I read the trio in the order listed above and the reading got better with each title.
The Iliad is epically epic, rendered in a stiff dactylic hexameter with many, many, many repeating phrases. Between “rosy-fingered dawn” and “the wine-dark sea,” Homer’s epithets lull the reader into a trance, which I suppose was the point in oral storytelling. As a result, the myriad battles and names start blending together.
But, man, those battles are brutal. The semi-divine soldiers are walking Cuisinarts, leading to lovely vignettes like this:
Next Erymas was doom’d his fate to feel,
His open’d mouth received the Cretan steel:
Beneath the brain the point a passage tore,
Crash’d the thin bones, and drown’d the teeth in gore:
His mouth, his eyes, his nostrils, pour a flood;
He sobs his soul out in the gush of blood.Spoiler alert: Erymas didn’t make it. As you can see, I read the older translations of these works; the above is Alexander Pope’s translation. I wanted the feel of the original, so I didn’t hunt down the modern versions. All three books are decidedly un-“woke.”
For The Odyssey, I chose the Harvard Classics version translated by Samuel Butler. This epic was far more interesting (and fun!) than the grim, brain-splattered Iliad. Ulysses slides into a Mediterranean port, feasts on great food, charms exotic women, grabs a pile of loot, and is off to the next isle.
Granted, the fellow gets in a few scrapes along the way, even being forced into love slavery by an eternally gorgeous nymph (poor guy), but returns home after 20 years to wreak vengeance on the cads trying to bed his wife. (Monogamy was pretty much a one-way street in ancient Hellas.)
After reading both of Homer’s works, I think The Iliad is geared toward young men, especially those of a military mindset. It’s all heroism, glory, and honor. I really should have tackled this in my Navy days.
The Odyssey is an even better adventure, but its themes of home, wisdom, fatherhood, and marriage are aimed squarely at those of us with more mileage on the drivetrain. The heroes still kill their share of monsters and men, but Ulysses always chooses brains before brawn.
The real revelation for me was Anabasis by Xenophon. How Hollywood hasn’t released a trilogy of this epic is beyond me. (No, The Warriors doesn’t count.) Here are the Cliffs Notes for this real-life tale:
Cyrus the Younger wants to topple his brother Artaxerxes II from the Persian throne, so he recruits 10,000 Greek mercenaries (including Xenophon) to help. They march 1,500 miles from the east coast of modern-day Turkey to the middle of modern-day Iraq and, in the first big battle, Cyrus is killed.
Uh oh.
Now, the entire Persian army opposes the Greeks. The pro-Cyrus Persians say, “No actually, we were for Artaxerxes the whole time!” and turn against the Greeks. The Hellenic generals ask the King for safe passage … and he murders them.
Xenophon is more a philosopher than soldier, but he gives an inspiring speech, the troops elect him leader, and they all hightail it due north while anyone, everyone, and everything tries to kill them.
They cross deserts and rivers and mountains through searing heat, waist-deep snow, and constant attacks from ahead and behind by an ever-hostile collection of bronze-age barbarians. Upon hitting Turkey’s north shore, they finally enter a Greek colony. Happy ending, right? Well, that’s when the soldiers start turning on each other.
Granted, Anabasis is an amazing war story, but it also serves as a history, an ancient travel guide, and a primer in leadership, group dynamics, and human nature.
If you haven’t read any of these three books, you should make up that deficit.
Jon Gabriel, “My Month in Ancient Greece”, Ricochet, 2018-01-23.
April 8, 2020
QotD: Iliad, Odyssey, and Anabasis
March 19, 2020
Stalin’s Paranoid Military Purges – The Great Terror | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1938 Part 4 of 4
TimeGhost History
Published 18 Mar 2020In 1938, Stalin has his military leadership purged, and has thousands of his comrades killed or locked up. The reasons as to why he did it are still open for debate.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations by:
– Daniel WeissSources:
From the Noun Project:
– Saluting Veteran by Eric Lamar Pearine
– Russian_soldier_1553396 (Edited) by Wonmo Kang
– Prison by FORMGUT
– Law_585610 by Delwar Hossain
Photos from Color by KlimbimSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Split Decision” – Rannar Sillard
– “Last Point of Safe Return” – Fabien Tell
– “Watchman” – Yi Nantiro
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Death And Glory 1” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Dark Beginning” – Johan Hynynen
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan ErikssonA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
1 day ago
This episode was hard to write, mainly because of the ambiguity that this topic is still clouded in today. There are no conclusive answers as to why Stalin did what he did, and why he stopped doing what he was doing in 1938. This episode features some of the explanations of the purges and the Great Terror. This certainly is a remarkable piece of Soviet History, and one that would dramatically influence the performance of the Red Army in 1939 and beyond. Those who followed our World War Two series know that already in December ’39, the direct consequences of the purges in ’37 and ’38 are gigantic. I would also like to note here that we would like the comment section to stick to factual debate.
cheers, Joram
March 15, 2020
Irish War of Independence – Black and Tans vs. IRA Guerrillas I THE GREAT WAR 1920
The Great War
Published 14 Mar 2020Sign up for Curiosity Stream and Nebula: https://curiositystream.com/thegreatwar
The movement for more Irish self determination had turned into a full out revolutionary movement by 1919. The British Empire was losing control over Ireland and by early 1920 was in a full out guerrilla war against the Irish Republican Army (IRA). To regain control more police forces were recruited with wide ranging authorities – and a lack of actual police training. With their mismatched equipment made from war supplies, they soon got the nickname “Black and Tans”.
» SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
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Merchandise: https://shop.spreadshirt.de/thegreatwar/» SOURCES
Bowen, Tom, “The Irish Underground and the War of Independence 1919-21” Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), pp. 3-23
Hopkinson, Michael, The Irish War of Independence, (Montreal & Kingston : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002)
Leeson, David, The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920-1921, (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011)
Lowe, W.J., “Who Were the Black-and-Tans”, History Ireland (Autumn 2004)
Townshend, Charles, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923, (London : Penguin Books, 2013)
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Presented by: Jesse Alexander
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Editing: Jose Gamez, Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
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Research by: Mark Newton
Fact checking: Florian WittigChannel Design: Alexander Clark
Original Logo: David van StepholdA Mediakraft Networks Original Channel
Contains licensed material by getty images
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2020
February 28, 2020
A history lesson from Roman Thessalonika
At Samizdata, Niall Kilmartin recounts a story that has some interesting modern parallels for those who choose to look:
The Course of Empire – Destruction by Thomas Cole, 1836.
From the New York Historical Society collection via Wikimedia Commons.
It happened in Thessalonika near the end of the Roman Empire.
The empire had been in trouble for some time. It was not reproducing itself – “The human harvest was bad” (Seeley). “Agri Deserti” – once-cultivated lands now abandoned for lack of people to till them – could be found in every province.
Internally, the empire tried its usual solution: more government, more laws, more force. Legislation to reward large families and tax bachelors was kept on the statute books for centuries although “successful it was not” (Power). As the empire waned, laws to deal with the consequence of this failure were added: binding cultivators to the soil (the origin of serfdom) was merely the most common example of assigning a hereditary obligation to more and more of the professions the state relied on as soon as a shortfall appeared in them, legally punishing any son who did not follow in his father’s footsteps. To draft and regulate these laws, the numbers and privileges of bureaucrats ballooned from Rome’s former proportion (though still small by our standards).
Successful all these laws were not – so, externally, the empire addressed its chronic shortage of manpower by immigration,
to dose it with barbarian vigour. Just a small injection to begin with and then more and more
Goths arrived, first as recruits to Roman army units, then as foederate units under their own leaders, growing like a cancer within the armed forces until an Egyptian mother quite naturally wrote the emperor to return her citizen son who “has gone off with the barbarians” – by which she meant he had joined the “Roman” army.
Emperor Theodosius made the Goths obey him, but his was an insecure authority over them. He used Gothic troops in battles where pyrrhic victories may have been welcome. As one summary of the costly victory of Frigidius (394 AD) puts it,
The loss of 10,000 Goths cannot have distressed Theodosius unduly.
Theodosius also had little choice but to use some of their leaders as governors. Mostly, the empire’s soldiers were also its police – so the leaders of those who were now increasingly providing those soldiers had to be both rewarded by, and used in, such posts. Thus did Butheric the Goth became governor (magister militum) over Illyricum, which included Thessalonika.
The urban elite of Thessalonika were university-educated Greeks.
It would be hard to imagine an education less suited to help them understand the dangers they faced. The study of rhetoric, its links with reality long severed, …
So Eileen Power described the “learned” of the dying Roman world. (Today, 8 decades after she wrote those sentences, it is easier to imagine an education even less suited to helping elite intellectuals understand the dangers facing them, one whose links with reality are even more completely severed.) In the empire’s second century, Hadrian had dispersed those Jews he did not kill around the empire, confident they’d soon lose their primitive prejudices and assimilate to being broad-minded Graeco-Roman intellectuals like himself. Fourth/fifth century Graeco-Roman intellectuals thought the same of the immigrants. Sidonius Appolinaris wrote a “good-natured” description of the “embarrassing friendliness” of the new barbarian neighbours he encountered on a fifth-century visit to Lyons:
“How can he be expected to compose six-foot metres”, [Sidonius] asks, “with so many seven-foot patrons all around him, all singing and all expecting him to admire their uncouth stream of non-Latin words.”
The shrug of the shoulders, the genial contempt of one conscious of an infinite superiority – how familiar it all seems.
Perhaps the Thessalonikan city leaders greeted their new governor in this spirit, as sure as Hadrian was about the Jews that this uncouth Goth would soon lose his barbaric prejudices.
February 27, 2020
Winston Churchill Biography: In the Darkest Hour
Biographics
Published 13 Feb 2018We imagine Winston Churchill with his signature cane, drinking scotch whiskey, and puffing on a Cuban cigar. His mouth is downturned, and his voice is gruff and his words pointed. This is the image Hollywood portrays but it is a mere caricature of the flesh and blood version. Who was Winston Churchill? In Britain’s “darkest hour,” Churchill led his country from the brink of Nazi conquest by forging an alliance with the U.S. and Russia. He had many critics, and made mistakes on a grand scale. Yet, above it all, possessed an unwavering belief in his own power. To his beloved country he offered his “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Visit our companion website for more: http://biographics.org
Credits:
Host – Simon Whistler
Author – Crystal Sullivan
Producer – Samuel Avila
Executive Producer – Shell HarrisBusiness inquiries to biographics.email@gmail.com
Biographies by the book, get Winston Churchill’s biography from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2EAfh7b
February 26, 2020
The Pacific War | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published 15 Jun 2018Huge thanks to Kan Shimada for the Japanese translation!
Our Website: https://www.thearmchairhistorian.com/
Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArmchairHist
This video has been sponsored and approved by Oasis Games
Sources:
The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, Daniel Marston (editor)
Iwo Jima: World War II Veterans Remember the Greatest Battle of the Pacific, Larry Smith
Hell is Upon Us: D-Day in the Pacific, Victor Brooks
Eyewitness Pacific Theater, Firsthand Accounts of the War in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the Atomic Bombs, John T. Kuehn and D.M. Giangreco
Lost in the Pacific: Epic Firsthand Accounts of WWII Survival Against Impossible Odds, L. Douglas Keeney (Editor)
This rather short-changes the Australian contribution to MacArthur’s campaigns in the southwest Pacific theatre, but it is a survey and can only cover so much of such a massive conflict.
Powell’s Cartridge Counter Luger: The First Military 9mm
Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Nov 2019The US first tested the Luger in 1901, and it seemed potentially good enough that the government spent $15,000 to buy 1,000 of the pistols (in 7.65mm Luger; the only cartridge available at the time) for field trials. The trials resulted in a variety of complaints, but particular among them was a dislike for the small caliber. In response, Georg Luger necked the 7.65mm round up to 9mm, and the US would be the first to trial the new model. After presenting 3 samples in 1903, Luger made a deal to swap 50 of the American 7.65mm pistols for 50 new 9mm ones. The US also specified that new guns had to be fitted with a cartridge counter grip system designed by one Graham Powell. The resulting guns (s/n 22401-22450) were delivered in April of 1904.
American testing did not find the 9mm much more satisfactory than the old 7.65mm, however. At the same time, the Thompson-La Garde tests of terminal ballistics were concluding that a new service pistol should be no less than .45 caliber. Luger would make one last effort to interest the US in 9mm with a duplex load in 1906, but this would also fail. Instead, he would redesign the Luger for .45 ACP and enter that in the US 1907 pistol trials.
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Forgotten Weapons
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February 22, 2020
How Switzerland Managed to Remain Neutral with WWI and WWII Raging Around Them
Today I Found Out
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In this video:
The tiny mountainous country of Switzerland has been in a state of “perpetual neutrality” since the major European powers of the time declared it as such during the Congress of Vienna after the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.
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The FAL for British Troop Trials in 1954: X8E1 & X8E2
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Feb 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…
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The NATO rifle trials of the early 1950s eventually chose the 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge, and the British and Belgians agreed on the FAL rifle to shoot it (and they thought the US would as well, but that’s another story). The British government formally accepted the FAL for troop trials, and in 1954 an order for 4,000 X8E1 rifles (with iron sights) and 1,000 X8E2 rifles (with SUIT 1x optical sights) was placed. These rifles were mechanically the same as what would be finalized as the L1A1 rifle, but they include a number of differing features. Both models had 3-position selector switches allowing automatic fire, and they also had manual forward assists on the bolt handles. The iron sights had top covers with integrated stripper clip guides, as there was concern that troops would have to manually reload their magazines, and stripper clips would speed this process up.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film these very scarce trials rifles! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:
https://royalarmouries.org/research/n…
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
February 20, 2020
A Neil Peart tribute from an unexpected source
Neil Peart, lyricist and percussionist for legendary Canadian band Rush, is remembered by Pershing’s Own, the United States Army Band:
When legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart died last January, I wanted to write about the significance of his life, but couldn’t. His death was a blow that surpassed the passing of any other stranger.
Of course, Peart was no stranger to millions of fans. We were his long-awaited friends. We grew up on Peart’s lyrics, and we grew old with them.
I also didn’t write because others were already saying everything that could be said. You cannot overstate the role that Peart played shaping a generation of liberty-inclined thought. Others covered his influence on music and drumming. You don’t need me for that.
Let’s fix the record on one point. Rush was not rock by nerds for nerds, as Bret Stephens mistakenly wrote. Not in my hometown. Rush fans were the cool tough kids, young boys bearing arms on Pennsylvania’s state holiday – the opening of deer season. Rush fans had a proud swagger wearing their raglan Rush shirts in the schoolyard the morning after the concert. A real Rush fan in my hometown was more likely to pop the “treasurer of the math club,” than be the treasurer, as Stephens described the typical fan.
But now comes a tribute to Neil Peart that captures what no other tribute quite captured. Pershing’s Own, the United States Army Band, has this touching arrangement of, fittingly, “Time Stand Still” from 1987’s Hold Your Fire. If you thought Rush was all loud progressive rock with glass-cracking vocals, you haven’t heard “Time Stand Still”, originally backed by Aimee Mann.
The U.S. Army Arrangement by Sgt. First Class Tim Whalen distills out the most beautiful elements of the 1987 track. The arrangement is sparse, and all percussion is notably absent. It is a song about time, and lives, and experiences passing.
Summers going fast, nights growing colder, children growing up, old friends growing older
When the song was released in 1987, I was all of nineteen. Hearing it then on crisp September nights, I knew I wasn’t entitled to those lyrics. But one day, if I was blessed, I would be.
H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.
February 19, 2020
Perhaps women just don’t want to join the infantry? Just a thought.
Barbara Kay on the long-promised yet still (unsurprisingly) unfulfilled plan to have 25% of the Canadian Army’s infantry be staffed by women:
A WW2-era recruiting poster for the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. You’d be surprised how few modern photos of women in combat roles are available online, given the Canadian government’s desire to recruit more women in those areas.
In 1997, when women comprised 14 per cent of the Canadian Forces, Gen. Maurice Baril argued that a robust recruitment campaign was all that was necessary to boost female membership to 28 per cent by 2009, when, he predicted, women would comprise a full 25 per cent of front-line infantry troops, up from 0.6 per cent at the time.
Since there wasn’t a shred of evidence from Canada or anywhere else to support such a projection — women in Russia and Israel have performed combat roles under extreme duress for national survival, but their participation never lasted past the crisis — it came as no surprise to skeptics that the recruitment campaign fell far short of its goal. Women presently comprise 15.9 per cent of Canadian Forces members, the great majority of whom are serving in support roles (the number is 14 per cent in the United States).
A realist would draw the obvious conclusion that women and men are different. Women just aren’t into combat, and so what. But gender realism hasn’t governed the Canadian Forces for decades. So its honchos are doubling down, determined to ensure that by 2026, females fill 25 per cent of the ranks. This time, they’ve assigned a “Tiger Team” to circumvent the “systemic barriers” that make the military a “less than desirable choice” for the majority of young Canadian women.
Apparently, they have chosen to ignore their own recruitment analysts, who informed them that women feel “discomfort with a profession that involves combat,” because it has the “potential of killing people (especially innocent people).” If the military’s main “systemic barrier” to recruiting women is their inherent distaste for the profession’s existential purpose, how can that barrier be overcome?
February 17, 2020
Development of the Model 1911 Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
Published 30 Nov 2014Cool Forgotten Weapons Merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
When I was looking through the catalog for this upcoming Rock Island auction, I noticed that there were a lot of early-type Colt automatic pistols listed. I looked a bit closer, and noticed that there was, in fact, one of almost every major developmental variety. Well, that sounded like a recipe for a big overview video! So here I present the developmental history of the 1911.
These pistols sold for:
$10,350 (1900 Sight Safety)
$2,875 (1900/1902 Sporting)
$1,840 (1902 Sporting)
$2,875 (1902 Military)
$2,588 (1903 Pocket Hammer)
$6,900 (1905)
$16,100 (Savage 1907)
$2,300 (1911)
$3,738 (1924 Transitional)
$8,625 (1911A1)http://www.forgottenweapons.com
Theme music by Dylan Benson – http://dbproductioncompany.webs.com
January 31, 2020
“Wehrmacht” – The German Army 1935-1945 – Sabaton History 052 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 30 Jan 2020From 1935 onwards, the German Wehrmacht was expanding rapidly. Millions of men joined the army, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to fulfill Adolf Hitler’s visions for the 3rd Reich.
Highly motorized Panzergrenadiers, elite parachute- and resilient mountain-infantry troops were trained and and led with the utmost combat-efficiency in mind, supported by state of the art Panzers and aircraft. If it came to war, they would break the enemy and break them fast, achieving fast victories in a series of devastating hits. However, succumbing to the ideological influence of National-Socialism, the Wehrmacht found itself soon to be both culprit and accomplice to a self-reinforcing cycle of violence and atrocities.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “Wehrmacht” here:
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Google Play: http://bit.ly/CoatOfArmsGooglePlayCheck out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…
Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastoryArchive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Bundesarchiv
– IWM: H 21907- Bundesarchiv
– IWM: H 21907An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
January 17, 2020
SdKfz 2 Kettenkrad: Germany’s Halftrack Motorcycle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Jan 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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The Sd.Kfz. 2 Kettenkraftrad (aka Kettenrad) is a deliciously German sort of vehicle, a small utility tractor made with a pair of treads and motorcycle front wheel. It was powered by a 4 cylinder Opel automotive engine generating 36 horsepower, and had a 3-speed gearbox with high and low range transfer case. Top speed was 44 mph, and it could tow about 1,000 pounds of ammunition or other supplies in a small 2-wheeled trailer, or directly tow light artillery pieces.
The vehicle was developed in 1939, and in mass production in time to see substantial use in Operation Barbarossa; the German invasion of Russia. Although complex to maintain and expensive to produce, the Kettenkrad was quite well suited to the terrain and distances of the Eastern Front. As the war progressed and supplies became scarcer and artillery became heavier it was less universally useful, but remained in service until the very end of the war, tasked with jobs as mundane as towing aircraft at airfields. After the war, they were put into civilian agricultural service (much like the Jeep in the US).
This example is in the rental fleet at DriveTanks.com, available for instruction and driving to anyone. It is one of my very favorite vehicles from World War Two, and I really appreciate DriveTanks giving me the opportunity to do some driving on it and show it to you! See all their available rentals here:
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
January 11, 2020
Logistics of Alexander the Great in His Campaign
Military History Visualized
Published 11 Jan 2016Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/mhv
Alexander the Great is well known for his tactics on the battlefield. Some aspect that is often forgotten is that victory on the battlefield requires well supplied troops. This is especially true, because Alexander’s conquest covered a vast area.
See the YouTube description for a lengthy sources list.
