland). To the North was "Hypervoreia" (Voreia meaning North) where Apollo was going to spend the winter in mythology, to the South I can't remember and to the east I believe that they knew as far as India where Dionysus had suppositivelly traveled.In Alexander's army there were Vimatistes (vima meaning "step") included. Those were people counting the distance by counting each step. This was the speed of the march could be calculated and corrected if needed.regards,
Yiannis