Diogenes.”
Some have portrayed Alexander’s response to Diogenes as an indication of Alexander’s noble
sense of perspective: while he was King of Macedon and now leader of the pan-Hellenic alliance, the
student of Greece’s most famous philosopher understood that a life of doglike simplicity was
preferable to the complicated and dangerous existence of a great warrior king. If the meeting and the
famous exchange did take place, however, it is more likely that it reveals Alexander’s admiration for
the dog who did not follow the pack, regardless of convention. In Diogenes, one alpha dog recognized
another.
Whatever the significance of Alexander’s statement, even as Alexander was obliging Diogenes, the
ever-restive Triballi and the Illyrians in the north had risen up in rebellion, and the king had to leave
Corinth soon to settle affairs in Thrace.
While Alexander was doing so, the Thebans revolted, having been persuaded to rebel by returned
exiles who claimed that Alexander had died in Illyria. But within thirteen days, with what proved to
be characteristic speed, he and the Macedonian army had marched down from the north 250 miles into
Boeotia itself. Even so, the organizers of the revolt continued to maintain that Alexander was dead.
Some other Alexander must have arrived in Boeotia. But, as the Turkish proverb goes, nothing is ever
certain, especially when it is certain: the real Alexander appeared suddenly at the walls of Thebes,
like some malevolent demon in a recurring nightmare. The Thebans should have learned their lesson
at Chaeronea.
Alexander surrounded the city but did not initiate action; he only requested the surrender of those
who had incited the revolt, and he promised their pardon in return. The reply was a spectacularly ill-
judged insult: the Thebans counterdemanded that Alexander surrender Philotas and Antipater. Philotas
was the son of Parmenio, Macedon’s greatest general, and Antipater (as we have seen) was
Alexander’s chief supporter and patron within the old guard of Macedonian nobles. Alexander was as
likely to hand them over as the Spartans were to become pacifists, which the Thebans well knew.
Thus, before Alexander even gave the order, the Macedonians, led by Perdiccas, later one of
Alexander’s most trusted officers, stormed into the city, killing more than 6,000 Thebans. More than
30,000 were captured; the rest were sold into public slavery. Only priests and priestesses, a few
guest-friends of Macedon, the descendants of the poet Pindar (whose poetry Alexander admired), and
those who opposed the revolt were spared. In the bloody annals of Greek history, rarely had a Greek
city and its population been annihilated with such savage precision.
Alexander extended his sense of moral selectivity to one Theban family. During the battle, a
Thracian leader fighting on the Macedonian side had raped a Theban noblewoman named Timokleia.
The Thracian then demanded to know whether she had any gold or silver hidden. Timokleia directed
him to a well in her garden and, when he peered down the shaft, she pushed him into the well and
stoned him to death. Enraged, the Thracians brought her before Alexander.
Timokleia proceeded to inform the king that she was the sister of Theagenes, who had commanded
the Theban army against Philip at Chaeronea and who had fallen fighting for the liberty of Greece.
Filled with admiration at Timokleia’s defiance, Alexander immediately gave orders that she and her
children should be freed and allowed to leave Thebes.
As for that city, in accordance with a decree of the pan-Hellenic council, Alexander then razed it,
except for the house of Pindar. Thebes’ terrible fate was intended as a warning to others who might
contemplate rebellion while Alexander was away in Asia.
CHAPTER 5
The Spear-Won Prize of Asia
SACRIFICES AND MUSTERING OF THE ARMY
Returning to Macedon in the spring of 334, Alexander sacrificed to the gods at Dium and held nine
days of dramatic contests in honor of Zeus and the Muses. Before and after every important event of
the subsequent campaigns, Alexander would make similar sacrifices and hold celebratory games.
Perhaps some intellectuals of the time questioned the very existence of the Greek gods and goddesses;
Alexander did not share such doubts.
After the games were completed Alexander departed Macedon, leaving Antipater with 12,000
infantrymen and 1,500 cavalry, to keep the peace among the Greeks. Alexander and his army
advanced over 300 miles from Macedon to the city of Sestos in twenty days. Sestos, on the European
side of the Hellespont, had been selected as the army’s departure point to Asia. Diodorus reports
most reliably that the invasion force totaled 32,000 foot soldiers and approximately 5,100 cavalry. Of
the infantrymen, 9,000 were Macedonian pezhetairoi and 3,000 were crack hypaspistai. In addition,
several thousand Macedonians were already in Asia with the advance force. There was also a
relatively small fleet: 160 warships, and a flotilla of cargo vessels, to provide logistical support.
This force certainly was one of the largest Greek or Macedonian armies ever assembled for an
invasion. From Philip, Alexander had inherited something far more valuable than a palace full of
gold: the best-equipped, best-trained, and best-led army in Greek history. But across the Bosphorus,
from Sardis to Samarkand, the armies of all Asia were slowly gathering, preparing to crush the
invader. They drank rivers dry; and their campfires turned night into day. Against such odds, what
seer would have predicted victory for the Macedonians?
PROTESILAUS AND TROY
While the main Macedonian army was crossing the Hellespont from Sestos to Abydos on the Asiatic
coast, Alexander traveled farther south, to Elaeus. It was from this small city on the European side of
the Bosphorus that the Achaeans had departed for Troy. Elaeus also was the site of the tomb of the
unfortunate Protesilaus. In the famous “catalogue of ships” in book 2 of the Iliad, Homer tells us that
“plunging ahead from his long ship to be first ashore at Troy of all Akhaians, he had been brought
down first by a Dardan spear.”
Like Athena’s temple on the Acropolis in Athens, Protesilaus’ tomb apparently had been plundered
by the Persians in 480. Alexander sacrificed at the tomb to ensure better luck for himself than
Protesilaus had experienced, we are told. But by such acts Alexander also linked his war against the
Persians symbolically to the Trojan War and to the Persians’ invasion of Greece in 480. More actions
linking the present to the past soon followed.
From Elaeus, Alexander sailed across the Hellespont to the so-called Achaean harbor, taking the
helm of the flagship. In the middle of the crossing he sacrified a bull to Poseidon and poured a
libation into the sea to propitiate the Nereids. Alexander doubtlessly meant these pious acts to be seen
in contrast to an infamous Persian deed. Xerxes had built a bridge across the Hellespont in 480 on his
way to invade Greece, but a storm had destroyed it. Xerxes punished the waters of the storm with 300
lashes and cast into them a pair of fetters.
Before Alexander leaped ashore onto Asian soil, he threw a spear from his ship, fixing it in the
ground. The point of this anticipatory act was to claim Asia as a spear-won prize, awarded by the
gods. Alexander thus ma
de clear that he intended to become master of Asia by divine will.
Throughout the campaigns in Asia Alexander sought, and believed he had received, the sanction of the
gods.
Altars also were built and dedicated to Zeus (of Safe Landings), Athena, and Herakles on the spots
from which Alexander left Europe and landed in Asia. His crossing to Asia thus was punctuated by a
whole series of ceremonies intended to gain the favor of the deities he held most dear: Zeus, whose
son he claimed to be; Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, whose temple the Persians had
destroyed in 480; and Herakles, a kinsman of Alexander who became first a hero and then a god by
virtue of his great deeds.
Once ashore, Alexander traveled inland to Ilium (Troy) where Achilles’ wrath once had “put pains
thousandfold upon the Achaeans, / hurled in their multitudes to Hades’ house strong souls / of
heroes.”
At that site, so imbued with historical and literary resonance for all Greeks, Alexander sacrificed
to Athena and poured libations to the heroes. He anointed with oil the column that marked the grave of
Achilles, and, in keeping with custom, he and his companions then raced naked past the column and
crowned Achilles’ grave with garlands. Alexander’s friend Hephaestion laid a wreath on the tomb of
Patroklos.
Born perhaps in the same year as Alexander, Hephaestion, the son of Amyntor from Pella, was
brought up with Alexander and had served as one of Philip’s royal pages. Although he was not among
those exiled after the Pixodarus affair, he and Alexander were close by the time Alexander reached
Asia. Taller than the king and apparently handsome, through Alexander’s favor Hephaestion
eventually advanced to the highest positions in the empire. This was despite what many considered
his quarrelsome nature, which may have annoyed even Alexander. Later, in India, after Hephaestion
had argued with Perdiccas, one of Alexander’s ablest officers, Alexander reportedly said that
Hephaestion was a madman if he did not know that “without Alexander’s favor he would be nothing.”
Still, Hephaestion was known as “the dearest” of all Alexander’s friends: unlike others, who loved
the king, he was said to have loved Alexander.
During the same visit to Troy, Alexander took from the temple of Athena some of the arms that,
dedicated to the goddess, had remained there since the Trojan War. The hypaspistai subsequently
carried those arms into battle before the king. Later, when he was severely wounded fighting against
an Indian tribe called the Mallians, Alexander would be carried off the battlefield on the very shield
he had taken from the temple.
Finally, Alexander made sacrifice to Priam to atone for Neoptolemus’ sacrilege in slaying him at
the altar of Zeus Herkeios; he prayed that Priam’s spirit would not vent its anger upon Neoptolemus’
descendants (that is, Alexander himself). On the eve of his first confrontation with the Persians in
Asia, Alexander did not want the angry spirit of a Trojan king howling for revenge into the ears of the
gods.
Some scholars have considered the visit to Troy a relatively unimportant event in Alexander’s life
and career. But Alexander’s identification with the heroes and events of Greece’s heroic past went
far beyond the cynical construction of a purely symbolic narrative of deeds, meant to justify the Asian
campaign. Alexander had internalized at least some of the values of those ancient heroes, and he acted
in accordance with those values, at least up to a point. As we shall see, after Alexander achieved a
position unprecedented in Greek history, he began to push beyond the values and behavior patterns of
those role models; and it could be argued that it was his willingness to move beyond Homer’s epic
script that led him into conflict with his contemporaries.
THE PRELUDE TO THE BATTLE OF THE GRANICUS RIVER
While Alexander was at Troy, his crossing was reported to the local Persian commanders, who then
assembled in force near Zeleia, a small Greek city about eight miles inland from the mouth of the
Aesepus River. These commanders included Arsames; Rheomithres; Petines; Niphates; Spithridates,
the Persian satrap (or governor) of the provinces of Lydia and Ionia; and Arsites, the satrap of
northern (Hellespontine) Phrygia. Serving under them were about 20,000 cavalry levied from Asia
Minor, around 20,000 Greek mercenary infantrymen, and also native levies. The Persian infantry thus
would be outnumbered substantially by the battle-tested Macedonians. They did, however, have a
substantial cavalry force.
Considering the Persians’ quantitative inferiority in infantrymen, Memnon of Rhodes, a clever
Greek officer serving under the Persian king, advised the Persian governors and generals to avoid
military engagement. Rather, he argued, they should burn all the crops in the fields, trample down and
destroy all grass and horse fodder, and gut the towns: dearth would expel Alexander from Asia more
quickly and with less risk than military confrontation. Memnon could not have known just what sound
advice this was: Alexander had come to Asia with only enough money to supply his troops for thirty
days. He had to engage the Persians as soon as possible; if there were any delay, he either would
have to find more money or go home.
But the Persian governor of the area, Arsites, would not consent to the destruction of a single house
belonging to any of his subjects. Suspicious of Memnon because he was Greek, and perhaps made
confident by their victories over Parmenio’s advance force in the year just past, the rest of the Persian
commanders supported Arsites. They voted to cross swords with the Macedonians.
By the time Alexander’s scouts located the Persian army, it had taken up a strong defensive
position on the east bank of the Granicus River (modern Kocabas Çay), perhaps near the present-day
Turkish town of Dimetoka. The Persian cavalry were drawn up along the river’s steep bank, but far
enough from the edge so that they could charge down upon the Macedonians after they had crossed the
river and attempted to make their way up the eastern banks. Behind the Persian riders, and on higher
ground, stood the Greek mercenary infantry.
Alexander and the Macedonians reached the river in the late afternoon. Seeing the natural strength
of the Persian position, Parmenio advised Alexander to wait and cross the river at dawn, before the
Persians could get into position to meet them.
Alexander rejected Parmenio’s advice. He would be ashamed of himself, he commented, if a mere
trickle like the Granicus were too much for the Macedonians to cross without further preparation,
when he had had no difficulty crossing the Hellespont. Considerations of shame apart, Alexander
probably could see that his overall numbers were superior; with this in mind, he immediately
dispatched Parmenio to command the left wing of the army, while he himself moved to the right of the
Macedonian line.
Alexander then stationed his infantry phalanx between his cavalry forces on the wings. On the
Macedonian left wing were the Thessalian, Greek, and Thracian cavalry, commanded by Parmenio.
Command on the right had been given to Parmenio’s son Philotas, with the Companion cavalry, the
archers, and the invaluable Agrianian spearmen. Attached to Philotas’ troops were Amyntas, the son
> of Arrabaeus, with the mounted lancers; the Paeonians; and Socrates’ squadron ( ile) from the city of
Apollonia. On the left of these were hypaspistai commanded by Parmenio’s son Nicanor; next the
infantry battalions of Perdiccas, Coenus, Craterus, and Amyntas; and finally the troops under
Amyntas’ son, Philip. So Parmenio and his family held three crucial leadership positions within the
Macedonian army at the Granicus.
The advance position on the Macedonian left wing was held by the Thessalian cavalry under Calas,
supported by the allied cavalry and the Thracians. On their right were several infantry battalions.
THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER GRANICUS
Among the Macedonians Alexander was conspicuous by his gleaming armor and the large white
plume attached to his helmet’s crest. Spotting that plume, the Persians had massed cavalry squadrons
opposite it.
For some time the forces on both sides of the river remained still and silence prevailed, as both
armies dreaded to precipitate the combat. Characteristically, Alexander then undertook the role of the
aggressor. He ordered Amyntas, with the advanced scouts, the Paeonians, and one infantry company,
and preceded by Ptolemy, son of Philip, with Socrates’ squadron of cavalry, to lead off into the
water. The depth of the river in the late spring, when the battle was fought, would perhaps have been
around three feet. We can assume that Amyntas and his men entered the river and then tried to make
their way up the opposite bank at its easiest points, perhaps along the gravel slopes noticed by
modern historians, rather than up the steep banks mentioned by Arrian.
Amyntas’ mission was to ford the Granicus, absorb whatever Persian attack came, and thereby give
Alexander time to get the rest of his right wing across the river in good order, ready to fight in the
traditional Macedonian wedge formation. The initial assault group thus was offered up as a kind of
pawn sacrifice in pursuit of a more important tactical goal—that of drawing the Persian left wing
down into the riverbed, where it could be attacked effectively. A similar operation took place on the
left wing, spearheaded by the Thessalian cavalry.
As expected, Amyntas’ assault group was forced back into the river, where hand-to-hand combat
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