Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire

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sean_m
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Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2014 4:00 pm

Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire

Post by sean_m »

For good or bad, my doctoral dissertation on the armies of the Achaemenids is now available for download at http://diglib.uibk.ac.at/urn:nbn:at:at-ubi:1-30064

I do not have much to say about the armies of Artaxerxes III and Darius III, because the sources are so poor, but I do have one question where the Alexander historians here could help. I lean pretty heavily on a quote by Ernst Badian who says something very hard to defend about Achaemenid armies. If you know of any similar statements by other eminent historians, I will be able to spread the blame when the dissertation becomes a book!

I do not know the modern literature on Alexander very well, there is too much of it and I would rather focus on knowing more sources (I still want to read up on poor Heremeias!)
My blog (Warning: may contain up to 95% non-Alexandrian content, rated shamelessly philobarbarian by 1 out of 1 Plutarchs)
system1988
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Location: Athens, Greece

Re: Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire

Post by system1988 »

Congratulations on your PHD thesis , with a subject such as this , it is for sure that it will aid in the understanding of the Persian art of war of that given era.
Now , since you have expressed your wish for more recent publications concerning Alexander , i would like to say this .The book ' History of Alexander the Great ' ( 1833) of J. G.Droysen has been issued recently, accompagnied by an indroduction, comments, observations , huge biblography as well as maps, all updated of course , by the historians and filologists Hrkos and Standis Apostolides .They also have published their own work called ' Alexander, the first sources' where they have accumulated all the first litterary sources we have about Alexander ( not only Arrian . Plutarce , Rufus , but + 42 ancient historians ) all of cource with the historical text,obsevations ,comments etc.If i am not mistaken they have also published another book about 'Alexander s heirs "
i will not go into depth about the prizes these books have earned but on the fact that they are written in Greek. Although i hypothesise that if a historian were to browse through them he/she would be able to gasp enough because of cource , the references, the ancient greek and latin are comprehensible by all .I was fortunate enough to see the Apostolides ( they are brothers) giving lectures in Athens and what i took out from them was of course the solid and strictly historical treatment of the histolical phenomenon of Alexander but it was at the same time refreshing to me ( did you know general Krateros ( also... ) was writing letters to his mother ?)
I reccomend those books to historians ,despite them not knowing greek.

Also i would like to to add that the work of many important researchers of the Hellenistic era history have been published on the recordings of the International Conference 'Hellenistic Alexandria -Celebrating 24 centuries ' that took place in the Acropolis Museum in 2017,where the latest archeological findings of the Ptolemaic Alexandria were presented .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKuuoC0P0bA

'He was not just a conqueror, he had a scientific team with him '
Πάντες άνθρωποι του ειδέναι ορέγονται φύσει
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