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The campaign of Alexander the Great in the Balkans... 423
with the Celts. nevertheless, he was dismayed by their proud reply and
remarked to his Macedonian friends that the Celts are haughty and too
proud men 8 .
Alexander’s next move, after the surrender of the autonomous
thracians, of the triballians (and the flight of the local Getae, followed
probably by their surrender through envoys), and the alliance concluded
with the Celts, was to direct his troops against the insurgent Illyrians. he
and his army possibly took the same retreat route from the Danube as the
road on which they have previously advanced to the Ister/Istros (lower
Danube). his intentions were to return his army intact to Macedon; on
the road of withdrawal, however, Alexander’s Macedonians were forced
to crush the rebellion of the Illyrians. these warlike, pastoral mountain
tribes were attacking the fortress of pelion, at the north western frontier
of Macedon. the first destination of Alexander was the land of paionians
and Agrianians (we do not know exactly why his initial destination was
toward the territories of his allies: at least the Agrianians were his loyal
allies and their prince, langarus, was a top commander in Alexander’s
army; probably the loyalty of the paionians towards Alexander was not
8 It is possible that either Arrian (An.1.4.6-8) or his source (be it ptolemaeus and/
or Aristobulus quoting Alexander himself) to have misunderstood the Celtic answer: it
is possible, even probable that the Celts replied at Alexander’s questions and demands
for alliance with an oath that was usual in Celtic lands even in the 1 st millennium AD in
Ireland for example: “We shall keep our oath of alliance/allegiance to you until the Sky
will fall on us and the Sea will drown us/We shall keep our oath of alliance/allegiance
unless the heaven will fall upon us and the ocean will drown us”. It was a most solemn
Celtic oath, the oath on the elements (Sky/Air, ocean or Sea/Water; it could also include
oath on Fire and earth probably). this was the thing the warlike Celts feared most: to
broke their sworn oath and thus provoke the fury of the elemental gods. For all these vide
Jean Markale’works dedicated to the Celts and their mythology. It is interesting here to
note that Arrian (An.1.3.1-2) mentions the populations of his day (that is of the 1 st –2 nd
centuries AD) on the Danube to be the same with those encountered by Alexander and
his men in 335 BC. For Arrian the quadi and the Marcomanni (Germanic tribes on the
Middle Danube in his age) were Celts; the Iazygi Sarmatians were for him present in
pannonia at least from Alexander’s times (in fact they arrived probably there in the 1 st
century AD); then followed the Getae, the Sarmatians, and the Scythians. In this list of
barbarian peoples Arrian majestically mixes the Scythians of herodotus (located in the
7 th –4 th centuries BC between the Don, the Dnieper, the Bug, and the Dniestr, with some
tribes venturing to the lowerDanube plains and the Dobrudja; in Arrian’s days the last
true Scythians were to be found only in the Crimea), the Sarmatians that in Alexander’s
days were probably still between the Don and the Volga and to the north of the Caucasus,
and the Getae that were already in the today’s romanian plain in Alexander’s age. Vide
Arrian (An.1.3.1-2 and An.1.4.6-8).