3. ASIA

THUS SAYS THE LORD TO HIS ANOINTED, TO
CYRUS, WHOSE RIGHT HAND I HAVE GRASPED,
TO SUBDUE THE NATIONS BEFORE HIM AND STRIP
KINGS OF THEIR ROBES, TO OPEN CITY DOORS
BEFORE HIM—AND THE GATES SHALL NOT BE SHUT.
—THE PROPHET ISAIAH

There was once a king named Astyages who ruled over the Medes in the mountains east of Mesopotamia. One night he had a dream that his daughter Mandane would someday give birth to a son who would rule all of Asia. Fearing he would lose his throne, he gave her in marriage to a man from the insignificant province of Persia to the south. But after Mandane had been married for a year and was pregnant, Astyages had another dream in which he saw vines spreading from her womb to cover all the lands of his empire and beyond. He consulted the wise Magi, who interpreted the dream and told him the baby would one day become a mighty king in his place. Thus Astyages decided to slay the child as soon as it was born. When the baby, named Cyrus, was delivered, the king gave him to a servant with orders to take the child away and kill it. This servant in turn gave the baby to a kindly cowherd, who secretly raised him as his own. Although his surroundings were humble, young Cyrus showed the qualities of royalty from an early age and was in time brought before the suspicious king. After discovering the truth, Astyages again consulted the Magi, who now told him he had nothing to fear from Cyrus. Nevertheless, when the prince had grown to manhood, he led a revolt of his father’s people against his Median grandfather and became the first Great King of the Persian Empire.

This is the heroic legend told by Herodotus, but the true story of Cyrus and the creation of the Persian Empire is even more remarkable. Starting from the Persian highlands near Persepolis in what is now southern Iran, Cyrus conquered Media by 549, then the kingdom of the Lydians in Asia Minor three years later when their wealthy king, Croesus, underestimated the Persian ruler. The empire of Babylon was next in 539, followed by much of central Asia.

Cambyses, the eldest son of Cyrus, ascended to the throne in 530 at the death of his father and soon added Egypt to the empire. After the untimely death of Cambyses in 522, Darius I seized the throne in a bloody struggle. He gained the Indus Valley for Persia, but his adventures in Europe were less successful. His crossing of the Danube and invasion of Scythia were only nominal victories, while the rout of his army at Marathon near Athens in 490 was a clear defeat. Though the Greeks looked back on Marathon as the greatest battle the world had ever known, to the Persians it was at worst a minor setback. Xerxes, the son of Darius and grandson of Cyrus, invaded Greece again in 480. The celebrated Spartan defense at Thermopylae is not worthy of mention in surviving Persian records, nor is the destruction of Athens the same year. However, the Persians’ defeat at Plataea near Thebes the next year put an end to Persian dreams of conquering Greece. After the death of Xerxes in 465, the borders of the Persian Empire remained largely unchanged, though there were frequent internal revolts put down by every Great King until Darius III took the throne in 336, the same year Alexander became king of Macedonia.

The policies of the Persian Empire begun under Cyrus continued for almost two centuries. Local inhabitants were left in peace to live and worship as they pleased so long as they paid their taxes and caused no trouble. However, if there was rebellion against theGreat King’s rule, retribution was swift and harsh. Egypt and Babylon in particular suffered after their people rose up against Persia. Cities were burned, rebels massacred, and onerous tribute imposed. And although the Persians had no interest in spreading their religious beliefs to the provinces, most of their rulers had little genuine respect for or understanding of the spiritual practices of their subject people. Time and again the Great Kings punished uprisings by destroying local temples and profaning sacred symbols, only increasing the bitter resentment of the natives.

The Persians themselves were polytheists who believed in many gods, as did almost every culture in the ancient world aside from the Jews. Like the Greeks, Celts, and peoples of northern India—to whom the Persians were particularly close in culture and language—the countrymen of the Great King saw the world as ruled by many divine powers. But the Persians also viewed the cosmos as a battleground between the forces of light and darkness. At the head of their pantheon was Ahuramazda, known as the Wise Lord, who created the world and embodied all goodness. Opposing him was Ahriman, a powerful spirit bent on evil and leading humans astray. The great Persian religious teacher Zoroaster, who lived centuries before Alexander, taught that all must choose whom they would follow, but that at the end of time Ahriman would be defeated by the Wise Lord. There were other deities as well, such as Anahita, the mother goddess, Mithra, protector of justice, and Atar, son of Ahuramazda and guardian of his sacred fire. The worship of all these gods and many others was carried out by the ancient priestly caste known as the Magi. They sacrificed and chanted hymns to the gods, as well as foretold the future and read in the stars the signs of things yet to be. Wherever the Persians went in their conquests, the Magi followed, not as missionaries but as religious practitioners for the Persian elite. Let the Egyptians worship jackal-headed deities and the Greeks pray to Athena—it was Ahuramazda and his fellow gods who had granted the Persians dominion over the earth.

This vast empire of the Persians—over two thousand miles from end to end—was divided into provinces, each ruled by a satrap, a governor directly responsible to the Great King. Communications were maintained by an efficient road system crossed by royal couriers, who, according to Herodotus, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dark of night hinder from the swift completion of their appointed course.” Like the Macedonians, the Persians were a warrior race from the mountains who learned the arts of civilization from the ancient kingdoms they conquered. Although they prided themselves on their simple education—“to ride horses, to shoot the bow, to speak the truth”—they were in fact quite receptive to outside influences and adapted many cultural elements from their subjects. While written Persian was used primarily for monumental carvings, beginning in the time of Darius I, everyday court records were documented by scribes in Elamite, Babylonian, or Aramaic. From the earlier empires of Mesopotamia, the Persians learned art, engineering, and the magnificent architecture of their palaces. But their own unique contribution to history was the gathering of dozens of nations into the first truly international empire. From the cataracts of the Nile and the shores of the Aegean to the steppes of central Asia and the valley of the Indus, the Great King ruled the largest and mightiest kingdom the world had ever known.

In the early spring of 334, Alexander at last began his war against Persia. He left General Antipater behind as regent in charge of Macedonia and Greece. His mother Olympias was surely at Pella that day to bid her son farewell. She had schemed and sacrificed for years so that he could pursue his destiny. Now, as he rode across the plains of Macedonia with snow still covering Mount Olympus to the south, Alexander could not have known that he would never see his mother or home again.

Alexander had precious little money to pay his troops. The Macedonian treasury was almost bare and the Greeks, parsimonious in the best of times, had been reluctant to contribute financially to what they believed was Alexander’s folly. The only good the citizens of Athens and the rest of Greece saw arising from the invasion was the imminent destruction of the Macedonian army at the hands of the Persians. They worried little about their fellow countrymen as there were few Greek troops among Alexander’s army. In fact, there were far more Greek soldiers serving as mercenaries in the Persian army than marching under Alexander’s banner. But Greek or Macedonian, the king would not be able to feed his soldiers for long unless he could quickly make the expedition profitable.

Ancient sources say the Macedonian army numbered almost fifty thousand men, including the few thousand soldiers Parmenion already had in Asia waiting for Alexander. Whatever the number, the Macedonian forces were vastly outnumbered by the men available to the Persians. At the core of Alexander’s army were the hardened Macedonian foot soldiers who had fought for years with Philip and followed his son to the Danube and back. In addition, there were key auxiliary troops from allied tribes in the Balkans, especially the fearless warriors of Thrace. The rest were cavalry from Macedonia and Thessaly, mounted scouts and archers from Thrace, and the few professional soldiers from Greece that Alexander could afford to hire. A support squad of reluctant Greek sailors followed the army along the coast. In addition, there were Philip’s superb corps of engineers, a staff of secretaries to handle the king’s correspondence, physicians, mapmakers, scientists, and the official campaign historian, Callisthenes, nephew of Aristotle and chief propaganda officer for the expedition.

Alexander’s march from Pella took his army past Amphipolis and over the Strymon River along the north Aegean coast. It was the same road Alexander had followed the previous year on the way to the Danube. But now, instead of turning north, Alexander pressed eastward over the marshes along the mouth of the Hebros River and down to the Gallipoli peninsula across the narrow strait of the Hellespont from Asia. At the town of Elaeus opposite Troy, Alexander offered sacrifice for the last time in Europe at the tomb of the hero Protesilaus, the first Greek to reach Asian soil—and the first to die—at the start of the Trojan War. Beneath the elms of the sacred grove, Alexander prayed that the gods would show him favor. He had good reason to worry. A large Persian fleet was active in the Aegean and knew of the young king’s plans. If they had wished, they could have easily prevented Alexander’s crossing. But the Persians decided to let the king and his Macedonians land freely in Asia before they made their move. Rather than blocking his advance across the strait with their navy, they intended to draw him into the interior, where they could destroy his army with their superior forces.

When the Great King Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont on his way to invade Greece in the previous century, he had ordered the construction of pontoon bridges across the strait to speed the passage of his enormous army—but a storm arose and destroyed the bridges before he could cross. The Persian king therefore ordered the Hellespont to be whipped with three hundred lashes and a pair of shackles thrown into its waters before he began construction of new bridges. Alexander knew this story and was determined that his own crossing would be more propitious. While Parmenion supervised the ferrying of the Macedonian army using warships and cargo boats, Alexander decided to leave the main body of the army and cross from Elaeus, steering the vessel himself to the middle of the Hellespont. There he sacrificed a bull to the sea god Poseidon and poured a drink offering from a golden bowl into the water. Then he guided the ship toward Troy to the place Homer said the Greeks had come ashore a thousand years earlier. As the coast drew near, Alexander took his spear and cast it with all his might onto the beach, claiming Asia for himself as spear-won from the gods. Then he leapt ashore before the boat had even reached land and waded through the surf onto Persian territory.

Alexander’s first act in Asia was to sacrifice to Zeus, the patron of safe arrivals, as well as Athena and his own ancestor Hercules. He was always scrupulous in religious ceremonies, but even more so now that he was surrounded by a mythological landscape straight from his childhood stories. Here was the very beach where the Greeks had made camp. Just beyond was the wide battlefield where Hector and his Trojans had stood against the invaders in the ten-year war for the honor of Helen, whose beauty had launched a thousand ships to bring her home. And there, rising above the plain, was the citadel of Troy itself—not the town it was in former days, to be sure, but still looming large in Alexander’s imagination. His hero Achilles, greatest warrior of the Greeks, had fought and died beneath those walls, preferring a short life of undying glory to peaceful old age surrounded by family and friends.

The Troy Alexander visited was only the latest in a series of towns at the site stretching back almost three thousand years. Over the centuries, the settlement had been sacked and burned several times, only to be rebuilt ever higher on top of the ruins. The town that Alexander entered was nothing more than a small village with a temple to Athena attended by a few local priests eager for the occasional tourist. The Spartan admiral Mindarus had visited there many years before, as had the Great King Xerxes on his way to Greece, but the arrival of the Macedonian leader and his entourage was the most memorable event at Troy for decades.

Alexander first sacrificed at the temple of Athena, dedicating his own armor at her altar. In place of his breastplate and shield, he took from the temple arms said to have been left there since the Trojan War. His favorite soldiers would proudly bear these weapons before him in battles across Asia, including a shield that would one day save his life in India. Alexander next visited the tombs of the warriors who had died fighting to capture or save the town. Most moving was the moment when he poured libations at the tomb of his boyhood hero and ancestor Achilles. Then, along with his companions, including Hephaestion, Alexander stripped off his clothes and oiled his naked body like an athlete. In honor of Achilles, Alexander and his friends then raced around the tomb and crowned it with garlands. Finally, he sacrificed to the spirit of the Trojan king Priam, who had been slain seeking sanctuary at the altar of Zeus, contrary to all sacred custom. Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, had carried out this shameful deed, prompting the young king to beseech the shade of the Trojan leader not to vent his anger on his Macedonian descendant.

As the priests led him on a final tour of the broken remains of the city, they asked if he wished to see the lyre of Paris before he departed. The young king, however, disdained Paris the Trojan prince as a coward drawn more to beautiful women than fame in battle: “I care little for that harp,” he said, “but would gladly see the lyre of Achilles on which he sang the glorious deeds of famous men.” Alexander’s greatest regret, he lamented, was that he had no Homer to celebrate his own glory.

From Troy, Alexander moved north twenty miles along the Hellespont to the small town of Arisbe, where his main force was waiting for him after crossing the strait. The next day they marched a short distance to the village of Percote, just a few miles from the large and prosperous city of Lampsacus guarding the northern entrance to the Hellespont. Lampsacus had been a wealthy ally of Athens during the Peloponnesian War in the previous century and was well known for its gold coinage. Being desperately short of money, Alexander needed the riches of the town and the prestige of freeing it from Persian control. Unfortunately for the Macedonian leader, the citizens of Lampsacus had no desire to be liberated. Like many Greek towns under Persian rule, they enjoyed relative freedom and prosperity with a minimum of interference from the Great King. The good people of Lampsacus had certainly heard of Alexander’s dealings with cities in Greece and especially his destruction of Thebes. They had little reason to trust him and even less motivation to trade the easy yoke of Persia for the potentially heavy burden of Macedonian rule. Alexander fumed, but he had no time to waste besieging a city. Even more than money, Alexander needed victory. He had to defeat the Persians in battle soon to establish his credibility as a general. Once he did, the Greek cities of Asia Minor would begin to open their gates to him, as well as their treasuries, out of fear and self-interest. Stories say that the philosopher Anaximenes, a scholar in Alexander’s entourage who happened to be from Lampsacus, begged the general to spare his hometown even though it favored the Persians. This served to enhance Alexander’s reputation for mercy, but he surely would have burned the city to the ground if he had had the time.

Alexander was a master of propaganda in war. He ordered his soldiers not to loot nearby farms and villages since it would be foolish to destroy what would soon be their own. This was a proven policy to build goodwill among the inhabitants of hostile territory, but Alexander cleverly added that they should take special care not to damage the estates belonging to the Greek-born Persian general Memnon of Rhodes. The king knew that word would quickly spread back to the Persian satraps that Memnon’s property was being treated with respect—as if the general were secretly supporting the Macedonians. It was an inspired stroke of psychological warfare that would soon bear fruit.

From near Lampsacus, Alexander moved his forces two days’ march east to the town of Hermoton, then on to the small town of Priapus, named for an unusually lustful son of the god Dionysus. Scouts reported to Alexander that the citizens of Priapus were willing to surrender the town to him, allowing the grateful king his first opportunity to liberate a Greek city, however insignificant it might be.

But as pleased as Alexander was finally to portray himself in dispatches back across the Aegean as a liberator of the Greeks, his overriding concern was more practical—where were the Persians? At that moment, they were much closer than he realized. The Persian governors and generals of Asia Minor were encamped only twenty miles away across the Granicus River at the town of Zeleia. With them were thousands of troops, including cavalry from distant Bactria and thousands of Greek mercenaries. While the Macedonian army moved toward the Granicus, the Persians were holding a council of war to decide what to do about Alexander.

Arsites, the satrap of the Hellespont region, presided at the meeting along with Spithridates, who ruled over nearby Lydia and the Greek cities of the Aegean coast. The satrap Arsames was there as well from Cilicia on the southern seaboard of Asia Minor. These leaders and their generals were all pledged to defend the realm of the Great King with their lives. And if honor were not enough motivation, they knew their wealth was derived from the land they held in the areas under their governance. If Alexander won, they would lose everything.

Also present was Memnon of Rhodes, perhaps the best general in the Persian army. He had defeated the advance forces under Parmenion the year before and driven them back to the Hellespont to wait for their king. When it was at last his turn to voice his opinion at the council, he rose and declared that the best way to defeat the Macedonians was to destroy all the crops in the region, empty the towns, and launch an expedition to take the war to Macedonia itself. With no fodder for his horses or food for his men, Alexander would be forced to withdraw from Asia in defeat to defend his own home. In addition, Memnon warned, the Macedonian infantry was far superior in skill if not numbers to its Persian counterparts. If the foot soldiers of Macedonia with their long sarissa spears came up against the Persians, the troops of the Great King would lose. As the Greek general surely reminded them, he had spent time in exile at the court of Philip and knew firsthand the power of the Macedonian army.

Memnon’s advice was sound and, if taken, would have almost guaranteed that the world would never have heard of Alexander the Great—but the Persian leaders would have none of it. Who did Memnon think he was to advise the noblemen of the Persian Empire to turn and run from an untried boy-king who had invaded their land? They would never allow their own fields and houses to be burned before the Macedonian army as if they were peasants shaking in their boots. They suspected that Memnon wanted to delay the war so that the Great King, who favored him, would appoint him as commander in their place. There must have been questions as well about why Alexander had ordered his men not to harm Memnon’s estates. But in the end it was their sense of honor and dignity that would not allow them to take Memnon’s counsel seriously. They were warriors from the highlands of Persia, the heirs of Cyrus, conquerors of the world—and they would fight.

The Granicus River rises in the mountains beyond Troy and flows north across the coastal plain into the sea. It is a small river fed by spring rains, but its banks are steep and difficult to climb. Here at this ancient crossroads on a late afternoon in May, Alexander finally saw the Persians. His scouts reported their cavalry was drawn up on the far bank with their infantry behind, an unusual positioning of forces but effective given the situation. If Alexander’s men engaged the Persian army here, they would have to cross the river unprotected, then struggle up the far banks as the mounted soldiers of the enemy struck at them from higher ground. The deadly sarissa formation of the Macedonians would be useless as they tried to climb from the riverbed to the open ground beyond. The Persians had deliberately chosen a field of battle that would yield nothing to the strength of the Macedonian infantry but would instead give themselves every advantage. They had set a trap for Alexander and were daring him to walk into it.

Alexander surveyed the situation with his keen eye for terrain and could not help but appreciate the Persian plan. A more cautious general might have sought a better location to cross the river or withdrawn south along the Aegean coast. But Alexander prided himself on his swiftness and daring—which was, of course, exactly what the Persians were counting on. They were betting the brash young king could not resist the bait.

As with the siege at Thebes, we have two versions of what happened next. One tradition from the historian Diodorus says that Alexander made camp for the night and prepared for an assault the next morning. But the other, from Arrian, says that he drew up his troops facing the river even though there were only a few hours of daylight left. In the latter version, old general Parmenion urged Alexander to remain on the near side of the river until the next day, when the army could be organized more effectively for what would be a grueling fight. A military setback at this point of the campaign, he warned, would be a disaster. In this account Alexander dismissed the general’s hesitation and said he would be ashamed if, after crossing the wide Hellespont, he were stopped by a petty stream. A delay, he declared, would only make the Persians think he was afraid of them. Arrian describes a similar dialogue between Parmenion and Alexander four other times during the expedition, always on the eve of battle, so that the reader begins to suspect that the veteran commander is being used as a foil to highlight Alexander’s boldness. But whether the Macedonians made camp or began the attack that evening makes little difference. Alexander had decided to fight the Persians there at the Granicus and risk everything on a single roll of the dice.

Facing thousands of Persian cavalry and at least an equal number of infantry across the river, Alexander arranged his troops in a standard battlefield formation with horsemen on the wings and foot soldiers in the center. He placed Parmenion in command of the Thracian and Thessalian cavalry on the left, while he himself mounted one of his battle horses and rode to the right. Philotas and his cavalry units were stationed near him with the archers and wild Agrianian spearmen from Thrace. Among the many other officers in the line were Nicanor, another son of Parmenion; Craterus, who would become one of Alexander’s most trusted commanders; and Black Cleitus, friend of his father, Philip, and brother of his childhood nurse. The king of Macedonia himself was unmistakable in his splendid armor as he walked beside his horse among the men, cajoling and encouraging them. The Persians had spotted Alexander as well and moved their best cavalry squadrons opposite to strike him down.

After both sides were set, they stood facing each other unmoving and in silence for several long minutes as if taking a deep breath before the battle began. Neither side wanted to be the first to move, but finally Alexander jumped up on his horse and moved the right wing forward into the river with the sounding of trumpets and a mighty cry to Ares, god of war.

Alexander flew across the river and up the banks so fast that the Persian horsemen couldn’t hit him, but many of his companions were pinned down in the water as arrows rained on them from above. Parmenion moved in from the left and the infantry pushed forward into the Granicus, holding their long spears as best they could. The Macedonian strategy was to outflank the Persian cavalry using its two wings, but plans soon gave way to bloody chaos as horses and men on both sides became so tightly packed they were barely able to move. The first Macedonians to reach the Persians on the far side of the river were badly outnumbered and cut down. Memnon and his grown sons were at the forefront of the Persian lines slaughtering as many of Alexander’s men as they could reach. As more men climbed over bodies to the opposite side, they put up a ferocious fight surrounded by Persian cavalry, who stabbed them with javelins. Alexander saw what was happening and in a frenzy led his closest men into the thick of battle. Gradually the Macedonians gained a foothold on the far side of the river as Alexander’s cavalry used their lances from horseback against the shorter javelins of the Persians.

A fierce struggle raged around Alexander as the Persians tried to kill him and end the war with one blow. The king’s lance was broken in the fight, but when he called on his groomsman for another he was told the young man’s lance had snapped in two. Surrounded and unarmed, his old companion Demaratus of Corinth, veteran of wars in distant Sicily and the man who some say years earlier had bought Bucephalas for the brash prince, rushed forward and gave him his own weapon. Alexander took courage from his friend and rushed back into the fray, charging a Persian noble named Mithridates and stabbing him in the face. The death of this son-in-law of the Great King distracted Alexander from the approach of another Persian nobleman, Rhoesaces, who rode at the king and struck him so hard on his head with his sword that his helmet split in two. The king was stunned by the blow, but managed to knock Rhoesaces onto the ground and skewer him with his lance. Even as he struck, the satrap Spithridates now charged Alexander from behind and raised his sword to strike a death blow when suddenly Black Cleitus threw himself at the Persian lord and cut off his arm cleanly at the shoulder. Alexander may have been frustrated at the number of Philip’s old officers in his ranks, but he owed his life that day to the courage and skill of Cleitus.

In every battle there is a turning point when both sides realize by unspoken consent that one will be the victor and the other lucky to escape with their lives. It was now that the Persians knew they could not hold back the Macedonians and so began to retreat. Their center then collapsed and they began to flee in panic from the Granicus. Over a thousand Persian horsemen were slain, among them nobles, satraps, and relatives of the Great King.

But Alexander was not yet finished as he quickly surrounded the Greek mercenaries who had been held in reserve by the Persians at the rear of the battle. These men knew they had lost, but as professional soldiers and by the accepted practice of the day they expected to pay a ransom and be allowed to depart. Alexander instead ordered his men to slaughter them, sparing only a few to work for the rest of their short lives as slaves in the mines of Macedonia. They would be a lesson to other Greeks who might side with the Persians against him.

Alexander visited his wounded and examined their injuries himself, offering advice to the camp doctors based on his studies with Aristotle. For the dozens of Macedonians who had fallen, he ordered burials with honor at the battle site while their families back in Macedonia were granted special privileges. For the noblemen among his dead he ordered bronze statues erected at Dion beneath Mount Olympus to be carved by Lysippus, the greatest sculptor of the day. He was generous to the enemy dead as well, allowing the Greek mercenaries to be buried so that they might journey with the boatman Charon across the river of the dead. He shipped all the fine drinking cups, purple robes, and other luxury goods he had captured from the Persians to his mother. Finally he sent three hundred sets of Persian armor to Athens to be set up as trophies on the Acropolis. He ordered an inscription carved beside them for all visitors to read:

ALEXANDER SON OF PHILIP AND ALL THE GREEKS—

EXCEPT THE SPARTANS—SENT THESE SPOILS FROM

THE BARBARIANS IN ASIA.

Alexander was not without a biting sense of humor. He wanted everyone in Greece to know that his Panhellenic crusade against the Persians was proceeding splendidly with the support of all the Greeks—except the Spartans.

The elation that Alexander felt after his first victory was soon replaced with the mundane necessity of governing his newly acquired territory. He appointed his cavalry commander Calas as satrap of the Hellespont region in place of the Persian Arsites, who in shame had committed suicide after the battle at the Granicus. This apparently minor administrative decision on Alexander’s part in fact had monumental consequences for the future. In appointing Calas as satrap, the king was making use of a Persian title and keeping in place the Persian structure of government. This continuity became even more clear when Alexander announced that the cities of northwest Asia Minor would continue to pay taxes in the same manner and at the same rates as they had under the Great King.

Local nobles who had fled to the hills at Alexander’s approach now returned to their estates and were pardoned. Charges were apparently brought against the town of Zeleia, which had hosted the ill-fated Persian conference a few days earlier and served as the military headquarters against the Macedonians. However, Alexander forgave the town in an act of calculated mercy. His campaign was still young and he wanted the cities ahead of him to know he was a generous man—a prudent move since it would encourage citizens to surrender knowing they would not be condemned for their previous Persian sympathies. Alexander then sent Parmenion to take over Dascylion, the Persian capital of the area. It was a prosperous Greek town long accustomed to serving the resident Persians. With the Macedonians now in charge, the mechanisms of rule—and presumably the numerous scribes, tax collectors, and other civil servants—would remain in place under Alexander. The new king knew better than to disrupt a smoothly functioning administration. He needed money to fund his campaign, be it through taxes or tribute payments, and the longtime employees at the satrapal palace were highly skilled at fleecing the local sheep.

Life on the campaign, in spite of the brutalities of war, must have been enjoyable for the young king. He would rise every morning and begin the day by sacrificing to the gods. This was his religious duty as king of Macedonia, but Alexander seems to have been quite sincere in his devotion, especially to Athena and his distant ancestors Zeus and Hercules. After his duties at the altar, he would sit down to breakfast. If the army was not breaking camp, he would spend the day organizing military affairs, answering correspondence, administering justice, or, if there was time, hunting with his friends. He loved to read and would snatch spare moments from the day to read from Greek works by the historians Herodotus and Xenophon, the dramatists Sophocles and Euripides, or poets, especially his beloved Homer.

On the march he would often stop and practice archery or mounting and dismounting from a moving chariot. Whether on the move or based in a town, he would finish the day with a bath or an anointing with oil and scraping in the Greek manner. While he was removing the day’s dirt, he would inquire what the cooks and bakers had prepared for the evening meal. He loved unusual fruits and fresh fish, so that travel along the sea coast was a special treat. His suppers were always magnificent, with Alexander and his friends reclining on couches to dine as any civilized person would. He always made sure his companions received enough to eat and personally dished out delicacies to everyone else at the table first so that often he was left with nothing.

He was fond of drinking wine in abundant quantities, in the Macedonian fashion, but at least at this stage of his life he was not given to drunken binges. He had many virtues, but like most rulers he loved flattery and would often boast of his own deeds like a common soldier. His companions would sometimes compete with one another to compliment the king, causing the more reticent among them to grow uncomfortable lest they fall behind the others in praise. It was for Alexander a tragic flaw, or hamartia, a Greek word meaning to miss the mark when shooting an arrow (Christians would later use the same word to mean “sin”). Love of praise was a pardonable fault of Alexander’s that in time would grow to be a serious problem.

From the Granicus, Alexander marched south along ancient pathways through the mountains to the city of Sardis. This inland capital of the prosperous land of Lydia was a key city of the Persian Empire and the end point of the royal road that stretched well over a thousand miles to Susa in Mesopotamia. The fortified citadel of the town towered hundreds of feet above the valley of the Hermus River, which ran just north of the city down to the Aegean Sea. The fortress was considered unbreachable by all who had visited the site and was surely a major cause of concern to Alexander as he approached the town.

The Lydians were not Greeks but descendants of early settlers in Asia Minor. They still spoke a language related to that of the Hittites, who had ruled the land a thousand years earlier, but the people of Sardis were accustomed to Greek visitors and ways. Their territory was rich in gold and horses, a powerful kingdom long desired by many conquerors. The Lydians were so wealthy and creative that they were the first nation to mint coins. In the sixth century the last native king, Croesus, had amassed such power that he longed to spread Lydian rule beyond his borders. He was a great supporter of Greek oracles, so that when he contemplated attacking the rising kingdom of Persia under Cyrus, he sent messengers to Delphi to seek the advice of Apollo. After making lavish donations to the oracle, he asked if he should invade Persia. The priestess, possessed by the god, uttered a typically cryptic response: “If Croesus sends a great army against Persia, a mighty empire will fall.”

Croesus was elated at this proclamation and prepared for war. What he didn’t realize was that it was his own empire that would fall. Through the creative use of camels to terrify the Lydian cavalry, Cyrus took Sardis and became ruler of Asia Minor. After a close brush with being burned alive on a giant pyre as a sacrifice to the gods, Croesus became a trusted advisor to Cyrus, and Sardis became the most important Persian city in the west.

Alexander had no camels and no clear idea how to take Sardis other than a long siege he could ill afford. Every day he spent starving the city into submission was a drain on his still limited resources and also gave Darius more time to raise a powerful army against him. It was therefore a tremendous relief to Alexander when Mithrenes, the Persian commander of the city’s citadel, met him several miles outside of Sardis and surrendered the town to him without a fight. Why Mithrenes would do this is something of a puzzle. He may not have been able to hold the surrounding countryside against Alexander’s army, but he could have resisted the Macedonians from the safety of the fortress for months. Whatever the reason, Alexander warmly welcomed Mithrenes and allowed him to retain his previous rank. The Persian commander was to follow the king’s retinue throughout the campaign in Asia Minor, but rather than an honor, this may have been a sign of Alexander’s mistrust of a man who would betray his lord so easily.

The city of Sardis now belonged to Alexander, including, to his delight, a treasury full of Lydian gold. The money would not last forever, but it allowed the king to proceed with the war knowing he could finally pay his men. The rank and file soldiers were equally thrilled since after weeks of marching and fighting they at last had a few coins in their pockets. From his camp outside of town Alexander declared that all the Lydians were now free and would be allowed to follow their ancient customs. This was a pleasant but meaningless gesture since the Persians had always allowed the inhabitants of their empire to follow ancestral customs. As for freedom, it was true only in the sense that the Lydians were now liberated from the Persian into the Macedonian Empire. As long as the citizens of Sardis paid their taxes and did as they were told, they could consider themselves as free as they liked. Alexander then entered the city as a conqueror and climbed to the top of the citadel, where the view across the wide valley of the Hermus was magnificent. The king examined the defenses of the hill and thanked the gods yet again that he didn’t have to lay siege to such a towering fortress. Then a summer storm suddenly broke loose from the heavens with peals of thunder and sheets of rain. The king had been contemplating the construction of a temple to his ancestor Zeus at the top of the citadel, but now he was certain he should do so.

Alexander appointed a Macedonian named Pausanias as the new commander of the citadel and charged Nicias, a Greek, with the assessment and collection of taxes for the region. Asander, who may have been Parmenion’s brother, was chosen as satrap of Lydia and was left enough cavalry and light infantry to maintain order. The king sent most of the Greek troops who had followed him from Macedonia back to garrison the region around Troy while he stationed the Greeks from the allied town of Argos on the citadel of Sardis with Pausanias.

These seemingly minor dispositions open an important window into Alexander’s mind at this stage of the campaign. He had successfully won his first battle and had now taken a key city of the Persian Empire. He felt he could dispense with most of the Greek troops in his army and cast aside the facade that this was a campaign of Panhellenic liberation. From now on, it was a Macedonian war of conquest. The Greeks would still have their uses, of course, but Alexander no longer wanted to share his glory with them. He was also anxious to begin paring away as many kinsmen and supporters of Parmenion as possible from his command staff, beginning with Asander. He continued to need Parmenion’s support, but little by little he would begin to wear away the old man’s power as his own grew. Finally, the number of different officials Alexander left behind to govern his growing empire shows a keen recognition of the dangers of concentrated power. As the Persians had before him, the king knew that competition between officials was the surest check on unfettered ambition. Asander would be satrap, but Nicias would control the purse strings while Pausanias commanded the high ground. None of these men had reason to trust each other—which was exactly the point. Alexander could continue his march knowing that no one man would dominate the rich and powerful province of Lydia.

Alexander’s next stop was the coastal city of Ephesus, a four-day journey from Sardis. The town had been founded by Ionian Greeks centuries earlier, but had fallen under the rule of Croesus of Lydia and then to Persian control. The Ionians were the same branch of Greeks as the Athenians, though the Ephesians did not always support their kindred in war. To the Persians, who saw little difference between the various Hellenic tribes and dialects, all Greeks were lumped together as Ionians, or Yauna, in the Persian language. The city of Ephesus was best known for its famous temple of Artemis, the virgin goddess of hunting, which had reportedly burned down the night Alexander was born and was still being rebuilt. “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians,” later generations would chant, and the citizens of Alexander’s time could not have agreed more.

The backers of democracy at Ephesus had opened the gates to Parmenion two years earlier, even setting up a statue of Philip at the temple. But Memnon had retaken the city and restored the ruling aristocracy that supported Persia. Now the democrats returnedfrom exile seeking vengeance. They launched a pogrom against the aristocrats and murdered anyone they could find who didn’t share their political convictions, including those who had torn down Philip’s statue. One oligarch named Syrphax was dragged from the temple along with his nephews and publicly stoned to death. Alexander had little sympathy with the aristocracy and allowed the bloodshed to continue for a few days, but eventually even he felt things were going too far. He knew that soon the violence would descend into general mayhem and personal grudges that had nothing to do with politics. He halted the vendetta and, to help distract the Ephesians from infighting, he offered to donate his own money to help rebuild the temple of Artemis and restore the lucrative tourist trade. Surprisingly, the citizens declined, though this refusal may have been orchestrated by Alexander to spare himself an enormous expense. Still, the king ordered that all city taxes previously paid to the Persians would henceforth be directed to rebuilding the great temple. To entertain and intimidate the restive citizens, Alexander then staged a grand parade and battle drill through the streets of the city with his troops in full battle dress.

Representatives from the nearby towns of Magnesia and Tralles soon arrived to surrender their cities to Alexander. The king graciously accepted and sent Parmenion with a large force of cavalry and infantry to make sure they meant it. He also dispatched troops to other Greek towns on the coast to drive out Persian garrisons, overthrow aristocratic rulers, and proclaim democracy and freedom for all. Now that they were free cities, they would not be subject to distasteful tax payments to the Great King in distant Persepolis. Instead, as liberated Greeks, they would be permitted to make hefty contributions to the Macedonian cause.

The famous painter Apelles was resident in Ephesus when Alexander arrived and the king could not resist commissioning a portrait of himself astride Bucephalas. The king had seen Apelles’ work before, including the painting of his own father, Philip, and had great expectations for a matchless work. However, when the painting was finished, Alexander was not impressed. Apelles then brought it over to show Bucephalas, who neighed in apparent approval. The bold artist then told Alexander that his horse had better taste than he did. But the king, who had studied artistic theory with Aristotle and fancied himself a connoisseur of fine paintings, demanded that Apelles try again. This time Apelles played to Alexander’s vanity and showed him as Zeus wielding a thunderbolt. He even used a secret varnish formula to give the portrait a striking tone. The king was pleased with this very un-Greek style of portraiture and gave Apelles a large bag of gold as payment.

While Parmenion was away, Alexander took the rest of the army and left Ephesus for the key city of Miletus thirty miles to the south. On the way he stopped at the small Ionian Greek town of Priene at the mouth of the Meander River. The river was notable for its wandering course (hence our modern term meander) and in time it would silt up the entire bay between Priene and Miletus. Alexander wanted to visit the newly completed temple to Athena in Priene, designed by Pythius himself, architect of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. At Priene, Alexander donated enough money so that, unlike at Ephesus, he was named patron of the new temple. The dedicatory inscription in Greek, which survives to this day, is one of the few pieces of contemporary evidence we possess naming the Macedonian king:

BAΣIΛEYΣ AΛEΞANΔPOΣ ANEυHKE TON

NAON AυHNAIHI ΠOΛIAΔI

King Alexander dedicated this temple to Athena,

Protector of the City

Alexander rarely missed a chance to combine his genuine devotion to the gods with useful propaganda.

Parmenion and his forces rejoined Alexander at Miletus. It was an ancient settlement dating back to the days of the Trojan War and had been a major naval center for centuries. It was now the city’s ability to shelter the Persian fleet that most concerned Alexander. The Great King had four hundred ships, primarily from Cyprus and Egypt, operating in the eastern Mediterranean, as opposed to his own, untried fleet, less than half that size, drawn from various Greek cities of questionable loyalty. If the Persians were allowed to use Miletus as a naval base, they could hamper his advance and strike against him anywhere in the Aegean.

The commander of the garrison at Miletus had sent a message to Alexander offering surrender, but when he heard the Persian fleet was near at hand he reneged on his offer and barred the city gates to the Macedonians. Alexander then ordered his small fleet to race for Miletus to prevent the Persians from seizing the harbor and nearby islands. The Greek navy arrived in time to set up base on the island of Lade just offshore while the tardy Persians were forced to anchor in an unfavorable location ten miles to the north. Alexander ferried several thousand Thracians and other mercenaries to Lade to help hold the island against any Persian attack.

It was now Parmenion who urged boldness against the Persian fleet. He advised the king that a naval attack by the Greek ships could succeed, especially as he had seen an eagle, a favored bird of Zeus, perching on the stern of one of the ships. It would be a great victory if they could win, the general claimed, but only a minor defeat if they lost. Alexander, however, was uncharacteristically cautious. He had little experience with naval warfare and less trust in Greek sailors. He countered that it was foolish to engage a much larger fleet with his inexperienced navy. He would have to place Macedonian marines on each ship to fight the Persians at sea, a frightening prospect to men from the mountains of his homeland. Moreover, a defeat would indeed be serious and give the Greek cities courage to rise up against him. Finally, the eagle Parmenion saw was facing the land, not the sea, so that Zeus clearly wanted him to wage war on solid ground.

When Alexander’s engineering corps arrived at Miletus, the king put them to work knocking down the city walls. It was the first opportunity his engineers had during the campaign to prove they could work miracles. Soon there was a hole wide enough in the defenses to send the Macedonian army through into the city. Alexander’s men swarmed through the town, killing all the defenders they could find, and headed for the harbor. There the Greek fleet had moved in to blockade the Persians from landing reinforcements. The Persian soldiers in the city, made up largely of several hundred Greek mercenaries hired by Memnon, were pushed to the sea, where many climbed onto their concave shields and paddled to a small island in the harbor to make a final stand. They had heard of the fate of their comrades at the Granicus and were determined to sell their lives dearly. But Alexander sailed to the island himself and told the mercenaries that he admired their bravery and loyalty. He offered them mercy on the condition that they join his army. Given the circumstances, they had little choice but to accept. The citizens of the city who had survived the assault were likewise spared the horrors of enslavement and allowed to remain in the town, undoubtedly after paying a large indemnity for their resistance.

The Persian navy continued to harass the Macedonians even after the fall of Miletus. Each day they would sail from their base and draw up before the harbor, trying to tempt Alexander into a fight at sea. But fume as he might, the king remained firm in his plan to avoid a naval battle. Instead he sent Parmenion’s son Philotas to the coast near the Persian anchorage to prevent them from collecting fresh water. In frustration, they sailed to the nearby island of Samos for supplies and then struck at Miletus again. Five Persian ships managed to slip into the inner harbor, hoping to catch Alexander unprepared, but the king quickly gathered whatever troops were at hand and launched ten ships to strike back. The Persians had convinced themselves that the Macedonians were afraid to face them on the water, so they were surprised to see Alexander at the helm of a force twice their size sailing toward them in the harbor. They turned and rowed for their lives, but not before Alexander captured one of their ships.

In spite of his modest naval victory, Alexander now made a momentous decision that was to determine his course for the rest of the war—he ordered his fleet to disband. Ancient and modern historians have long argued about why he did this, but the reasons given by the historian Arrian seem plausible, namely that he did not have enough money to support a navy and even if he did, his fleet was no match for the Persians. One might add that he found the Greek sailors untrustworthy and far more trouble than they were worth. But decommissioning his navy meant that he had no choice but to defeat the Persian fleet by land. The only way he could do this was to deny them a safe harbor anywhere in the Mediterranean. In effect, Alexander was committing himself and the Macedonian army to seizing the entire coast from Troy to Egypt. Until he could accomplish this, he was leaving himself vulnerable to Persian naval strikes against Asia Minor, Greece, and even Macedonia. But to conquer the entire eastern Mediterranean was an astonishingly ambitious plan. Most of Alexander’s officers and soldiers had probably assumed they would limit their campaign to the shores of the Aegean Sea, but one suspects that the young king had planned from the beginning to drive his army all the way to the pyramids if not to the heart of Persia and beyond.

Word soon reached Alexander that the Great King had overruled the objections of his nobles and at last appointed Memnon as commander of the Persian army and fleet in the war against the Macedonians. The price of this appointment was that Memnon had to send his wife, Barsine, and his children to the court of Darius as hostages. The new commander then moved his forces to the coastal city of Halicarnassus, south of Miletus. It was an astute decision on Memnon’s part as this southernmost of the major Greek towns in Asia Minor had one of the finest harbors on the Aegean coast and was surrounded by formidable walls.

Halicarnassus was in the mountainous land of Caria, inhabited by a people of non-Greek origin related in language to the Lydians. The Dorian Greeks, relatives of the Spartans, had settled along the coast centuries earlier and founded outposts such as Halicarnassus. In later times, the Greek towns of Caria became Ionian in culture and produced such famous figures as the historian Herodotus, a native of Halicarnassus. Greeks and Carians lived amicably side by side, but the rulers were a native dynasty known as the Hecatomnids. As in Macedonia, the nobles embraced Greek culture while the vast majority of the people carried on the ways of their ancestors, even in the Hellenized cities. To the proud Carians, a father was ted and a mother en, not patēr and mētēr as among the Greeks. Ancient pastoralism was the foundation of the economy and it was practiced largely from isolated hilltop villages scattered throughout the land. But in spite of royal initiatives to promote Hellenic culture, the Carians remained loyal to their kings and queens even while they ignored their attempts to spread Greek ways.

Caria had fallen under Persian control in the late sixth century as had the rest of Asia Minor, but the royal family continued to rule in the name of the Great King. Most famous of these monarchs was Mausolus, who, following a custom Carian royalty shared with Egyptian pharaohs and Persian kings, had married his sister. He then moved the Carian capital from the inland town of Mylasa to Halicarnassus. He had briefly joined a revolt of the satraps of Asia Minor in the 360s, but was soon forgiven and spent the remainder of his reign increasing Carian power in the region while remaining loyal to Persia. His crowning achievement was the construction of the famous Mausoleum, named after himself, that was to serve as his tomb and a monument to his rule. It was indeed a wonder of the world, soaring almost 150 feet and topped by a pyramid. It was elaborately decorated with splendid Ionic columns and sculptures of lions, Amazons, and centaurs.

When Mausolus died and was buried as a cult hero in his magnificent tomb, royal power passed in time to Pixodarus, with whom the impulsive Alexander had tried to arrange a marriage alliance several years earlier. Pixodarus had seized power from his sister, Ada, and soon married his daughter to a Persian nobleman named Orontobates, who took over rule of Caria at the recent death of Pixodarus. The resourceful Ada, however, still held the mountain fortress of Alinda just fifty miles away. The Carians chafed under the rule of a foreign overlord and longed to see Ada on the throne once again. It was a situation that Alexander could exploit to his own advantage.

On the march from Miletus to Halicarnassus, the Macedonians captured several smaller towns along the way, presumably including the sacred oracle of Apollo at Didyma. It seems unlikely that Alexander could have resisted the opportunity to visit this hilltop site overlooking the sea, as it had been one of the greatest prophetic centers in the Greek world before the Persian king Darius I destroyed it at the beginning of the fifth century. Darius deported the ruling priesthood, known as the Branchidae, to central Asia even though they had collaborated with the Persians, to protect them from retribution by their Greek neighbors. Alexander would have known of their fate and the rituals once conducted at the temple. As at Delphi, a consecrated prophetess conveyed the will of the god to mortals. At Didyma she first bathed, then entered the shrine to hear the questions put forth by petitioners. She sat on an axle suspended over a sacred spring, dipping her foot into the water before she answered. It must have saddened the king that the voice of Apollo had grown silent at this holy place, and he may have given orders to reestablish the oracle.

At the seaside town of Iasus, Alexander met a delegation of officials who welcomed him and anxiously petitioned him to restore the fishing rights they had lost under the Persians. Such prosaic matters may have seemed to some beneath the concern of the king, but Alexander knew that the support of local leaders was crucial to his enterprise and gladly granted their request. There he also met a young boy who had tamed a friendly dolphin. The king was so impressed by the lad and his talent with sea creatures that he afterward named him as chief priest of the god Poseidon at Babylon.

As he approached the border of Caria, Alexander was met on the road by the former queen, Ada. The Macedonian ruler had never shown much interest in members of the opposite sex his own age, but had always gotten on well with older women. Ada welcomed Alexander to Caria and proceeded to work out a deal with him. Alexander needed someone he could trust to rule the land once he had taken Halicarnassus and moved on. Ada was loved and respected by her people, who saw her as the legitimate ruler of Caria rather than the Persian usurper Orontobates. She would throw her support behind Alexander in return for the throne. In addition, she would formally adopt Alexander as her own son, thus giving him legitimacy as overlord in the eyes of the Carians. He would not be invading their country as just another foreigner bent on conquest, but as a liberator restoring his mother, their beloved queen, to her rightful place. Alexander was charmed by Ada, but also saw the practical benefits to her proposal and readily agreed. The Carian reaction was indeed favorable as delegations from towns throughout the land began to arrive at Alexander’s camp bearing golden crowns and promises of cooperation. Ada herself was soon sending her new son delicacies from her own kitchen.

But as sympathetic as Ada and the Carian country people might be to Alexander’s cause, Halicarnassus was going to be very hard to conquer. When the Macedonians arrived at the city, Alexander looked down in dismay from the surrounding hills at the Persian fortifications. The fleet headquarters at the entrance to the harbor was cut off from land attack, while heavy walls encircled the entire city, including two fortresses on opposite sides of the town. Since he had dismissed his fleet, Alexander could not prevent supplies or reinforcements from reaching Halicarnassus by sea. The only way to take the town was to find a way through the walls.

On the first day of the siege, some of Memnon’s troops burst through the northeast gate and struck at Alexander’s surprised troops. They were easily driven back within the walls, but it was just the start of what would be a long series of hit-and-run forays by the Persian forces to throw the Macedonians off balance. Alexander then ordered his troops to begin filling in the trenches the defenders had dug around the city. Days went by as the Macedonians tried to secure the moats, but were repeatedly driven back by troops on the walls. Alexander tried sheltering his men with movable sheds to keep off rocks and arrows, but the rain of projectiles from above was still too much. In frustration, he led a diversionary attack on the Persian-held city of Myndus ten miles to the west, hoping to draw away some of Memnon’s troops from Halicarnassus. Here he faced the same difficulties even after his engineers dug a tunnel under the wall to collapse it from below. When Memnon’s reinforcements arrived, they were able to link up with the defenders of Myndus and drive the Macedonians away in defeat.

Returning to Halicarnassus, Alexander redoubled his efforts at taking the wall and brought up a huge tower on wheels to shower the defenders with missiles while a battering ram pounded the stones beneath them. In response, the Persian troops made a night raid to burn down the tower, but were caught just in time by Macedonian guards, who roused their comrades to action. The Persians lost almost two hundred men that night while only sixteen of Alexander’s men fell, but three hundred Macedonians were badly wounded during a chaotic battle in darkness.

The stalemate dragged on as summer turned to autumn and the fierce heat of the Carian coast began to wane. Still Alexander was no closer to taking Halicarnassus than he had been when he first arrived. His men were frustrated as well. One night two drunken Macedonian soldiers on guard duty decided they had had enough. With wine to give them courage and insults to each other’s manhood, they armed themselves and rushed one of the city gates in a foolhardy bid for glory. A few defenders met them and were slain by the Macedonians. This brought out more troops from both sides until there was a full-fledged battle outside the gates. Dozens were killed on both sides as the Macedonians almost stormed the walls, but by dawn defenders and attackers alike were forced to retreat.

Alexander decided he had to take the city soon or withdraw before winter set in. Over the next few days the king himself led a series of attacks against the walls, causing a great deal of damage, only to be met by defenders equally determined to drive the Macedonians back. Alexander was losing too many officers and men with each assault, but the Persians were losing more. At last Memnon decided that his troops could no longer hold the entire city. He ordered his men to set fire to the town. Leaving garrisons at the city’s fortresses, Memnon and the fleet then sailed that night to the nearby island of Cos, out of Alexander’s reach.

The Macedonian king was at last victorious in his most grueling battle yet. Now he controlled the entire Aegean coast of Asia Minor from the Hellespont to Caria. He spared the lives of the people of Halicarnassus, but finished what the Persians began and burned their city to the ground. Concerning the fate of the thousands of men, women, and children left homeless as winter was descending, our sources are silent. Alexander placed Ada on the throne of Caria as his satrap in the smoldering ruins of the city and stationed enough troops nearby to drive out the last of the Persians from their citadels. But even in the midst of celebrating, the king knew that just across the narrow strait on the island of Cos, the Persians were waiting. Their navy was intact and they had thousands of troops at their disposal. Memnon had lost Halicarnassus, but Alexander’s most capable foe was far from defeated.

Many of Alexander’s soldiers were newly married and had left their young brides behind when they departed Macedonia the previous spring. Now that the campaign season was over and all the Greek coast of Asia Minor was in Alexander’s hands, the king sent these recent grooms home to spend the winter with their wives and sow the seeds for a new generation of Macedonian warriors. In the spring, they would rejoin the army to continue the war against Persia. It was a popular decision with the men and a great boost for morale. The furloughs were also a clever propaganda ploy since the men could give eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s victories against the Persians and build support back home. To lead the men, Alexander sent Coenus and Meleager, both newlyweds themselves. Meleager was a loyal officer from the Macedonian highlands who had served Alexander on the Danube and at the Granicus. Coenus had also fought bravely for the king, but his new bride was a sister of Philotas, making him the son-in-law of Parmenion. It is no surprise that Alexander wanted to be rid of as many of Parmenion’s family as possible, at least for the winter. At the same time he sent Cleander, brother of Coenus, to the Peloponnese in southern Greece to recruit mercenaries from the neighbors of Sparta. Apart from their marital duties, Meleager and Coenus were ordered to recruit new soldiers in Macedonia during their short stay and bring them back to Asia in the spring. Parmenion himself was dispatched with most of the cavalry north to Sardis with orders to rendezvous at Gordium in the Phrygian highlands of central Asia Minor in a few months. Splitting the army not only freed Alexander from Parmenion’s unwanted advice but reduced the amount of food and fodder needed from any one region.

Conventional wisdom in the ancient world said that wars were never fought in winter. Alexander, however, was not one to follow tradition. With his lean and hardened army, he set off from Halicarnassus into the wild highlands of Lycia along the southern coast of Asia Minor just as the leaves were falling from the trees. It was a bold move, but without Parmenion around to tell him why he was being a fool, Alexander was at last free to do as he pleased. His objective was to conquer the region, especially key naval bases on the coast, while the Persians were unprepared. But aside from military objectives, Alexander was seeking the glory that comes from taking an unexpected risk—and winning.

Bundled against the increasing cold, Alexander’s army marched through the mountains and along the coast almost a hundred miles to the port of Telmessus, home of the king’s favorite soothsayer, Aristander. According to one story, Nearchus, the childhood companion of Alexander, had a friend in the Persian-controlled town who suggested a ruse to take the citadel without a fight. With his friend’s help, Nearchus smuggled a troop of dancing girls into a dinner party for the Great King’s soldiers. After dinner and entertainment, when all the soldiers had drunk far more wine than was wise, the girls pulled daggers from their baskets and massacred the garrison. Whether or not the story is true, Alexander was able to take the citadel of Telmessus without a fight and gain control over a key port on the southern coast.

From Telmessus the army marched over the rugged mountains to the Xanthus River and down to the city of the same name on the coast. There representatives from over thirty Lycian towns, including the key port of Phaselis, met the king and offered their submission. Near the Xanthus, Alexander found a sacred spring that conveniently spewed forth a bronze tablet engraved with ancient letters. It was probably the seer Aristander who read the inscription and claimed it said that one day the empire of the Persians would be destroyed by the Greeks. Alexander was encouraged by this prophecy as he struggled over snow-covered passes to eastern Lycia.

Alexander and his men finally arrived at the port of Phaselis, founded by Greeks three centuries before. The path north from the town was more fit for goatherds than an army of thousands, so the king sent his Thracian soldiers to carve a road over the pass and down into the plain of Pamphylia. He allowed the remainder of the army a few days’ rest and enjoyed the local wine himself. One night, after a typically raucous Macedonian drinking party, he led his friends into the town square, where they found a statue to the late local poet Theodectes, a friend of Aristotle’s during the philosopher’s years in Athens. Alexander must have heard his teacher speak favorably of the man, for the king and his companions crowned his statue with many garlands.

While at Phaselis, Alexander received a disturbing report from Parmenion. The general’s message said that the leader of the Thessalian cavalry on his staff, Alexander of Lyncestis, was conspiring with the Great King to murder Alexander. Parmenion had captured a Persian agent, Sisines, on the way to Phrygia who under torture had confessed that Darius was offering the supposed conspirator a king’s ransom in gold and his full support in seizing the Macedonian throne in return for his cooperation. Alexander of Lyncestis was already a suspect character to some as his brothers had been executed for plotting the murder of Philip. Only the fact that he had been the first to hail Alexander as king and accompany him as a guard into the palace had saved his life. In addition, Alexander’s mother, Olympias, had been warning her son to beware of Alexander of Lyncestis for months, whether because she had been receiving her own reports questioning his loyalty or because she simply didn’t like the man. Her son, however, was accustomed to frequent, unsolicited advice from his mother. He would later complain that she charged a very high rent for nine months in her womb.

The charges placed the king in a difficult position. He knew the other Alexander as a brave and capable officer, having appointed him commander of the important Thessalian cavalry after he had made the former leader, Calas, satrap of the Hellespont region. Alexander of Lyncestis was also the son-in-law of Antipater, whom the king had left as regent of Macedonia during the campaign. He immediately called a council of his closest friends to seek their advice, but they agreed with Parmenion that such a man should be eliminated. They also reminded Alexander that while he was still besieging Halicarnassus, a swallow had flitted about his head during a nap and chattered until he awoke. Aristander the seer had interpreted this as an omen that someone close to the king would soon plot against his life. But Alexander was deeply suspicious of the charges. Parmenion would love to remove the king’s appointee from his staff and replace him with his own choice. What better way than to accuse a man from a traitorous family of conspiracy? In addition, Alexander had met Sisines a few years before, when he had arrived at Pella as a secret messenger from Egypt trying to persuade his father to support a rebellion against Persia. He was a shady character of dubious integrity, moving between kings and kingdoms, serving whoever paid him the most. As for Aristander and the bird, even Alexander didn’t believe everything the old soothsayer prophesied.

Still, it would not be prudent to risk a knife in the back when he arrived in Phrygia, so Alexander sent a trusted envoy undercover to Parmenion dressed as a mountain tribesman. The mission was so delicate that the king did not commit his orders to writing but instructed the herald to memorize them—a precaution against his capture by Persian agents. The herald instructed Parmenion to detain Alexander of Lyncestis, but not to execute him. The king himself would investigate the charges of conspiracy quietly in due time. Alexander then appointed his old friend Erigyius to fill the vacant position as head of the Thessalian cavalry to forestall Parmenion from selecting one of his relatives for the post.

When the Thracian road builders had finished their work, Alexander gathered the rest of his army and marched north from Phaselis over the pass at Mount Climax, then down to the narrow trail along the sea. It was a tricky path during the storms of winter as the south wind would frequently send waves surging over the shore. The historian Arrian, drawing on the official account of Callisthenes, reports that the north wind began to drive the water back just as Alexander arrived. It was thereafter claimed that the gods had miraculously vanquished the waves to allow the Macedonians safe passage. Diodorus, however, using a more sober account perhaps written by a weary soldier in the ranks, says that the army marched all day long in freezing water up to their waists.

Somewhere in this region, while his men were strung out in a long column, Alexander was attacked by a local tribe known as the Marmares. They killed many of his rear guard and captured others, seizing as well many of the pack animals with their crucial supplies. The Marmares retreated to a mountaintop fortress called the Rock, confident that they were safe from attack. The natives failed to realize that Alexander was unlike any foe they had ever faced and was especially dangerous when he was angry. In a prelude to assaults the king would make against towering citadels in the Hindu Kush, Alexander launched a full-scale assault on the mountain. Within two days it became clear to the natives that they had no hope of resisting the Macedonians, but neither would they surrender their families and their freedom to the invaders. The elders of the tribe urged the warriors to kill their wives and children themselves rather than allow them to fall into slavery and abuse at the hands of the enemy. The young men agreed and so retired to their homes for a final feast before the slaughter began. When the time came, however, a few could not carry out the deed with their own hands and so set fire to their houses instead, burning their families alive. Unencumbered by women and children, the warriors of the Marmares then slipped through the Macedonian lines that night and fled into the mountains.

With this gruesome scene behind them, Alexander and his army at last marched into Pamphylia, a beautiful plain stretching some fifty miles along the shore and surrounded by mountains. The largest city in the area was Perge, famous for its temple to Artemis centered around a cult object that was probably a large meteorite. The citizens spoke an archaic form of Greek that sounded quite odd to Alexander’s ears, but they surrendered peacefully. Down the road a day’s march was the hilltop town of Aspendus, supposedly settled by colonists from Argos in Greece but loyal to the Persians, who had long used it as a base. The town was famous for the wealth it had built on the salt and olive oil trades. A delegation of city elders met the king and offered to submit to his authority if only he would not station a garrison of his troops in their town. Alexander agreed on the condition that they give him all the horses they bred for the Great King in their lush meadows and donate an outrageous sum to pay his army. This was blackmail, but the citizens of Aspendus had little choice but to consent.

Alexander then moved on to Side, the easternmost town in Pamphylia, posting a garrison before he doubled back to Aspendus to collect his money and horses. But in the short time he had been away, the people of Aspendus had found their courage and now shut the gates of the city in his face, fleeing to their acropolis. The lower town was surrounded by a short wall that the Macedonians easily stormed, but the fortified upper city was on a steep hill bordered on one side by a river. The army made themselves at home in the houses of the lower town and waited since Alexander badly needed both the money and horses. A shrewd judge of human nature, he was betting the people of Aspendus would crack when they saw their homes occupied and their city cut off. He was soon proven right when a deputation appeared begging the king to accept their surrender on the terms to which they had previously agreed. Alexander must have smiled as he shook his head and replied that they now must not only give him the horses, but double the amount of gold agreed on before. In addition, he would be posting a large garrison in their town, taking their leading citizens as hostages, collecting an additional yearly tax, and—by the way—he would be looking closely into complaints that they had unjustly annexed land from their more cooperative neighbors along the coast. The citizens of Aspendus had learned the hard way that no one double-crossed Alexander.

With his cavalry mounted on fresh horses and gold from Aspendus loaded on his pack animals, Alexander set out toward Gordium to rendezvous with the rest of his army. The only problem was that he had little idea how to get there. He started in the wrong direction, heading west until he arrived at the fortress of Termessus commanding the pass into the mountains. The citadel, surrounded by gorges and cliffs, was occupied by highlanders who had never submitted to the Persians. For a few days the Macedonians skirmished with these brigands, but to little avail. Given enough time, Alexander could have taken Termessus, but the king did not want to get bogged down in a protracted siege. It was at this point that messengers from the nearby town of Selge arrived at his camp to make a treaty of friendship. They also pointed out that Alexander was going the wrong way. There was a much easier road that ran near their village directly through the mountains to Gordium. Swallowing his pride, the king left Termessus untouched and marched his army north into the heart of Asia Minor.

Alexander’s first stop on the road to Gordium was the town of Sagalassus in the mountainous land of Pisidia. The people were warlike and their town well fortified, but this was one location the king could not leave unconquered as it commanded an important passage to the south. On the other hand, it was the worst possible setting for a battle. The Macedonians would have to fight uphill the whole distance without cavalry support because the ground was too rough for horses.

The army spread out and charged the enemy with infantry, archers, and Thracian spearmen. It was a fierce battle in the winter cold, but at last the Pisidians began to give way as they had no armor and were suffering grievous injuries. Most of the warriors from Sagalassus escaped since the Macedonian army was too exhausted to pursue them, but at least five hundred died defending their home.

The ice was beginning to break up on the streams of the Anatolian plateau when the Macedonans at last arrived at Celaenae midway on the march to Gordium. The inhabitants of the area were known for their trade in the salt that crystallized naturally from the briny lakes of the regions. They also sat astride the main road linking Persia to the Aegean coast. It was a city Alexander absolutely had to take if he was to control his line of communication between Macedonia and all points east. The citadel of the town was formidable, especially as it was occupied by more than a thousand Carian and Greek mercenaries—but soldiers of fortune are nothing if not practical. They sent a delegation to the king offering to surrender to the Macedonians if no help arrived in two months. Alexander hated to make deals like this, but he did not want to waste weeks besieging the city. He agreed to their terms, leaving fifteen hundred troops behind to guard the city under the command of the one-eyed general Antigonus, whom the king appointed as satrap of the region. Selecting this ambitious and capable soldier to oversee a key piece of the growing Macedonian empire would in time have profound consequences.

Alexander reached Gordium in the ancient kingdom of Phrygia just as spring was beginning in the highlands of central Asia Minor. King Midas of the golden touch had once ruled this rich land, but for almost two hundred years it had been a key outpost of the Persians. Alexander hoped to meet Parmenion and the reinforcements from Macedonia at the town and was not disappointed. The crusty old general was waiting for him, as were the returning newlywed troops along with three thousand additional Macedonian infantry, three hundred cavalry, and two hundred mounted warriors from Thessaly. Trailing behind was a delegation from Athens that had journeyed all the way from Greece to ask the king for clemency on behalf of the Athenian mercenaries captured months earlier at the battle on the Granicus River. These unfortunate men had been sent to the mines of Macedonia to labor and die underground as punishment for siding with the Persians. Alexander was polite, but he informed the Athenians that regretfully he could not grant their request at this time. However, he did consent to free their countrymen when the war against Persia was complete. Since the life expectancy of mine slaves was exceedingly short, this was in fact a confirmation of their death sentence.

But the king had much more to worry about that spring than disgruntled Athenians. News arrived at Gordium that the Persian general Memnon had been busy in the Aegean while Alexander was campaigning in Asia. Memnon had taken the fleet north from Cos after his defeat at Halicarnassus and seized the island of Chios, then sailed to Lesbos, which he captured except for the chief town of Mytilene. At the same time, he was making overtures to disgruntled Greeks on the mainland, especially the Athenians and Spartans. If they would support the Great King, he would launch an invasion of Greece and Macedonia that would drive out the hated Macedonians. Most of the Greeks were enthusiastic at the prospect of Persian intervention and many sent delegations to welcome Memnon and his army. It was a scene that would have astonished their ancestors, who had laid down their lives to drive back the Persians at Marathon and Thermopylae in the previous century.

The reports from Greece were a devastating blow to Alexander. He was winning the war in Asia only to risk losing Greece and Macedonia. With the Greeks in revolt and his homeland threatened, how could Alexander continue his campaign in Asia? He would surely have to return to the west—and yet, if he did, the victories he had won against Persia would be for nothing. His dreams of conquest would vanish and he would be remembered as just another small king who had dared great deeds only to fail.

It was now that one of those fortuitous events in history occurred that changed everything. While he was besieging the town of Mytilene on Lesbos, Memnon suddenly fell ill and died. Alexander could not believe his luck when he received the news. Memnon had handed over command of the Aegean to his Persian nephew Pharnabazus on his deathbed, but the young man, though a skillful soldier, was not his uncle. He continued the war and took Mytilene, then captured the small but crucial island of Tenedos at the mouth of the Hellespont. Pharnabazus continued to plan the invasion of Greece and Macedonia, but things had changed because of the death of Memnon. The Greeks began to have second thoughts about the rebellion. More important, the Great King doubted that he could win the war in the west without his favorite general. He sent one of Memnon’s other nephews, a Greek named Thymondas, to relieve Pharnabazus of most of his army and bring the soldiers to Babylon. The campaign in the Aegean continued, but it was a halfhearted effort, biding time until Darius decided his next move.

The Great King called a meeting of his closest advisors to discuss the matter. Should he send his generals west to carry on the war with a mercenary army or should he take command himself and face Alexander in a decisive battle in Asia? Most of his advisors argued that he should lead the army in person and defeat this upstart Macedonian king once and for all with the full might of the Persian army. It would be an inspiring victory with the Great King leading his men from his war chariot on the glorious field of battle. But the experienced mercenary leader from Athens named Charidemus, who had earlier been exiled on Alexander’s orders, strongly disagreed and urged Darius not to risk everything on a single battle with the Macedonians. He advised the Great King to keep his army in reserve in Babylon while a skilled general led an army composed largely of Greek mercenaries to fight Alexander. He also strongly hinted that he himself would be willing to take on this commission.

Darius was impressed by his arguments, but his Persian councilors began to rail against Charidemus, arguing that he wanted an army only so that he could gain glory for himself and probably betray the Great King as well. Charidemus grew livid and began to berate the advisors of Darius and Persians in general as effeminate cowards who couldn’t face real men on the battlefield. Darius was so offended at this outburst that he rushed down off the throne, grabbed Charidemus by the belt, and ordered his immediate execution. As he was led away to his death, the defiant Charidemus shouted back to the Great King that he would soon see his empire fall to pieces around him. After the execution, Darius regretted that he had been so hasty in killing one of his best generals. He was haunted by dreams of Alexander and his Macedonian soldiers ever before his eyes. He sought in vain for a worthy replacement for Memnon to lead his army against the invaders, but soon decided that he would take command himself. He would gather a mighty host from the far corners of his empire and personally lead them against Alexander. It would take many months of preparation, but when the army was ready it would grind the Macedonians into dust.