Invicta

How Cyrus went from Sardis to Babylon

Added 2019-06-13 18:25:32 +0000 UTC

I've uploaded an example of an army's march route for context on how people in antiquity described navigation. This was much more like a metro map than a modern bird's eye view map as people were more used to describing travel as series of intervals between landmarks. We will be discussing this and more in an upcoming episode!

Here is the actual description from Xenophon's Anabasis:

Cyrus was now setting forth from Sardis… and he marched through Lydia three stages, a distance of twenty-two parasangs, to the Maeander river. After crossing ... he marched through Phrygia one stage, a distance of eight parasangs, to Colossae, an inhabited city, prosperous and large. There he remained seven days.... Thence he marched three stages, twenty parasangs, to Celaenae, an inhabited city of Phrygia, large and prosperous...

Here Cyrus remained thirty days; and ... held a review ... of the Greeks in the park, and they amounted all told to eleven thousand hoplites and about two thousand peltasts. hence he marched two stages, ten parasangs, to Peltae, an inhabited city. There he remained three days, ... Thence he marched two stages, twelve parasangs, to the inhabited city of Ceramon-agora, the last Phrygian city as one goes toward Mysia.