[7]

Intimations of Immortality

HOUR after hour Darius kept up his headlong flight, over bad mountain roads, in pitch darkness, accompanied only by a few staff officers and attendants, determined to put as many miles between himself and Alexander as he could before daybreak. Next morning he was joined by other disorganized groups of fugitives, including some 4,000 Greek mercenaries. With this scratch force he rode on eastward, never slackening rein until he had crossed the Euphrates and reached Babylon (Arrian 2.13.1; QC 4.1.1–3; Diod. 17.39.1). The Great King was, for the moment, a very frightened man. He clearly expected Alexander to be hammering at the gates of Babylon within a matter of days, and his own shattered forces were in no condition to fight another battle. The administration of the empire had been totally disrupted; most of the Great King's Council of Friends were also serving as corps commanders, and where they were now only time would tell.

Darius therefore had no option but to act on his own initiative. Since he could not fight within the immediate future, he decided, he must try diplomacy. So — doubtless with many misgivings — the fugitive lord of Asia now drafted a memorandum to Alexander proposing terms for a settlement. The offer he made was, as we shall see (below, p. 240), extremely generous: it can never have occurred to him that his adversary might reject it out of hand. He had yet to learn the scope and intensity of Alexander's ambitions.

On the morning after the battle Alexander, accompanied by his alter ego Hephaestion, went to visit Darius' womenfolk himself. Both men wore plain Macedonian tunics; Hephaestion was the taller and more handsome of the two. The queen mother,Sisygambis, naturally enough mistook him for Alexander, and threw herself at his feet in supplication. When her error was pointed out to her by an attendant, she was covered with confusion, but nevertheless gamely ‘made a new start and did obeisance to Alexander’. The king brushed aside her apologies, saying: ‘Never mind, Mother; you didn't make a mistake. He is Alexander too.’ Then he personally confirmed all the promises he had conveyed through Leonnatus: he even undertook to provide dowries for Darius'daughters, and to bring up the Great King's six-year-old son with all the honours befitting his royal status. The child was not in the least frightened; when Alexander called him over he came at once, and put his arms round the king's neck for a kiss. Alexander, touched by this gesture, remarked to Hephaestion what a pity it was that the father lacked his son's courage and self-possession.¹

After this, in his customary fashion, he visited the wounded, and also held a splendid military funeral for the fallen, with the whole army on ceremonial parade. Decorations were awarded to those who had distinguished themselves during the battle. Balacrus, son of Nicanor, was appointed satrap of Cilicia, while Harpalus' vacant post as treasurer and quartermaster-general Alexander divided between Philoxenus and Coeranus. Among their other duties they became responsible for supervising the various mints (in Cilicia and at Myriandrus, later to be augmented by those of Aradus, Byblos and Sidon) from which Alexander now began, as a general policy, to issue his own coinage.

The Macedonians were revelling in their first real taste of oriental luxury: Darius' camp (even with the heavy baggage already removed to Damascus) had yielded plunder beyond their wildest dreams. Alexander himself might despise such fripperies, but his officers and men did not. From now on their passion for good living steadily increased. After the near-Spartan hardships of life in Macedonia they fell, all too easily, into an orgy of ostentatious affluence. One officer had his boots studded with silver nails. Another gave audience to his troops on a carpet of royal purple. They also laid hands on large numbers of Persian concubines and camp-followers, who swelled the ranks of Alexander's army as it progressed farther into Asia. Sometimes this proved a mixed blessing.Antigone, the girl whom Parmenio's son Philotas now took as his mistress, was later suborned to spy on him and report his private conversations (see below, pp. 339–40). But it is small wonder that the Macedonians were now, as Plutarch says, ‘like dogs in their eagerness to pursue and track down the wealth of the Persians’.

The battle once over, Alexander had told them, ‘nothing would remain but to crown their many labours with the sovereignty of Asia’. This in the event, proved an infinitely expandable programme. If they were expecting a quick chase after Darius, another share-out of Persian loot, and a triumphant homecoming, they were doomed to disappointment. At this critical stage in the campaign Alexander had to consider his future strategy very carefully indeed. The Persian army he had defeated was by no means totally destroyed, nor did it represent Darius' last reserves of manpower. Its survivors had scattered to the four quarters of the compass. Some, including the cavalry, had made their way north of the Taurus, and were liable to cut Alexander's always tenuous lines of communication across Anatolia. The eastern provinces remained intact; their contingents had not been present at Issus at all, and it was from them that Darius would recruit the backbone of his new defence force.

No one could say, for the moment, exactly where the Great King had gone, and Alexander did not intend to plunge into a hazardous guerrilla campaign through the wilds of Asia, against an all-too-elusive enemy. Besides, the Phoenician fleet was still at large, and Persia continued to control most of the Aegean. While Issus was bound to make a considerable psychological impact on the Greek states, its effect could easily be over-estimated. The situation in Asia Minor remained highly fluid, and Alexander'simmediate strategy bore this fact fully in mind. The one way in which he could finally crush Darius was by provoking him into another set battle — a battle, moreover, in which the full strength of the Persian empire was deployed. He therefore decided, very shrewdly, to attend to other matters for the time being. The Great King's pride was such that there would be no difficulty in forcing a show-down when the time came. Meanwhile he had to be given ample leisure to reassemble and strengthen his shattered forces.

This suited Alexander's own plans very well. While Darius was thus occupied, he himself — undisturbed by any major opposition — would complete his interrupted project of reducing the Phoenician seaboard. As usual, he wasted no time. Only a few days after Issus, the Macedonian army struck camp and set out down the coast road into Syria. Before Alexander left, as a gesture he remitted the fifty talents still outstanding from the fine he had imposed on Soli. He was liable to have quite enough trouble in his rear as it was without stirring up more bad blood gratuitously. Besides, from now on he could afford, when he so chose, to be generous.²

From Myriandrus the Macedonian army marched south, by the old Phoenician road: inland at first, through the Orontes Valley — where he left Menon as governor of Lowland Syria — and then along the coast by way of Gabala (Jebleh) and Paltos (Arab el Melik) towards Marathus, with its fortified offshore island, Aradus (Arwad). Marathus could have caused Alexander considerable trouble. But once again his luck held. The local princes of Phoenicia and Cyprus had mustered their squadrons and sailed west to support Pharnabazus in the Aegean. Among them was the ruler of Marathus, who had left his son Straton to hold the city during his absence. With a depleted garrison and virtually no naval forces, there was very little Straton could do in the event of an attack. When he heard that the Macedonians were approaching, he decided that resistance would be futile. He therefore rode out to meet Alexander, who graciously accepted his offer of a gold crown, together with the formal surrender of Marathus, Arwad, and all dependent territories as far inland as Mariamne. The last-named city was a most valuable acquisition. Not only did it control first-class farming territory, but also lay on the vital caravan route to Palmyra and Babylon.

When Alexander reached Marathus, he was met by two Persian envoys bearing Darius' armistice proposals. The Great King protested that Philip and Artaxerxes had been in peace and alliance; that Philip had committed acts of aggression against Artaxerxes' successor Arses; that Alexander himself had wantonly invaded Asia in defiance of ‘this ancient friendship’. He, Darius, had done no more than defend his country and his sovereignty. The battle had gone ‘as some god willed it’. If Alexander would restore his wife, mother, and children, he was ready to pay an appropriate ransom. Furthermore, if Alexander agreed to sign a treaty of friendship and alliance with Persia, the Great King would cede him ‘the territories and cities of Asia west of the Halys River’. What Darius now offered him, in fact, was all that Philip had aimed to conquer — ‘Asia from Cilicia to Sinope’, as Isocrates phrased it.

Alexander thus found himself in a somewhat delicate predicament. If he revealed the Great King's terms to his war council, Parmenio and the old guard would argue, irrefutably, that the Persian crusade had gained all its objectives, and that this offer should be accepted without delay. But Alexander's own ambitions looked far beyond so modest a goal. Nothing would satisfy him, ultimately, but the utter overthrow of Darius, and his own establishment as lord of Asia, heir by right of conquest to the Achaemenid throne and empire. With this end in view, it was essential that the Persian offer should be turned down. Alexander therefore suppressed the original document, and forged a substitute, which was not only offensively arrogant in tone, but — more important — omitted any reference to territorial concessions. This, not surprisingly, the council rejected on sight.

Alexander then drafted a reply which began, very much de haut en bas, ‘King Alexander to Darius’. He treated the Great King as a mere vulgar usurper, who had conspired with Bagoas to win the throne ‘unjustly and illegally’. He raked over all the old accusations against Xerxes and his successors. He accused Darius of having procured Philip's murder, which was not true, and of running an anti-Macedonian fifth column in Greece, which was. He professed himself willing to restore the queen mother, the queen, and her children, without ransom — provided Darius came to him humbly, as a suppliant. But it is his concluding words which are most remarkable:

In future [he wrote] let any communication you wish to make with me be addressed to the King of all Asia. Do not write to me as an equal. Everything you possess is now mine; so, if you should want anything, let me know in the proper terms, or I shall take steps to deal with you as a criminal. If, on the other hand, you wish to dispute the throne, stand and fight for it and do not run away. Wherever you may hide yourself, be sure I shall seek you out.

The envoy chosen to deliver this scathing broadside had strict instructions ‘to discuss no question whatever which might arise from it’ — a very necessary precaution.

If Alexander's letter reveals how far-reaching his aims had become, it also displays very shrewd psychological insight.³ That final threat was, at the time of writing, no more than a monumental, if calculated, piece of bluff; yet it might well sting Darius — whose prestige had taken a bad battering — into doing the one thing that would enable Alexander to bring about his final downfall — that is, amass another imperial army, and challenge the Macedonians to a second trial of strength. Cool heads at Susa must have realized that success depended on avoiding such a direct confrontation; but honour and prestige were now involved. Meanwhile, the mere fact that Darius had offered to surrender Asia Minor showed how badly Issus had shaken him. It was an encouraging sign for any future negotiations which Alexander might undertake.

When Darius received Alexander's reply, he at once began planning a fresh campaign. The eastern provinces contained vast untapped reserves of manpower. All he needed was time in which to organize them. Meanwhile, Memnon's scheme for carrying the war into Europe — temporarily shelved at the instance of the Persian High Command — was now given a fresh airing. If Darius could cut Alexander's land-communications in Asia Minor, win complete control of the Hellespont, and persuade the Greek states to launch a general revolt against Antipater, the Macedonian army's position would (it was thought) become virtually untenable. In this way, the Great King calculated, he might force Alexander to withdraw without fighting another major engagement. At the very least he would win valuable time to rebuild his own shattered forces.

He therefore sent out an order of the day alerting his commanders on the Ionian seaboard. The Aegean campaign had, not surprisingly, been holding fire since Issus; as a result of Darius' directive it once more acquired top priority. Pharnabazus (who had recaptured Miletus and Halicarnassus, and was now using the latter as his operational headquarters) had already been privately in touch with King Agis of Sparta, now actively planning a nationalist rebellion. On receipt of Darius' order he summoned the Spartan to Halicarnassus, and sent him home equipped with Persian ships, Persian gold (‘to change the political situation in Greece in favour of Darius’) and no less than 8,000 mercenaries, who had found their way from Issus to Caria since the battle.^a It was now, too, that the port of Taenarum, in the deep Mani, became established as a landing-point and recruiting-centre for rebel volunteers. At the same time — again on Darius' orders — another mercenary force was sent to recover the Hellespont area.

A number of important cities in Asia Minor (our sources do not name them) were recaptured for Persia. Most important of all, those units — including Nabarzanes' crack cavalry divisions — which had escaped north of the Taurus now raised a full-scale revolt in Cappadocia and Paphlagonia. Alexander's lines of communication, as we have seen (cf. above, pp. 209–10), ran through a narrow bottleneck by way of Celaenae. With the aid of the mountain tribes, Darius calculated, it should not take long to close this bottleneck altogether. Antigonus the One-Eyed, who had been left as governor of central Anatolia, was dangerously short of troops. If Alexander found himself cut off from Europe, he might prove somewhat more amenable to argument. But this (though Darius could not have known it) was a false assumption. Alexander had already made his own crucial decision, at Gordium: Greece and Macedonia were, in the last resort, expendable. The victory of Issus can only have reinforced such an attitude.⁴

Meanwhile Parmenio had — as so often — been given the most tiresome and dangerous job going, with wholly inadequate forces for its safe execution. His orders, received the day after Issus, were to march through lowland Syria on Damascus, receive the city's surrender, and secure the Great King's baggage-train. He had no first-class troops with him apart from the Thessalian cavalry, and felt understandably nervous. Winter was setting in: if the citizens of Damascus decided to close their gates and stand siege, that would be that. His column advanced through a flurry of snowstorms. Even when the snow stopped, the ground remained frozen solid with hoar-frost. It was bitterly cold. But when they were about four days' march from the city, a letter reached them from the governor, saying that ‘Alexander should speedily send one of his generals with a small force, to whom he might hand over what Darius had left in his charge’.

On the excuse that Damascus' walls and fortifications were too dilapidated to resist attack, the governor now ordered a general evacuation — timing it so that treasure, baggage, and distinguished prisoners should be there for the picking when Parmenio arrived. All went off as planned. The Macedonians were met by a long column of refugees plodding through the snow (it was so cold that the porters bearing the treasure had wrapped themselves in Darius' gold and purple robes). The Thessalian cavalry charged. Baggage-carriers and armed escort fled, leaving the Persian royal treasure scattered in the snow: coined money, gold ornaments, jewelled bridles, chariots. Each item was carefully listed by Parmenio in an inventory he prepared for Alexander. It included 2,600 talents of coined money, and 500lb. of wrought silver. The total weight of gold cups was about 4,500lb., or something over two tons, if we can trust our sources; of cups inlaid with precious stones, 3,400lb. In addition, all Darius' household staff was captured: the inventory showed, amongst others, 329 concubines (musically trained), 277 caterers, and seventeen bar-tenders. Other prisoners, if less exotic, had greater political significance: various high-ranking Persians, the wives and children of Darius' commanders and blood-relatives, and Memnon's widow Barsine, the daughter of Artabazus. Most interesting of all, there were ambassadors from Thebes, Sparta, and Athens.

Parmenio sent Alexander a detailed dispatch on all these matters, together with a richly wrought and jewelled gold casket, by general agreement the finest objet d'art in Darius' collection. (Alexander, characteristically, used it as a travelling-box for his Iliad.) What, he asked, were the king's instructions now? Alexander's reply was very crisp and practical. He commissioned Parmenio to organize the military defences of lowland Syria, in collaboration with Memnon, the new governor. Darius' treasures were to be kept under guard in Damascus, and the captive envoys sent on to Marathus for interrogation. Parmenio was further authorized to issue Macedonian coins from the Damascus mint. He had asked, in his dispatch, what action should be taken against two Macedonians accused of raping mercenaries' wives. If found guilty, Alexander wrote, they were to be ‘put to death as wild beasts born for the destruction of mankind’.

In the same letter he informed Parmenio — perhaps a little too insistently — that he had neither seen nor wanted to see Darius' wife, and would not even allow people to discuss her beauty in his presence (presumably she had been veiled on the morning afterIssus). He went on to describe the Great King's harem, in general, as ‘an irritation to the eyes’. Parmenio, who seems to have had a sophisticated sense of humour, sent Alexander the three ambassadors, as requested; but he also sent him Barsine, now in her late thirties or early forties, whose aristocratic Persian breeding had been reinforced with an impeccable Greek education. This experiment (if we can believe Aristobulus) proved a striking success — even though the hypothetical son born of the union is more often than not dismissed as pure fiction.⁵

Early in January 332 Alexander continued his march from Marathus. Byblos surrendered without any trouble, The Macedonians tramped on south by the sea, through Nahr-el-Kalb, where their predecessors from Babylon and Assyria and Egypt had carved inscriptions in the rock-face as they passed, to the great commercial port of Sidon. Here the inhabitants welcomed Alexander — out of hatred for Darius and the Persians, says Arrian (2.16.6); but Sidon's long-standing rivalry with Tyre, a few miles farther down the coast, must surely have been the deciding factor. The Sidonians repudiated their reigning prince (he appears to have been executed) and left the appointment of a successor to Alexander. Alexander, we are told, asked his friend Hephaestion to select a suitable candidate. Hephaestion's choice fell on a collateral member of the royal house, now living in reduced circumstances and working as a market gardener.

This man, Abdalonymus — his Phoenician name means ‘servant of the gods’ — duly ascended the throne, and ancient moralists never tired of citing his history as a classic instance of ‘the incredible changes which Fortune can effect’. (Alexander doubtless calculated that so dramatic an elevation would give him a permanent sense of compliant obligation to his god-like benefactor.) Abdalonymus has a further claim to fame: it was he who subsequently commissioned the great ‘Alexander-sarcophagus’ now in Istanbul, with its hunting and battle scenes. These depict not only Alexander himself, but also, in all likelihood (though the identifications have been contested), Hephaestion and Parmenio. One especially interesting feature of the sarcophagus reliefs, as of the coins which Alexander now began to issue from Sidon's ancient mint (active since 475 B.C.) is the king's portrayal as the young Heracles — a vigorous, handsome figure wearing Heracles' traditional lion-skin helmet.

There was ample precedent for this in Macedonian tradition: Argead monarchs often found it useful to underline their Heraclid descent. But Alexander's new gold staters and silver decadrachms reveal significant modifications. The conqueror is shown being crowned by Nike (Victory), who bears a wreath in her outstretched hand; and the serpent of earlier issues is replaced by the Persian lion-headed griffin. Heracles, moreover, was generally identified with the Phoenician god Melkart.⁶ Alexander could hardly have made his assumption of eastern sovereignty less ambiguous; and indeed this calculated Heraclid propaganda campaign sheds an interesting light on the events of the next few days.

From Sidon Alexander continued south towards Tyre, the most powerful naval and commercial port between Cilicia and Egypt. It stood on a rocky island half a mile offshore, protected by great walls which on the landward side rose to a height of about 150 feet. As his army approached, a group of ambassadors, including the king's son, came out to greet him, with the usual gold crown and many protestations of allegiance.⁷ But their hospitable manner was deceptive. They had not the slightest intention of handing over Tyre to the Macedonians: on the contrary, they meant to hold this island fortress for Darius and the Phoenician fleet. If they could avoid trouble by a little diplomatic bribery, well and good (the lavish gift of provisions they brought with them might at least stop these uncouth and unwelcome visitors from ravaging the countryside). But they were not prepared to compromise. If Alexander proved obdurate, he could go ahead and besiege them. They had worn out besiegers before, and the Macedonians did not even have the advantage of a fleet. Besides, the longer they delayed Alexander, the more time Darius would have to mobilize a new army and carry out his military operations in Asia Minor.⁸

Before very long Alexander saw that the Tyrians were ‘more inclined to accept an alliance with him than to submit to his rule’. He thanked the envoys for their gifts. Then, very blandly, he said what great pleasure it would give him, as a royal descendant of Heracles, to visit the island and sacrifice to their god Melkart, in his great temple there. The Tyrians were well aware of the Heracles-Melkart equation, and probably also knew just how Alexander hoped to exploit it for his own benefit. This was the time of Melkart's great annual festival,⁹ which attracted many visitors, especially from Carthage. To let Alexander have his way would be tantamount to acknowledging him as their rightful king. (If other Near Eastern parallels apply here, to sacrifice to Melkart during this festival was strictly a royal prerogative.) So the envoys, with charming aplomb, told him that this was, unfortunately, out of the question. However, another temple, just as good, existed on the mainland, at Old Tyre. Perhaps he would like to sacrifice there?¹⁰ They meant no offence, they said; they were merely preserving strict neutrality. Till the war was over they would admit neither Persians nor Macedonians to their city.

At this patent evasion Alexander's always uncertain temper got the better of him. He flew into a murderous rage and dismissed the envoys out of hand, with all manner of dire threats. On returning home they advised their government to think twice before taking on so formidable an opponent. But the Tyrians had complete confidence in their natural and man-made defences. The channel between Tyre and the mainland was over twenty feet deep, and frequently lashed by violent south-west winds. Their fortifications, they believed, would resist the strongest battering-ram yet devised. The city-walls stood sheer above the sea: how could any army without ships scale them? Shore-based artillery was useless at such a range. The Tyrians decided to stand firm, encouraged by their visitors from Carthage,¹¹ who promised them massive reinforcements.

Even Alexander himself appears to have had second thoughts about embarking on so hazardous a project — perhaps because his officers showed something less than enthusiasm for it. He therefore sent heralds to Tyre, urging the acceptance of a peaceful settlement. The Tyrians, however, mistaking this move for a sign of weakness, killed the heralds and tossed their bodies over the battlements.¹² If this senseless atrocity did nothing else, it at least got Alexander a solid vote of confidence from his staff. The speech he now made to them (reported in extenso by Ptolemy, who was present)¹³ shows a solid grasp of strategic realities. There had been some talk of leaving a garrison at Old Tyre to ‘contain’ the island, and marching straight on to Egypt. Others were anxious to abandonPhoenicia altogether and continue the hunt for Darius. Either course, Alexander emphasized, was out of the question so long as Tyre remained a potential base for the Great King's fleet. But once naval supremacy had been achieved in the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt would offer no resistance; and then, with both Egypt and Phoenicia safe, they could take the road to Babylon.^b

Such arguments might convince Alexander's corps commanders; the Macedonian rank and file, on the other hand, cared not a jot for strategy. What they saw was the work they would have to undertake, and they did not fancy it. Alexander had made it known that he intended to reach Tyre by building a mole across the strait. They took a good look at the deep, windswept channel, and the fortress of Tyre beyond it, and the artillery that their opponents were already mounting on the walls. Never can Alexander's lack of a fleet have seemed so obvious and insurmountable a handicap. A mole half a mile long, through that? This time the king was asking too much.¹⁴ But Alexander — who, as Curtius observes, ‘was by no means inexperienced in working upon the minds of soldiers’ — now announced that he had had a dream, in which he saw Heracles standing on the walls of Tyre and beckoning to him. Aristander interpreted this as meaning that the city would be taken, but only after labours worthy of Heracles himself: an obvious enough deduction.¹⁵

All opposition was finally overcome, and Alexander began what was to prove the longest and most gruelling military operation of his entire career.¹⁶ He began by demolishing Old Tyre to provide foundation-stones and rubble.¹⁷ A pioneering party was sent inland through the lower Beqaa Valley to fetch timber, cedars in particular, from the slopes of Antilebanon. It is possible that both this expedition and Alexander's own subsequent raid into the same area (see below, p. 255) were in search not only of timber — essential for mole-building operations — but also of grain-supplies. Though adequate water was provided by the River Litani, about five and a half miles from the city, local resources would clearly be inadequate to victual Alexander's forces over a long period. Before the siege was over, Josephus tells us, Alexander wrote to the high priest in Jerusalem, ‘requesting him to send him assistance and supply his army with provisions’.¹⁸ Meanwhile not only Alexander's own troops, but all able-bodied men from the surrounding towns and villages found themselves drafted into a vast emergency labour force, estimated at ‘many tens of thousands’.

The early stages of the project,¹⁹ across mud-flats and through shallow water, presented no particular problems. Alexander's siege-engineers sank piles in the mud, packed down rocks between them, and on this foundation laid huge baulks of timber. Themole, in its final form, is said to have reached a breadth of no less than 200 feet: Alexander wanted to assault the fortifications on as wide a front as possible. He himself was always on the spot, ready to solve any technical problem, encouraging the men and handing out rewards for conspicuously good work.

At first the Tyrians treated his project as a joke. They would row across to watch, and sit there, just out of range, making rude comments. They jeered at the soldiers for carrying loads on their back like beasts of burden. They inquired, facetiously, whether Alexander had become so swollen-headed that he was now setting up in competition with Poseidon.²⁰ But the rapid, efficient progress of the work soon made them change their tune. They evacuated some of their women and children,²¹ and began to construct extraartillery for the landward defences.²² Far from laughing at Alexander's mole, they now made a vigorous attempt to destroy it before it could become a real menace. Eight vessels crammed with archers, slingers, and light catapults sailed down either side of the construction, and poured a concentrated cross-fire into the thousands of labourers swarming over it.²³ At such short range they could hardly miss, and Alexander's men, who wore no armour while working, suffered heavy casualties.^c

As a counter-measure the king rigged up protective screens of hide and canvas, and placed two tall wooden towers near the end of the mole. From these his archers and artillerymen could shoot straight down into the enemy's boats. Such precautions were now doubly necessary. The work was so far advanced that very soon it would come within range of the catapults on the walls; but at the same time, since it had now reached the deepest part of the channel, its rate of progress had slowed almost to a standstill.²⁴Endless tons of rock went into the sea without appreciably raising the foundation-level. Supplies of timber were not coming through as fast as they should, since the forestry section had constantly to fight off attacks by Arab marauders.²⁵ On top of everything else the Tyrians, whose resourcefulness was only matched by their sense of timing, chose this moment to carry out a highly successful commando raid.

They took a broadbeamed old horse-transport and crammed it to the gunwales with dry firewood, over which they poured large quantities of liquid pitch. Two new masts were rigged well forward in the bows, and from the projecting yard-arm of each they hung a cauldron full of some highly inflammable substance, probably naphtha. Finally, they ballasted this curious vessel so heavily aft that its bows rose clear of the water, despite the extra load they had to carry. When a good on-shore wind began blowing, they put a skeleton crew aboard, and towed this improvised fireship towards the mole with a pair of fast triremes, the crews rowing flat out so as to work up maximum speed. At the last moment the triremes sheered off, to port and starboard respectively, while those aboard the transport let go the tow-ropes. Then they hurled flaming torches into the midst of the combustible material, and quickly dived overboard.

The barge, now a mass of flames, bore straight down on the mole, its bows crunching and grinding over the outermost foundations, close to Alexander's wooden towers. These caught fire at once. Meanwhile the two triremes had put about, and now lay alongside the mole, sniping at any Macedonian who put his head outside the towers or attempted to extinguish the fire. Then the ropes holding the cauldrons burnt through, and a torrent of naphtha came pouring down. The result must have been like a small-scale explosion in an oil-refinery: both towers were at once engulfed in a raging inferno. At the same time a flotilla of small craft which had been following the fireship ran in on the mole from all sides. One commando party slaughtered the men carrying rocks from the shore. Others tore down Alexander's protective palisades and set fire to any siege equipment that had escaped the original conflagration. The whole attack was carried out in a matter of minutes. Then the raiders withdrew, leaving behind them a smoke-blackened trail of carnage and destruction. For its entire length the mole was littered with charred corpses and blazing, shapeless piles of timber.²⁶

Alexander, nothing daunted, gave orders for new towers and artillery to be built, and directed that the mole itself should be widened still further. He then left Perdiccas and Craterus in charge of operations, and himself returned to Sidon, with the Guards Brigade and the pick of the light-armed troops. This expensive setback had made one thing abundantly clear: without a strong fleet he might as well give up altogether. Only an amphibious assault stood any real chance of success. To obtain ships, moreover, was not so hopeless a task as might be supposed. In his speech to his corps commanders, Alexander had predicted that when news of Issus — and subsequent successes — reached the Aegean, many of the Phoenician squadrons serving with Pharnabazus would defect. This optimistic hunch now vindicated itself in the most remarkable fashion.

The kings of Byblos and Aradus (Arwad), learning that their cities were in Macedonian hands, both withdrew their contingents and sailed back to Sidon. Ten triremes arrived from Rhodes (hitherto a Persian stronghold), ten more from Lycia, and three fromSoli. Together with Sidon's own squadrons, this at once gave Alexander 103 vessels. But better still was to come. A day or two later the kings of Cyprus sailed in, leading a combined flotilla of no less than 120 warships. Desertions on this scale meant that the Persian fleet would very soon cease to be an effective force. At the same time a fifty-oared Macedonian galley, having successfully dodged Pharnabazus' blockade, arrived with the welcome news that a strong naval counter-offensive, under Amphoterus andHegelochus (see above, p. 214), was now developing in the Hellespont area.²⁷

Alexander had every reason to be pleased. In a week or two he had mustered a far more powerful fleet than that of the Tyrians; and the situation in Greece and Ionia seemed to be, at long last, taking a turn for the better. He at once collected fresh engineers from Cyprus and Phoenicia, who were set to work mounting siege artillery (including rams) on barges or old transport vessels. While the fleet was being fitted out, Alexander himself took a flying column up into the rough, snow-clad wastes of the Lebanon ranges, and spent ten days harrying the tribesmen who had threatened his supply-lines.

One evening he and his immediate entourage fell behind the main troop, chiefly because of Alexander's old tutor Lysimachus, who had insisted on accompanying them, but proved unable to stand the pace they set. When night fell they were lost, and shivering with cold. Beyond them twinkled the camp-fires of their elusive opponents. Alexander went out alone, Indian scout fashion, crept up on the nearest encampment, knifed two natives, and got away with a large flaming branch. They built their own fire, bivouacked for the night, and rejoined the others in the morning. This episode (if true: it bristles with improbabilities) offers a fairly typical instance of the gratuitous personal risks which Alexander continued to take throughout his career. It excites our admiration: yet what would have happened if one of those Arab mountain guerrillas had been a little quicker off the mark? As so often, it is hard to decide at what point courage merges into sheer exuberant irresponsibility. One stroke of a dagger amid the Lebanese snows could have changed the entire course of Greek history.²⁸

His minor punitive expedition successfully concluded, Alexander hurried back to Sidon. Here he found further welcome reinforcements awaiting him.²⁹ Cleander was back at last from his recruiting drive in the Peloponnese (see above, p. 200), accompanied by no less than 4,000 Greek mercenaries. Word had got about that Alexander's expedition was now not merely solvent, but also paying handsome dividends. The king never again had any real trouble in recruiting as many mercenaries as he wanted.

The fleet was ready for active service. Alexander at once put to sea in battle formation, using the fifty-oared Macedonian galley as his flagship, with half the large Cypriot contingent stationed on each wing to strengthen his overall striking power. The Tyrian admiral's first thought, on hearing of Alexander's approach, was to force an engagement. But the appearance of this gigantic armada, far larger than anything he had anticipated, soon made him change his mind: Alexander, spoiling for an immediate trial of strength, saw the enemy squadrons put about and make for home. At this he crammed on all speed in a bid to reach the north harbour before them, and a desperate race ensued. Most of Tyre's best troops had been packed aboard the galleys to fight as marines, and if Alexander could force his way into the harbour, he had an excellent chance of capturing the city there and then.

The Tyrians, in line-ahead formation, just managed to squeeze through the harbour entrance in front of Alexander's leading vessels. Three Tyrian triremes put about to hold off the attack, and were sunk one after the other. Meanwhile, behind them, a solid array of ships was jammed bows on across the harbour mouth. Similar defensive tactics were adopted at the Egyptian harbour, on the south-east side of the island.³⁰ Alexander, seeing there was nothing he could do to force an entry, brought his fleet to anchor on the lee side of the mole. However, if it was impossible for him to get in, he had, equally, no intention of letting the Tyrian fleet get out. Early next morning he sent the Cyprian and Phoenician squadrons to blockade both harbour mouths. This effectively bottled up Tyre's entire naval force, and at one stroke gave Alexander mastery of the sea.³¹

He was now free to press on at full speed with the mole, his workers protected from attack by a thick defensive screen of ships.³² But Poseidon, it seemed, was fighting on the Tyrian side. A strong north-west gale blew up, which not only made further progress impossible, but caused serious damage to the existing structure. Alexander, however, refused to admit defeat. A number of giant untrimmed Lebanon cedars were floated into position on the windward side, and absorbed the most violent impact of the waves. After the storm subsided, these huge trees were built into the mole as bulwarks. The damage was soon made good, and Alexander, surmounting every obstacle, at last found himself within missile-range of the walls.³³

He now proceeded to launch the ancient equivalent of a saturation barrage.³⁴ Stone-throwers and light catapults were brought up in force to the end of the mole. While the stone-throwers pounded away at Tyre's fortifications, the catapults, reinforced byarchers and slingers, concentrated on those defenders who were manning the battlements. At the same time, no less vigorous an assault was being pressed home from the seaward side. Alexander's engineers had constructed a number of naval battering-rams, each mounted on a large platform lashed across two barges. Other similar floating platforms carried heavy catapults and manganels. All were well protected against attack from above.³⁵ These craft, escorted by more orthodox vessels, now formed a tight circle right round the island fortress, and subjected it to the most violent, unremitting assault. The great rams smashed their way through loose blocks of masonry, while a deadly hail of bolts and arrows picked off the defenders on the walls.

The Tyrians fought back as best they could. They hung up hides and other yielding materials to break the force of the stone balls. They built wooden towers on their battlements, and filled them with archers who shot fire-arrows into the assault-craft below. They worked at feverish speed to repair the breaches made by Alexander's rams, or, where this proved impracticable, to build new curtain-walls behind them.³⁶ At the end of a long day's fighting their position did not look at all encouraging. They had one consolation, however: the defences opposite the mole still stood firm. Here the walls were tallest, and built of great ashlar blocks set in mortar; even the heaviest Macedonian artillery had so far made no impression on them. Alexander, well aware of this, but determined to press home his advantage, now attempted a night-assault from the seaward side. Under cover of darkness his whole task-force moved into position. Then, for the second time, Tyre was saved by bad weather. Clouds drifted across the moon, accompanied by a thick sea-mist. A gale got up, and violent waves began to pound Alexander's floating platforms. Some of these actually broke up: they were unwieldy at the best of times, and quite unmanageable in a storm. Alexander had no choice but to cancel the operation.³⁷ Most of his fleet got back safely, though many vessels had suffered serious damage.

This setback gave the Tyrians a brief but valuable breathing-space. With considerable ingenuity, they now dumped heavy blocks of stone and masonry in the shallow water below the walls — probably demolishing large numbers of houses to supply them with the necessary material. Such a protection should, with luck, suffice to keep Alexander's floating rams out of range. Their engineers and smiths, who seem to have been of an inventive turn of mind, kept the forges working late to devise ever more outré and horrific weapons. They had to face the fact that very soon (unless something quite unforeseen happened) Alexander's mole would reach the island. This is why many of their devices were designed for hand-to-hand combat. They included drop-beams (which swung down on the ships from a derrick), grappling-irons or barbed tridents attached to cords, with which assailants could be hooked off their towers, fire-throwers that discharged large quantities of molten metal, scythes on poles to cut the ropes which worked the rams, and — simple but effective — lead-shot fishing-nets to entangle any who might rush the fortifications by means of bridge-ladders.³⁸

One reason for all this urgent work was an embassy which had just arrived from Carthage, bearing highly unwelcome news. Those Carthaginians still in the city had doubtless sent home increasingly gloomy reports on Tyre's chances of survival. Their government, sensing an imminent débâcle, did not want to involve Carthage in what might prove a long and expensive war. They remembered, suddenly and conveniently, that Carthage had troubles of her own at home, and would not, therefore, much though they regretted it, be able to send Tyre any reinforcements.³⁹ This news caused considerable alarm throughout the beleaguered city. One man was rash enough to announce that he had had a dream in which he saw a god (probably Baal: our classical sources say Apollo) departing Tyre, and it was at once assumed that he had made up this tale in order to curry favour with Alexander. Some of the young men actually tried to stone him, and he was forced to seek sanctuary in the temple of Melkart. Others, more superstitious, reserved their anger for the god, and tied his image down securely with golden cords to prevent him deserting to the enemy.⁴⁰

Alexander, meanwhile, was making vast efforts to winch up the heaps of stone and masonry which had been dropped in the sea beneath the walls. This work could only be done from securely anchored transport vessels with strong derricks. Tyrian divers held up the salvage work by cutting these ships' anchor-cables. Only when Alexander replaced the cables with chains could the crews go ahead. They finally cleared all the stones, catapulting them into deep water where no one could retrieve them.⁴¹ Now, once again, the assault-craft could come in close under the walls. About the same time, after a sustained effort of which Heracles himself might well have been proud, the mole finally reached Tyre: Alexander's promise that he would join Tyre's fortress to the mainland had been fulfilled.⁴² At this point he would have been less than human had he not attempted a direct assault. The great siege-towers, over 150 feet high, were wheeled into position, the boarding-gangways were made ready, and a tremendous attack launched against the walls.⁴³

The Tyrians, who had been long awaiting this moment, fought back with ferocious courage. The most ingenious and horrific device at their disposal was also the simplest. They filled a number of huge metal bowls with sand and fine gravel, and then heated this mixture until it was almost incandescent. The bowls were mounted on the parapet, each with a tipping mechanism, so that its contents could be emptied over any assailant who came within range. The red-hot sand sifted down inside breastplates and shirts, burning deep into the flesh: an appallingly effective forerunner of napalm. Finally Alexander was forced to retreat: the assault had proved an elaborate and expensive failure. At this point, from utter weariness it is said,⁴⁴ he felt seriously tempted to abandon the siege and march on to Egypt. It was now high summer: for nearly six months he had laboured before the walls of Tyre, and all in vain. The wastage of manpower and materials had been prodigious; and day by day Darius was steadily building and training a new Grand Army. If Alexander held on, it was because he had long ago passed the point of no return. To give up this siege now would be more costly than to go through with it.

It was the Tyrians who finally gave him what he needed. Their fleet made an all-but-successful sortie during siesta-time, but after a sharp engagement was driven back and bottled up in the north harbour — where it remained for the duration of the siege. Alexander was now able to move round the island without any trouble, looking for a weak point on which to concentrate. He brought up his seaborne artillery and rams against the fortifications by the north harbour, but once again a solid barrage failed to breach them.⁴⁵ The king then moved his entire task-force round to the south-east side of Tyre, just below the Egyptian harbour. Here he had better luck. Concentrated bombardment broke down one section of the wall, and badly shook what remained. Alexander, desperate to follow up this opening, at once threw assault-bridges across from his ships, and ordered a spearhead of crack troops into the breach. They were driven back by a violent and well-aimed hail of missiles.⁴⁶ Yet despite this he knew, beyond any doubt, that he had at last found the vulnerable point in Tyre's defences.

It was now 28 July. Alexander decided to rest his men for a couple of days before the final assault. Something of his suddenly increased confidence must have communicated itself to Aristander the seer, who after taking the omens announced that without a doubt Tyre would fall within the current month. The sea had become choppy again; but on the third night the wind dropped, and at dawn Alexander began a tremendous bombardment of the wall, choosing the same point that he had breached earlier.⁴⁷ When a wide section had been battered into rubble, he withdrew his unwieldy artillery barges, and brought up two special assault craft crammed with shock-troops. While this was going on the Cypriot and Phoenician squadrons launched a powerful attack against both harbours, and numerous other vessels, loaded with archers and ammunition, kept circling the island, lending a hand wherever it might be needed.⁴⁸

As soon as the assault craft were in position, and the gangways run out, a wave of Macedonians charged across on to the battlements. First came the Guards Brigade, closely followed by Craterus' battalion of the phalanx. The commander of the spearhead,Admetus, had his skull split by an axe. When he fell, Alexander took over in person. Stubbornly the Macedonians fought their way along the battlements. Then there came a sound of cheering from the harbours below them: the Cypriot and Phoenician squadrons had successfully smashed their way through.⁴⁹ The Tyrians on the walls, afraid of being caught front and rear, now retreated to the centre of the city, barricading the narrow streets as they went. Tiles came pelting down on their pursuers from the roof-tops. By the Shrine of Agenor Tyre's defenders turned at bay, and fought it out to the death.⁵⁰

When the last organized resistance was broken, Alexander's veterans ranged through the city on a ferocious manhunt, all restraint abandoned, hysterical and half-crazy after the long rigours of that dreadful siege, mere butchers now, striking and trampling and tearing limb from limb until Tyre became a bloody, reeking abattoir.⁵¹ Some citizens locked themselves in their houses and committed suicide. Alexander had ordered that all save those who sought sanctuary were to be slain, and his commands were executed with savage relish. The air grew thick with smoke from burning buildings. Seven thousand Tyrians died in this frightful orgy of destruction, and the number would have been far higher had it not been for the men of Sidon, who entered the city alongside Alexander's troops. Even though Tyre had been Sidon's rival for centuries, these neighbours of the victims, horrified by what they now witnessed, managed to smuggle some 15,000 of them to safety.⁵²

The great city over which Hiram had once held sway was now utterly destroyed. Her king, Azimilik, and various other notables, including envoys from Carthage, had taken refuge in the temple of Melkart, and Alexander spared their lives. The remaining survivors, some 30,000 in number, he sold into slavery. Two thousand men of military age were crucified. Then Alexander went up into the temple, ripped the golden cords from the image of the god (now to be renamed, by decree, Apollo Philalexander), and made his long-delayed sacrifice: the most costly blood-offering even Melkart had ever received.⁵³ Afterwards came the feasting and the processions, a lavish funeral for the Macedonian dead, torch-races, public games, and a splendid naval review. The ram which finally battered down Tyre's bastions Alexander dedicated to Heracles, with an inscription which not even Ptolemy could bring himself to repeat.⁵⁴

But it was Zachariah, a Jewish prophet crying in the wilderness, who had already composed the city's epitaph:

Burden of the Lord's doom, where falls it now? … This Tyre, how strong a fortress she has built, what gold and silver she has amassed, till they were as common as clay, as mire in the streets! Ay, but the Lord means to dispossess her; cast into the sea, all that wealth of hers, and herself burnt to the ground! [Zachariah ix, 1–8]

Against Alexander's mole, quiet now under the summer sky, sand began to drift from the coastal dunes, softening the sharp outline of blocks and joists, linking Tyre ever more closely to the mainland. The flail of the Lord had done his work all too well. With each passing century the peninsula grew wider. Today, deep under asphalt streets and apartment blocks, the stone core of that fantastic causeway still stands: one of Alexander's most tangible and permanent legacies to posterity.

Zachariah was not alone in foreseeing the destruction of Tyre. Darius, too, must have realized that the city could not hold out much longer. Unfortunately he was in no position to relieve its garrison. Rumours to the contrary, he had done very little about raising a new imperial army, preferring to stake everything on the success of his campaign in Asia Minor and the Aegean. All the front-line troops he had available were committed to one of these two theatres. By the summer of 332, however, shortly before Alexander stormed Tyre, Darius was forced to recognize that this campaign had proved an expensive failure. Alexander's commanders on the Hellespont, Amphoterus and Hegelochus, had at last succeeded in raising a powerful fleet (the news of Issus probably helped here, too). They defeated Aristomenes' squadrons off Tenedos, and then swept south through the Aegean, recapturing Lesbos, Chios and other islands. Wholesale desertions from Pharnabazus' fleet by the Phoenician contingents made their task progressively easier as they advanced.

On land the situation (from Darius' point of view) was no better. Balacrus had defeated the Persian satrap Hydarnes, and won back Miletus. Calas was campaigning successfully against the Paphlagonians. Most important of all, the Persian drive to cut Alexander's lines of communication across central Anatolia had proved a complete fiasco. Antigonus the One-Eyed had fought three pitched battles against Nabarzanes' crack cavalry divisions, and won them all.⁵⁵

After a careful assessment of this deteriorating situation, Darius decided to approach Alexander again.⁵⁶ The terms of his second offer were somewhat more generous. Territorial concessions remained unaltered: he would cede all the provinces west of theHalys. But the ransom proposed for his family was now doubled, from ten to twenty thousand talents; and on top of this he offered Alexander the hand in marriage of his eldest daughter, with all the fringe-benefits proper to the Great King's son-in-law. His letter ended on an admonitory note. The Persian Empire was vast: sooner or later Alexander's small army would have to emerge into the steppes, where it would be far more vulnerable. Alexander, however, securely in control at Tyre, had no qualms about rejecting these new proposals. Darius, he told the Persian envoys, was offering him a wife he could marry whenever he so chose, and a dowry which he had already won for himself. He had not crossed the sea to pick up such minor fringe benefits as Lydia or Cilicia. His goal now was Persepolis, and the eastern provinces. If Darius wanted to keep his empire, Alexander repeated, he must fight for it, because the Macedonians would hunt him down wherever he might take refuge.

On receipt of this message, the Great King abandoned his attempt to secure a settlement by diplomatic means, and ‘set to work on vast preparations for war’.⁵⁷ He summoned all the provincial satraps to join him in Babylon, with their full war-levies. The strongest force was that of the Bactrians: he could not afford to dispense with their help, though he profoundly distrusted the Bactrian satrap, Bessus, who had ambitions — and some genealogical claim — to be Great King himself. Conscious that his earlier failures had been due in part to inadequate equipment, Darius this time took far greater care over the arming of his troops. Whole herds of horses were broken in to provide mounts for regiments that had previously fought on foot. Men who had had to make do with javelins were now issued swords and shields. More of the cavalry got protective chain-mail. As a special shock-force, the Great King ordered two hundred scythed chariots, to ‘cut to pieces whatever came in the way of the horses as they were swiftly driven on’.

While Alexander was still at Tyre, fifteen delegates arrived from the Hellenic League. Its member-cities, they announced, had voted Alexander a gold wreath, as a prize for valour and in recognition of all he had done ‘for the safety and freedom of Greece’[sic]. The king was far too realistic to accept this flattery at its face value; but it did offer a valuable pointer as to how much the Greek political climate had been changed by the news of Issus. At the same time Parmenio returned to base from Lowland Syria, having handed over his duties as military commander to Andromachus. Alexander was thus ready to continue his march again.

When the fall of Tyre became known, every coastal city along the direct route south to Egypt had made its submission — with one important exception. This was Gaza, a powerful walled stronghold at the edge of the desert, built on a tell a couple of miles inland, with deep sand-dunes all round it. Besides controlling the approaches to Egypt, Gaza stood at the head of an age-old caravan route, and thus formed a natural clearing-centre for the eastern spice-trade. Its inhabitants, a mixed group of Philistines and Arabs, had thus acquired enormous wealth — another reason for not by-passing it. The city's governor, Batis, believed it to be impregnable. While Alexander was besieging Tyre, Batus had hired a strong force of Arab mercenaries and laid in vast stocks of provisions. Like the Tyrians, he now awaited Alexander's approach with cheerful confidence, secure in the knowledge that the last commander to take Gaza by direct assault had been Cambyses, two centuries previously.

Untroubled by such considerations, Alexander sent Hephaestion ahead by sea with the fleet and the siege-equipment, while he himself led the army thither by land. It seems likely that one of Hephaestion's tasks was to keep the army supplied with food and water: during August and September most of the wadis on the 160-mile stretch between Tyre and Gaza would be dry, while Batis had already efficiently stripped Palestine of its immediate grain-reserves. Alexander could not rely solely on the wells and granaries of the few cities along his route, and the only major river available was the Jordan: the obvious solution was to ferry in regular supplies by sea from Tyre and beyond. The line of march lay down the coast, which made the use of tenders easy: Alexander's troubles in theGedrosian desert (see below, pp. 433 ff.) began when he was forced inland by the mountains of the Makran Coast Range. The Macedonians marched south through Ake (once used by the Persians as a stronghold for attacking Egypt) where Alexander set up another mint; past Mt Carmel, sacred to Baal, and Joppa, where Andromeda had patiently awaited the arrival of her sea-monster, and Ascalon, on the borders of Lowland Syria. Samaria surrendered — for a while; but the tradition that Alexander made a pilgrimage toJerusalem is mere pious legend.

At Gaza this easy progress was brought to an abrupt halt. Alexander's sappers went to work undermining the walls, but their task proved harder than they had anticipated. When the siege-towers were brought up, they sank axle-deep in fine, shifting sand. During a sally by Batis's mercenaries, Alexander was shot in one shoulder, the arrow piercing clean through his corslet. He lost a great deal of blood — it sounds as though the wound severed an artery — and had to be carried off the field half-conscious. The defenders made constant raids on his lines, trying to burn the siege equipment. In the end he was forced to build a mound all round Gaza, to the same height as the tell itself — a monumental undertaking. Then, at last, he could bring his most powerful catapults into play, hauling them up a ramp to the summit of the mound. After a prolonged pounding with heavy stone balls, a breach was opened in the fortifications. While one assault-group scrambled across on gangways, another broke in through an underground tunnel. After some savage hand-to-hand fighting, the city finally fell.

Alexander, whose first wound was still only half-healed, had his leg cracked by an artillery stone during the action. This, combined with the fact that Batis had held up his advance for a further two months, did not leave him in the best of tempers. The defenders, some 10,000 in number, he slaughtered wholesale, while their women and children were sold into slavery. He also captured vast quantities of spices from Gaza's warehouses — which provided him, inter alia, with his memorable present to old Leonidas(see above, p. 42). Batis himself was captured alive, by Leonnatus and Philotas, who brought him before Alexander for judgement. He stood there, grimly defiant, covered with dust and sweat and blood, a huge corpulent dark-skinned eunuch. Interrogated by Alexander, he refused to utter a word; he would not even beg for mercy. The king, who actively disliked ugly people (and was himself in a very ugly mood) seems to have lost control of himself at this point; the ordeal before Tyre had left him more than a little frayed. Curtius asserts that he had Batis lashed by the ankles behind a chariot and dragged round the walls of Gaza till he was dead: a grim variant on Achilles' treatment of Hector's dead body in the Iliad.^{58 d}

From Gaza Alexander marched for the Nile delta, covering the 130 miles to Pelusium in a week — a remarkable forced march which, once again, was probably due to the difficulty of obtaining water and supplies en route, from a region that was nothing but barren desert. As before, the fleet must have been responsible for provisioning his land forces. At some point it was sent on ahead, and when the Macedonians reached Pelusium it was already there to welcome them — together with a rapturous throng of Egyptians, for whom Alexander truly came as a liberator. The Persians had maintained an uneasy and intermittent regime in Egypt ever since 525, when Cambyses had first acquired it for his empire. He made a disastrous start by attempting to break the power of the Egyptian priesthood — destroying their temples, mocking their beliefs, and with his own sword dispatching the sacred bull, Apis.

The Egyptian fellaheen would endure more abuses than most people; but any affront to their religion meant trouble. For two centuries they had regarded the Persians as godless oppressors against whom they revolted whenever the opportunity presented itself. The most successful of these insurrections lasted for some sixty years, during which time Egypt was, to all intents and purposes, an independent country. Three successive attempts to reconquer the province met with little success. It took that brutal autocratArtaxerxes Ochus to break down the last elements of resistance (see above, pp. 51–2). Small wonder, then, that the Egyptians, having endured Persian rule again since 343, now hailed Alexander as their deliverer. The Persians had treated this province all the more harshly because they — like the Romans after them — regarded it as little more than a gigantic free granary, to be exploited by every means at their disposal. Even during the fifth century Egypt's tribute-quota had been set at 700 talents, the second highest of any province in the empire. This did not include the free grain it was required to provide for Persia's 20,000 resident garrison troops.

Alexander, therefore, had everything in his favour when he arrived. If he took care not to offend local religious susceptibilities — better still, if he participated in some kind of public ritual to symbolize the transfer of power — he could count on enthusiastic support from the entire population. In the event, he got rather more than he bargained for. What had been conceived as a piece of political diplomacy turned into a profoundly felt emotional and spiritual experience. It is no exaggeration to say that the months Alexander spent in Egypt, from late October 332 till April 331, marked a psychological turning-point in his life.

From Pelusium the Macedonian fleet and army advanced up the Nile in stately procession towards Memphis. The Persian garrison offered no resistance. Mazaces, Darius' governor, came out to meet Alexander, presenting him with ‘800 talents and all the royal furniture’. This obliging service won Mazaces an administrative post in the new regime. But when Alexander reached Memphis, he found a still greater tribute awaiting him. The Persian kings had been, ex officio, Pharaohs of Egypt, by right of conquest over the native dynasty. Alexander had put down Darius: in the priests' eyes he now became their legitimate ruler. So, on 14 November 332, the young Macedonian was solemnly instated as Pharaoh. They placed the double crown on his head, and the crook and flail in his hands. He became simultaneously god and king, incarnation and son of Ra and Osiris; he was Horus the Golden One, the mighty prince, beloved of Amen, King of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The impact of this revelation on Alexander can well be imagined. Here, at last, Olympias' belief in his divine birth found a wholly acceptable context. Pharaonic dogma closed the gap between mortal and immortal, fused godhead and royal supremacy in one person. Soon Alexander's new subjects — primed, no doubt, by the propaganda section — absorbed the old rumours of his begetting into their own theocratic system. The god who had visited Olympias in the guise of a snake (the royal uraeus?) was Nectanebo, the last native Pharaoh; and the child of this union was Alexander.

Too much success can be dangerous: power breeds its own special isolation. There are signs that after Issus Alexander began to lose touch with his Macedonians, and such an infusion of superhuman charisma must surely have accelerated the process. Already his achievement had out-rivalled those of Heracles. Now, amid the ancient splendours of Egypt — a civilization which invariably bred semi-mystical awe in the Greek mind — he learnt that he was in truth a god, and the son of a god. Greek tradition distinguished sharply between the two; Egypt did not. For Alexander this was to have interesting consequences.

After the coronation ceremony, Egypt's new Pharaoh made public sacrifice to Apis and the other Egyptian gods. Then, to show that despite everything he remained a Hellene at heart, he held splendid athletic contests and literary festivals, inviting many distinguished artists from Greece to take part in them. His growing number of local and not-so-local roles raised serious problems for the future. Already he was King of Macedonia, hegemon of the Greek League, Queen Ada's adopted son in Caria, and now Pharaoh of Egypt. In the last-named capacity he hastened to emphasize the contrast between his own regime and that of his Persian predecessors. Before leaving Memphis, in January 331, he ordered the restoration of at least two temples, at Karnak and Luxor (both of them, in all likelihood, destroyed by Cambyses). Then he sailed back down the Nile, this time along the western, or Canopic, tributary.

Here he was following a long-established Greek precedent. For centuries all sea-borne commerce had entered the Nile by its so-called ‘Canopic mouth’, sailing some fifty miles through the delta to Naucratis, the international Greek trading-port. Alexander'sobject, clearly, was to visit Naucratis and assess its value as a commercial centre. Having eliminated Tyre, he now meant to divert the Eastern Mediterranean's highly profitable flow of maritime traffic from Phoenicia to Egypt. Naucratis, perhaps because of its isolated inland position, did not impress him. When he reached the coast, and sailed round Lake Mareotis, he found a far better site, on a narrow limestone ridge between lake and sea, opposite the island of Pharos. The harbour here was deep, and provided excellent shelter. Both land approaches could be easily blocked against invasion. Cool prevailing winds would ensure a pleasant, healthy climate, even at the height of summer. There were no steamy marshes, no dust-storms, no malaria. Once more Alexander had a prophetic dream, in which some hoary sage declaimed Homer's lines alluding to Pharos. As his first royal act, Egypt's Macedonian Pharaoh decided to build a city there — Alexandria, the most famous of all those many foundations which afterwards bore his name.⁵⁹

About this time Hegelochus arrived in Egypt, with a more than welcome report on Macedonian naval successes in the Aegean. He also brought with him a number of ‘hard-core’ oligarchs from Chios, who had ruled the island during Pharnabazus'ascendency. These he judged too dangerous to be left to the unpredictable mercies of the League Council, and Alexander agreed with him: they were promptly banished to Elephantine, far up the Nile. This, of course, constituted a flagrant breach of the LeagueTreaty; but by now Alexander cared very little for Greek opinion, and one technical illegality more or less made little difference to him. The most important news that Hegelochus brought, however, concerned Athens. Demades, who was now in charge of Athenianstate revenues (while remaining a good friend to Antipater) had persuaded the Athenian assembly not to make their powerful fleet available to King Agis of Sparta for the revolt he was now planning. If they did so, he pointed out, they would lose 50 drachmas apiece: these funds, at present earmarked for public distribution during the Anthesteria (a religious spring festival) would go towards the expedition instead. Even Demosthenes kept quiet at this point; it seems possible that there was some private connection between him and (of all people) Hephaestion.⁶⁰

It was now that Alexander expressed a particular desire, a pothos (see above, p. 128) to consult the oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the Siwah Oasis.⁶¹ Since Siwah lay some three hundred miles distant across the burning wastes of the Libyan desert, his motives must have been very compelling. He did not make a habit of wasting six weeks or more on some mere casual whim. On the other hand, he did tend to consult an oracle before each major advance in his career of conquest. He had made a special detour to Delphi; the incident at Gordium had left a profound impression on him. Now once again he hoped to lift the veil that covered his future. In this connection it is significant that, though ‘Ammon’ was a Hellenized form of the Egyptian deity Amen-Ra, nevertheless Siwah's reputation stood highest in the Greek-speaking world.⁶²

The oracle had been consulted by Croesus, and before him — or so legend related — by Alexander's ancestors Perseus and Heracles. Pindar had composed a hymn to Ammon, and dedicated his temple in Thebes. The Athenians had consulted his oracle during the Peloponnesian War; Aristophanes bracketed Siwah, for reliability, with Delphi and Dodona. Since then its reputation had risen still further. Many distinguished Greeks, including Lysander the Spartan, had sought its guidance. The Greeks in general regarded Ammon as parallel to, if not precisely identical with, their own Zeus: the very existence of an ‘Ammonium’ in Athens shows how far he had been acclimatized. If Alexander, as Pharaoh, had wished to consult an Egyptian oracle, he could have done so without setting foot outside the Nile Valley — at hundred-gated Thebes, for example. But despite his long flirtation with orientalism, he remained in many ways surprisingly parochial, not least in religious matters. What he wanted was the most trustworthy Greekoracle within marching-range. He may have felt himself specially favoured by the gods; but for him they were Greek gods, and would only speak through a suitably Hellenized mouthpiece.

Alexander had several obvious motives for making such a pilgrimage. Despite the scepticism expressed by some modern scholars, there can be little doubt that he was anxious to clear up the very serious question of his divine parentage. If he was in truth son of Ammon — or of Zeus — as the priests had declared him at his coronation, then let the oracle endorse their claim. Quite apart from this, he was about to embark on a crucial stage of his campaign, and would have been less than human had he not shown concern as to its ultimate success or failure. Would Siwah confirm the judgement of Gordium, and declare him the future lord of Asia? There was also the question of this new city he hoped to found at the mouth of the Nile: no Greek would dream of attempting such a task without endorsement from an oracle. Lastly — one question on which almost all our sources are agreed — he wanted to know whether all his father's murderers had been punished. If he was indeed a party to the assassination himself, this carefully oblique query affords us a horrifying glimpse into his mind. The fear of divine retribution hung over him; Philip's angry ghost, like Orestes' ineluctable Furies, haunted him still. And if he were declared the son of a god, parricide would ipso facto become mere murder, a venial offence which (to judge by the number of occasions on which he committed it) caused him few if any qualms.

So, probably in late January, he set out westward with a small party, following the coastal road immortalized by another great general, in a more modern war. He passed through the village known today as El Alamein, and after travelling about 170 miles reached the Libyan border settlement of Paraetonium (Mersa Matruh). Here he was met by a group of envoys from Cyrene, bringing expensive gifts, and an offer of friendship and alliance. Alexander duly made a treaty with them, which may have included an agreement for the purchase of North African wheat. He was always meticulous about securing his frontiers.⁶³ From Paraetonium he struck south-west into the desert, along an ancient caravan-trail. Siwah was still nearly 200 miles away.

This part of Alexander's journey proved both hazardous and uncomfortable.⁶⁴ After four days the party's water-supplies gave out, and only a providential rainstorm saved them. Later the khamsin — that terrible south wind of the desert — blew up, obliterating all landmarks in a blinding sandstorm. Alexander's guides completely lost their bearings, until a migrant flight of birds making for the oasis enabled them to pick up the trail again. They finally reached Siwah in late February, some three weeks after setting out. It must have been a welcome sight: an abundance of olives and date-palms, and everywhere the sound of water from innumerable springs.⁶⁵ But Alexander had no time for relaxation. He went straight to the temple, where the chief priest, warned of his approach, was waiting for him.⁶⁶ The new Pharaoh received a traditional greeting as ‘Son of Ammon, Good God, Lord of the Two Lands’. His first query, then, was solved before he ever set foot inside the holy of holies.

Since none of his followers was admitted with him, and Alexander never revealed what took place during that famous oracular consultation (though it is just possible that the priests may have done so for a consideration) the responses he received must remain problematical.⁶⁷ When he came out, all he would say in answer to a chorus of eager questions was that ‘he had been told what his heart desired’. In a subsequent letter to his mother, he wrote that he had learnt certain secret matters which he would impart to her, and to her alone, on his return. Since he died without ever again setting foot on Macedonian soil, these secrets went to the grave with him. Nevertheless, it seems very likely that the traditional answers are not too wide of the mark. Alexander's status as son of a god now became more generally known and accepted: other oracles hastened to endorse the claim. If Ammon did not actually promise him the Achaemenid empire, at least he was told to which gods he should sacrifice if, or when, he became lord of Asia (see below, p. 429). The future site of Alexandria must have been approved. Tradition asserts that he had to rephrase his question about Philip's murderers, since he had spoken of ‘his father’, and it was impious to describe the god as suffering a violent death. But whatever Alexander heard at Siwah, one thing is certain: it struck him with the force of a revelation, and left a permanent mark on his whole future career.

His purpose thus accomplished — and Ammon's priests suitably rewarded — Alexander left Siwah and returned by the way he had come: across the desert, and then eastward along the coast road to Lake Mareotis. He could have taken a more direct route, straight through the Qattara Depression to Memphis; but this would entail a 400-mile journey across unrelieved desert, which no more appealed to Alexander than it did to Rommel in 1941.⁶⁸ Besides, he was impatient to supervise the planning of his new city: time enough to revisit Memphis later. By the time he got back the king clearly had the whole plan of Alexandria worked out. It was to be built along the isthmus, in the symbolically appropriate shape of a Macedonian military cloak. Deinochares, the city-planner who had re-designed Ephesus, persuaded Alexander to adopt the axial-grid system, with a great central boulevard running from east to west, intersected by numerous streets at right-angles. But the king had his own ideas about such matters as the exact line of the outer fortifications, the position of the central market, and the sites to be reserved for various temples — including a shrine to the Egyptian goddess Isis.

He strode about the ridge at a breathless pace, marking-chalk in hand, equerries and surveyors panting along behind him. The dock area and harbours would be opposite Pharos, and the island itself was to be linked with the mainland by a great mole (later known as the Heptastadion because it was seven stades or furlongs in length). The grid was to be placed at such an angle that the streets got the full benefit of the Etesian winds. Presently Alexander ran out of chalk, and helpful attendants provided him with baskets of barley-meal that had been intended for the workers' rations. Full of town-planning zeal — what the workers had to say about it is not recorded — the king scattered flour by the handful, wherever the fancy took him. His main object appears to have been a quasi-ritual outlining of the city-wall. Presently flocks of hungry gulls and other birds descended en masse and made short work of this unexpected feast, till every last grain was devoured.

Alexander, being superstitious to a degree, was seriously alarmed, and at first regarded the incident as an unfavourable omen for his project. But that ingenious seer Aristander quickly reassured him. The city, he foretold, would have ‘most abundant and helpful resources and be a nursing mother to men of every nation’. For once he hit the mark better than he knew, and those familiar with Alexandria's cosmopolitan splendours can fully endorse his verdict. The city's official foundation-date was 7 April: after the first bricks had been laid, Alexander left the builders to get on with it and sailed back up-river to Memphis,⁶⁹ where the atmosphere of divine royalty enfolded him once more. On temple walls at Luxor and Karnak and Khonsu Egyptian artists were busy depicting their new Pharaoh, ‘king of the south and north, Setep-en-Amon-meri-re, son of the sun, lord of risings, Arksandres’, a god among gods, in the act of sacrifice.

Nor, indeed, was this new line in flattery confined to Egypt. Once the Greeks learnt what had taken place at Memphis and Siwah, they very quickly saw how Alexander's position could be exploited for their own benefit. Among many embassies awaiting him on his return was one from Miletus, with remarkable news concerning Apollo's oracle at nearby Didyma. No prophecies had issued from this shrine since its destruction during the Persian Wars. Even the sacred spring dried up. But with the coming of Alexander— or so the envoys said — miracle of miracles, the spring began to flow again, and the god to prophesy. Since the Milesians were anxious to excuse themselves for having supported Pharnabazus during his Aegean campaign, the king probably took all this with a fairly large grain of salt. Nevertheless, it made undeniably useful political propaganda. Apollo ratified Alexander's descent from Zeus, predicted great future victories for him (not to mention the death of Darius), and saw no future in King Agis' threatened Spartanrevolt.^{70 e}

From now on Alexander began to take a noticeably softer line with embassies from mainland Greece. All those who waited upon him in Memphis, for instance, had their petitions granted out of hand. Success — combined with what he had learnt at Siwah— may have put the king in a more generous mood; but it is hard not to believe that he was also influenced by the potentially explosive situation in the Peloponnese. Anything that might prevent a general revolt of the Greek states was worth trying.

The administration of Egypt presented special problems. The country's size, wealth, and enormous strategic importance had made a deep impression on Alexander. He also knew that its history as a province revealed two recurrent hazards: nationalist insurrections, and take-over bids by ambitious satraps. The arrangements he now put into force aimed to avoid both, their cardinal principle being complete separation of the civil and military arms. As far as possible Alexander left the actual running of the administration in Egyptian hands — a move which won him considerable popularity. Municipal government went on exactly as before, operating through a network of district commissioners. Thus, though taxes were now paid into the Macedonian war-chest, they continued to be collected by native officials: if the fellaheen grumbled, it would not be against Alexander. The existing structure was retained even in the higher echelons, so that an Egyptian ‘nomarch’, in true Pharaonic style, ruled over Upper and Lower Egypt. But since he controlled neither troops nor taxes, he had little chance of acquiring real power.

A similar system of divide and rule was employed on the military side. The eastern and western frontier districts were commanded by two Greeks, one of whom, Cleomenes of Naucratis, was further responsible for receiving taxes after collection. Alexander installed Macedonian garrisons at Memphis and Pelusium; the mercenaries remained under their own officers and were stationed elsewhere. Supreme command over these various units — some 4,000 men in all — was divided between two (possibly three) generals. Even they, however, had no authority over the naval squadron left to guard the Nile delta. Yet, despite all these precautions, a clever man — in this case Cleomenes — could, and did, very soon make himself de facto satrap of Egypt. He saw that the key to success here was hard cash, and (with the help of his military-cum-fiscal office) proceeded to amass it in vast quantities. The story of his rapid rise to power, through robbery, blackmail, grain-profiteering and wholesale extortion, is too complex, and marginal, to relate here. What does call for comment, however, is Alexander's reaction to it.

It was not long, a year or two at most, before this typical Middle East success story reached the king's ears. Far from removing his subordinate, or charging him with gross corruption, Alexander tacitly accepted Cleomenes' enhanced status. Later, this official recognition was still further extended, and all the Greek's past misdemeanours written off. Cleomenes, crook though he might be, was highly efficient and (more important) completely lacking in political ambition. He had nothing to gain from disloyalty to his master. He might make huge profits for himself, but he was sensible enough to give Alexander the lion's share. As a result he was the only Macedonian-appointed governor (apart from Antigonus the One-Eyed, who had different methods of making himself indispensable) to hold office uninterruptedly until the king's death. There is a moral of a sort here.⁷¹

The holiday in Egypt was now over. Callisthenes, who had been travelling round Ethiopia and speculating (with remarkable prescience) on the sources of the Nile, prepared to resume his more serious official labours. Alexander — having first had the river and its tributary canals bridged just below Memphis — set out on the road back to Tyre. It was now mid April. Just before the army marched north one of Parmenio's sons, Hector, was drowned during a boating expedition. Though Alexander is said to have been much attached to the young man personally, he doubtless consoled himself with the reflection that Hector's death meant one less place which Parmenio could fill. As he advanced up the coast, he learnt that Andromachus, his military commander in Lowland Syria, had been burnt alive by the Samarians. One swift, savage raid sufficed to smoke these guerrillas out of the caves in the Wadi Daliyeh where they had taken refuge. The murderers were surrendered and executed.

At Tyre Alexander found the fleet awaiting him, together with envoys from Athens, Rhodes and Chios. The Athenians had come to make a second application for the release of their fellow-countrymen captured at the Granicus (see above, p. 215). This time the request was granted at once, without argument. The Chians and Rhodians had complaints about their Macedonian garrisons: these complaints, after investigation, the king upheld. He also reimbursed the citizens of Mytilene for their expenses during the Aegeancampaign, and granted them a large stretch of territory on the mainland opposite. All the king's actions at this point suggest that he was especially anxious to conciliate the Greeks as far as possible before heading east after Darius. Hence the high honours he paid to the independent princes of Cyprus, whose fleet had proved so invaluable during the siege of Tyre.

This policy of Alexander's shows diplomatic foresight, but must also have been to a great extent dictated by the alarming news from mainland Greece. During the winter Agis and his brother Agesilaus had managed to win over most of Crete. Before leavingEgypt, Alexander dispatched a naval task-force under Amphoterus (who had reported back from the Hellespont) with orders to ‘liberate’ the island and clear the sea of ‘pirates’ — the latter term doubtless including, if not specifically designating, any pro-Spartansquadrons they might encounter. But at Tyre Alexander learnt that Agis was now in open revolt. He had gathered a large mercenary force, and was appealing for all the Greek states to join him. A number of them, however — as might have been predicted — were either undecided, or anxious to stay clear of trouble. This gave Alexander his opening. A hundred Cypriot and Phoenician triremes now sailed to Crete to rendezvous with Amphoterus. The combined flotilla would then move into Peloponnesian waters, and do everything possible to unite the still uncommitted city-states against Sparta. Further rumours were coming in about a revolt in Thrace. But Alexander could waste no further time or reserves on Greece; from now on it was up to Antipater.

Before he finally left Tyre, Alexander made several important administrative changes. Menon, the satrap of Syria, had died shortly after taking office, and his stop-gap successor did not come up to Alexander's high standards of efficiency over organizingsupplies for the army's forthcoming march inland. The king replaced him with a more carefully chosen nominee. However, the incident also suggested to him that he might do well to appoint two senior finance officers, with jurisdiction respectively over Phoeniciaand coastal Asia Minor. Their main task would be to collect taxes (or rather syntaxeis) from the countless ‘independent’ city-states under Macedonian rule.

These new appointments were due in part to the mysterious reappearance of Harpalus, Alexander's former quartermaster-general and treasurer, who had supposedly defected just before Issus (see above, p. 222), but was more probably on a secret mission toGreece. (He may well have brought Alexander intelligence concerning Agis' activities in the Peloponnese; and it is tempting, in view of later developments [see below, pp. 308–9], to associate him with Athens' abstention from the revolt.) During his absence the Treasury had been run by two men, Coeranus and Philoxenus. Alexander, we are told, invited Harpalus back himself, promising him not merely a free pardon, but also — far more extraordinary, on the face of it — reinstatement in his old office, which carried enormous power and responsibility.⁷²

Unless Harpalus' ‘defection’ was in fact some kind of cover-story, it is hard to credit Alexander, of all people, with so touching a faith in human repentance, especially regarding a post which involved access to vast stores of plunder and bullion. Whatever the truth of the matter, Harpalus, not surprisingly, accepted the king's offer without hesitation. His return, however, meant that new positions would have to be found for his stand-ins. It seemed a pity to waste their newly-acquired expertise: by appointing them regional finance officers Alexander solved the problem very neatly. This, of course, left them as Harpalus' direct subordinates.

In early summer 331 Alexander led his whole army northeast through Syria, reaching Thapsacus on the Euphrates not earlier than 10 July.⁷³ By now the Mesopotamian summer was at its height. Temperatures in the plain reached a steady 110°F — not exactly ideal conditions for men carrying battle equipment, and in all likelihood heavy waterskins (not to mention iron rations) as well.^f An advance party led by Hephaestion had constructed two pontoon bridges, leaving the final span incomplete as a safeguard against attack. Their operations were observed by a cavalry force some 3,000 strong under Mazaeus, the satrap of Babylon. Darius knew very well that Babylon itself must be Alexander's next objective. This great city on the Lower Euphrates was the economic centre of the empire, the strategic bastion protecting Susa, Persepolis, and the eastern provinces. Nor was there much doubt in the Great King's mind as to the route his adversary would take. Alexander, he knew, struck hard, fast, and with maximum economy. It was therefore odds-on that he would come straight down the east bank of the Euphrates — just as Cyrus had done in 401, to meet disastrous defeat at Cunaxa.

There are signs that Darius had studied the battle of Cunaxa with some care, and hoped to repeat it in detail. Mazaeus' advance force was similarly ordered to retreat before the invader, burning all crops for fodder as it went. Even the famous scythe-chariots (a long outmoded method of warfare) had been re-introduced because Artaxerxes used them against Cyrus. Darius clearly thought he had found the magical formula for victory. The plain at Cunaxa, some sixty miles north-west of Babylon, was ideal for cavalry manoeuvres — and the Great King now had some 34,000 armed horsemen at his disposal. Alexander's troops, he calculated, would reach Cunaxa hot, exhausted, and underfed. Between Mazaeus' scorched-earth policy and the blazing Mesopotamian sun, they would fall easy victims to his own fresh, well-armed, and numerically superior divisions.

This whole elaborate fantasy, however, depended on Alexander's doing just what he was expected to do: always a dangerous assumption, and especially foolish in the present instance. It might surely have occurred to the Persian High Command that their opponent was at least as familiar with the Cunaxa débâcle as they were. Alexander, who undoubtedly knew his Anabasis, was the last man to walk into such a trap when he had Cyrus' example to warn him off. Besides, the narrow green strip of the Euphrates valley would barely support his army even if Mazaeus failed to lay it waste. So when the bridges were built, the Macedonian army, instead of marching downstream as predicted, struck out in a north-easterly direction across the Mesopotamian plain.

Mazaeus watched them go, horror-struck. Then he rode the 440 miles back to Babylon with the news. Darius could forget his dream of a second Cunaxa; a quick change of strategy was imperative. The Great King thereupon made up his mind to hold Alexander at the Tigris: a bold but hazardous plan, since no one could be certain where the Macedonian intended to cross. Four main fords could be regarded as possibilities. The nearest of these to Babylon was at Mosul, 356 miles away. From Thapsacus the march to Mosul was slightly longer, 371 miles. But as one went farther north, the ratio of distances changed in Alexander's favour. The most remote crossing-point from Babylon was also the nearest to Thapsacus, 308 miles as opposed to 422.

Darius' plan looks competent enough on paper. Fast mounted scouts were at once sent out to reconnoitre all the main crossing-points; these would report back to an advance force under Mazaeus, who would in turn notify Darius himself. The main body of the imperial army — now perhaps 100,000 strong — would march north by the Royal Road to Arbela, due east of Mosul. This was where the Great King hoped and expected that Alexander's crossing would take place. However, if he chose a different ford, Mazaeusand his cavalry were to fight a holding action until the main force, under Darius himself, came up and finished the Macedonians off. In point of fact the Great King had no option but to concentrate on the Mosul ford. With his unwieldy army this was the only crossing-point where he could hope to get into position before Alexander arrived. Even so, he was going to have remarkable luck if he made it with any margin to spare. The overall plan depended on perfect coordination between Mazaeus, the scouts, and command headquarters. The imperial army had, at all costs, to reach Arbela on schedule. Most important of all, Alexander must get no inkling of this revised strategy: a security leak would be fatal.

The Great King got his forces to Arbela, and prepared to march on Mosul. Meanwhile Alexander, following the northern route across Mesopotamia, had been lucky enough to capture some of Darius' scouts. Under interrogation they not only revealed the entire Persian plan of campaign, but also provided valuable details concerning the size and composition of the Great King's army. (How far Alexander believed what he was told is, as we shall see, quite another matter.) If the Macedonians had, in fact, been making for the Mosul ford, which seems quite probable, there was now a quick change of route: they turned off in the direction of Abu Wajnam, some forty miles to the north.⁷⁴

Alexander reached the Tigris on 18 September, having suffered none of the hardships predicted by Darius. Northern Mesopotamia was not only cooler than the Euphrates valley, but far better supplied with grain and fodder. His men were neither starved nor wilting from heat-exhaustion. Even the perils of the crossing itself have been much exaggerated. Tradition paints a graphic picture of the Macedonian phalanx struggling breast-deep through a raging torrent, arms linked to stop themselves being swept away. There might have been a sudden flash-storm; but modern travellers report the average depth of the Tigris in September, between Jazirat and Mosul, as about a foot. In any case, the Macedonians encountered no opposition at Abu Wajnam. A few frightened scouts fled south with the news, and the Great King — already across the Greater Zab and approaching Mosul — had to change his plans yet again. He no longer had the Tigris between Alexander's army and his own. The Macedonians were little more than fifty miles away. His best chance now was to locate another open plain, suitable for cavalry and chariots, and bring Alexander to battle there.

Persian scouts found what he needed at Gaugamela (Tell Gomel), a village between the Khazir River and the ruins of Nineveh. Darius brought up his troops, inspected the plain, and at once set sappers to work clearing it of any trees, rocks, or awkward hummocks. What he did not do — an omission which afterwards cost him dear — was to occupy the low hills some three miles to the north-west. From this convenient vantage-point Alexander's reconnaissance troops subsequently observed, and reported on, all his military dispositions.

Shortly after crossing the Tigris, Alexander made contact with a regiment of Mazaeus' cavalry. The Paeonian mounted scouts, under their leader Ariston, were sent up to deal with this nuisance. The Persians fled; Ariston speared their commander, cut off his head, and ‘amid great applause laid it at the king's feet’. The Macedonians were then given two days' rest. On the night before they resumed their march (20–21 September, at 9.20 p.m.) a near-total lunar eclipse took place. Aristander, optimistic as always, interpreted this as meaning victory for Alexander ‘during that self-same moon’. Duly reassured, the army set off once more. Four days later (24 September) Mazaeus' cavalry was sighted again. Could this indicate the presence of the whole Persian army? A quick cavalry raid, led by the king in person, secured one or two prisoners. These soon told him what he wanted to know. Darius now lay at Gaugamela, no more than eight miles away beyond the hills. His ground-levelling operations showed that he did not intend to budge far from his present camp. Alexander therefore, very sensibly, gave his own troops another four days' rest (25–8 September). The heat down in the plain was gruelling, and he wanted them as fit and fresh as possible for the final battle.

During this period Darius' agents tried to smuggle in messages offering the Macedonians rich rewards if they would kill or betray Alexander. These were intercepted and (on Parmenio's advice) suppressed. The camp was also strengthened with a ditch and a palisade.⁷⁵ It was now, too, that the Great King's unfortunate wife fell ill and died — either in childbirth or as the result of a miscarriage. Since she had been separated from her husband since November 333, almost two years before, Alexander may conceivably not have found her quite such an ‘irritation to the eyes’ (let alone to his long-term dynastic ambitions) as he liked to proclaim. This sad news was brought to Darius by a eunuch of the queen's bedchamber, who escaped from the Macedonian camp, stole a horse, and so reached the Persian lines.

The Great King's reaction was interesting. After an understandable outburst of sorrow and passion, he pulled himself together, and made his third and final attempt to reach a settlement with Alexander by peaceful negotiation. This time he offered more, far more, than previously — all territories west of the Euphrates; 30,000 talents as ransom for his mother and daughters; the hand of one daughter in marriage, and the retention of his son Ochus as a permanent hostage. Alexander placed these proposals before his war council — though this time the decision was never seriously in doubt. Parmenio, as spokesman for the old guard, observed sourly that dragging so many prisoners around ever since the capture of Damascus had been a great nuisance: why not ransom the lot and have done with it? As for one old woman and two girls, they were a bargain at the price offered. No man hitherto had ever ruled from the Euphrates to the Danube — and here was Darius proposing to ratify all these conquests without a fight! ‘If I were Alexander,’ Parmenio concluded, ‘I should accept this offer.’ ‘So should I,’ said Alexander, ‘if I were Parmenio.’ Then he turned to Darius' envoys. Asia could no more support two monarchs, he told them, than the earth could exist with two suns. If Darius wanted to keep his throne, he would have to fight for it. The Persian terms were rejected out of hand, and Darius ‘gave up any hope of a diplomatic settlement’.⁷⁶

Alexander had not yet actually set eyes on Darius' new army for himself, and was clearly sceptical of what he had heard concerning it. He seems to have assumed that it would be neither very much larger nor noticeably more efficient than the force which he had broken at Issus. Prisoners' reports and similar sources always tended to exaggerate. His own army had been built up since then to a total of about 47,000 men. Before dawn on 29 September he breasted the low ridge of hills above Gaugamela, and got the first glimpse of what he was up against. It shocked him considerably. Darius' army consisted, to all intents and purposes, entirely of cavalry, and armoured cavalry at that. Looking down through the morning haze, Alexander could see countless thousands of mailed horsemen, this time including the crack eastern divisions from Parthia and Bactria. A snap count suggested that in this vital arm the Macedonians were outnumbered by at least five to one. The Great King, unable to raise a competent infantry force, had decided to give up the idea of front-line foot-soldiers altogether.

Not only was this highly unconventional force stronger and better-armed than Alexander had anticipated; its order of battle also slightly took him aback. Darius, this time, was clearly determined that the Macedonians should not repeat those tactics which had brought them victory at Issus and the Granicus. On his left wing he had stationed a considerable force of Bactrian and Scythian cavalry, together with half his scythed chariots. The more he studied these Persian dispositions, the less Alexander liked them. He therefore assembled his staff-commanders, and solicited their advice. Should they attack now, or wait till tomorrow? Without any overt suggestion that the Persian army was more formidable than had been supposed, he argued that perhaps the terrain needed closer reconnaissance. There had been rumours of hidden pits with sharpened stakes fixed in them, of caltrops and other similar devices. Most of his officers were keyed up for immediate action, but Alexander — with Parmenio's backing — managed to talk them out of it.

He spent much of 29 September riding round the prospective battlefield with a strong cavalry escort, examining the ground — and Darius' lines — with a very sharp eye. The Persians made no attempt to stop him. Then (like his hero Achilles, but for very different reasons) he retired to his tent. While his men ate and slept, Alexander sat up hour after hour, ‘casting over in his mind the number of the Persian forces’, considering and discarding one tactical scheme after another. During the night Parmenio visited him, with the suggestion of a surprise night-attack. The king retorted, snubbingly, that to steal victory was a cheap trick (and, he might have added, bad propaganda): ‘Alexander must defeat his enemies openly and without subterfuge.’ Besides, as Arrian reminds us, a night-attack is of all operations the most dangerous and unpredictable. This did not stop Alexander from carefully ‘leaking’ the possibility of such an attack, so that the rumour very soon reached Darius' lines. As a result the Persians stood to arms all night and were exceedingly sleepy in the morning.

After much thought, Alexander worked out the last details of his master strategy — and having done so, at once fell into a deep untroubled sleep. The sun rose, but the king did not. Company officers, on their own initiative, sounded reveille and issued orders for the men to take breakfast. Still Alexander slumbered on. Finally Parmenio shook him awake. It was high time to form up in battle order — and only Alexander himself knew what that order was. The king yawned and stretched. When Parmenio expressed surprise at his having slept so soundly, Alexander retorted: ‘It is not remarkable at all. When Darius was scorching the earth, razing villages, destroying foodstuffs, I was beside myself; but now what am I to fear, when he is preparing to fight a pitched battle? By Heracles, he has done exactly what I wanted.’

This in one sense was true, as it had been at the Granicus, and for much the same reasons (see above, pp. 170–71); but it was also the most superb bravado. Darius had 34,000 front-line cavalry to Alexander's 7,250: no amount of strategy — or so it might have been thought — could get round that one basic fact.⁷⁷ Alexander was going to be outflanked, and knew it. There were no mountains to protect him as at Issus, and no sea either. The Persian line overlapped his by nearly a mile. So while his basic order of battle remained unchanged, he took special pains to protect his flanks and rear — and also to make his line appear weaker there than it in fact was. He stationed a powerful force of mercenaries on his right wing, carefully masking them with cavalry squadrons. He echeloned both wings back at an angle of 45° from his main battle-line. Finally, he placed the league infantry and the rest of the Greek mercenaries to cover his rear.

He was, in fact, making a virtue of necessity. Alone in his lamplit tent, by sheer intuitive genius, he had invented a tactical plan that was to be imitated, centuries afterwards, by Marlborough at Blenheim and Napoleon at Austerlitz, but which no other general (so far as is known) had hitherto conceived. To reduce the vast numerical odds against him, and to create an opening for his decisive charge, he planned to draw as many Persian cavalry units as possible away from the centre, into engagement with his flank-guards. When the flanks were fully committed he would strike, hard, at Darius' weakened centre. Such a plan, of course, was going to need the most delicate timing. Alexander had no spare cavalry with which to provoke Darius. The Great King himself must make the first move, must be edged into taking the bait which those massively outflanked and deceptively weak-looking wings offered him. Furthermore, the decisive attack itself had to be delivered at just the right moment. ‘If he charged too soon, his offensive weapon would be blunted; if he left it too late, the wings might cave in and the heavy cavalry become involved in a fight for its very existence.’⁷⁸

Both commanders made a speech before the battle,⁷⁹ and in each case an interesting theological angle was involved. Darius, invoking Mithra, emphasized to his troops that this was a Holy War rather than a mere struggle for power: his description of Alexander and the Macedonians sounds uncommonly like later Persian diatribes against the Demons of the Race of Wrath (which may, indeed, have influenced Curtius' account). Alexander, attended by a white-robed, gold-crowned Aristander, delivered a long exhortation to the Thessalians and league troops — not, be it noted, to his own Macedonians — praying the gods ‘if he was really sprung from Zeus, to defend and strengthen the Greeks’. It was the morning of 30 September 331 B.C. These preliminaries once over, the Macedonian and Persian armies moved forward, crabwise and with apparent reluctance, into an engagement which, as it turned out, ‘gave Alexander the chance to secure the whole Persian Empire from the Euphrates to the Hindu Kush’: his military masterpiece, alike in design and execution.

Macedonians Right flank guard   1 Greek Mercenary Cavalry—Menidas   2 Lancers—Aretes   3 Paeonian Cavalry—Ariston   4 ½ Agrianians—Attalus   5 ½ Macedonian Archers—Briso   6 Veteran Mercenaries—Cleander Right wing   7 Companion Cavalry—Philotas   8 Javelin-men—Balacrus   9 ½ Macedonian Archers—Briso 10 ½ Agrianians—Attalus 11 Hypaspists—Nicanor 12 Phalanx—Coenus 13 Phalanx—Perdiccas 14 Phalanx—Meleager 15 Phalanx—Polyperchon Left wing 16 Phalanx—Simmias 17 Phalanx—Craterus 18 Allied Greek Cavalry—Erigyius 19 Thessalian Cavalry—Philip 20 Cretan Archers—Clearchus 21 Achaian Mercenary Infantry Left flank guard 22 Greek Mercenary Cavalry—Andromachus 23 Thracian Horse—Sitalces 24 Allied Greek Horse—Coeranus 25 Odrysian Horse—Agathon

Persians Left wing a Bactrian Cavalry b Dahae Cavalry c Arachosian Cavalry d Persian Cavalry e Susian Cavalry f Cadusian Cavalry g Bactrian Cavalry h Scythian Cavalry i Chariots Centre j Carian Cavalry k Greek Mercenaries l Persian Horse Guards m Persian Foot Guards n Indian Cavalry o Mardian Archers Right wing p Coelo—Syrian Cavalry q Mesopotamian Cavalry r Median Cavalry s Parthian Cavalry t Sacian Cavalry u Tapurian Cavalry v Hyrcanian Cavalry w Albanian Cavalry x Sacesinian Cavalry y Cappadocian Cavalry z Armenian Cavalry

The Macedonians advanced, as usual, with their left wing progressively echeloned back, trying to lure the Persian right, under Mazaeus, into a premature flank engagement. At the same time the Persian left — commanded by Bessus, satrap of Bactria and would-be Great King — outflanked Alexander so far that he and the Companion Cavalry were almost opposite Darius' central command-post. Neither side wanted to initiate the engagement: both Alexander and Darius — who by now had learnt the secret of his opponent's ‘oblique’ advance — kept edging forward and sideways, till they were very near the edge of the terrain which the Persians had cleared for their chariots and cavalry. Someone had to act; and in the end it was Darius. Anxious to halt this dangerous drift towards rough ground, he ordered Bessus to launch a flank attack against Alexander's advancing right wing.

This was the move for which Alexander had been waiting. Once Bessus' cavalry was committed, the king, with superb timing, kept feeding in further units from his deep flank-guard. To counter this increasing pressure, Bessus brought up squadron after squadron, determined now to penetrate or roll up Alexander's flank, and probably still unaware of the 6,700 mercenaries waiting in reserve behind the Macedonian cavalry. A point came when this force — Alexander's cavalry numbered no more than 1,100 — was holding, for just long enough, ten times its own strength of front-line, heavily armoured Persian horsemen. Meanwhile Darius, as a diversionary measure, launched his scythed chariots, which proved, on the whole, remarkably ineffective. The screen of light-armed troops which Alexander had posted in front of his main line caused havoc amongst them by pelting the horses with javelins, and stabbing the drivers as they whirled past. A few limbs and heads were lopped off, to provide, in due course, a field-day for Graeco-Roman rhetoricians; but the well-drilled ranks of the phalanx opened wide, and the survivors were rounded up by Alexander's grooms, with the help of a few agile volunteers from the Guards Brigade.

By now almost all the Persian cavalry on both flanks was engaged. Parmenio was fighting a desperate defensive action against Mazaeus, while Alexander had just flung in his last mounted reserves, the Rangers, to hold Bessus. At this crucial moment the king's keen eye detected a thinning of the ranks, perhaps even a gap, momentarily opening in Darius' left centre. It was now or never. Gathering all his remaining forces into one gigantic wedge, Alexander charged. The spearhead of this wedge was formed by theCompanion Cavalry, Alexander himself leading with the Royal Squadron. Behind him came seven more squadrons, together with the Guards Brigade and any disengaged phalanx battalions, followed by a fierce rush of light-armed troops.

The Companions smashed through the weakened Persian centre towards Darius, shattering his household cavalry division and the Greek mercenaries. In the course of two or three minutes the battle was completely transformed. Bessus, still fully engaged against Alexander's right, found his own flank dangerously exposed by the force of the Companions' charge; he had lost touch with Darius, and feared that at any moment Alexander's wedge might swing round to take him in the rear. He therefore, with good justification, sounded a retreat, and began to withdraw his forces. At the same time Darius, hard-pressed by Alexander's cavalry and infantry, and seeing himself in danger of being cut off, fled the field as he had done at Issus. This time he only just managed to get away before the ring closed on him. It was now, at this crucial moment, that an urgent message reached Alexander from Parmenio, informing him that the left was heavily engaged; it had probably been dispatched just before the king's charge with the Companions.^g

A gap had opened between Parmenio's Thessalians and the charging battalions of the phalanx. Into this gap a body of Indian and Persian cavalry charged headlong, probably with the original intention of taking Parmenio in the rear. In the event, however, perhaps carried on by their own momentum, they swerved neither to left nor right, but rode straight on through the reserve infantry, and made for Alexander's baggage-camp. After looting for a while, and releasing some Persian prisoners (the queen mother, wisely, decided to sit tight until the situation clarified itself) they were driven out again. On their way back they ran into Alexander and the cavalry, and put up the toughest fight of the entire battle. During this scrimmage no less than sixty Companions lost their lives, and Alexander himself was in serious danger.

By now, however, the whole Persian line was rapidly breaking up. Once again the Great King's personal withdrawal had proved decisive. Darius vanished across the plain towards Arbela, dust-clouds swirling behind his chariot. Mazaeus, seeing him go, at once broke off the long and desperate struggle against Parmenio. Bessus was already withdrawing, in comparatively good order, on the farther flank. Parmenio's Thessalians, who had fought superbly all day against heavy odds, now found themselves surging forward in pursuit of a beaten foe.⁸⁰ For the second time, Alexander's efforts to kill or capture Darius were frustrated. While Parmenio rounded up the Persian baggage-train, with its elephants and camels, the king rode on into the gathering dusk, still hoping to overtake Darius' party. When darkness fell, he rested his weary men and horses for an hour or two, resuming the chase about midnight. The Macedonian troop rode into Arbela as dawn broke, having covered some seventy-five miles during the night, only to find Darius gone. However, as at Issus, he had left his chariot and bow behind him, together with no less than 4,000 talents in coined money. This was a substantial consolation-prize; and in any case the Great King's prestige had suffered such a catastrophic blow that his personal escape was of comparatively little moment. The Achaemenid empire had been split in two, and its ruler's authority ripped to shreds. If Alexander now proclaimed himself Great King in Darius' stead, who except Bessus would deny his right to the title?

Macedonian intelligence officers soon pieced together the story of the Great King's escape. He and his retinue had retreated headlong to Arbela, not even bothering to break down the river-bridges as they fled. Here they were joined by Bessus and theBactrian cavalry, 2,000 loyal Greek mercenaries, and a few survivors from the Royal Guard. The defeated monarch gathered them around him, and made a short speech before continuing his flight. He predicted, correctly, that Alexander would press straight on to the rich cities of southern Iran, ‘since all that part was inhabited and the road itself was easy for the baggage trains, and besides, Babylon and Susa naturally seemed to be the prize of the war’. He himself, he said, intended to take the road over the mountains intoMedia and the eastern provinces, where he would recruit yet another army. Let the Macedonians glut themselves with gold, idle their time away amid concubines and luxury: nothing was better calculated to weaken them as a fighting force.

It may be doubted whether Darius' audience took this apologia very seriously, though it was about the best he could do in the circumstances. They had suffered a massive and humiliating defeat,^h which no mere words could palliate. The prospect of abandoning Babylon, for whatever reason, came as an added indignity. However, the Greeks remained doggedly loyal; even Bessus was not confident enough — yet — to discard Darius altogether. As a symbolic figurehead he still counted for something. So, soon after midnight, these battered remnants of the Persian Grand Army set out together from Arbela, taking the road east through the Armenian mountains, and eventually descending on Ecbatana from the north. Here Darius halted for a while, to let stragglers rejoin him. He made sporadic efforts to re-organize and re-arm them; he also sent palpably nervous notes to his governors and generals in Bactria and the upper satrapies, urging them to remain loyal. But Gaugamela had broken his nerve, and he was never to recover it.⁸¹