Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  The Macedonian king regarded him as no more than an irritant. Alexander was annoyed that the league was failing to do its job of keeping a lid on dissent, but he had no intention of returning to Greece to defeat the insurgents in person. That would be left to his deputy in Pella, Antipater. But he knew that he needed to win opinion to his side. While in Egypt he had welcomed numerous Greek delegations and made a point of giving them whatever they asked for. Most important of all, he knew that although Athens was weaker than it had once been, it was still worth having as a friend. The insurgency would be easily put down if only he could dissuade Athens from joining.

  This is the likely background to a murky story concerning a handsome young long-term lodger in the house of Demosthenes (on terms unknown but perhaps sexual). The great orator was a fierce opponent of Macedonia and feared for his life. The lodger set up a back channel via Hephaestion to Alexander, who was happy to give Demosthenes “a certain degree of immunity” in return for his neutrality.

  At Tyre during the arts festival the Athenian state galley turned up and a delegation once again asked the king to pardon those fellow citizens who had fought against him at the Battle of the Granicus and were still prisoners of war. He immediately agreed to the request.

  At about this time, his former treasurer, the rascally Harpalus, arrived at the camp, begging pardon for having run away with a large sum of money before Issus. His con-man partner had disappeared to Italy and conveniently died. Unlike Alexander, Harpalus enjoyed sex, especially with expensive female prostitutes, and he may have been running short of cash. It says a lot for his charm that it was the king who made the first contact and persuaded him to return. He promised Harpalus that he would not be punished—in fact, on his arrival in Phoenicia the king gave him his old job back as treasurer.

  It is a puzzling story. Alexander was not a man for pardoning betrayal. That said, they were old friends. Some speculate that in fact Harpalus was on a confidential mission, but it is hard to imagine what project would have required the secret involvement of such a senior figure. However, Harpalus could well have picked up useful information about the planned insurgency and passed it on to a grateful Alexander.

  In any event, despite all the Hellenic fine words and smiles, Alexander suspected that friendliness might not be enough; he dispatched warships to intervene in Crete and keep a watch over the Peloponnese.

  Alexander could be a diplomat when he chose. His combination of velvet glove and iron fist predictably failed to win over King Agis, but it did persuade the Athenians to steer clear of revolt.

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  IT WAS TIME TO find the Great King and fight him again. Around the first week of July, Alexander and his entire army left Tyre and marched up through Syria, probably along the seacoast (to facilitate supplies of food, fodder, and water). At the place where the great port of Seleucia would stand in later centuries, he turned right and made for Thapsacus, an ancient town on the western bank of the Euphrates.

  As always with Alexander, logistical planning was meticulous. It seems that supplies were to be transported by boat south down the river toward Babylon, the assembly point for Darius’s horde. The army was to have marched alongside the ships. Unfortunately, the newly appointed Macedonian satrap of Syria had failed to gather enough food and fodder and was sacked. By itself the narrow Euphrates Valley would not support the army, and in any case grain stores from the recent harvest were locked up and inaccessible in walled towns, so this route was now out of the question. Instead, Alexander decided to march east to the Tigris through the fertile fields of northern Mesopotamia, where there would be plenty to eat and the sun’s summer heat would be less intense than farther south.

  Hephaestion was sent in advance to build two pontoon bridges across the Euphrates. The farthest sections were left unfinished to deny them to the enemy. A prominent Persian, Mazaeus, commanded a sizable force of three thousand cavalry and the same number of infantry (of whom a third were Greek mercenaries). He was charged with preventing the Macedonians from crossing the Euphrates, and for a time he kept guard on the bank. But when he caught wind of Alexander’s imminent arrival, Mazaeus quickly withdrew, perhaps feeling that the forces at his disposal were not strong enough to deter the Macedonians. It could also be that his heart was not in the fight.

  The bridges were completed and the army spent an estimated five days tramping over them. The king paused for a few days to rest his men and prepare them for a forced march of 125 miles to the Tigris. He wanted to prevent any Persian force from reaching the river first. Luckily, Darius had probably expected Alexander to descend the Euphrates Valley, and by the time he had worked out that he was in fact making for the Tigris it was too late to stop him.

  For an army to cross a river when an enemy was nearby could be very dangerous. It was also slow and difficult if the water was deep and fast-flowing. However, modern travelers record that the average depth of the Tigris in September is no more than one foot; there is no reason to suppose it was different in the past. Mazaeus reappeared, but did not attack the Macedonians directly; instead, he set about laying waste the land some distance east of the river. This scorched-earth policy (much like what Memnon had advocated before the Granicus) could have decided the war in the Persians’ favor, but it was initiated far too late to cause Alexander any serious trouble. Once again he had gained advantage by speed and surprise.

  Not long after the crossing, a regiment of Persian horse did put in an appearance. Alexander dispatched some scouts to charge it at full gallop. Their commander ran through his Persian counterpart with his spear, hurled him from his horse, and decapitated him while he struggled on the ground. He took the head back with him and, to loud applause, laid it at the king’s feet.

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  IN FARAWAY BABYLON, which Darius and his army were in the process of leaving to fight with Alexander in northern Mesopotamia, temple astronomers were recording their daily observation of the heavens and weather conditions, as they had done for centuries. They believed that the gods had created the movements of the planets to give people on earth indications of the future.

  In a collection of celestial omens known as Enûma Anu Enlil, the astronomers asserted causal links between movements in the sky and political, economic, and other important events, both after they happened and as prophecies of the future. They warned the authorities of impending troubles. Although they did not have telescopes, their observations were fairly accurate and they were able to anticipate eclipses.

  The stargazers recorded a nearly total lunar eclipse that occurred at 9:20 P.M. on September 20 in the year 331:

  Sunset to moonrise: 8º. There was a lunar eclipse. Its totality was covered at the moment when Jupiter set and Saturn rose. During totality the west wind blew, clearing the east wind. During the eclipse, deaths and plague occurred.

  According to the priest-astronomers, the predictive significance of this event was that

  an intruder will come with the princes of the west; for eight years he will exercise kingship; he will conquer the enemy army; there will be abundance and riches on his path; he will continually pursue his enemies; and his luck will not run out.

  However, Alexander did not know of this helpful prognostication when he and his men saw the moon dim and grow blood-red in color. His soldiers were terrified. They were more than a thousand miles from home and were marching into the unknown. Religious awe was swiftly followed by panic.

  Aristander and Egyptian seers who specialized in the movement of heavenly bodies knew perfectly well that the eclipse was the result of the sun, the earth, and the moon coming into perfect or nearly perfect alignment, with the earth’s shadow falling on and covering the moon. But Alexander was certain that the common man would not accept such a rational explanation. This was the work of the gods. He called a full meeting of his generals and officers in his tent and asked
the Egyptians to give their opinion. Using their imaginations, they ruled that the sun represented the Macedonians and the moon the Persians. An eclipse of the moon signified disaster for the latter. The grateful king sacrificed to the moon, the sun, and the earth (incidentally demonstrating that he understood the true explanation of the lunar eclipse). Aristander announced that the animals’ entrails had been scrutinized and the omens were good. They indicated a victory for Alexander. The army calmed down and morale rose to its normal temperature.

  The march resumed, but the Macedonians had no clear idea of where Darius was. Then, on September 24, Macedonian scouts encountered a body of Persian horse. They captured one or two of them and learned that the Great King’s army was only eight miles away, at Gaugamela, on the far side of a low range of hills.

  Alexander established a permanent camp with a ditch and a palisade on this higher ground. Defensiveness of this kind was unusual for him, as indeed it was for Greek commanders in general, and indicated his nervousness. He gave his men a further four days’ rest, leaving the Persians to swelter in the plain.

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  AN INJUDICIOUS LETTER FROM the Great King was intercepted and brought to Alexander. It sought to suborn the Greek soldiers in the Macedonian army to murder or betray him. He wondered whether it would be a good idea to read the letter aloud at a general assembly. It would helpfully arouse anger on the eve of battle, and he was fairly confident of the loyalty of his League of Corinth forces. But Parmenion advised otherwise. Darius’s scheming should not be allowed to reach the men’s ears, for that would simply further publicize the Great King’s criminal intentions. It would take only one soldier to kill Alexander. Alexander conceded the point, and the letter was set aside.

  It was about this time that the death of Darius’s wife, Stateira, was announced. It seems that the constant discomfort of traveling in an army baggage train had exhausted her, but she was probably only in her midthirties and in the ordinary way of things should have been able to manage. She may have been struck down by some fatal, and doubtless little understood, disease.

  Perhaps her comparative youth provoked the unlikely story that she had been pregnant and miscarried. Certainly Darius was afraid that Alexander had slept with her. However, an attendant eunuch who had escaped from the Macedonian camp and brought the news of Stateira’s death reassured the Great King that all the imperial women had been treated with respect during their captivity. Apparently, Alexander had only seen her once, in the immediate aftermath of Issus. He gave her a full funeral in the traditional Persian manner.

  The two armies were nearing each other and Darius, moved by his opponent’s kindness to his dead wife, launched a third peace initiative. He sent ten envoys to put new proposals to Alexander. These were even more generous than their predecessors. The Great King agreed to cede to Alexander all his lands west of the Euphrates, pay the sum of thirty thousand talents of gold as ransom for his mother and daughters, and give him the hand in marriage of one of the daughters. His son Ochus would stay with the Macedonians as a token of goodwill. The two rulers would become friends and allies. Presumably, although this was not spelled out, Darius’s new son-in-law could expect to succeed him on the imperial throne. There was a precedent for this, when Alexander’s father, Philip, set aside his little brother Amyntas to take the throne himself.

  But the experienced observer might well wonder how two suns could occupy the same sky. A reconciliation would be most unlikely to last long. Apart from anything else, it would require good faith—a tall order after the revelation of Darius’s assassination plot. Moreover, with a decisive battle only a few days away, it was impractical to stand down all the military preparations at the last minute in favor of a sudden peace conference.

  The Persian delegation left having achieved nothing, made its way across the plain Darius had chosen for his battlefield, and reported the failure of its mission.

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  WHAT WAS TO BE DONE? The young king went on sleeping and his immediate entourage did not dare enter his tent. It was high time that the army began to form up in order of battle, and nobody but he knew what that order was to be.

  Eventually Parmenion went in, stood by the bedside, and called Alexander by name two or three times. Once the king was awake, the general asked how he could have slept so soundly when he faced the biggest battle of his life. Alexander replied: “Why not? Don’t you see we have already won the battle? We won’t have to wander any more around endless burnt-out plains, chasing an enemy who never stands and fights.” This was an unfair slur on Darius, but bravado suited the moment.

  The conundrum that had kept the king awake for much of the night was this. The Macedonians were massively outnumbered and could easily be outflanked. They faced a long, fearsome row of massed cavalry, some in shining armor of flexible laminated mail. In front of them at various points were the Great King’s secret weapon—chariots with sharp scythes fastened to the yoke and to the axle housings.

  We do not know exactly how large the Persian army was, but it greatly exceeded the Macedonian. Arrian’s estimate rose as high as a million infantry and 400,000 horses. That was absurd hyperbole, but it is convincingly reported that as the two armies approached, Alexander’s right wing found itself facing Darius’s center. The largest number of men Darius could feed and water without difficulty did not much exceed 100,000.

  Darius had learned from his defeat at Issus that cavalry, not infantry, won battles. He had observed that Alexander had triumphed with a single blow—that is, a devastating cavalry charge from the right. His plan, simple but sound, was to go one step further: he would exploit his numerical superiority and strike a double blow. His best cavalry would deliver an irresistible charge against both the Macedonian wings, outflanking them, enveloping them, and rolling them up.

  Although he worked hard to train his forces, the Great King’s foot soldiers looked attractive in their multifarious ethnic uniforms but were of almost no value in the field. Hence the sensible decision to place them at the back behind the cavalry, most of which was recruited from the fierce tribes of the empire’s eastern lands.

  The finest horsemen in the Great King’s army came from Bactria, home to a fiercely independent-minded people (inhabiting parts of today’s Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) and from Scythia in the uncharted north. An estimated nineteen thousand of them (including some other ethnic contingents) occupied the entire Persian left wing, of whom eight thousand were placed past Alexander at the end of the line. They were commanded by Bessus, an energetic member of the imperial family. It is estimated that fourteen thousand horses were gathered on the Great King’s right. They were commanded by Mazaeus, whose career seems not to have suffered from his failure to stop the Macedonians from crossing the Euphrates and the Tigris.

  In the center, as at Issus, stood Darius in his great chariot. He was protected by elite troops, the Royal Foot Guard; these were the so-called Apple Bearers, after the golden apples fixed to their spear butts in lieu of spikes. They were accompanied by the Persian Horse Guard and two divisions of Greek mercenaries, each probably a thousand strong. In front of these forces were posted fifty chariots and fifteen elephants, whose purpose was psychological more than straightforwardly military. They were to panic men and horses who had never encountered them before. The Great King correctly guessed Alexander’s whereabouts (he was learning fast) and ordered a hundred chariots to face him, but only fifty against Parmenion.

  The Persian strategy was well thought out, although it depended on good timing and flexibility for success. What then had Alexander excogitated during the small hours of the night?

  The number of Macedonians has come down to us in approximate but fairly reliable form. It was somewhat higher than at Issus. Alexander commanded about 44,000 infantry in all, of which the elite corps was the Macedonian phalanx, about 12,000 strong. Cavalry nu
mbered 7,250. At the other end of the scale were the fierce but loyal specialist teams, whose military contribution far exceeded their size: 600 Greek mercenary cavalry; just fewer than 500 Paeonian light cavalry; about the same number of cavalry scouts; 1,000 Agrianians; and Thracian tribesmen who were crack javelin throwers.

  Alexander observed that the Great King had reversed his strategy. At Issus, Darius’s order of battle had been defensive, but now at Gaugamela the preponderance of cavalry along almost the entire front line was proof that he had decided to go on the offensive. He had to be planning an attack of double envelopment, with the cavalry galloping around his flanks. Bearing in mind the military arithmetic, Alexander found it hard to see how he could resist this. So, with typical bravura, he decided to encourage it.

  Here was his master plan. Alexander would tempt the Persian horse into excessive double envelopment. This would weaken the enemy center, and he would then lead a lethal attack of penetration against it. The plan was clever and bold, but very risky.

  As usual, he placed his phalanx, bristling with long pikes, in the center of his line. On the right, the flexible hypaspists were, again as usual, the “universal joint” between the phalanx and the elite Macedonian cavalry, the Companions, with the Royal Squadron in front. This was where the king took up his position. The entire wing was screened by half the Agrianians, half the Macedonian archers, and the javelin men. As usual, the left wing was under the overall command of Parmenion; it echoed the right and was given over to cavalry, including about two thousand Thessalians.

  At the far end of each line were posted some of the specialist fighters, accompanied by cavalry and infantry units. Those on the right were a thin row of Greek mercenary cavalry under a commander called Menidas. Behind them, refused were lancers and Paeonian cavalry, and farther back still the other halves of the Agrianians and the archers. Close to the latter were some 6,700 highly experienced veteran Greek mercenary foot soldiers.