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ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE SOGDIAN ROCK
338 BC
On a bright August morning, two armies faced off against each other in the Greek town of Chaeronea. Once again, the fate of Greece hung in the balance. This time, it was the rising power of Macedonia that sought to rule, and all that stood in its way was the combined forces of Thebes and Athens.
The king of Macedonia, Philip II, was well aware of the military strength of Thebes. In 367 BC, the Thebans had taken him prisoner, where he not only received a military education from Epaminondas, but it is also believed that he became a lover of Pelopidas. Both relationships gave Philip a rare opportunity to study how Thebes’s previously amateur army had become Greece’s most powerful armed force. In 359 BC, after returning to Macedonia, Philip’s ascent to the throne was endangered by wild barbarian tribes to the north and wily Greek cities to the south. Taking inspiration from the Sacred Band, he rearmed and retrained his infantry, fending off enemies in his own country, and then looked to conquests further afield. More often than not, it was the Macedonian phalanx that proved the difference. Inspired by the Sacred Band, Philip had also made a few improvements of his own.
Firstly, he had replaced the outdated hoplite spear with the sarissa, an 18–20ft pike, to give his men further reach. However, this was just the beginning of his phalanx revolution. As his phalanx moved into formation, every man would carry their sarissa upright, and then, just before they were to engage, the first five ranks would lower their deadly pikes horizontally, creating a deadly wall of iron. This would set off a chain reaction as the lines just behind would then lower their own pikes at a 45-degree angle, while the rows further back would keep their pikes upright until they were engaged. Thanks to the great length of the pike, four deadly sarissa heads could protrude ahead of the first infantryman in the phalanx. This gave Philip and his infantry a great advantage. The sheer offensive power of multiple advancing sarissa could steamroller any opponent. Yet Philip also ensured his phalanx was flexible. Formed in line or in column, with varying depth to suit the circumstances, it could be packed close or strung out thin, or in a wedge formation to penetrate an enemy’s front. Either way, he was a master at utilising it in any situation, ensuring his phalanx was considered the deadliest in the ancient world.
With his well-trained and well-armed phalanx, the Macedonians crushed the elite infantry of both the Illyrians and the Greeks, as well as the hardened warriors of Thrace and Paeonia. However, while his phalanx and infantry were formidable, Philip had another secret weapon at his disposal: his son Alexander, the 18-year-old commander of his elite cavalry.
Several legends surround Alexander’s birth in 356 BC. According to Plutarch, his mother, Olympias, had a dream on the eve of the consummation of her marriage to Philip, in which her womb was struck by a thunderbolt. Sometime after the wedding, Philip also had a dream in which he secured his wife’s womb with a seal engraved with a lion’s image. Thereafter many Greeks believed that Alexander’s virgin birth proved him to be the son of their god Zeus. Alexander certainly didn’t believe his pedigree was a mere genealogical fiction. As he grew older, he truly believed he hailed from the gods, and, in later years, he behaved explicitly as though he were the lineal descendant of both Hercules and Achilles.
Philip also believed his son was special. On the day of Alexander’s birth, Philip received news that his forces had defeated the combined Illyrian and Paeonian armies, while his horses had also won races at the Olympic Games. These good omens were, however, just a taste of the glory Philip’s young son would soon bring him, and his country.
Educated by Aristotle, at the Temple of the Nymphs at Mieza, Alexander developed relationships with children of Macedonian nobles, such as Ptolemy, Hephaistion and Cassander. In time, these young boys would become Alexander’s generals in his elite special forces, known as the ‘Companions’.
Hailing from the upper classes, they were able to acquire and maintain the best armour and horses, and were experts at wielding the spear and shield. Eventually they would become the first shock cavalry in history. In battle, Alexander would wait for the Macedonian phalanx to pin the enemy in place, before unleashing his Companion Cavalry on the enemy’s flank, or behind, with lightning speed and ferocity.
In 338 BC, Alexander’s Companion Cavalry would face its greatest test yet. Outside the town of Chaeronea, they faced Greek forces, including that of the Sacred Band. Sadly, details of the battle itself are scarce, with Diodorus providing the only formal account. However, he recounts that ‘the battle was fierce and bloody’ and that ‘victory was uncertain’ until Alexander entered the fray. Riding at the head of his Companions, and with the battle in the balance, he had ‘his heart set on showing his father his prowess’.
From here, Alexander led the charge of his Companions, and ‘was the first to break through the main body of the enemy, directly opposing him, slaying many; and bore down all before him – and his men, pressing on closely, cut to pieces the lines of the enemy; and after the ground had been piled with the dead, put the wing resisting him in flight’.
The 18-year-old boy wonder had just delivered the most crushing defeat, on the biggest stage, of his young life. Not only had he proven his prowess as a warrior, but also as a leader. In front of him now were the spoils of his victory – thousands of dead Athenians, as well as the bloodied bodies of the Sacred Band.
Plutarch, in his Life of Alexander, wrote of the young commander’s courage, ‘. . . he is said to have been the first man that charged the Thebans’ sacred band . . . This bravery made Philip so fond of him, that nothing pleased him more than to hear his subjects call himself their general and Alexander their king.’
After Alexander’s famous victory, Athens was forced into an alliance with Macedonia, while Thebes lost its rich agricultural lands in Boeotia, with the Sacred Band no more. According to Plutarch, Philip was extremely moved by the Band’s courage, having of course once been so close to their founders, Epaminondas and Pelopidas:
After the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the 300 were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, and mingled one with another, he was amazed, and on learning that this was the band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said, ‘Perish miserably they who think that these men did or suffered aught disgraceful.’
So touched was Philip at the sacrifice of the Sacred Band that it appears he built a monument to them, which was discovered by a British tourist in 1818. While out horseback riding near the battlefield, the tourist tripped over a rock that, upon some digging, was revealed to be a massive stone lion. Inside the monument, 254 skeletons were later discovered, believed to be those of the Sacred Band, with the lovers wrapped in eternity to each other.
The Macedonians’ victory at Chaeronea was a turning point in history. With the Greeks conquered, Philip now turned his military ambitions to Persia. However, before this could be realised, he was assassinated, with Alexander coming to the throne at the age of just twenty.
Despite his youth, Alexander launched one of the most daring military campaigns ever attempted. With just 50,000 men, he set out to achieve his father’s dream of conquering the vast Persian Empire. By now, it stretched from modern-day Turkey in the west and included most of the Middle East, an area of 3 million square miles.
Nevertheless, Alexander commenced his invasion in 334 BC and, over the course of four years, won a series of decisive battles, most notably the Battle of the Granicus River and the Battle of Issus, which finally marked the end of the Persian Empire. After his men had killed or captured over 100,000 Persians in Issus, the Persian King Darius offered Alexander half his empire and marriage to his daughter, in an attempt to reach a truce. Alexander replied that he already had half of the empire, and intended to take the rest.
Such conquests saw Alexander heralded as a military genius, whose guile, ingenuity and lateral thinking allowed him to defeat f
ar superior forces. Many started to believe that the prophecy might actually be true: Alexander really was descended from the gods. His men vowed to follow him to the end of the earth, which is exactly where he wanted to take them, as he endeavoured to reach the ‘ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea’.
In 1979, after seven years of planning, my colleague Charles Burton and I embarked on the ‘Transglobe Expedition’. The aim was to become the first expedition to make a circumpolar navigation, travelling the world ‘vertically’, traversing both of the poles using only surface transport. In effect, we were looking to reach both ‘ends of the world’. It took us over three years and 100,000 miles, travelling across the Sahara, through the swamps and jungles of Mali and the Ivory Coast, over huge unexplored crevasse fields in Antarctica, through the inhospitable Northwest Passage, and into the unpredictable hazards of the Arctic Ocean. In temperatures that veered between 40 degrees in the Sahara and minus 50 in the Antarctic, we suffered countless injuries, from frost-nipped noses, fingers and toes, to blisters and sores down to the bone, not to mention facing the threat of polar bears. Alexander might very well have achieved all of this and more, but I’m not entirely sure the poles would have reached his expectations for the ‘ends of the world’. All I can say is it was very white and very cold. However, the mere thrill of getting there, which was certainly one of the reasons that spurred me on, might just have been enough for Alexander. After all, sometimes it is the journey, rather than the destination, that counts.
In any event, before he embarked on his ambition to reach the end of the world, Alexander soon had his next conquest in sight: India. This exotic country was one that not even his hero Hercules made his own. Moreover, it was all that was left for Alexander to conquer in the ancient world.
However, standing in Alexander’s way, between Persia and India, were the tribal badlands of Bactria and Sogdiana, what we know today as Afghanistan and Tajikistan. This was one of the world’s most difficult places to control, as the Soviet Union and United States have found to their cost in recent times. Warlords in the regions knew the land better than anybody. Disappearing into the vast mountains, they then picked their enemy off from the shadows.
By now, Alexander’s supply chain ran thousands of miles back to Greece. He depended on this to move troops, horses and gold, all vital when conquering a country. This was something the Afghans understood, and they hit the chain at every opportunity. And it was never-ending. Even if Alexander killed one warlord it seemed another dozen took his place. After three years of brutal suppression, he had done all he could to overcome this threat, but one warlord still stood in his way: Oxyartes.
The Greek historian Arrian of Nicomedia detailed in his book The Anabasis of Alexander that Oxyartes retreated with his tribe and his precious 16-year-old daughter, Roxana, to the Sogdian Rock, a mountain fortress located north of Bactria. Twelve miles in circumference, it rose to a summit some 3,000ft up. From here, Oxyartes could still swoop down on Alexander’s supply lines while remaining untouchable. Alexander knew he couldn’t take India until Oxyartes had been dealt with, but with his impregnable mountain fortress it looked an impossible task. The intelligence Alexander received was also unfavourable.
While Alexander’s army outnumbered Oxyartes’ ten to one, he was told that any attempt to face them head-on would be a suicide mission. The only route to the fortress was a narrow winding footpath, which was out in the open. Should his troops attempt to storm the castle, they would either be picked off by archers or forced downhill. It appeared the only option was to lay siege, but Alexander was also told that Oxyartes had enough supplies to last for months, while there was a never-ending supply of fresh water, thanks to the snow on the mountain.
Alexander had no patience for a long siege. In order to break the impasse, he sent an envoy to Oxyartes promising to give the warlord, and his tribe, safe passage if they surrendered immediately. Such was his confidence in this impregnable fortress that Oxyartes mockingly told the envoy that Alexander would need ‘men with wings’ to capture him. This response infuriated the Macedonian king. But, as Oxyartes’ taunt played over in his mind, it soon gave him an idea.
Quickly, he ordered his commanders to muster 300 of the best climbers in his army. Many of these men were either former mountain herdsmen, used to scaling rugged cliffs, or members of his crack infantry unit, known as the shield bearers, who were always in the first wave of attack over high enemy walls. During their duty, all had been involved in dangerous situations, but even they were astonished when Alexander told them of his plan.
Scaling the 3,000ft rock, at night, without making any noise to alert the enemy, even if they should fall to their deaths, Alexander wanted them to reach a crag overlooking the rebel base. He was convinced that their sudden appearance would deliver such a shock that the rebels would surrender without a fight. After all, Oxyartes believed that only men with wings could reach the summit, and that’s just what Alexander wanted him to believe.
Unsurprisingly, many of the men were apprehensive. Climbing the rock at night seemed suicidal, especially in such cold and snowy conditions. What’s more, they wouldn’t be able to climb 3,000ft in one single night. This meant that, when daylight hit, they would need to hide on the mountain, all day, until darkness descended and they could then resume their climb. In order to climb such a mountain, they also needed to be as light as possible. This would mean taking with them only minimal clothing and provisions, surely not enough to sustain at least two days of arduous climbing. Although one essential item Alexander insisted they all took with them was a white sheet, which they were to wave as a signal once they had reached the top. This reminds me of my time at Eton, where for some reason I became addicted to stegophily, the official name for the sport of climbing up the outside of buildings, particularly at night, and leaving items on their topmost spire, dome or lightning conductor. However, one such escapade almost saw me expelled from school after my climbing partner and I had affixed a flag to the ‘summit’ of School Hall’s dome. I was lucky enough to escape in the ensuing chase but, alas, my poor partner was caught and asked to leave at the end of term. Such punishment nonetheless paled in comparison to what would happen to Alexander’s mountain men if they were to be caught.
Alexander was, however, prepared for his men’s scepticism. He therefore offered them a sweetener. The first man to reach the summit would be rewarded with a huge prize of twelve talents (the equivalent of $250,000 today), while the second man would receive eleven talents, the third ten, and so on to the twelfth, who would receive 300 gold darics.
It might have seemed like a suicide mission but Alexander’s mountain men couldn’t turn this down. The dangers were clear. They could die from exposure, fall to their deaths, or be picked off as sitting targets by enemy archers, but it could also make them very rich men. Moreover, it could also put an unknown man into the good books of the world’s greatest conqueror, a valuable position indeed.
Like many of you, I am not sure I would have been tempted by such a proposition. I have always had a tremendous fear of heights and this mission would have terrified me. Over the years, I have tried to confront this fear head-on, with little success. My first attempt saw me suffer heart issues while climbing Everest, which meant I had to turn back. While I would go on to conquer the world’s highest mountain a few years later, I found that it still hadn’t really solved anything. Climbing Everest was, of course, a monumental task but it didn’t really involve scaling sheer cliff faces, with a massive drop below. As such, I turned to the supposed daddy of vertigo-inducing climbs – the north face of the Eiger mountain in the Alps.
The 6,000ft of vertical limestone and black ice had killed over forty of the world’s top climbers. Joe Simpson, of Touching the Void fame, has written of this so-called ‘Murder Wall’: ‘It wasn’t the hardest or the highest. It was simply “The Eiger”. The very mention of the name made my heart beat faster. The seminal mountain, a metaphorical mountain that represented e
verything that defines mountaineering – a route I had dreamed of climbing my entire adult life.’
My task was made slightly harder owing to the fact that some of the fingers on my left hand had previously been amputated due to suffering frostbite on an expedition. Thankfully, they were not to cause me too many problems. One thing that did, however, terrify me was when one of my boots skidded off the rock, and I was left hanging off the mountain by just the axe in my right hand and the smallest of footholds. My mouth felt very dry after that, and I still faced two more days, with yet more slips and falls prevented only by my axe precariously buried in the rock. At times, I had to avoid looking down and occupy my mind with all manner of things, so that no tiny chink of terror could burrow into my psyche and render me a gibbering fool. When I accidentally dropped my windproof jacket, and saw it fall below, the subsequent butterflies in my stomach threatened to eat me alive.
Night-time was also a testing experience. After climbing all day, I was exhausted. However, rest would not come easily. Each night we had to find a ledge upon which to camp, which was often no more than 4ft wide. After clipping my harness to a rock bolt, I would lie with my nose right up against the wall, and my backside protruding over the edge of the ledge, with the void thousands of feet below. I daren’t close my eyes for fear that one wrong move would see me dangling over the edge. That was certainly a jolt that would have woken me up.
While I managed to ‘conquer’ the Eiger, I still had not conquered my vertigo. It seems that it is a condition I will be stuck with, but I certainly can’t be accused of hiding from it. In any event, the idea of climbing the Sogdian Rock, like Alexander’s men, without any equipment, is certainly one that would make anybody think twice.
As darkness enveloped the Sogdian mountain, the men began their preparations. With at least two nights of climbing ahead, they had to travel light. In order to cut down on the quantity of rations they took with them, they ate and drank as much as they could before they set off. They also wore minimal clothing, despite it being a cold spring night. With a sheer rock climb, any added weight could be the difference between success and failure. And in this case failure meant death.
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