Agesilaos wrote:
Livy XXXII.14 would seem to militate against Morgan's identification of Krini with Palaipharsalos. Here Livy, probably following Polybios, gives the cities razed by Philip's scorched earth march of 198, Phacium. Iresiae, Euhydrium, Eretria, Palaipharsalos and then Pherae which was not attacked. Clearly Palaipharsalos was at the eastern end of the Enipeus valley. Morgan is quite disingenuous concerning this as he mentions the passage to support the fact that Palaipharsalos was not the citidel of Pharsalos itself, but never gives this itinerary. Ooops!
“Seem” is the operative word here. There is no evidence whatever that Livy gave the names of the cities as an itinerary from west to east – that is pure unsupported assumption on the part of some. For a start Palaepharsalus cannot possibly be at the east end of the Enipeus valley, for Caesar most assuredly did not fight Pompey there! The locations of the cities have been the subject of speculation since the first archaeologists went there, from Leake in 1837 down to Decourt – and there are as many locations as there are scholars, with differences between English groups, and their rival French and German counterparts! A brief summary of various scholars speculations can be found in “The battlefield of old Pharsalus” ( i.e. Palaepharsalus) by T. Rice Holmes, that most eminent Caesarian scholar [available on JSTOR]. The problem then and now is that it is hard to identify with certainty what a place is from a pile of stones and anonymous pottery sherds – unless you are fortunate enough to come across an inscription which names a place, obviously a very rare occurrence. Morgan doesn’t give Livy’s supposed itinerary precisely because it is demonstrably NOT an itinerary, simply a list of the cities. Livy’s list therefore is no help at all, because we don’t know the locations of the cities with any certainty to this day , as Morgan knew.
For the route of the later Roman road from Larissa to Thaumakos see, Descourt and Motta 'Voies et Milliares Romain de Thessalie', every early nineteenth century traveller used the supposedly circuitous direct route from Pharsalos to Larissa, which is, nonetheless shorter than the route via Krannon.
“Every” 19 C traveller? Or just a few tourists travelling a tourist route? I’ll comment further below on this aspect. More Decourt ? ( not Descourt, for those foolish enough to want to follow up).Is this some subtle form of torture you are trying to inflict on me ?
I’m not going to waste any more time reading boring travelogues in French containing unsupported speculations, especially as there are plenty of other scholars with different views, e.g Morgan’s comments on various crossing points of the Enipeus [ p.52 of his paper] and the concrete evidence of the two itinerariums versus Decourt, who offers no evidence at all for just where the Roman road crossed the Enipeus, and who ignores the itinerariums stating the road passed through Crannon.
You may not agree with Descourt but I noticed no argument against, nor indeed reference to any mis-locations, other than the implied disagreement over Palaipharsalos, just a sweeping statement.
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Well, I’ve just given you one, but more to the point, debating Decourt’s locations is just a massive red herring – the only one of relevance is the location of Palaepharsalus, and Decourt is undoubtedly wrong, and Morgan conclusively right, as Hammond agreed. You introduced Decourt purely as an attempt to counter Morgan regarding the location of Palaepharsalus, nothing else, if you recall. So let us bid Monsieur Decourt Adieu.
Throughout, Morgan works on the assumption that late Republican Romans fought on an individual frontage of six-feet, twice that we are assuming for their mid Republican compatriots (although it is what Polybios says), making his objections to sites on the basis of length of the acies somewhat fraught.
I think you’ll find Morgan is quite correct – the legions throughout their history operated in ‘open order’ of 6 ft per man, and ‘close order’ of 3 ft per man just like the Greeks and Macedonians and Hellenistic armies and many others. ( though their organisation was rank based rather than file based). As Morgan ( p.27) says this sort of frontage is demonstrated by Caesar BC.I.42.2-4, so his frontage is not an “assumption”. Have you read Morgan in full ?
Agesilaos wrote Tue 7 April:
These are a couple of the nineteenth century accounts....... This can only happen from the direct route Pharsalos-Larissa.
Of what relevance are these? That there was such a route in the 19C has been accepted. These tourists seem to have travelled on horseback, judging by the times they take. None of the accounts mention roads, still less roads suitable for heavy wagons, a feature which would have surely drawn comment.
It would seem that Agesilaos also marched his army this way in 395, so it has an ancient pedigree. Morgan's objection that one could not march an army of 70,000 by this way, which he calls country tracks, when it is a flat plain is given the lie in that in 1897 the Turks marched just such an army explicitly by this route upon Farsala in the Thirty Day's War.
I don’t recall any evidence from Xenophon’s 'Hellenica' or 'Agesilao's , or Plutarch’s ‘Agesilaos' that supports that proposition. Do you have a reference, or any evidence for that assertion? IIRC, King Agesilaos travelled up the east coast, and thence by ship to Asia both coming and going, and I’m too tired at the moment to look it up.....
Your assertion about the Thessalian part of the Graeco-Turkish war of 1897 is also incorrect, I believe. The campaign was predicated on the railway routes, which both sides used to transport troops. The one route ran from Larissa toward the Pherae gap, via the rail junction at Velestino and on to the port of Volos, and the other toward the Palepharsalus route. Each route ran slightly to the west of the ancient routes shown on my maps, approximately. Again, as far as I recall, no armies and no fighting occurred along the direct Lariss-Pharsalus north-south route, and neither Army used it.
As I expected, you cannot come up with any convincing evidence that the north-south direct route was anything other than a track at best prior to the 19 C, (even if you have some solid evidence regarding King Agesilaos in 396/395, which I doubt).
In any event, this is just pure argumentation, and I weary of it. I believe I have been quite patient in that regard. If you have a proposed site that you believe meets the source criteria, then by all means let us move on, and discuss it.
edited to add reference