might be attracted to aspects of his brand of Hel enism, but not at the
Alexander the Great and Empire 133
expense of their own culture and, even more important, their freedom.
Using powerful families in his administration, al owing natives to be sa-
traps, involving natives in his army, and adopting Asian dress were some
of the ways in which Alexander might have appealed to his subjects.
His methods, however, alienated his own men and were transparent
to the locals: no native satrap could have thought for a moment that
nothing had changed from the days of the Great King. The fact that
Macedonians were in charge of the army and treasury in his satrapy
was a daily reminder that a new regime existed. Thanks to the Mace-
donian army’s continued victories, Alexander’s position as Lord of Asia
was as secure as it ever could be. However, the problems increased as he
marched farther eastward, intent on expanding his empire. The intense
fighting in Bactria and Sogdiana was a turning point in Alexander’s re-
lations with his own men, who up to that point had loyally followed
their king. The fighting in these regions and then in India, together
with Alexander’s orientalism, proved too much, as seen in the mutiny
at the Hyphasis. This event marked a decline in Alexander’s control of
Asia as a whole. That military success was the basis of his power, and
not hellenization or empire building, is proved by the revolts of India,
Bactria, and Sogdiana as he left, and by the activities in the west of the
satraps, generals, and imperial treasurer in his absence. And it is signifi-
cant that before the burning of Persepolis, the story goes, Parmenion
warned Alexander about the possible native backlash from the palace’s
destruction. None came, a testimony not so much to the acceptance of
Alexander’s rule as to the military might of the conquering army.
No one wants to be conquered, and in the end, only military power,
not idealism, can maintain a conqueror’s power. Alexander’s empire did
not survive him, but that was probably its fate anyway. He established an
empire that was for a time without paral el, but its very size and cultural
diversity made it impossible for one man or one regime to govern it
effectively. These factors alone led to the failure of his attempts to main-
tain it. At the same time, without Alexander, there would not have been
the great Hel enistic kingdoms and the cultural capitals at Alexandria,
Antioch, and Pergamum. These great centers arose from the spread of
Greek civilization that began with Alexander and continued with the
Hel enistic kings, as shown by the ease with which the Ptolemaic kings
134 Worthington
in Egypt and the Seleucid kings in Syria, whose dynasties were founded
by Alexander’s generals in the disintegration of his empire, were able to
attract Greeks from the west to live and work in their empires.
Further Reading
Dozens of accounts of Alexander’s reign were written during and shortly after his life-
time (the so-called primary sources), but only fragments of these survive. The extant
narrative histories of Alexander’s reign that we have (the secondary sources) were writ-
ten centuries after his death, beginning with Diodorus Siculus in the first century BC,
Quintus Curtius Rufus sometime in the mid- to later first century AD, Arrian in the
second century AD, and Justin’s epitome of an earlier work by Pompeius Trogus (now
lost), which he copied in either the second or the third century AD. Of these, Arrian
is commonly accepted as the most reliable source, principally because of his critical
and balanced approach to the primary sources and his reliance on the eyewitness ac-
count of Ptolemy. To these later sources may be added the biography of Alexander by
Plutarch (second century AD) and his treatise On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander,
though this is a rhetorical, not historical, work. Ian Worthington, Alexander the Great:
A Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), includes a wide selection of translated primary
sources, and Waldemar Heckel and J. Yardley, Alexander the Great: Historical Sources in
Translation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), contains a selection of mostly secondary
sources in translation.
There is an abundance of modern books about Alexander, from scholarly biogra-
phies to glossy coffee-table ones. Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Alexander (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997) is recommended as a general
introduction to Alexander and especially for its photographs of the areas through
which he marched since Wood himself followed his route. More recent biographies
that can be singled out include Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon 356–323 b.c.: A Histori-
cal Biography (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974); Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great
(London: Penguin, 1973); A. B. Bosworth’s Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander
the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), the best scholarly biography,
together with his Alexander and the East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Major
General J.F.C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (New Brunswick, NJ: Rut-
gers University Press, 1960); N.G.L. Hammond, Alexander the Great: King, Commander
and Statesman (Bristol: Bristol Press, 1989), to be preferred over his later The Genius of
Alexander the Great (London: Duckworth, 1997); Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great:
The Hunt for a New Past (London: Routledge, 2003); and Ian Worthington, Alexander
the Great: Man and God, rev. ed. (London: Pearson, 2004). Some collections of scholarly
articles that deal with different aspects of Alexander’s reign are A. B. Bosworth and E. J.
Baynham, eds., Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000); Guy T. Griffith, ed., Alexander the Great: The Main Problems (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1966); Joseph Roisman, ed., Brill’s Companion to Alexander the
Great (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Waldemar Heckel and Lawrence A. Tritle, eds., Crossroads of
History: The Age of Alexander (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 2003); and Worthington,
Alexander the Great and Empire 135
Alexander the Great: A Reader. For the Persian Empire, the best book is still Pierre Briant,
From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter D. Daniels (Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002).
notes
1 Diodorus 17.17.2; Justin 11.5.10.
2 On Philip’s army reforms, see Ian Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia (New Ha-
ven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 26–32; on Alexander’s army, see A .B. Bosworth,
Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1988), 266–77.
3 Aristobulus, FGrH 139 F7 (Arrian 2.3.7); Plutarch Alexander 18.4.
4 Cf. Plutarch Alexander 27.3–6.
5 Diodorus 17.70.
6 Plutarch Alexander 38.6–7.
7 Q. Curtius Rufus 6.2.15–16.
8 Note Arrian 3.3.2 implies that Alexander made the long and arduous trek to Siwah
in Egypt to emulate his ancestors Perseus and Heracles.
9 Diodorus 17.77.7; Q. Curtius Rufus 6.6.9–12.
10 For a reappra
isal of Darius, see Ernst Badian, “Darius III,” HSCP 100 (2000): 241–68.
11 See Ernst Badian, “The Administration of the Empire,” G&R 2 12 (1965): 166–82,
and W. E. Higgins, “Aspects of Alexander’s Imperial Administration: Some Modern
Methods and Views Reviewed,” Athenaeum 58 (1980): 29–52.
12 On Alexander’s satrapal appointments and arrangements, see in more detail
Bosworth, Conquest and Empire, 229–41, and Badian, “Administration of the Empire,”
166–82. On the Indian arrangements, see A. B. Bosworth, “The Indian Satrapies under
Alexander the Great,” Antichthon 17 (1983): 37–46.
13 Arrian 1.23.6.
14 Arrian 6.30.2–3.
15 On Alexander’s financial administration, see in more detail Bosworth, Conquest
and Empire, 241–45.
16 Arrian 4.22.3.
17 Diodorus 18.4.4.
18 Cf. Diodorus 17.111.6.
19 On Alexander’s cities, see P. M. Fraser, Cities of Alexander the Great (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1996), who argues that excluding Alexandria in Egypt, Alexander
founded only eight cities.
20 See further A. B. Bosworth, “Philip II and Upper Macedonia,” CQ 2 21 (1971): 93–105.
21 Justin 12.5.13 says that Alexander founded twelve cities in Bactria and Sogdiana, but
he does not name them.
22 See Arrian 4.1.3–4 on the potential of Alexander Eschate (Alexandria-on-the-
Jaxartes, the modern Leninabad) as security against future Scythian attacks.
23 Much has been written on this topic, but for excellent arguments against the
unity of mankind, see Ernst Badian, “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,”
136 Worthington
Historia 7 (1958): 425–44, and A. B. Bosworth, “Alexander and the Iranians,” JHS 100
(1980): 1–21, citing previous bibliography.
24 See Bosworth, Conquest and Empire, 271–73.
25 Plutarch On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander 338d.
26 Metz Epitome 70.
27 Plutarch On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander 329b. On what Hellenism con-
stituted, bound up with speaking Greek, see Herodotus 8.1442 and Thucydides 2.68.5,
with J. M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 2002), 189–98.
28 See Ernst Badian, “Alexander the Great and the Scientific Exploration of the Ori-
ental Part of His Empire,” Ancient Society 22 (1991): 127–38.
29 Plutarch On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander 328b.
30 See, e.g., Herodotus 3.32.4 on Cambyses marrying his sister; Strabo 15.3.20 on sons
marrying their mothers. See A. M. Schwarts, “The Old Eastern Iranian World View
According to the Avesta,” in Cambridge History of Iran, ed. I. Gershevitch, vol. 2 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 656.
31 Sacrificing elderly parents: Herodotus 1.126; using corpses: Herodotus 4.64.1–65.
32 Onesicritus, FGrH 134 F 5 (Strabo 11.11.3)
33 See C. B. Welles, “Alexander’s Historical Achievement,” G&R 2 12 (1965): 216–28;
quotation at 228.
34 Cf. Arrian 7.19.6.
35 Cf. Bosworth, “Alexander and the Iranians,” 6.
Alexander the Great and Empire 137
6. Urban Warfare in the Classical Greek World
John W. I. Lee
On a rainy, almost moonless night in early summer 431 BC, a The-
ban assault force of three hundred men entered the small town
of Plataea in central Greece. They were let in by a Plataean, part of an
oligarchic faction hoping to seize power with Theban support. In the
sodden darkness the Thebans hurried to Plataea’s marketplace. There
they issued a proclamation: Plataea was occupied, and the sensible
thing to do was to accept the fact. Plataea and Thebes, after all, had
once been allies; they could be so again. At first the Plataeans, panicked
at the enemy presence in the heart of town, agreed to terms. Soon,
though, they realized how few Thebans there were. Digging passages
through the earthen walls of their houses and placing wagons in the
streets as barricades, the Plataeans surrounded the invaders. In the pre-
dawn twilight, they struck. Plataean soldiers rushed down the streets,
while women and slaves threw stones and tiles from the rooftops. The
surprised Thebans withstood several onslaughts but at last broke and
fled, with the Plataeans in pursuit. Unfamiliar with the twisting streets
of the town, hindered by mud and darkness, the Thebans scattered in
desperation. One group, thinking it had found an exit, stumbled into
a warehouse by the city wall, only to be trapped there. A few men
made it to the gates; others were cut down in the streets. By daybreak
it was all over. One hundred twenty Theban corpses lay scattered in the
streets and houses of Plataea. The Plataeans took 180 prisoners; fearing
further Theban treachery, they executed all of them.
Thanks to the Athenian writer Thucydides, the vicious fight at Plat-
aea has passed into history as the opening act of the Peloponnesian War
(431–404 BC) between the rival alliances of Athens and Sparta.1 Thucy-
dides’ narrative skill has made the assault on Plataea one of the most
famous episodes of the war. Yet the larger phenomenon Plataea repre-
sents— pitched battle within city walls—remains relatively neglected in
classical Greek warfare studies.2 Instead, scholars have tended to focus
on set-piece battles fought on open fields between armies of heavily
armored spearmen, or hoplites. As well, studies of Greek fortifications
and sieges have concentrated on siege engineering and on the struggle
for city walls, rather than on fighting within cities themselves.
Urban combat, however, was hardly uncommon in classical Greece.
Indeed, during the period from about 500 to 300 BC, the preeminent
cities of Hellas, including Argos, Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and Thebes,
all witnessed major battles within their city limits. Some of the most
desperate and most decisive clashes of classical antiquity were urban
ones. Athenian democracy was born out of a popular urban revolution
against oligarchs and their Spartan supporters in 508–507 BC. After the
Peloponnesian War, when a junta of Thirty Tyrants usurped power,
democracy was restored only after a civil war that saw intense combat
in Athens’s port of Piraeus. It was through an urban uprising in 379 BC
that the Thebans broke free of Spartan domination and embarked on
their short-lived hegemony over Greece. During that period, Theban
forces would attack Sparta twice, in 370–369 and 362, the second time
penetrating almost to the center of town. Alexander of Macedon, in
turn, would subdue the Thebans in brutal street fighting before razing
their city in 335 BC.
The western and eastern regions of the classical world also experi-
enced intra-urban war. The opening clash of the Ionian Rebellion of
499–494, which would ultimately lead to the Greco-Persian Wars and
the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, saw Ionian Greeks
and their Athenian allies sack the Persian provincial capital of Sardis.3
The mercenaries of Cyrus, whose story Xenophon tells in his Anabasis,
engaged in urban combat during their retreat from Mes
opotamia to
Byzantium in 401–400 BC.4 In Sicily, Syracuse and other cities witnessed
repeated episodes of urban warfare from the 460s down to the 350s.5
In the twenty-five centuries since Plataea, the urban battleground
has always to some extent remained on the minds of strategists and
Urban Warfare 139
field commanders.6 Despite the carnage of modern city fights in places
such as Stalingrad, Berlin, Hue, Mogadishu, and Grozny, however, ur-
ban war in the past few decades has often faded into the background
of military consciousness. Just as the ancient Greeks privileged the
decisive hoplite clash, many modern soldiers have preferred to think
about and prepare for conventional battle between massed armies on
open ground. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century,
though, urban warfare has again become a pressing concern. The on-
going U.S. involvement in Iraq, where Western armed forces trained
and equipped for open battle were slow to adapt to the challenges of
fighting in and occupying urban terrain, has been a decisive factor in a
renewed appreciation of urban warfare. In a world of instantaneous
televised communications, insurgents and terrorists have come to real-
ize not only the tactical advantages but also the propaganda value of
drawing Western conventional armies into cities, where they inevita-
bly kill innocent civilians. But it is not only a question of Iraq. About
half the world’s population lives in cities, and the pace of global ur-
banization shows no sign of letting up.7 The problems of fighting in
built-up areas will continue to exercise military thinkers as the century
progresses.
Armies and cities, of course, have changed radical y between Plataea
and Fallujah. Yet despite the many differences in topography, technol-
ogy, and culture that separate antiquity and the twenty-first century,
studying classical Greek city fighting not only sheds light on the history
of war in antiquity, it also offers a fresh perspective on the present.
This chapter provides an introduction to the practices and ideologies
of urban warfare in the classical Greek world. We start by looking at
the various types of classical urban clashes. From there we move to
investigate the ancient city as a battleground, and to evaluate the ca-
pabilities of classical armies for urban operations. Putting terrain and
Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome Page 22