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  their island. So they decided to counterattack by sailing up in light boats to

  the edges of the mole and firing missiles at the builders, thus injuring

  many. In response Alexander had two towers raised at the end of the mole

  with war engines to ward off such attackers. The Tyrians also conducted a

  successful land raid, inflicting heavy casualties among the Macedonians

  employed in the gathering of stones. It was at about this time that

  highlanders from the Antilebanon Mountains also launched an attack and

  killed thirty Macedonians. Worse still, the Tyrians managed to sail a fire

  ship to the end of the mole, which set ablaze the towers and war engines,

  while missiles from nearby Tyrian triremes prevented Alexander’s soldiers

  from putting the flames out. It is possible that this fire not only destroyed

  the towers but also the parts of the mole structure, which allowed the

  waves to wash many of the stones away.119

  By then it had probably become obvious that the city could not be

  captured without the aid of a fleet. That was why Alexander set out with a

  detachment of hypaspists and Agrianians to Sidon, which he designated to

  be the gathering point for his navy. This was the time when

  Autophradates’s Persian fleet was already dispersing with its Phoenician

  and Greeks contingents successively departing. It was also no later than

  then that the Tyrian squadron commanded by King Azemilcus must have

  119 Arr., An. , 2.18.3-19.5; Curt., 4.2.7-3.7; Diod., 17.42-43; Str., 16.2.23; Plin., Nat. , 5.76; Polyaen., 4.3.3. Bosworth 1980, pp. 239-241. On the tombolo: Marriner 2009,

  pp. 49-101.

  188

  Chapter IV

  returned home as soon afterwards it was taking part in the conflict and,

  although he had not been there when Alexander first arrived, this king was

  captured in Tyre when the city finally fell. The ships of the other

  Phoenician kings, Gerostratus of Aradus and Ainel of Byblus, now sailed

  to Sidon; together with the Sidonian squadron they formed a force of 80

  vessels. Next they were joined by ten ships from Lycia, three from Mallus,

  three from Soli and probably ten from Rhodes – though some sources

  claim that island went over to Alexander’s side only after the capture of

  Tyre. At least some of the nine kingdoms of Cyprus also decided to

  contribute to the victor’s side. The sources mention that among those

  present at the siege were Androcles of Amathus, Pasicrates of Curium as

  well as Pnytagoras of Salamis; as a reward for his services the last of these

  was granted part of the Phoenician kingdom of Citium in Cyprus.

  However, it is probable that even more kingdoms from that island

  supported the Macedonian king for his fleet included as many as 120

  vessels. The deflection of Phoenician and Cypriot squadrons effectively

  marked the end of Persian dominance at sea and the ultimate vindication

  of the strategy announced by Alexander at Miletus. The Cypriot rulers,

  who had for a long time supported Persia, now wished to ingratiate

  themselves to Alexander, buy his favour and thus maintain the status quo

  on the island. That is why we later hear of the gifts offered to Alexander

  by Pymiathon of Citium. The last element of the Macedonian king’s

  armada was a single Macedonian warship. Cleander also joined

  Alexander’s forces at Sidon with a unit of 4,000 Greek mercenaries that

  had been hired in the Peloponnese.120

  In the spring of 332, while allied sea states gathered their forces at

  Sidon, Alexander set out from that city on campaign against the Itureans,

  who inhabited Mount Lebanon and were hampering his soldiers who were

  collecting logs in this area. Some historians reckon that Alexander’s

  expedition reached as far as the Bekaa Valley, but the sources only

  mention an episode high up in the mountains, whose nights at that time of

  year were bitterly cold. Curtius’s inaccurate claim that this expedition

  occurred before the burning down of the towers and war engines on the

  mole at Tyre is perhaps motivated by a desire to absolve Alexander for

  this Macedonian failure. During his absence Alexander entrusted

  command of the Tyre siege to Perdiccas and Craterus. For his expedition

  he selected the best and fastest moving units – several ilai of cavalry,

  hypaspists, Agrianians and archers – which suggest that he was expecting

  120 Arr., An. , 2.19.6-20.3; Duris, FGrH, 76 F12; Curt., 4.2.11; Plu., Alex. , 24.4-5, 29.2-6, 32.10; Plu., mor. , 334d-e; It. Alex. , 42. Bosworth 1980, pp. 241-244;

  Seibert 1985, pp. 80-82; Heckel 2006, pp. 224, 239.

  From Abydus to Alexandria

  189

  stiff resistance. No doubt his caution was well justified for, despite

  numerous pacifications, the region was still plagued by bandits in Roman

  times. There was an incident during this expedition that yet again

  demonstrated Alexander’s courage and bravado. His main units had

  dispersed into this dangerous territory but the king decided to stay behind

  with a small unit of soldiers and accompany Lysimachus, for his now aged

  teacher’s strength had failed him. Dusk fell and his small detachment

  faced the prospect of spending a bitterly cold night without a fire.

  Alexander therefore decided to creep up on the enemy, who had fires

  burning. He stabbed two of the barbarians to death and returned to his men

  with a lighted brand from the enemy’s fire. In this way the Macedonians

  were able to light a huge fire, which terrified some of the Itureans and

  caused them to flee. The rest of the enemy were defeated in a nigh-time

  skirmish. The sources provide no further information regarding the results

  of this ten-day military campaign.121

  In response to the Tyrian counterattack and the damage caused by

  waves Alexander ordered the mole to be widened and new towers to be

  constructed nearer its centre, so that they would be beyond the reach of

  missiles fired from Tyrian ships. These works were carried out while

  Alexander was away in Sidon and later on his expedition in Mount

  Lebanon. A breakwater of tree trunks was constructed around the mole,

  which was particularly important in the winter season, when sea storms

  could easily destroy a construction raised with such difficulty. The greater

  width of the mole offered the Macedonian soldiers better protection

  against surprise attacks. Trees dragged down from the hills were used as

  building material in their entirety and thrown into the sea whole, their

  roots weighted down with stones. Unfortunately, the defenders soon found

  a new method of counterattacking: they sent divers to release the stones

  from the roots of these trees so that the timber floated up to the surface and

  thus broke up the mole’s building structure. Curtius writes that in face of

  these mounting problems Alexander considered giving up on the siege, but

  eventually he resolved to continue it with the aid of his fleet. Besides,

  despite everything, the engineering work was making progress. After some

  time the walls of Tyre found themselves within the firing range of

  Macedonian siege engines on wooden towers now constructed at the end

  of the farther extended mole.122

  1
21 Plu., Alex. , 24.10-14 (after Chares, FGrH, 125 F7); Curt., 4.3.1; Arr., An. , 2.20.4; Polyaen., 4.3.4. Bosworth 1980, p. 244; Seibert 1985, p. 82; Eph’al 1988, p.

  148.

  122 Diod., 17.42.6-7; Curt., 4.3.8-11.

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  Chapter IV

  Some time after his return from the expedition against the Itureans

  Alexander ordered the fleet gathered at Sidon to sail for Tyre. These ships

  were instructed to sail in battle formation with hypaspists on board.

  Therefore clearly Alexander’s intention was to fight a sea battle against

  the weaker Tyrian fleet. He personally commanded the right wing and

  entrusted the left wing to Craterus and Pnytagoras of Salamis. The Tyrians

  did initially wish to engage Alexander’s fleet in battle, but when they

  realised that this fleet included the mighty Phoenician and Cypriot

  squadrons, they sensibly decided to stay in harbour blocking the entrance

  with several rows of triremes. Alexander tried a feint attack to lure the

  ships out to sea, but to no avail. The most Alexander’s fleet could do was

  to sink three of the most protruding Tyrian triremes. Moreover, the

  Macedonian side also suffered losses; on top of the city fortifications the

  Tyrians cruelly murdered some Macedonian hostages as their compatriots

  helplessly looked on from the sea. However, although the sea operation

  against Tyre was not spectacularly successful, it did at least stop the

  Tyrian ships from hampering the work of the besiegers.123

  However, the Tyrian defenders remained active. Soon they repaired the

  parts of the city wall that had incurred damage and raised their own

  wooden towers to fire missiles at the Macedonians on the mole. The

  defenders used a number of ingenious machines and discovered ever

  newer ways of weakening the enemy’s power to attack. They fired rope-

  fastened metal tridents into the besiegers’ shields which were next

  violently pulled away to leave the enemy exposed or catapulted them

  together with the shield to a certain death. Tyrians captured other

  Macedonians on the mole with hooks or simple nets fired from a war

  engine called the crow. They lessened the impact of battering rams by

  literally lowering cushions in the place where they struck the wall and

  cutting the ropes from which the battering log was suspended with sickles

  attached to long poles. Metal tipped spears fired from Tyrian war engines

  also damaged the rigging of the enemy’s ships and wounded those on

  board. A simpler but awfully effective weapon in this cruel war was to

  pour blistering hot sand on the Macedonian soldiers below, which once it

  got beneath their armour caused unbearable pain. Large stones had been

  hurled into the sea to prevent the Macedonian ships from getting too close

  to the city, and it was with the greatest of effort, under fire from the city

  wall, that that these stones had to be removed by Macedonian divers so as

  to clear the waterway. Tyrian divers, on the other hand, caused chaos in

  the Macedonian fleet by cutting the anchor cables, which consequently

  123 Arr., An. , 2.20.6-10, 2.24.3; Diod., 17.43.3; Curt., 4.3.11-12. Bosworth 1980, pp.

  244-246.

  From Abydus to Alexandria

  191

  had to be replaced with chains. All such measures further prolonged the

  siege, forcing Alexander to once again consider whether there was any

  sense in continuing it. The stiff resistance of the Tyrians as well as that

  awkwardness of the topography meant that the siege lasted until the

  summer and the final storming of the city did not occur until the end of

  July or even early August.124

  The Tyrians tried their luck once more in the open sea with a surprise

  attack on the Cypriot ships that lay anchored blocking their northern (so-

  called Sidon) harbour. They chose to attack at midday, when the enemy

  was less watchful and there was practically no one on deck. Earlier they

  had also screened off the harbour mouth with canvas and now their ships

  sailed out silently without the steersmen calling the oarsmen to keep in

  time. The Tyrian squadron, which included modern quad- and

  quinqueremes, were initially very successful against the moored Cypriot

  vessels, sinking many including the flagships of Pnytagoras of Salamis

  and Androcles of Amathus. Their luck turned, however, when an alerted

  Alexander, who had been stationed on the southern side of the mole, sailed

  with some hastily gathered quinqueremes and several smaller ships to

  counterattack the enemy while they were still engaged in sinking the

  Cypriot vessels. The Tyrians now had to save themselves by returning into

  the harbour. Although the Tyrians lost only two ships and had inflicted

  much heavier losses on the enemy, their strategic situation must have now

  radically deteriorated. The sources make no further mention of the

  defenders being able to challenge Macedonian dominance at sea.125

  Once the Tyrian fleet was confined to port and no longer was able to

  hamper Macedonian actions, Alexander gave the order to attack. Under the

  cover of fire from Macedonian catapults, the mole was extended right up

  to the island. Meanwhile Macedonian, Cypriot and Phoenician engineers

  constructed yet more siege engines, some of which were mounted on

  transport ships and triremes, the intention being to attack from both land

  and sea. This first attack ended in failure: on the mole’s side the city’s

  mighty wall proved too strong for Macedonian battering rams. Nor did the

  seaborne attack from north bring any success. From the southern side

  seaborne siege engines on ships did manage to destroy part of the wall and

  the Macedonians did lower draw bridges in an attempt to get in through

  124 Arr., An. , 2.21.1-7; Diod., 17.43.5-45.7; Curt., 4.3.13-4.1; Fragmentum

  Sabbaiticum, FGrH, 151 F1.7.

  125 There are two accounts differing in details: Arr., An. , 2.21.8-22.5 and Curt.,

  4.4.6-9; better being that of Arrian, Atkinson 1980, pp. 309-310. A hypothesis was

  formulated about two sea battles, both won by Alexander: Abramenko 1992.

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  the breach, but this attack was also repelled. Moreover, a storm next

  damaged some of the siege engine bearing vessels.126

  The final assault commenced after a two-day respite when the sea had

  calmed down. With no winds the siege engines mounted on ships could be

  effectively used against the city wall, which was considerably weaker

  from the side facing the sea. This was the 29th day of a Macedonian month

  that is not named in the sources, but according the Athenian calendar it

  would have been Hekatombaion, i.e. July/August. Therefore the assault

  would have most probably occurred in the early August of 332. The

  Macedonians attacked from all sides and their battering rams managed to

  destroy a considerable section of the wall. Bridges were thrown over to

  this breach and elite detachments of hypaspists and phalangites

  commanded by Coenus landed. The remaining ships sailed round the

  island with archers on board firing at the defenders to distract them from

  the main thrust of attack. Alexander himself together with some hypaspists

  scaled the city’s
wall from a tower on one of the ships and thence, via the

  royal palace, reached the city. At the same time Phoenician ships broke

  into the southern harbour while Cypriot ships entered the northern harbour

  and their respective crews started occupying the city from both sides.

  Paradoxically the only side where the sources record no breach was from

  the mole which had been built with such great effort. Realising that the

  enemy had entered the city from several directions, the Tyrians rallied to a

  part of the city called Agenorion. But even there they were unable to

  withstand the onslaught of Alexander and his hypaspists. Enraged by the

  difficulties they had had to endure in the long siege, the Macedonians now

  set about massacring the stubborn city’s inhabitants. The number of

  Tyrians killed has been estimated from 6,000 (Curtius) to 8,000 (Arrian),

  with another 2,000 said to have been crucified on the mainland coast.

  Probably rather 13,000 (Diodorus) than 30,000 (Arrian) inhabitants were

  allegedly taken into slavery. The Sidonians, however, took pity on their

  compatriots and saved 15,000 Tyrians by taking them on board their ships.

  The victor’s mercy was only shown to King Azemilcus, some Tyrian

  dignitaries and envoys from Carthage, who had all sought refuge in the

  Temple of Melqart. The only available information regarding the size of

  Macedonian losses for the entire siege and the two major assaults on the

  city is 400 soldiers killed: it comes from Arrian and therefore probably has

  126 Arr., An. , 2.22.6-7; Curt., 4.3.13-18; Diod., 17.43.6-44.5. Bosworth 1980, pp.

  250-251.

  From Abydus to Alexandria

  193

  as much to do with reality as all the other figures provided by this

  author.127

  Military historians give Alexander high notes for the siege of the

  seemingly impregnable fortress defended by skilful and determined

  citizens. The capture of mighty Tyre was an earthshaking event in this part

  of the world, even recorded in the Bible as a prophesy in the second part of

 

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