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Alexander the Great in Affghanistan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Extract
Before our own no European army, except that of Alexander, has ever traversed Affghanistan, and some interest naturally attaches to his movements among the passes so well known to us. Hitherto, however, the attempts to trace his progress have not been very satisfactory. My attention was drawn to the question, and reading a paper by Henry L. Long in an old number of the Classical Museum, I was led to believe with him that the theory of Grote and most historians which sends Alexander through Kohistan and the neighbourhood was untenable.
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- Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1880
References
page 223 note * Said to have been still called Skandria by the Persians in the fourteenth century.
page 224 note * As he was on the road to India we may exclude the supposition that he took the road which is marked in maps as running nearly directly south from Balk towards Candahar. The direction and the subsequent operations, as well as the time occupied in the whole campaign, forbid it.
page 224 note † That Alexandreia was at Ghizni and Nikaia at Candahar is possible, but the supposition is advanced by Mr. Long to support the theory of a march through the Bolan, which is scarcely possible.
page 225 note * From whatever possible point we start we must take ώς έπί as meaning “towards,” not “at right angles to.” “Towards the upper streams of the Kophes.” This Kophes can hardly have been the Kabul river. No government in the neighbourhood of Kabul could be said to reach to the Kabul River from the country of the Parapamisadae.
page 225 note † It is difficult not to suspect that this direction has been assigned to Alexander's march, owing to the interesting tradition among the chiefs of Kaffiristan and Badakshan, that they are descended from Alexander, or at least from his soldiers, a tradition probably dating from the greatness of the Macedonian Bactrian kingdom. See the account in Marco polo's travels, and the interesting notes and comments of M. Penautier and of Colonel Yule upon it.
page 226 note * If the Kabul River were the Kophes, Alexander marched eastward from near Kabul at first. The possibility of sending Hephaistion by a shorter route to the Indus then disappears, unless Alexander went north of the Kabul River, when, as above, we are met with the objection that there is no account of the dangerous and difficult recrossing of the Kabul, dangerous as we too well know now, to reach Attock, when the rivers were swollen by melted snow. (Arrian, v., 9.)