The routes of Alexander's campaign: Outside of Engels

[Duptar]

Hello to all,

One of my favorite hobbies in war gaming is looking at the logistical makeup of armies, my research has shown how important this was during the wars of Alexander the Great and his father Phillip. The dominant work on this in English is Engels: Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. A lot of the errors in Engels' work were exposed by Brunt, so as of lately I've been trying to get a historical perspective of Alexander's routes/logistics without using Engels.

Today I pulled out my copy of Conquest and Empire by A.B. Bosworth to see what references he makes to the topic. What I found was plenty of literature, the problem is that the ones I am looking for are all in German.

This is the list:

E.N. Borza: Alexander and the Return from Siwah (1967)
E.N. Borza: Fire from Heaven: Alexander at Persepolis (1972)
A.B. Bosworth: A historical commentary on Arrian's history of Alexander I (1980)
A.B. Bosworth: The location of Alexander's campaigns against the Illyrians in 335 B.C. (1982)
N.G.L. Hammond: The march of Alexander the Great on Thebes in 335 B.C.
A. Janke: Auf Alexanders des Grossen Pfaden
T.B. Jones: Alexander and the winter of 330/20 B.C.
G. Radet: La derniere campagne d' Alexandre contre Darius
Jakob Seibert: Die Eroberung des Perserreiches durch Alexander dem Grossen auf kartographischer Grundlage
A. von Stahl: Notes on the march of Alexander the Great from Ecbatana to Hyrcania
A. Stein: On Alexander's track to the Indus (1929)
A. Stein: On Alexander's route into Gedrosia (1943)

Of these Bosworth (1980), Janke, Seibert, and Stein (1943) are the only ones constantly referred to. How do their views contrast to Engels?

P.S. I also found this http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Army-March- ... +the+March as well as this http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Warfare-Han ... ns+van+Wee

[chris_taylor]

Hello to all,

Of these Bosworth (1980), Janke, Seibert, and Stein (1943) are the only ones constantly referred to. How do their views contrast to Engels?

I'm not sure I understand your question - 9 out of the 12 works on your list are in English.

A. Janke: Auf Alexanders des Grossen Pfaden

Janke was an Oberst (app Colonel rank) in the German Army. In May 1901, he set out with 3 other military guys to explore the areas around Issus and Granicus for a month to identify Alexander's exact route. Janke kept a diary, and the book is a narrative version of that diary, with a few maps and photos. The text is in the public domain, although I haven't been able to find the maps.

I read the sections on Granicus last week to plan a trip through Turkey in Alexander's footsteps.

Janke & his team went on horseback with baggage animals, so the narrative conveys the pace of an army moving through what was in Janke's time still an untouched landscape: dense forests, streams and scattered villages with just a few families.

He evokes how the journey undulates across successive ranges of hills, low mountains and more hills. There always seemed to be "a next range of low-lying hills". And he describes the difficulties of actually getting across: narrow foot paths, local guides getting lost and horses having to skidd back down the slope on their hind quarters.

So Janke's account doesn't compare to Engels, it supplements it.

Should you learn German to read it yourself? No. His major contribution (to the Granicus area) was to identify the pass Alexander must have crossed en-route from Lampsacus by excluding the only other possible route. Unlike the musings of armchair academics, his opinion is difficult to refute. He went to look at the place, so everyone writing about Granicus must quote him to demonstrate they're aware of his writings.

Although I challenge any of these academics who quote him to prove they actually understand which way he went: Janke uses a transliterration of Turkish village names into German. To map those accurately on a modern English map is difficult even for a native German speaker.

HTH,

Chris.