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

418 DAn TUDOR IOnEScU
Improbable is or rather means not impossible; anyway, the lands
occupied by the triballians appeared to be located somewhere in Moesia, on
both sides of the present frontier between Bulgaria and Serbia (northwestern
Bulgaria-northeastern Serbia), around the confluence between the Isker
(oescus) and the Danube (Ister/Istros). the demonstration of Florin
Medeleţ, however, somehow contradicted this assumption, concluding on
the basis of narrative sources pre-dating Alexander’s age (i.e. herodotus
and thucydides) that the triballian country was located between pannonia,
Dardania, and Moesia; therefore the oescus river was only the southeastern
frontier of the triballian territory. the bulk of the triballian army, however,
took position behind Alexander’s lines of communication, hoping to cut his
line of retreat and take him in his rear. Alexander made his army to do a
counter march, surprising and utterly defeating the triballians. Alexander
appeared to use in this battle the formation of a deep phalanx in the centre
and the cavalry on his two wings: philotas with the upper Macedonians on
the right flank, heracleides and Sopolis with the lowland Macedonians
on the left. the archers were used by Alexander as a long range striking
force, covering with a hail of arrows his main attack. After this second
fight and the crushing of the main triballian force (3000 triballians fell in
the fight; only eleven cavalrymen and about forty foot soldiers were lost
on the Macedonian side), on the third day after this battle he came back
at the Danube and sought to assault the island defended by the remaining
triballians and neighbouring thracians. the steep banks of the island and
the quick stream of the Danube prevented his ships (that went from the
Aegean Sea through the Straits and from Byzantium into the Black Sea
and after that upstream the Danube) from landing troops on the island (the
quick flowing river in early summer, so long after the melting of the snows,
also implies a narrower Danube course, so a region in the vicinity of the
Iron Gates); after repeated failures to take the island by storm, Alexander
attempted to cross the Danube 6 .
6 Arrian An.1.2.4-7 and An.1.3.1-4; Green, peter, Alexander of Macedon 356-323
B.C. A Historical Biography, Berkeley, los Angeles, oxford, university of California
press, 1991, 127 (he identified as a probability the lyginus river with the yantra river);
SuCeVeAnu, Alexandru, Alexandru cel Mare, Bucureşti, Editura Academiei române,
1993, 63. As a curiosity, the Danube Delta appeared to have five mouths in Alexander’s
days (or maybe in Arrian’s lifetime, one cannot be sure about the precise dating of the
information contained in Arrian An.1.3.2-3). dr. cristian Emilian Ghiţă suggested to me,
out of his personal childhood experiences that temporary islands could be formed even
lower than the Danube’s Iron Gates, in a dry summer. the water currents or streams
between the river banks and the banks of the island could well be quick, strong, and
treacherous. nevertheless, there remains the problem of the steep banks of the island,