Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  The city was fired and sacked.

  For the Greeks, the Trojan War was a momentous event and is evidence of the trouble they had always had with sieges. Their main method for capturing cities was deceit and bribery. It was only to be expected that Troy should fall, not to attack, but to subterfuge.

  Centuries later, the Greeks lagged far behind Persia, which mined tunnels, built mounds to the height of defensive walls, and used battering rams. Philip, Alexander’s father, recognized that a well-defended city was a challenge to his forces and he had no objection to duplicity. A wooden horse was fit only for myth, and anyway he had another more likely animal in mind. He confessed: “There is no citadel to which one cannot send up a little donkey laden with gold.”

  However, both Philip and Alexander were determined to improve the art of siegecraft. They borrowed many of their techniques from the Carthaginians and the Syracusans, who regularly clashed in Sicily where both held substantial territories.

  The main problem was that city walls, which used to consist of masonry rubble or even mud, were getting stronger. During the fifth century B.C., wealthy states began building them from accurately cut rectangular or polygonal stone blocks, surmounted by mud-brick battlements. Narrow sallyports allowed defenders to launch sorties. Athens was a maritime power and boasted the most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean. She made herself impregnable from land assault by building massive stone walls around her port, Piraeus, and linking it to the city by means of a “corridor” of two high stone walls punctuated at regular intervals by two-story towers. In effect, Athens became an island.

  So the question facing the Macedonians was how to counter stone. Philip and Alexander invested heavily in imaginative engineers. One of these was a Thessalian called Diades. He claimed to have invented, but probably only improved, wheeled towers constructed from wood and hides. These would have up to ten floors with windows on each side, protected from arrows by leather curtains. They could bring the besiegers level with the top of a fortification and enabled them to fight guards on the battlements on equal terms. An assault bridge allowed soldiers to cross over onto a wall, a fortification, or a building. The tallest tower Diades ever built was more than fifty meters high.

  The other solution to the problem of lofty stone walls was artillery. Sicilian engineers invented the arrow-shooting catapult. To begin with this was no more than an outsize crossbow, but in Philip’s day the more deadly torsion catapult was invented, powered by twisted sinew or hair. It was soon adapted for stone-throwing, and a large one could hurl heavy rocks as far as 100 meters.

  Battering rams developed rapidly at this time. The most important innovation was to house them in a covered vehicle called a tortoise. This could be sixteen feet long; a small tower stood on its pitched roof, which held pots of water for extinguishing fires. The ram itself could be pulled back and forth by ropes, like a pendulum; these gave way to rams on rollers, which had a constant momentum and greater penetration. A specialist form of ram was the drill, twenty feet long with a sharp metal point that could pierce walls.

  Defenders, no longer able to sit comfortably behind their stone walls, countered the new siege devices with developments of their own. Above all, they needed to be active with countermeasures. Towers were built that accommodated heavy artillery, for the higher a catapult was from the ground, the greater its range. Ditches were dug in front of walls to make it difficult for mobile siege towers to approach. Crenellated battlements were replaced by screen walls with shuttered openings and loopholes.

  Thanks to the technological advances of men like Diades, the balance of advantage now lay with the besieger, provided that he was determined, not pressed for time, and able to endure high casualties. A victorious general was liable to lose more men in a siege than on the battlefield. However, the besieged could win the day if they had strong defenses, plentiful food supplies and running water, and could boast loyal citizens and brave soldiers.

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  MILETUS WAS ONE OF the wealthiest Greek city-states on the coastline of Asia Minor. Founded by Athens, it was perched on a headland at the foot of the rocky, jagged Mount Latmos and looked across a bay at the mouth of the river Maeander. It became a center for philosophical and scientific studies. Its greatest citizen was the sixth-century-B.C. thinker and political consultant Thales, who devoted much of his time to the cause of Milesian independence. It was an era of political upheaval, dominated by Cyrus the Great and culminating in the creation of the Persian empire.

  Thales rejected the use of mythology to explain the nature of the universe in favor of hypotheses that could be tested—in other words, he pioneered the scientific method. Philosophers of his era often supposed that all material things were modifications of one eternal substance. According to Thales, this substance was water.

  Thales is credited with inventing geometry by generalizing from Egyptian land measurement. He was also an astronomer and is reputed to have predicted a solar eclipse. Aristotle regarded him as the first philosopher in the Hellenic tradition.

  As we have seen, for a few brief years at the close of the fifth century, Miletus joined other Greek city-states in the Ionian revolt against Persian rule. Their navy lost a decisive battle off the small island of Lade near the harbor entrance. The city itself was besieged and captured. The Great King was back in control.

  Now, in the autumn of 334, more than a century and a half later, the empire was again being challenged. Miletus was a rich prize, as the Persians well knew. They sent their fleet of 400 warships to reach the city before the Macedonians. However, Alexander’s one hundred and sixty ships arrived there first and anchored at Lade. From this position they could intercept any Persian ships that tried to enter the port, and the enemy was forced to moor some distance away, under Mount Mycale.

  Parmenion advised the king to fight at sea, arguing that although the Macedonian fleet was half the size of the enemy’s, a naval battle was worth the risk—and a defeat would not have serious consequences. Alexander strongly disagreed. It made no sense, he said, to pit their own inexperienced sailors against the better-trained Cypriots and Phoenicians who made up the Persian fleet. A defeat would be a blow to his reputation for invincibility and would encourage revolt in Greece.

  So the king let the fleets look after themselves and prepared for a siege. He dismissed some envoys from Miletus, who offered equal access to the walls and harbor for both sides. “Go back at once inside the city,” he told them, “and warn your compatriots to be ready for battle tomorrow.”

  Alexander’s engineers got down to work, under his supervision, and proved their worth. Siege engines (presumably battering rams and catapults) were brought up and soon demolished a section of wall. The soldiers worked in relays. A longer stretch of wall was weakened; once it had been broken down, the army prepared to launch a major assault. The Persians at Mycale were powerless and could only watch over the fate of their friends and allies.

  The admiral of the Macedonian fleet at Lade observed this early success and feared that the desperate Persians might risk running the gauntlet into the port and smuggling in aid. So he rowed along the coast to the harbor mouth, where he lined up his triremes and packed them close together like sardines with their prows facing outward. Miletus was now completely blockaded by sea.

  The garrison of Greek mercenaries lost hope. Some of them jumped into the sea and paddled on their upturned shields to an uninhabited islet. Others tried to slip away in small boats, but were caught by the triremes at the harbor mouth. Most of the defenders were killed in the city itself. The Rhodian general Memnon and other high officials had made their escape from the battlefield at the Granicus and taken refuge in Miletus; they went on their travels again.

  The Milesians made it clear that the Persian garrison had been responsible for the resistance to the siege. Leading citizens carrying suppliant olive boughs prostrated themselves
before the king and placed their city in his hands. Alexander was a little skeptical. He noticed many statues of athletes who had won victories in the Olympic and the Pythian Games and asked, “Where were the men with bodies like these when the barbarians took over your city?” However, he took the Milesians at their word and treated them with kindness. All other adult males were sold into slavery.

  With the siege now over, Alexander sailed some triremes to the islet. They were equipped with ladders on their prows for scaling the sheer cliffs. However, when he realized that the mercenaries were prepared to fight to the death, the king was moved by their courage. He pardoned them on condition that they sign up in his army. The story is very probably true, for he had a soft spot for brave enemies. He may also have wanted to make a show of reconciliation with Greek mercenaries. The massacre at the Granicus had been counterproductive. Thousands of embittered Greeks were in the Great King’s pay; believing they could expect no mercy from Alexander, they remained his most obdurate enemies. It was in his interest to win them over to his side.

  It was now time to deal with the Persian fleet marooned at Mount Mycale. Alexander sent Philotas with a small mixed force of cavalry and infantry to prevent the sailors from leaving their ships. Finding supplies in this barren spot was already difficult; Philotas made it impossible. After a perfunctory attempt to entice the Macedonian fleet out of the harbor, the Persians, half starved and thirsty, sailed away.

  The siege showed that the Macedonians could defeat the Persian navy from dry land, or at least render it harmless. What was the point, Alexander mused, of maintaining a fleet of his own, especially when it was too small, too inadequate, and too expensive to be of practical use. He decided to disband it altogether, except for a few transports for carrying the siege equipment. His army was well on its way to capturing Asia Minor. He would make do without ships.

  At the time it seemed like an excellent idea.

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  MILESIANS MIGHT DISAGREE, but Halicarnassus was the greatest of the Ionian city-ports.

  The capital of Caria, it stood on a barren peninsula that extended into the Aegean Sea and commanded a fine harbor. Its most famous son was Herodotus, who wrote a prose epic about the Persian invasions of Greece in the fifth century B.C.

  The city had been governed for many years by members of the same family: Hecatomnus, who founded the regime, and his three sons and two daughters. Although they were officially only satraps, the Great King was content to let them settle into dynasties and, in effect, become monarchs themselves. There were pros and cons to this arrangement. It conferred stability, continuity, and in-depth local knowledge; on the other hand, overmighty subjects might be tempted to bid for complete independence.

  The most successful Hecatomnid was Mausolus, the eldest of three brothers, who reigned between 377 and 353 and expanded his sphere of influence to include Rhodes and other islands. He moved his capital to Halicarnassus and invested in an ambitious program of public works. He was a Hellenophile, and the best Greek architects, artists, and engineers were hired. The harbor was deepened and a fine city wall was built, with watchtowers, three fortified citadels, and deep protective ditches. Streets and squares were paved, statues erected and temples dedicated. Halicarnassus became one of the most spectacular cities in the ancient world.

  Its inhabitants acquired a reputation for decadent living. Some fantasists blamed a city fountain for making “effeminate” all who drank from it. Strabo disagreed: “It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy.”

  Like the pharaohs in Egypt, male Hecatomnids married their female siblings, perhaps to keep the ruling family to a manageable size and limit the number of potential claimants to the throne. Mausolus married his sister Artemisia, who acted as his co-ruler. The union was, or became, a love match. On her brother’s death, the grief-stricken queen supposedly swallowed his ashes, mixed in a drink. She commissioned an elaborate tomb, the Mausoleum (whence our “mausoleum”), on a hill overlooking the city. Within three years she, too, was dead.

  The Hecatomnid clan held on to power. Artemisia was followed by a brother, who died and left his sister-wife, Ada, as queen regnant. She was displaced by the youngest of the brothers, Pixodarus (the man whose plan to marry his daughter to Alexander’s half-brother Arridhaeus had caused so much grief). He in turn was succeeded by his son-in-law, a prominent Persian called Orontobates.

  Halicarnassus was the next siege on Alexander’s list, after which he would have realized his immediate strategic aim, the conquest of Asia Minor. He marched south and received surrenders from towns en route. He made a detour to the fortified town of Alinda, where the deposed widow Ada lived in exile. She petitioned the king to reinstate her as queen of Caria, which he immediately promised to do.

  He had a taste for ladies of a certain age, and he fell if not in love then in warm friendship with her. He allowed her to adopt him and gave her the official title of Mother. Every day she used to send him cakes and sweets from her kitchen. Finally, Ada offered to send him her finest bakers and cooks. These little tokens of her affection began to be embarrassing and, according to Plutarch, he politely reprimanded her:

  I do not need your chefs, because my tutor Leonidas provided me with better ones—a night march for breakfast and a light breakfast to give me an appetite for supper. This same Leonidas would often come and open my chests of bedding and clothes, to see if my mother hadn’t hidden some titbits inside.

  One can only wonder what Olympias made of all this. Alexander frequently corresponded with her, but perhaps he took care not to draw this new relationship to her attention.

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  HALICARNASSUS PROMISED TO BE a challenge. Memnon and many Persians, together with several thousand Greek mercenaries, had concentrated their forces there after leaving Miletus. The Great King’s navy, still smarting from its failure there, rode at anchor inside the harbor. Now that the Macedonian fleet had been disbanded, nothing could be done to prevent supplies from being brought into the city.

  Alexander pitched camp on the eastern side of Halicarnassus; siege engines and provisions arrived by sea. The king reconnoitered the walls. A body of defenders suddenly stormed out of a nearby gate to the accompaniment of long-range artillery fire. The Macedonians had little difficulty driving them back inside, but after a few days the king decided to assess the western fortifications near a gate that led to the town of Myndus twelve miles away.

  He was briefly distracted by some traitors inside Myndus who promised to hand it over to him. One day he went in person up to the town wall around midnight, but the agreed signal was not given and the Macedonians returned empty-handed.

  The siege now began in earnest. It was decided to demolish a section of wall in the north of the city. Sappers began by filling in a part of the ditch so that the wheeled towers and battering rams could be pushed close to the wall. Penthouses were placed against it to protect diggers who were undermining its foundations. A surprise nighttime sally was repulsed: about 170 defenders lost their lives against sixteen of Alexander’s troops (although 300 were injured because they had not had enough time to put on their armor).

  One piece of good news was that the Halicarnassian fatalities included Neoptolemus. He was the son of Arrabhaeus, the Macedonian nobleman who had been executed for his (alleged) involvement in Philip’s assassination. This provoked his desertion to the Persians. By contrast, his brother Amyntas was an officer of high standing and ability and remained loyal and trusted. Neoptolemus was not long dead when the king confirmed his confidence in Amyntas by appointing him to an important command.

  A few days later, two towers and connecting walls were destroyed and a third tower badly shaken. That evening two men from Perdiccas’s infantry battalion, who were tent-mates,
drank too much wine and quarreled about their exploits. To prove their virility they ran up to the piles of collapsed masonry. Soldiers from the city came out to confront them and a fight started. More men from both sides joined the mêlée and soon a fierce battle was underway. This was the second time that Perdiccas and his men had endangered Alexander’s career by their foolhardiness (the first time had been at the siege of Thebes).

  He and his staff appeared in person; the Macedonians drove back the enemy and, writes Arrian, Halicarnassus “came near to being captured.” That may be so, but it looks as though the struggle was more even than the historian suggests. According to Diodorus, the king asked the enemy through a herald for a truce to recover the bodies of his men who had fallen during the engagement. Evidently, he did not control the area where they lay. The clear implication is that the Macedonians had had the worst of it.

  Ephialtes and Thrasybulus, Athenians fighting on the Persian side, advised Memnon not to give up the dead bodies for burial, but chivalrously he granted the request.

  The defenders rapidly plugged the gap in their defenses by constructing a crescent-shaped brick wall behind the debris. On the next day, the king brought up his siege engines against it, but one of his towers and some wickerwork shelters for the sappers were destroyed when enemy soldiers with torches set light to them. They were chased back inside, but the damage had been done.

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  A DAY OR TWO’S pause ensued. Memnon and his staff met in council to discuss the situation. Despite their successes, they realized that unless the besieged took some sort of aggressive action their future was bleak. Ephialtes devised a clever plan. One thousand mercenaries were to emerge with torches and once again set light to the siege engines. The Macedonians would react by sending in troops. Once they were fully engaged, a second troop of mercenaries, led by Ephialtes, would issue from a nearby city gate and take the Macedonians in the flank. If this tactic showed any sign of succeeding, Memnon and his full army would arrive to deliver the coup de grâce.