Could Caesar Fly?

[oudysseos]

I had just finished reading Robin Waterfield's excellent book on Xenophon, and was looking at a map of the region that happens to have Caesar's Civil War battles located and it struck me that Xenophon and his Merry Men took the best part of 6 months (September 401 to spring 400) to go 6 or 7 hundred miles (maybe 1,000 kilometers) from Cunaxa (basically Babylon) to Trapezus.
Now that's 2 turns in EB terms, and although I haven't tried it recently, if I remember correctly (fight for proper English!), even a young family member on his own couldn't make it from Babylon to Trapezous in 2 turns.

But that's not the point, I'm not trying to get the EB team to revise movement rates. What I meant to say was, Xenophons journey was nothing compared to the way Caesar hopped around the map. I mean, Alexandria in February of 47, the Battle of Zela in May, in August of 47 he's quelling a mutiny in Rome, invades Africa in October, the Battle of Thapsus in February of the following year, by November he's off to Spain, wins the Battle of Munda in March of 45, returns to Rome, reforms the Calendar, and writes the frickin' Commentaries as well. All in 12 turns? No way in hell! It'd take me 12 turns to march an army from Alexandria to Zela alone, which he apparently did in 3 months max (That's 1 turn)! That's at least a thousand miles in half the time it took Xenophon to go 2/3 of the distance. Is that even possible?

Without provoking the wrath of the EB team, my question is that known military campaigns (Xenophon, Alexander, Caesar, etc.) seem to be impossible to reproduce under EB/RTW conditions. Yet the movement of armies in EB has always seemed realistic to me. It's a conundrum: are movement rates in EB toned down for balance purposes, or was Caesar flying around on Bartix Airways?