#philippi

and later -

Pharsalus haunts Philippi haunts Pharsalus haunts Philippi (Carrhae is also there)

all i can say is that the roman matron in book 1 of pharsalia crying out that she sees philippi broke something open in my brain and i have since then been obsessed with the ghosts of battles haunting each other both forwards and backwards in time

And my parents for scale to where I was. Yes I know theaters like Epidaurus are famous and for a good reason but I wanted to show this underrated gem of later years in antiquity.

Cities Named Alexandria

I’ll go with Door Number Three.

As funny as some of the “Alexandria” memes are…after the first 20, they get old. I do enjoy memes, but far too many about Alexander involve the multiplicity of “Alexandria”s. The others are often puns on Alexander “the Great”…again, funny if it’s one or two. Not-so-funny after you’ve seen the umpteenth. But yes, much of this is cultural expectation + Daddy + vanity.

First, the number is often exaggerated. Plutarch claimed 70, but that’s way too high. And of those we can verify, several were founded after he died by Successors making use of his name. The number of verified cities ranges from the teens to about twenty, maybe a few more. roughly half on the eastern side of the Tigris. Why does that matter? They’re hill forts, not “cities.” Most didn’t last any length of time, either. Nor, I suspect, were they meant to. Alexander was making an attempt to formalize a border with these outposts, then peopled them with veterans he needed to retire because they were wounded or too old.

Most of these cities had an additional epithet to indicate where they were. So “Alexandria Eschate” meant “Alexandria the Farthest,” which today is probably Khujand in Tajikistan. It actually lasted as distinctively Greek down to the first century BCE. That owed a lot to the Greco-Baktrian kingdom that emerged from the eastern carcass of the Seleucid Kingdom. Alexandria Arachosia, called in the medieval period “Alexandria of the East,” is, today, Kandahar, Afghanistan. There are even a few cities not named after himself, such a Bucephaleia, after his horse. But another was named just “Nikaia”—victory.

But of note is that many of these had a military purpose, or which a few later took on a life of their own. But far more of them went “poof” over time and we have no idea where they actually were. Later Successors also used their own names for cities, such as Lysimachia, Antioch, Kassandreia, and Seleucia. And even their wives! Apama got a city of her very own (Apamea). As did Thessalonike (Thessaloniki).

Alexander wasn’t the first to do this. His father founded two cities, one that still bears his name: Philippi, but also Philippolis (Plovdiv). The later even recently got a new archaeological park in Bulgaria. (The article is hysterical, as apparently people turned out to take pictures of the local soccer/futbol star, rather than the archaeological site.) In any case, as in so much else, Alexander was following in his father’s footsteps.

"This is how history is made."