From the Tigris to the Sea: The Problematic Geography of Anabasis Book 4

Theches: an elusive mountain

“…The route from Theches ends at Trapezus, but otherwise lacks firmly identifiable features in just the same way as in most of the rest of Anabasis IV (Tuplin, Brennan 2022); the river junction (reached within a day) and Colchian Mountain (reached in three days) -though given non-banal descriptions both directly and within the associated narrative (4.8.1-8, 9-18) -have not (yet) proved distinctive enough to settle the question. The fact that the route at the river-junction was not habitually used by groups of 8,000 does not serve to distinguish between candidates, and existing modern identifications fail to achieve the degree of distinctive certainty that could settle the Theches issue, though their proponents doubtless feel otherwise.…”

“…In Anabasis, of course, the first reason does not apply, but it may be that the second one does, notwithstanding the care Xenophon took to provide a systematic record of the army's journey in terms of time, distance and colourful incident. Theches is only one case of narrative taking precedence over coherent landscape description (Tuplin, Brennan 2022 explores the issue further for Book IV, and by extension for the rest of Anabasis), but it is perhaps a specially forceful example, since the site is so iconic in literary terms and in the experience of the author. Xenophon can set out to describe landscape in its own right: he does so briefly in Cilicia (1.2.22) and at much greater length at Calpe Harbour (6.4.1-6), but that is as much a literary fact as a topographical one (in the latter case in particular he is channelling a literary locus amoenus trope that goes back at least to Odyssey IX), and the literary world to which he belongs did not provide him with a framework or an appetite for 'textualising' the distinctions between different mountain landscapes in the sort of way that a satisfactory description of Theches would require.…”

“…But the problem presented by the attempt to locate it is not unique in character. On the contrary, it is actually a small-scale version of a problem about routes and locations that is characteristic of Anabasis IV as a whole (Tuplin, Brennan 2022). We know where the journey past Theches ends (at Trabzon) and we can be confident that it starts 110-40km (by modern roads) from Trabzon in the Bayburt-Gümüşhane region (i.e., the area of rolling highlands south of the Pontic Mountains), but in between we are at sea.…”

Der literarische Topos des Mangels an Diplomatie und der Effekt auf die Darstellung der Argeadinnen Eurydike und Olympias

“…und den Persern generell; vgl. Madreiter 2012, 100-101, 151, 153, 173;Tuplin 2021); Just. 41,3,10 (Trug und Unehrlichkeit der Parther); Polyain.…”