Richard Stoneman's 'How Many Miles To Babylon'

In the author Richard Stoneman “How Many Miles To Babylon” article he analyzes maps: guides: roads: and rivers in the expeditions of Xenophon and Alexander. In the “Maps” section of the author's article the author talks about “Greeks getting lost as soon as they ventured outside their own peninsula” (Stoneman, Greece and Rome). In Guides Stoneman uses the Anabasis, to describe how the army found itself lost by saying “Greeks were in an extremely awkward position...They were at least a thousand miles away from Greece; they had no guide to show them the way; they were shut in by impassable rivers which traversed their homeward journey” (Stoneman, 64). Stoneman talked about a state of crisis at rivers but using interpreters to manipulate Greeks.

Maps was a pretty interesting point …show more content…
They faced generals being arrested and captains and soldiers being put to death while being far away from there home land. They also still didn't have a accurate way of knowing where they were going and ended up in battles like the Battle of Cunaxa. While their enemies had guides and maps they were more traveling into an unknown territory which made things hard on the Greeks. They lost man running into enemies and marched to places that wasn't even setout on the journey. They dealt with problems described in the text as “The guides we have say that there is no other road.’ Xenophon now announces that he has captured a number of men, killed several of them and kept two alive to act as ‘guides who know the country’ (Stoneman, 65). This showed that Xenophon was probably getting tired of being misguided and was trying to show it through killing so that the next person who tries to step in or say they know their way around won't be playing. He felt that any man who acted as a guidman for them was a enemy I would assume that Xenophon felt that way due to the past history of guideman misdirecting him in his