LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

The campaign of Alexander the Great in the Balkans... 415
warfare. In Spring 335 BC he went with his army eastward from Amphipolis
by neapolis (Kavalla) to and accros the nestus river (today’s Mesta river)
and then turned northwards, across the rhodope Mountains to philippopolis
(plovdiv), a city founded by his royal late father. leaving to his left (he
was moving north, therefore left in Arrian’s narrative signifies to the west)
the Macedonian colony of philippi and Mount orbelus, Alexander’s army
marched to invade the land of the autonomous thracians. up to there
he was in friendly territories; nevertheless, Alexander intended to strike
northwards to the Balkans (haemus Mountains) and from there to the
Danube. By doing so, he pursued a threefold aim: to pacify the wild and
warlike tribes of the thracians and triballians and their equally fierce and
warlike Illyrian neighbours (they were peoples incompletely conquered and
pacified by philip’s Macedonian soldiers); to free his Macedonian general,
Antipater, of any concerns from the barbarian northern populations and
leave him free to concentrate his efforts against any would-be rebellion in
Macedon and/or in Greece; to consolidate and push his northern frontier
up to the Danube and train his army in the process for the coming war
against persia. the Macedonian warriors will have to hone and whet their
skills and steel their resolve in one of the toughest theater of operations in
europe, prior to their landing in Asia 3 .
the first military encounter and taste of opposition Alexander has had
was in a mountain strait. the narrow mountains pass where the Macedonian
fighting men faced the autonomous thracian fighters could well be the
famous Shipka pass; however, it is not at all sure that it is so. It could well
have been another Balkan pass; we shall discuss later in the text and in a
footnote if it is not a mountain pass further west from Shipka. nevertheless,
the stratagem used by the thracian warriors, of launching their mountain
wagons and carts or chariots against Alexander’s phalanx, in order to
disrupt the Macedonian soldierly ranks, failed. Alexander ordered his
troops to kneel and cover their heads with the shields where they could no
longer open their files and let the wagons pass, thus avoiding death and
injury (the same tactics he later applied at Gaugamela against the scythed
battle chariots of the persians). his measure worked, the carts passed in
between the soldiers; some wagons slid over the Macedonian shields (they
were apparently not heavy but light mountain carts) and fell between the
Macedonian files. Very few men were hurt; there were some wounded, but
none was dead. the thracian warriors probably expected their tactics to
3 Green, peter, Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C. A Historical Biography,
Berkeley, los Angeles, oxford, university of California press, 1991, 124; vide Arrian
An.1.1.3-5.