When Alexander III of Macedon set out on campaign against the Persian Empire in 334 bc, he had little previous experience to draw on in devising the route to follow. Xenophon had covered some of the ground, but his written account took the route in reverse and was notably full of crisis management and extemporizing: it is doubtful whether Alexander made much use of it. Herodotus had described the basic topography of the Persian empire over a century before, but not in much detail. This article considers the kinds of information that Alexander had to draw on in planning his route, and the ways in which he, and Xenophon before him, acquired the information they needed on the way.
Maps
Greeks had a history of getting lost as soon as they ventured outside their own peninsula. Greek history begins with an abortive expedition to Troy, described in the Cypria,Footnote 1 when, having no maps and relying on Calchas' misinformation, they failed to find the city they were aiming to besiege and ended up in Mysia, which they ravaged ‘and came back home in disgrace’. It was only when Telephus emerged as their guide that they reached their destination successfully.Footnote 2 Strabo (1.1.17) mentions this in connection with other failures of planning, including several in Xerxes' expedition to Greece and the colonization missions of the Aeolians and Ionians. When the Athenians were setting out for Sicily, ‘there were many who sat in the palaestras and exedras mapping out in the sand the shape of Sicily and the position of Libya and Carthage’;Footnote 3 but, as Thucydides (6.1.1) observed, ‘the Athenians were for the most part ignorant of the size of the island and of the numbers of its inhabitants’. Even in modern times it is not hard to find examples of expeditions that turned out disastrously because of a lack of topographical advance planning: the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 is a notable case, the troops coming ashore under the command of officers who had no maps of the peninsula better than could be torn out of world atlases.
The situation of fifth- and fourth-century Greece with regard to Asia may not have been much better.Footnote 4 The Ionian thinkers had devoted effort to producing maps of the world, though their models, as in so much else, may have been Babylonian, since the oldest surviving regional map is from Babylon. Hecataeus (c.500 bc) holds the distinction of being the first map-maker, but even at the end of the fifth century Democritus (who is said to have travelled widely, even to India) is supposed to have produced a world map which depicted the world as oblong. Hecataeus' map may have been more in the nature of a periodos ges, but Herodotus 5.49 tells us that Aristagoras had ‘a bronze chart on which was engraved a map of the whole earth, showing every stretch of sea and all the rivers’. On this he was able to pick out all the people eastwards from the Lydians as far as Susa. ‘All you have to do’, he said blithely to Cleomenes, ‘is to capture Susa, and your wealth will then undoubtedly challenge that of Zeus!’ However accurate this map, it does not sound much like a road map. There is a remarkable jump from Cilicia to Armenia and immediately to Cissia, which reminds me of a Monty Python sketch about an expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro: ‘You head out of London on the A2 until you get to Dover, cross the channel to Calais and then head off in a general south-easterly direction until you get to Africa.’
The wanderings of Io in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (700–41) are a mythologized version of contemporary geographical knowledge, arranged, as Ruffell writes, as a series of arcs, but containing no locations in Asia Minor except the Bosporus and the River Thermodon.Footnote 5 Aeschylus' Supplices, however (540–64), is a much more scientific description of a series of lands – Phrygia, Teuthrania, Lydia, Cilicia, Pamphylia, the land of Aphrodite, the grove of Zeus, the Nile – probably based on a coastal itinerary.
The best knowledge of routes in Asia is contained in Herodotus' description of the Persian Royal Road, probably based on a Persian source.Footnote 6 We are a long way yet from the itineraria picta of the strategic writer Vegetius, or even the puzzling array of roads on the Peutinger Table, or the travels of Egeria, when guides are mentioned, but they are tourist guides not way-finders. The papyrus fragment of Artemidorus' geography is evidence for road maps on a local scale,Footnote 7 and Strabo made use of Artemidorus' workFootnote 8 though apparently not of Xenophon's Anabasis, which he never mentions. There is evidence, too, from the fifth century bc of local maps in Attica: the inscribed map of the mine at Thorikos is a striking example,Footnote 9 while there was a world map set up for public use somewhere in Athens. Two anecdotes draw attention to its limited use for practical purposes: when a student in Aristophanes' Clouds (200–17) proudly picks out Athens, Strepsiades complains that it cannot be Athens because he can see no jury courts; and an anecdote in Aelian (VH 3.28) has Socrates mocking Alcibiades on the grounds that this map, large though it was, was not on a sufficient scale to show Alcibiades' estates!
It is not surprising, then, that, as we are told, Alexander from his earliest years made efforts to understand the geography of the Persian Empire against which his father was minded to march. An anecdote in Plutarch (Vit. Alex. 5) tells how he impressed the Persian envoys to Pella by asking ‘no childish or trivial questions, but by enquiring about the length of the roads and the character of the journey into the interior’.Footnote 10 Robin Lane Fox thinks that Alexander studied an abridged Herodotus at school, and it seems to be the case that Herodotus was indeed known and appreciated in hellenistic times.Footnote 11 Alexander's instruction under Aristotle would certainly have included geography, along the lines of the account of Asia Minor in Meteorologica 1.13.350ab: geography is conceptualized as focusing on rivers and mountains (a1 and 14),Footnote 12 and maps are referred to at a15. The passage includes information on the height of the Caucasus, and also the mountain that Aristotle calls Parnassus, namely the Hindu Kush, from which he believed that it was possible to see the River of Ocean (350a19–23).
There is a similar account in De Mundo 393ab, with its detailed account of the Ocean and the seas (but not rivers). The latter work, though not by Aristotle, and influenced by Posidonius,Footnote 13 contains much information dating from Aristotle's lifetime or perhaps a little later, not least the interesting account of the Persian Empire
apportioned according to races among generals and satraps and kings, slaves of the Great King; and there were couriers and watchmen and messengers and superintendents of signal-fires. So effective was the organization, in particular the system of signal-fires, which formed a chain of beacons from the furthest bounds of the empire to Susa and Ecbatana, that the king received on the same day the news of all that was happening in Asia. (De Mundo 398a27–34)Footnote 14
All this was information of a general nature; for the detail, Alexander had to acquire information in advance at every stage of his expedition.Footnote 15 The key tasks were finding roads and dealing with rivers and other obstacles. Alexander's methods here can usefully be compared to those of Xenophon, who found himself thrown in at the deep end when his commander was killed at the Battle of Cunaxa and he had to take a leading role in bringing the Greeks back to safety from Babylon to their homeland, or at least to their comfort zone. As Alexander advanced, he made regular use of his bematists (literally, those who recorded every ‘step’ of the route) to log the stages of the march, no doubt with a view to the information being of use in the future. It is notable that the few fragments of the bematists that we have all relate to more remote regions. Baeton (FGrH 119) gives the distances from the Caspian to Hecatompylus and beyond, though not as far as the land of the cannibals; Diognetus (FGrH 120) gives information about Syria; Amyntas (FGrH 122) speaks of Syria and Nineveh, of the flies and cows of the Caspian region, of the stathmoi Persikoi, and of Babylonia; Archelaus (FGrH 123) mentions the long hair of the Indians, and also names Egypt and Carthage. But the bematists' work was logically secondary to the important task of finding the way in the first place, for which guides were required. As Donald Engels says, intelligence systems are often taken for granted in the Alexander historians, but Xenophon makes the practice vivid, and can shed light on Alexander's methods and practice.Footnote 16
Guides
Quite early in the Anabasis, after the Battle of Cunaxa, the army finds itself lost: the advice of Ariaeus, Cyrus' second-in-command, is to follow a longer route because it will be easier to obtain supplies that way (2.2.11). Xenophon introduces his involvement in the march of the Ten Thousand by drawing attention to the importance of guides (Anabasis 3.1.2)
With their generals arrested and the captains and soldiers who had gone with them put to death [by Tissaphernes] the Greeks were in an extremely awkward position…They were at least a thousand miles away from Greece; they had no guide to show them the way; they were shut in by impassable rivers which traversed their homeward journey; even natives who had marched on the capital with Cyrus had turned against them;
and they had no cavalry.
Besides the need for guides, the stress on the problems caused by rivers is a recurrent theme, and I shall return to it. But first, guides. The Persian Empire, efficient in so many matters of communication, provided official guides for travellers of high status.Footnote 17 These were known as parrišdama, and a number of the Persepolis Fortification Tablets mention the names of some of these ‘elite guides’ who accompanied travellers from, for example, India to Susa.Footnote 18 Nehemiah's account of his journey from the Persian court to Jerusalem reveals that he had a full escort of army officers and cavalry, as well as a letter of authority or passport.Footnote 19 No such amenities were available to the Ten Thousand, but after Xenophon assumes responsibility for the march homewards, he has no more to say about guides until 4.1.20–8, when the men have reached the land of the Carduchi. Two men were killed in a skirmish while Chirisophus hurried towards the pass through the mountains, which was soon blocked by a mass of hostile troops: ‘I thought there was a chance of being able to get there first, before the pass was seized. The guides we have say that there is no other road.’ Xenophon now announces that he has captured a number of men, killed several of them and kept two alive to act as ‘guides who know the country’.Footnote 20 On being questioned and threatened, one of them said that he knew of no other road; so Xenophon had him killed in front of the other man, who then admitted that there was another possible road, but that the first man had been reluctant to mention it because it passed the place where his daughter lived with her husband. The guide is then bound to ensure that he cannot escape if he leads them into an ambush, and the expedition moves on. You should always make sure to use two such guides, as Engels makes clear with many references.Footnote 21
The brutality with which the guides are treated is a recurrent motif. At 3.2.20 Xenophon makes clear that prisoners will be more reliable than the slippery Tissaphernes as guides, precisely because one can threaten them (see also 3.5.15 for advice given by prisoners). In the fictional account of Alexander's adventures in the Alexander Romance, the guides lead the party through strange lands to the ‘evil place’ where the soldiers endure the ‘night of terrors’: ‘Then I ordered that the local guides, of whom we had fifty and who had led us to those evil places, be tortured and taken and thrown into the river’ (3.17 ff. A).Footnote 22 In the account of the same adventure in the Letter to Aristotle about India (5), Alexander has 100 guides drowned; and at another crisis (8) the guides' legs are broken, their hands are cut off, and they are left to be eaten by serpents. Later in Xenophon's account the men have to come to an arrangement with the Carduchi to give up their guide as a condition of having their dead returned for burial: they then advance without a guide but immediately find themselves in trouble again.
Another occasion of brutal treatment of guides comes in Anabasis 4.6.1–3, when approaching the River Araxes.Footnote 23 The head man of a village is forced to act as guide, while his son is taken hostage for his reliable behaviour.
When they had already marched for three days Chirisophus got angry with him for not having brought them to any villages. The man said that there were none in this part of the country. Chirisophus then struck him, but did not have him bound. As a result of this he ran away and escaped in the night, leaving his son behind. This affair – ill-treating the guide and then not taking adequate precautions – was the only occasion on the march when Xenophon and Chirisophus fell out.
The son, however, stayed with his master to the end of the expedition and became his trusty companion.
The Greeks meet a friendlier reception at the city of Gymnias (Bayburt) (4.7.19), where the governor of the country provides them with a guide;Footnote 24 but the purpose is to get him to lead the Greeks through territory of the governor's enemies, whose land they are to burn. Although self-interest is paramount, the guide does bring the Greeks in sight of the sea within five days. At this thrilling moment, the climax of Xenophon's narrative, the Greeks no longer feel the need of a guide, and send him back to his country, travelling at night for safety.
Again in 5.4, Xenophon encourages his men with the information that ‘the men who are going to act as our guides are genuine enemies of those whom we have to fight’. Engels notes that ‘enemies of enemies’ are the best guides;Footnote 25 for example, the Uxii, who are not subjects of the Persian Empire, show Alexander a secret path into Pars (Arr. 3.17.2). The last reference to guides in Xenophon comes in 7.3, when Seuthes appears with his cavalry and peltasts; he assigns them guides and the hoplites lead the way – the very model of an army proceeding in good order.
Rivers
Throughout the Anabasis – at least until this point – the army is in a state of crisis management, dealing with natives who may be hostile and are certainly not to be trusted without evidence. But for Xenophon at least, the army does not proceed by its own wits alone: it is important at all times to have the support of the gods, and this comes out most notably in a set piece that concerns a river crossing (4.3.6 ff.).Footnote 26 The River Centrites (Buhtan Su) forms the border between the land of the Carduchi and Armenia: fast-flowing and full of slippery boulders, it posed a serious problem, and the Carduchi were bearing down on the army from the rear. At this point Xenophon had a dream. He felt that it was a favourable one, and the following morning the generals offered a sacrifice (to which gods, is not stated). Scouts then set out and found what seemed to be a good crossing place, with shallow water but with banks inaccessible to the enemy's cavalry. Xenophon poured a libation. The ford was less than half a mile away, but as soon as the advance party under Chirisophus arrived there, Chirisophus garlanded his head, the seers cut the throats of more animals, the soldiers raised the paean, and the crossing began.Footnote 27
Xenophon's piety has become a commonplace,Footnote 28 but the extensive use of religious ritual at this crucial moment is notable. Rivers are very significant barriers: as David Braund has written apropos Roman river crossings, they were seen as ‘religious entities which were dangerous, and needed appeasing’.Footnote 29 One thinks perhaps of Achilles' battle with the River Scamander in the Iliad. Rivers, as children of Ocean (there are thirty lines of them in Hesiod's Theogony [337–67]), are immortal and divine, as noted by Artemidorus in his book on dreams (5.6, the River Xanthus),Footnote 30 who also interprets their meaning in dreams as representing ‘masters and judges, because they do what they wish with impunity’ (2.27). Hesiod (Op. 737) instructs his reader to pray and wash before crossing a river. Oaths are taken by rivers (Iliad 3.276, of course), and diabateria sacrifices must be performed before crossing them, as Xerxes did at the Strymon.Footnote 31 Xenophon also conducts sacrifices before attempting a mountain pass (3.5.18), perhaps so that the men can eat some meat.Footnote 32 So at Anabasis 1.4 the easy crossing of the Euphrates at Thapsacus is interpreted as a sign of divine favour to Cyrus, even though no prior sacrifices are mentioned: ‘it certainly seemed that there was something supernatural about it, and that the river had undoubtedly made way for Cyrus since he was destined to become king’.Footnote 33
Conversely, rivers become insuperable obstacles at 2.2 – ‘we can't cross the Tigris without boats, and we have none’ – and at 2.4 a similar problem arises at the Euphrates. Later, Rhodians propose constructing floats to cross the Tigris but the idea is rejected because they would be massacred by the defenders on the other side; instead they go north to the land of the Carduchi.Footnote 34 At 4.7.18, however, the crossing of the River Harpasus (Çoruh) is passed over without comment.Footnote 35 At 3.2 Xenophon admonishes his men:
You may think that the rivers are an insuperable obstacle and regard yourselves as having been led properly into a trap by crossing them…. But…all rivers, however impassable they may be at a distance from their springs, can be forded, and without so much as getting one's knees wet, if one follows them up towards their sources. And even if we cannot get across the rivers, even if no one comes forward to show us the way, even then we have no reason to get downhearted.Footnote 36
Many of the same issues recur in the descriptions of Alexander's march, but Alexander's way of dealing with them differs interestingly from Xenophon's. No doubt he knew Xenophon's book, though it traversed little of the same ground as his own expedition.Footnote 37 Freya Stark notes that he neglected Xenophon's routes in Asia Minor, though she thinks that the Cyropaedia exerted a strong influence on Alexander.Footnote 38 Most notable is the very light reliance on local guides: the main occasion is the employment of the Uxii (Q 5.3.5) to show him the way through the mountains. As a properly constituted expedition, Alexander's was supplied with scouts at every stage, who could go ahead to spy out the land. He also made good use of contacts, such as his trusty seer Aristander with his family connections and local knowledge in Lycia,Footnote 39 where it is explicitly stated that Alexander was ignorant of the local paths (Arr. 1.28.7).
He also, of course, had the advantage that his presence might be less apparent to the natives than Xenophon's. When he heads for India, for example, all Curtius says is that ‘all preparations had been made’ (Curt. 8.5.5.). It is a rare moment when, at 5.4.26, in a crisis, each man becomes his own guide, or when it is mentioned (Curt. 9.8.30–9.1) that they had captured some local guides, but they ran off. At Curt. 3.13.4 Parmenion becomes uneasy in a strange country without a guide and captures some peasants to act as guides. At Curt. 8.10.13 local people tell Alexander how to get to Mount Meru, but this is more like tourism than route-finding. Perhaps the same applies to Pharasmanes' offer to show Alexander how to reach the land of the Amazons. The disaster in Gedrosia was the result of having no guides, while the problems in Sogdia arose from the fact that there were no roads, only shifting sands across which one must navigate by the stars: so at Curt. 8.2.34 Alexander is ‘led into a bad road’ in Sogdia. But the capture of the Sogdian rock was effected by offering rewards to local guides: Curt 7.11.4.Footnote 40
Often there was no choice of roads, as Xenophon makes clear: 2.4.168 and 4.2.8 (phaneran hodon, ‘the obvious road’), though at 4.1.23 the lack of choice turns out to be a lie by one of the prisoners (as mentioned above). At 5.1.13 Xenophon actually gets the locals to build roads, on the persuasive grounds that they will thus get rid of the Greeks more quickly. But Cyrus does not seem to have planned ahead as well as Alexander: east of the Euphrates, on the route they intended to follow to the Araxes, there was no road, only desert.Footnote 41
InterpretersFootnote 42
Where the two commanders do come closer is in their use of interpreters. Xenophon has several references to such men, a fine example being 4.5.34, when Chirisophus comes upon some women and girls by a well: ‘they asked the Greeks who they were, and the interpreter replied in Persian and said they were on their way from the king to the satrap’.Footnote 43 At 4.8 a battle with the Macrones is brought to a gracious close after one of the Greek peltasts comes up to Xenophon: ‘he said that he had been a slave in Athens and that he knew the language of these people. “Indeed”, he went on, “ I think that this is my own country.”’ The man is able to explain what the Greeks are up to, and that they come with no hostile intent, and so the situation is defused. The Macrones, in fact, then help the Greeks to build a bridge across the river.
It was not surprising that the Greeks should have a Persian speaker with them, but the presence of this man who spoke Macronish was a stroke of good fortune. There are scattered references to the use of interpreters in the Persian Empire, collected by Kuhrt.Footnote 44 In a multilingual and multicultural empire, it was a matter of course that such men would be employed where needed. Specific mentions include the interpreter who worked with Syloson at Susa (Hdt. 3.140), a Carian interpreter (Thuc. 8.85.1–2), the unfortunate interpreter whom Themistocles had put to death for daring to utter outrageous demands in the Greek language (Plut. Vit. Them. 6.3), Darius' interpreter (Curt. 5.13.6–7), and, of course, Pigres the Carian, who was Cyrus the Younger's own interpreter (Xen. An. 1.5.4–8).
The sources make fairly frequent reference to Alexander's use of interpreters, another element of a well-planned campaign. Alexander made use of a Lycian prisoner who had a Lycian father and a Persian mother, and who spoke both Greek and Persian (Curt 5.4.4–10).Footnote 45 Other bilingual persons from an earlier period include Democedes (Hdt. 3.125) and Scylas (Hdt 4.78 ff.), whose father was Scythian and whose philhellenism came from his Greek mother. Laomedon, the commissioner of the Alexander sarcophagus of Sidon, spoke both Persian and Greek (Arr. 3.6.6). Artabazus had lived at Philip's court and spoke both languages (Arr. 3.21, 23.7).Footnote 46 Peucestas, who became satrap of Persis, is several times said to have spoken Persian and to have adopted Persian ways (Arr. 6.30.2–3, 7.6.3).Footnote 47
Lycians and Carians, on the cusp of two worlds, may have had a particular facility in both languages, for another interpreter, Pharnuches, was also a Lycian (Arr. 4.3.6–7); he may also have been a commander, but this is only in Aristobulus.Footnote 48 Other interpreters used by Alexander include Cophes and Mithrines, as well as several unnamed men.Footnote 49 A notorious instance is Onesicritus' interview with the naked philosophers at Taxila, which could only be conducted through a series of three interpreters, a process ‘like getting water to flow clear through mud’.Footnote 50 Presumably Alexander also needed an interpreter for his interview with Porus. And what happened at Siwa is anyone's guess.
Athenians who were not, like Themistocles, outraged to hear a Persian speaking Greek badly, generally found it funny. Notable instances are the scene with the Persian envoy in Aristophanes' Acharnians, and that with the Scythian archer in Thesmophoriazusae 1001–225. In this they are most unlike modern Greeks, who react with delight to the simplest kalimera. Plato's Cratylus (Cra. 383ab) goes so far as to define languages as either Greek or barbarian; but, on campaign, command of a foreign language was of enormous value.
Rivers again
Where Alexander and Xenophon do differ is in their attitude to significant crossings. Almost from the beginning of his march, Alexander had set out to traverse the bounds of Heracles and Liber (C. 3.10.5). He crossed rivers with ease, from the battle at the Granicus to the crossing of the Lycus (4.9.9 – five days), the Euphrates (4.9.12), and the Tigris (4.9.16 ff.). Soon after this there was an eclipse of the moon:
Right on the brink of a decisive battle the men were already in a state of anxiety, and this now struck them with a deep religious awe which precipitated a kind of panic. They complained that the gods opposed their being taken to the ends of the earth, that now rivers forbade them access, heavenly bodies did not maintain their erstwhile brightness, and they were met everywhere by desolation and desert.
The king summoned the seers to give an explanation of the eclipse which favoured the Greeks and calmed them. His approach is notably rational, and there are other occasions when he treats the usual religious observances with insouciance. At 6.4.7 he tests the underground course of a river by conducting a kind of game of Poohsticks with a few dead horses. At 4.13.15 he only conducts sacrifices to halt a panic, and at 5.4.2 he actually halts sacrifices when it is apparent that no good omens can be produced. Curtius writes that ‘besides giving rational consideration to his next move, he was also prompted by his superstition to summon the soothsayers’, but the dénouement as he describes it suggests that reason prevailed over the religious impulse, something that you would never catch Xenophon doing. Alexander is, indeed, said to show ‘contempt for superstition’ at 9.4.28–9.
Many of Alexander's crossings are described without any religious apparatus: he does sacrifice to the shade of Protesilaus before crossing the Hellespont (Arr. 1.2.5), but Arrian makes no reference to sacrifices at the rivers of Thrace, or at the Granicus; even the Halys, which had indirectly brought Croesus low, is taken in Alexander's stride (Arr. 2.4.2). Similarly, the crossing of the Euphrates at Thapsacus is a simple event (Arr. 3.7.1, C. 4.9.12),Footnote 51 and he also crosses the Tigris without opposition (Arr. 3.7.5, C. 4.9.14), though here Curtius, deploying his regular leitmotif, remarks that the goddess Fortuna was on Alexander's side. Only at the crossing of the Indus does Curtius remark that ‘you would have thought they were at war with the river’ (9.4.14). Here Arrian, too, states that after the crossing Alexander ‘sacrificed once more, according to custom’ (5.7.2), perhaps implying that there had been sacrifices before the embarkation too. But possibly not: Lucullus, for example, sacrificed only after crossing the Euphrates, having relied on omens that preceded the crossing.Footnote 52
Arrian notes that he is going to omit the colourful tales that other writers liked to retail about the River Indus (5.4.3), and in fact does not even mention how it was bridged (5.7.1). Curtius, on the other hand, shows considerable interest in rivers, but usually as the excuse for an ekphrasis: for example, the Cydnus (3.4.6), the Araxes (5.4. 7–9), and the Ziobetis (6.4.4–7), including a wondrous story about its course underground. In this Curtius shows himself in thrall to the by now prevalent taste for paradoxography, also demonstrated in such works from the first to third centuries ad as Pseudo-Plutarch On rivers and Pseudo-Aristotle On wondrous things heard:Footnote 53 the tradition perhaps began with Callimachus' contemporary Philostratus of Cyrene, author of peri paradoxon potamon (On paradoxical [or surprising] rivers).Footnote 54 Even Strabo gives way to the passion for mythological aetiology at 12.2.3: Comana on the River Saros is named after the locks deposited by Orestes and Iphigenia (which makes a change from the repeated emphasis on incest and suicide in Pseudo-Plutarch).
The rise of paradoxography may indeed be regarded, along with more serious scientific discoveries, and even language change, as one of the notable results of Alexander's expedition. Far fewer such ‘wonders’ trace their origin to Xenophon's Anabasis, though one notable case is the deli bal or ‘mad honey’ of the Pontus, which is mentioned in Pseudo-Aristotle (On wondrous things heard, 18).Footnote 55 Some more significant contrasts also emerge from the collocation of the two expeditions. Xenophon's piety may be set alongside Alexander's ‘contempt for superstition’, and his (inevitable) lack of advance planning against the methodical approach of Alexander, which is so often taken for granted by the historians but which can be teased out from their passing references. As Engels rightly remarks, military intelligence is as important to success as logistics.Footnote 56 One may suppose that Alexander learnt from Xenophon, though the sources do not suggest it and his route often differs.Footnote 57 It is notable too that Strabo never cites Xenophon for any topographical matter, though Eunapius believed that ‘Great Alexander would never have become great but for Xenophon’!Footnote 58 Xenophon's was just an adventure story; Alexander's was the expedition into Asia that really counted. But both in their different ways illustrate the importance of locally acquired knowledge in executing a journey over a long distance in unfamiliar lands.
