Chapter 11
In This Chapter
● Taking on the Persian Empire
● Picking apart the big battles: Grannicus, Issus, and Gaugamela
● Journeying to Egypt, Babylon, and India
● Probing Alexander’s death
It is my belief that there was in those days no nation, no city, no single individual beyond the reach of Alexander's name; never in all the world was there another like him, and therefore I cannot help but feel that some power more than human was concerned in his birth.
-Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander
Arrian, a Greek who became a general in the Roman army in the second century AD, wrote the above words about Alexander’s skill as a general in his book - which is still in print today. Arrian was a sober, reflective man, not given to making fanciful statements, so his assessment of Alexander is quite compelling.
Indeed, Alexander the Great was an extraordinary individual - visionary, brilliant, cruel, vengeful, and probably more than a little insane. Alexander was 20 years old when he became king of Macedonia. By the time he died, 12 years later, he’d changed the Mediterranean world. This chapter charts his incredible course.
Popping In on the Persian Empire
The Persian Empire had changed a huge amount in the 150 years after the Persian Wars (see Chapter 6 for more). By 334 BC the king very loosely ruled the massive territories that made up the empire, and local rulers or satraps effectively ran the show in their own territories. Central control had relaxed considerably since the days of the invasion under Xerxes in 490 BC.
During Alexander’s reign, the Persian king was Darius III, who seized the throne in 335 BC after helping to instigate the assassination of his predecessor. He was a weak king, but he had the huge wealth of the Persian Empire and its massive manpower at his disposal.
Although the Persian army was huge, it did have a problem. In many ways, the Persians were the complete opposite of the unified, well-drilled, and professional Macedonian army (see Chapter 10).
With the exception of Darius’s personal troops, the Persian army was drawn from throughout the empire and thrown together when needed. Many of the troops didn’t speak the same language. In many cases, they had very little to fight for and were basically forced to do so.
Spin versus Reality: The Reasons for Invasion
So why did Alexander want to go to Persia? The real reason was the desire for adventure, conquest, and glory that underpinned his whole life. The idea of invading Asia Minor was originally that of his father, Philip II, who wanted the wealth that the Persian-controlled cities possessed.
The official reasons were very different. The Macedonians were seeking to ‘liberate’ the Greek cities under Persian control and gain revenge for the Persian invasions of Greece in the fifth century BC.
Overwhelming Persia at the battle of the Granicus River
Alexander’s first real confrontation with the Persian army came at the battle of the Granicus River in 334 BC.
The Persian army that came to meet Alexander at the Granicus was made up of large numbers of troops from the most westerly parts of the Persian Empire. Darius wasn’t present at the battle and the Persians were commanded by the western satraps. The Persians camped at the bottom of a hill across the river Granicus from Alexander’s camp.
Alexander had to cross the river to attack with his Companion cavalry (refer to Chapter 10), breaking a hole in the Persian line. The weakened Persian line gave the Macedonian sarissa-wielding infantry and hypaspists a chance to get over and engage the centre. Fighting furiously, the Macedonians managed to surround the Persian infantry, and the other Persian troops fled the field. It was an amazing victory that owed a lot to the incredible charge by Alexander and the cavalry.
Considering a controversy
But was Alexander’s attack and victory that simple? The battle of Granicus River is very controversial because the sources disagree on whether Alexander crossed the river at night to surprise the Persians with an attack in the morning, or rode straight across it in the morning as the battle began.
You may think that the time of the attack doesn’t really matter, but depending on when it happened, the Granicus was either a great ‘surprise attack’ by Alexander or an amazing example of fighting a standard infantry battle from a situation of great disadvantage. Either is impressive but it would be great to know which it was! This discrepancy is an excellent example of how careful historians have to be when dealing with a quasi-mythical figure like Alexander.
Doting out harsh punishment
The Persian army defeated at the battle of Granicus contained a lot of Greek mercenaries. Alexander dealt harshly with them. Many thousands were killed and the rest sent back to Macedonia in chains to work in the mines. (The Athenians on the Sicilian Expedition - see Chapter 8 - suffered a similarly grim fate under Alexander’s father.)
Liberating the Greeks
I mention in Chapter 10 that Alexander’s main reason for attacking Persia was to liberate the Greek cities in Asia Minor. Whether they needed liberating was a bit of an open question.
The Greek cities were locally ruled by Persian satraps, but they were pretty autonomous and their only obligation was to pay taxes to their satraps. Still, the Greek cities’ attitude seemed to be ‘Anything for a quiet life’, and they threw in their lot with Alexander as he marched south-east through Asia Minor, liberating them as he went.
A knotty problem
In 333 BC, during Alexander's trip through Asia Minor, a famous, semi-historical event happened that's a great example of the kind of mythologised stories that attach themselves to him. When Alexander arrived at the Greek town of Gordium, he was shown the famous 'Gordian Knot' that fastened a chariot to a tree. Supposedly, the chariot had been tied to the tree for hundreds of years and locals believed the man that could untie it would become the ruler of the whole world.
Based on accounts of the day and later mythologising, Alexander had a quick look, decided it was a bit tricky, and cut the knot in two with his sword. It was a logical solution that was typical of Alexander: the quickest and most expedient way to solve the problem that disregarded the traditional approach. It didn't seem to matter that he didn't untie it either - he still went on to conquer Asia and beyond.
Slipping by at the battle at Issus
After the Battle of the Granicus River, the next big confrontation between Alexander and the Persian Empire came when Alexander headed south from Asia Minor into what’s known as the Levantine coast. This stretch of land includes Syria and the Holy Land and links the near Middle East with Egypt, as Figure 11-1 shows.
Alexander and his troops had been on the road for a year. Having successfully liberated many Greek cities, Alexander decided to press on into the heartlands of the Persian Empire and defeat the Persian king Darius.
However, by 333 BC, Alexander had travelled so far south that Darius now appeared to the north of the Macedonian army outside the town of Issus - cutting off Alexander from the way that he’d come. Alexander had to fight the Persians in order to protect the supply lines that he’d established in the towns and cities that he’d already passed through.
Although the Persians never defeated Alexander, the battle of Issus was a dodgy one. It was fought on a plain in between the sea (to Alexander’s left) and some hilly ground (on his right). The Persians outnumbered Alexander by two to one, but many of the Persian troops had been pressed into service against their will (see the section ‘Popping In on the Persian Empire’).
A fierce battle raged and the Persians fell back across the river Pandarus. The Macedonian infantry really struggled against the Persians’ superior numbers and the difficult terrain. In a decisive manoeuvre, Alexander took his cavalry up into the hills before veering left and charging for Darius’s chariot. This was an inspired move but also a highly dangerous one - a great example of what Alexander was like. Darius wisely did a runner - and before long so did much of the Persian army.
Issus was a great victory for Alexander but not a total one. Darius was still alive and Alexander knew he’d probably face even greater numbers of Persians the next time they met.
Getting Tyre'd out
Throughout 333 BC, Alexander continued to move south down the Levantine coast. As he went, cities either welcomed him or he forced them to.
Alexander had a particularly tricky time at the siege of the ancient city of Tyre (refer to Figure 11-1). Here, the people had fled to the sanctuary of the citadel, which was on an island just under a kilometre off the coast.
Figure 11-1: Alexander’s journey south.
Alexander’s solution was to build a mole, or causeway, out to the island. The siege required seven months of continual attacks on the island before it fell.
In the end, only a combined infantry and naval assault on all four sides of the island enabled Alexander to defeat the incredibly resistant Tyrenians. More than 30,000 citizens were sold into slavery as punishment. Finally, in July 332 BC, Alexander was able to leave.
Taking a Surprising Turn: Alexander in Egypt
Given the fact that Darius was still at large and that he’d spent so long at Tyre (see the preceding section), Alexander’s next step was quite surprising - he chose to head toward Egypt.
Walking like an Egyptian
By the fourth century BC, Egypt had fallen from its centuries of greatness and was part of the Persian Empire. Check out The Ancient Egyptians For Dummies (Wiley) by Charlotte Booth for all the details of the rise and fall of this amazing culture.
By far the most ancient civilisation in the Mediterranean world, Egypt was still something of a mystery to most Greeks - and there was no way Alexander could resist it. Alexander received a rapturous welcome when he arrived at the Egyptian town of Pelusium in 332 BC. The Egyptians saw him as a liberator who’d freed them from Darius. To show their thanks, they made him their new pharaoh. Up to this point Egypt had been under the control of a Persian satrap called Mazaces who surrendered as soon as Alexander arrived.
As pharaoh, all the palaces of Egypt and its immense wealth were now at Alexander’s disposal. He set out on a voyage down the river Nile to visit the ancient capital of Memphis.
Turning into a god
After returning from his visit to Memphis, Alexander set out for the ancient Siwah oasis, which involved a huge trek across the desert. The journey was extremely difficult - even today the trip is incredibly hard if you go across the desert the way that Alexander did.
Alexander’s reason for going to the oasis was to consult its famous oracle and, allegedly, discover whether he was the son of a god. The story goes that the oracle identified him as being the son of the Egyptian god Ammon who Greeks equated with their own god Zeus. This, of course, fitted quite nicely with what his mother Olympias had always told him (see Chapter 10) - so Alexander wasn’t inclined to argue.
The events at the Siwah oasis were very controversial to the Greek mind, which clearly delineated between men and gods (see Part IV for the low-down.) Later on, this proved a problem for Alexander and his Macedonian followers (see the section ‘Going Persian’). But the notion of Alexander as a god in human form was entirely acceptable to both the Egyptian and Persian systems of belief - indeed, kings and rulers in these cultures were worshipped as gods.
Founding the first Alexandria
While in Egypt, Alexander spent a lot of time reorganising its government and appointing his own men as officials to oversee the running of his new territories. These efforts were nothing new; he’d been doing so all the way down from Asia Minor. But in Egypt he also decided to found a new city.
Choosing a spot at the mouth of the Nile, Alexander declared that it would be his new capital - called Alexandria. He recognised that the location would be a tremendous port and would link his territories in the east with those in the west.
Having drawn up a plan for the city itself, Alexander left others to build it for him. He would never return to see it completed. (For more on how the city turned out, see Chapter 12.) Never one to stop when he had a good thing going, Alexander went on to found many other Alexandrias on his travels - possibly as many as 12 spread out over the whole of the Persian Empire and as far afield as India. Only the original city was referred to purely as Alexandria; the rest were given a second name that emphasised their location such as ‘Alexandria in the Caucuses’.
Hunting Down Darius
With fun time in Egypt over, Alexander returned to the hunt for Darius, and a final showdown loomed. Alexander headed west, and by the end of September 331 BC, he and his troops (around 40,000 men) were into the heartlands of Mesopotamia.
Going into the Battle of Gaugamela
Darius’s and Alexander’s armies met on the plain of Gaugamela in 331 BC. Darius had spent the two years since the battle of Issus building up his army. The Persians took the field with a force of well over 100,000 men and probably 15 elephants. Some sources quote up to 250,000 Persian combatants! However, such a big force faced the familiar problems of communication, commitment, and training that I mention in the section ‘Popping In on the Persian Empire’.
The film Alexander (2004) features a brilliant depiction of the Battle of Gaugamela in all its bloody brutality. Even better though is the scene of the evening before the battle where Alexander and his generals discuss the tactics that they’ll use the next day. That’s exactly what they would’ve been doing in 331 BC.
Darius chose the spot for the showdown with Alexander with great care. In fact, he levelled out the ground so he could use his chariots. Alexander used his troops in a wedge formation. His plan was to follow a similar attack as at Issus and use the cavalry punch tactic. For this tactic, Alexander and the Companions rode a long way to the right of the battlefield, forcing the Persians on their left to follow. Suddenly turning back left, the Macedonians charged at the weaker Persian line, and after fierce fighting they broke through.
While this was going on, the Macedonian left was desperately holding on against the huge Persian numbers. Alexander led a charge toward Darius, and even went as far as throwing a javelin that just missed the Persian king.
Darius turned and fled again taking only a tiny fraction of his army with him. Alexander was unable to chase him because the Persians had broken through against the Macedonian left, and Alexander and his Companions had to return to support. However, as soon as news of Darius’s flight spread, the Persian army followed.
Alexander had won an amazing victory against overwhelming odds. Darius was still alive - but on the run with no army. There was effectively nobody to pull together an organised response and challenge Alexander’s supremacy and he and his victorious troops moved south to the city of Babylon.
Meanwhile, back at home ...
While Alexander was away, various things were going on back in Greece and Macedonia. Alexander had left the general Antipater in charge while he was away. As you may expect, Antipater was very, very busy putting down uprisings from the Greek city-states. Even less surprisingly, Sparta, under King Agis, was the city-state that caused most of the trouble (see Chapters 5 and 8).
Burning down the house
Alexander's visit to the ancient religious capital of Persepolis in 330 BC was less successful than his time spent in Babylon. During an evening of heavy drinking, the story goes that a conversation began about the fact that the Persian king Xerxes (who built the palace that Alexander and his men were in) had burned the temples of Greece when the Persians attacked 250 years before. In revenge, Alexander set fire to the Persepolis palace. Apparently, the following morning he was very sorry. Whether or not the story is completely true isn't certain, but the palace was certainly damaged by a huge fire at that time and it seems like the sort of impulsive thing that Alexander would've done.
Things came to a head in the Battle of Megalopolis in 331 BC where Antipater crushed Sparta and her allies. King Agis died in the battle, and it was the last revolt against Macedonian control.
Moving on to Babylon
To the victor goes the spoils. With Darius defeated at Gaugamela (see the earlier section ‘Going into the Battle of Gaugamela’), Alexander was free to take possession of the major cities of the Persian Empire: Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis.
Alexander was welcomed into Babylon as the new Persian king and immediately took possession of its wealth, its palaces and, among other things, Darius’s harem.
The incredible wealth and opulence of Babylon must’ve amazed the Macedonians. It was the biggest city that any of them had ever seen. Plutarch describes Alexander’s own reaction to the city’s riches:
[Alexander] observed the magnificence of the dining-couches, the tables and the banquet which had been set out for him. He turned to his companions and remarked, So this, it seems, is what it is to be a king.’
Pressing further east
By the summer of 330 BC, Alexander had a decision to make: Stay in Babylon and be content to rule his new empire from a glorious city or go farther? Unsurprisingly, he went for the latter option. His excuse was that he needed to hunt down Darius because, while Darius lived, Alexander wasn’t the true king of Persia.
In fact, Darius was hunted down quite quickly; some of his own supporters had already killed him but Alexander wasn’t aware of it until some scouts from his army found the body of the Persian king unceremoniously dumped onto a cart. Nevertheless, Alexander spent the next three years tearing around the mountainous regions of Bactria and Sogdiana in the north-east of the Persian Empire subduing every tribe he encountered. It was hard work, fighting guerrilla battles against fast-moving enemies in mountainous terrain.
Going Persian
Alexander experienced another difficulty during this time. Now that he was Persian king, he began to adopt certain Persian customs that his Macedonian comrades found difficult to accept.
For example, Alexander began wearing trousers and make-up - both unusual practices for Macedonians. But the custom that caused the most fuss was proskynesis. This traditional Persian practice required all those who met and addressed the great king to prostrate themselves before him. Although Alexander didn’t ask it of them, the old generals who fought with Philip II found this new and foreign practice difficult to accept.
Unhappy campers
The mood in the Macedonian camp was further soured by the deaths of two notable Companions - Parmenion and Cleitus. (See Chapter 10 for more on the Companions.) Parmenion was killed on the orders of Alexander after an alleged plot involving Parmenion’s son Philotas, and Alexander killed Cleitus after a drunken argument about, of all things, proskynesis.
Camaraderie had been a vital strength of the Macedonian army and culture; now it was beginning to break apart.
Taking a new queen
Alexander made another surprising decision in 327 BC. After defeating the tribal chief Oxyartes in Sogdiana, he married Oxyartes’s daughter Roxanne.
The sexuality of Alexander the Great continues to fascinate people to this day. In modern terms he was probably bisexual. Alexander’s relationship with his companion Hephaestion was probably sexual, and several historical writers such as his biographer Plutarch said that he also loved a Persian eunuch called Bagoas. This relationship features in the film Alexander(2004) and caused a furore in the final edit when much of it was cut. It’s worth seeing Alexander Revisited (2007), Oliver Stone’s second ‘cut’ of the film that restores much lost material.
To the end of the world and back again
Some historians believe that Alexander planned to march through India to what he thought was the edge of the world and then build a fleet. Using this, he would then sail back around the 'bottom' of the world (where India was joined to Ethiopia), find the source of the Nile, and then travel back up it to Alexandria!
It was a brilliant and fantastical idea on Alexander's part - but the geography was all wrong. Regardless of the seriousness of this plan, Alexander and the Greeks didn't know that China lay beyond India. But that was just the first of their problems. ...
Alexander probably did find women attractive too, but it seems likely that he married Roxanne mostly because he felt it was time to father an heir to his new empire.
Alexander took a second wife, Statira, the daughter of Darius, when he returned to Babylon in 324 BC. Neither marriage was a love match, but some ancient writers allege that he took many mistresses over the course of his life.
Making a passage to India
In 327 BC, Alexander went farther than any Greek had before - through the Hindu Kush and into India itself. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of the mythological figures Heracles and Dionysus who were said to have travelled there (see Chapter 21). Alexander was travelling toward what he believed was the edge of the world.
Having entered India, Alexander made his way to the Hydaspes (now Jhelum) River in 326 BC. He fought a furious and very difficult battle with the local king Porus, which involved his troops tackling jungle warfare for the first time.
The battle was a real struggle with great losses on both sides. (The elephants got scared and ran amok, killing scores of Porus’s own men.) But Alexander was very impressed with how bravely Porus had fought. As a result, he made Porus governor of his new province of India!
Suffering a defeat - and returning home
Alexander planned to go even farther across the Indian desert, toward the Ganges River and from there to the edge of the world (see the nearby sidebar ‘To the end of the world and back again’). But he suffered a revolt from his own troops who refused to go any farther.
By 325 BC, Alexander had been on campaign for nearly ten years, and many of the men in his infantry had served with Philip II for many years before that. These men were absolutely exhausted from fighting. Reluctantly, Alexander agreed to their demands.
The journey home was incredibly arduous. Alexander sent part of his army back to Persia along the land route that they had travelled a few years earlier. He also used the huge amount of timber available to construct a new fleet. With this, he sailed down the Indus River to its mouth in the Indian Ocean. To Alexander, this was the southern edge of the world.
Alexander then led the rest of his troops in a march across the Gedrosian desert. It was an appalling journey with terrible heat and a lack of food. Thousands of men and all the pack animals died before they eventually met up with the fleet, under Nearchus, on the Persian Gulf.
Returning to Babylon and Ruling the Empire
On his return to Babylon in 324 BC, Alexander set about ruling the empire he had created. He was now technically the ruler of Macedonia, Egypt, all the territories in the Persian Empire, and western India, and he was commander of all the Greeks.
Of course, such a massive area proved impossible to manage. News regularly came to his court of corrupt practices among the governors that he appointed as well as revolts by the tribes in Bactria and Sogdiana.
Creating a new master race
Alexander seems to have been well aware of the wider problems associated with ruling such a large empire. For some time he’d been incorporating young Persian men into his army and training them as replacements in the phalanx for some of his father’s veterans who’d retired. After he was back in Babylon, he took this training a stage further.
Various cities that Alexander had founded from Egypt to India were already filled with a mixture of European (Greek/Macedonian) and Asiatic (Egyptian/Persian/Indian) settlers. Alexander now decided to try and settle some Asiatics in Greece and Macedonia.
Getting hitched
To realise his plans, he arranged marriages between almost the whole of his Macedonian high command and aristocratic Persian brides. Alexander himself married Statira, the daughter of Darius III. Following Alexander’s lead, up to 10,000 Macedonian soldiers took Persian brides.
Plutarch describes the massive, magnificent joint wedding, which cost a fortune and certainly would’ve made the pages of Hello! these days!
We are told that 9,000 guests attended this feast and each of them was given a gold cup for their libations. The whole entertainment was carried out on a grand-scale and Alexander went as far as to discharge [pay off] the debts owed by any of his guests: the outlay for the occasion amounted to 9,870 talents.
To put this in perspective, the total cost of the wedding festivities was equivalent to 97,536 kilograms of gold. Even Elton John may struggle to match that!
Boyz 2 men
Alexander had also recruited the best part of 30,000 young Persian boys when he visited Babylon in 331 BC. These males had spent the six years that Alexander was away being trained and educated in the fashion of Alexander and his Companions (see Chapter 10), and they were now ready to become the bulk of Alexander’s expedition army.
Historical accounts indicate that Alexander planned future campaigns to Arabia (in the south) and even possibly to the western Mediterranean. These men would have made up his new army.
Contemplating the death of a god
Despite the great festivities and exciting new plans, Alexander’s time in Babylon wasn’t happy. He was constantly dealing with unrest and revolt in the empire and his loyal Macedonians reacted badly to the new Persian recruits. The death of Hephaestion in early 323 BC left Alexander stricken with grief, and he held a suitably lavish funeral with a 30-metre high pyre.
In June of 323 BC, Alexander was about to leave for his expedition to Arabia when, following a banquet to honour one of his Companions, Nearchus, he fell ill. He struggled against a high fever for a week before becoming bedridden. Finally, on 13th June 323 BC, Alexander died. He was 32 years old.
Death - or murder?
Alexander's death - by catching a fever and then dying - wasn't unusual. Alexander's companion Hephaestion died of something similar only a few weeks before. Yet rumours persist that Alexander was murdered, and several recent books have been written on exactly this subject. These books point to the unhappiness of the Macedonians at Alexander adopting 'Persian behaviour' (see the section 'Going Persian'), and his troops' unwillingness to go on another campaign now that they were fantastically wealthy in Babylon.
Others argue that Alexander had suffered a severe chest wound during one of his last battles in India. The effects of this wound, coupled with the march across the Gedrosian desert shortly afterwards, would have been severe.
It seems quite appropriate that a life so full of myth, adventure, and amazing tales should finish with death in mysterious circumstances. I still can't decide whether Alexander was murdered or not. What do you think?
Alexander’s life and activities brought the world to a very different place by the time of his death:
● The traditional powers of Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and even the Persian Empire had lost their dominance.
● The continents of Europe and Asia were closer together than ever before. The old barriers between the Greek world and the Persian Empire never really existed again.
● The Mediterranean world was left in the hands of Alexander’s former generals who carried out a vicious struggle for power. Chapter 12 looks at this Hellenistic world, as it became known.
● Almost every other dictator that’s followed, from Julius Caesar to Napoleon, has regarded Alexander as a role model.
These were impressive accomplishments indeed for a mere ten years in power. In the words of the Greek general Arrian:
Anyone who belittles Alexander has no right to do so... But let such a person, if blackguard [berate or criticise] Alexander he must, first compare himself with the object of his abuse: himself, so mean and obscure, and, confronting him, the great king, with his unparalleled worldly success, the undisputed monarch of two continents, who spread the power of his name all over the earth.