Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  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, N
earchus 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 easi
ly 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.