He remained touchy, however, and renewed tensions quickly arose over a proposed marriage alliance later in 337. Pixodarus, the local dynast of Caria, who was at the same time recognized as governor of Caria by the Persian king, knew of Philip’s plans to invade western Asia and made overtures to marry his daughter to a son of Philip, suggesting that he might be willing to switch sides and ally with Philip when the time came. Philip proposed that his son Arrhidaeus could marry Pixodarus’ daughter, and when Alexander learned of this he again felt slighted and became furious. Through intermediaries, he instead offered himself to Pixodarus as a better match for his daughter; but when Philip heard about this he put a stop to the proposed match. The angry king explained to Alexander that he had no plan to marry his heir presumptive to the daughter of a mere Carian dynast, and instructed him to think things through before acting. A few of Alexander’s friends, who had acted as intermediaries, were banished from Macedonia, and a chastened Alexander had to accept his father’s criticism for spoiling a potentially useful alliance: Pixodarus now chose to marry his daughter to a Persian grandee instead. The point of both of these upsets is that they were born of Alexander’s touchy and impetuous nature, and from the natural frictions between two very dominant personalities. Friction between fathers and teenage sons is in general a common phenomenon, even when the two men concerned do not have quite such outsize egos as Philip and Alexander. Far too much has in general been made of these upsets: at the end of the day Alexander was Philip’s publicly acknowledged and groomed heir apparent, and he succeeded to the throne of Macedonia at once when Philip died, thanks to the immediate support of Philip’s right-hand men Antipater and Parmenio, who knew quite well what Philip’s plans and intentions were.
It is appropriate here to point up the contrast between the situations faced by Philip and Alexander when they each became ruler at very young ages: twenty-three or twenty-four in Philip’s case, twenty in the case of Alexander. Philip took over in the aftermath of a terrible military disaster in which the Macedonian army had been largely wiped out; he had to deal with a Macedonia that had been chronically weak and disunited for decades at least, and which was at his succession under attack from all sides and seemingly on the verge of complete dissolution. Alexander, by contrast, inherited a strong and unified state, a loyal and obedient aristocracy and people, the best and largest army in the eastern Mediterranean region with an outstandingly trained officer corps, and a two-decade tradition of unbroken and unparalleled Macedonian success. In addition, Philip came to the throne unexpectedly, the youngest of three brothers with no particular preparation or training for a task of ruling he was never likely to have to take up; Alexander had the best training and grooming for the role of commanding and ruling that the ancient world could provide, at the hands of Aristotle, of Philip’s right-hand men Antipater and Parmenio, and most crucially from Philip himself.
This is not to say that Alexander faced no difficulties in taking up the rule of his father’s empire. Philip’s nephew Amyntas, the son of his older brother and predecessor as Macedonian ruler Perdiccas III, was still alive and aged around thirty. He had been carefully raised by Philip almost as another son: after all, for the first ten or twelve years of his reign, until Alexander began to grow up and show his abilities, Amyntas was Philip’s most natural successor should he die. At some point a few years before he died, Philip had married Amyntas to his oldest daughter Cynnane, from his Illyrian wife Audata; which meant that Amyntas’ children would not only be Philip’s great-nephews or nieces, but also his grandchildren. Amyntas, that is to say, was still very much part of the potential line of succession. As the son of a previous ruler and apparently impatient at his subordination, Amyntas decided not to wait. He challenged Alexander’s claim to the succession, but received virtually no backing from the Macedonian aristocracy, who understandably followed Philip’s intentions and Antipatros’ lead in accepting Alexander as the new ruler. Amyntas was quickly hunted down and executed.
More serious challenges to Alexander’s power came from outside, from non-Macedonian peoples. To the north of Macedonia the Balkan peoples had only been subordinated by long, arduous, and repeated campaigning under Philip. With Philip dead and Alexander a largely unknown quantity, it is no surprise that peoples like the Triballians and some of the Illyrians saw the chance to recover complete freedom. Alexander reacted swiftly. He led his army on an armed march through Thrace, cowing the Thracians, and into Triballian territory along the Danube. The Triballians were forced to submit, and Alexander crossed the Danube on ships that had sailed up the river from the Black Sea to join him, in order to stage a military demonstration among the Scythian tribes north of the great river. Re-crossing to the southern side, he swiftly marched west into Illyrian lands, where the demonstration of Macedonian military efficiency quoted in the previous chapter, along with some small-scale fighting, taught the Illyrians to accept the new ruler and keep quiet.
In southern Greece, meanwhile, embassies had flown to and fro debating the wisdom of a rebellion against Macedonian domination. The Thebans were all for it, but sensibly preferred not to act alone; they wanted other Greek city-states to join them, especially the Athenians. The lesson of Chaeroneia was too recent, however: the Athenians preferred to watch and wait, with even the anti-Macedonian Demosthenes counseling caution. In the event, the Thebans acted alone, spurred on by false rumors that the Macedonians had suffered a reverse in Illyria and Alexander was dead. In spring of 335, Alexander moved south through Thessaly at the head of a large army and invaded Boeotia. The Thebans preferred not to try battle against a greatly superior force; they pulled their population behind the defensive walls of the city of Thebes and prepared to withstand a siege. Unfortunately for the Thebans, the siege did not last long: an unwise sortie by Theban forces was repelled and, in the confusion, Macedonian infantry commanded by the phalanx officer Perdiccas forced their way through an open gate and into the city along with the fleeing Thebans. Thebes was captured, and Alexander decided to make an example of the city: he wanted no more trouble from southern Greece during his planned eastern campaigns. The men of Thebes were slaughtered, and the women and children were sold into slavery. The city was destroyed and its lands parceled out among the other cities of Boeotia. Thebes, one of the oldest and most famous cities of Greece, ceased to exist. Thoroughly cowed by this act of terror, the other southern Greek states, meeting at Corinth, accepted Alexander as their leader in succession to his father Philip, and renewed their commitment to join the Macedonians in war against the Persians. The story of Alexander’s war to conquer the Persian Empire has been written up in every way, from the sober to the fantastical, from the adulatory to the debunking, and everything in between. In view of the dozens of recent full-length accounts on offer, it can be treated relatively briefly here.
2. Alexander’s Conquests
Alexander is remembered, indeed world-famous, as one of history’s great conquerors. In his rather brief reign of thirteen years—from 336 until his early death in 323—he conquered all of western Asia from the Mediterranean Sea to the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River valley, and from the southern shores of the Black and Caspian seas to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and also forayed into north Africa to add Egypt to his conquests. That sounds very impressive, but there is another way to put it which sounds a bit less so. In a grand ten-year campaign Alexander and his army took control of the Persian Empire away from the traditionally ruling Achaemenid royal family and Persian elite, and extended the empire a little in the region of modern-day Pakistan. This is, I suggest, the truer way of stating Alexander’s achievement. He could have done nothing without the magnificent army he inherited from his father, and it was that army as much as or more than Alexander which did the conquering. And if you want to conquer an empire, the easiest way to do so is to find an existing empire and take it over: the hard work of subjecting varied peoples by military force and making them accept their subordination and fiscal exp
loitation has already been done. All you need to do is defeat the army or armies of the governing power; the subject peoples of the empire will by and large accept the change of rulers, because it makes little difference to them who receives their taxes or gives the orders, so long as the taxes do not go up and the orders are not too onerous.
In the spring of 334, Alexander crossed over from the European to the Asian shore of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) at the head of a large invasion force, some forty thousand strong. About half of this army was Macedonian; the rest was a mix of southern Greek allies and mercenaries, and forces drawn from the Balkan peoples to the north and east of Macedonia. After Alexander himself, the most important leaders in the army were Parmenio, who was the second-in-command of the expedition; and Parmenio’s sons Philotas and Nicanor who commanded, respectively, the Macedonian heavy cavalry (eighteen hundred strong) and the elite infantry guard formerly named the pezetairoi, now renamed the hypaspistai (three thousand strong). At some time before crossing into Asia, Alexander had renamed his key Macedonian forces in a ploy intended to boost morale and loyalty to himself. The evidence is a passage preserved from the history of Anaximenes of Lampsacus, quoted in Chapter 4: whereas under Philip the term hetairoi (companions) referred to the closest associates of the king, about eight hundred in number, Alexander extended the term to refer to all of the Macedonian heavy cavalry; and whereas pezetairoi (foot companions) had been the name of the elite royal infantry guard unit, Alexander extended that name to all soldiers of the Macedonian pike phalanx (though we also later hear of some battalions using the mysterious name asthetairoi). The aim, specifically cited by Anaximenes, was that “sharing in the royal companionship (hetaireia), they should remain most devoted.”
The main part of the goal of winning control of the Persian Empire was accomplished in three great battles fought in a four-year span: the Battle of the Granicus, fought in north-western Asia Minor in the early summer of 334; the Battle of Issus, fought in north-west Syria in the late summer of 333; and the Battle of Gaugamela, fought in northern Mesopotamia (Iraq) in the summer of 331. In addition to these three great battles, Alexander also conducted a few sieges, particularly the siege of Halicarnassus in south-west Asia Minor in the summer of 334, and the epic seven-month siege of Tyre in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) in late 333. He also invaded Egypt in 332 and received its surrender: the Egyptians hated the Persians, who had only reconquered Egypt in 343 after more than fifty years of Egyptian independence, and they welcomed Alexander as a savior. After 331, the bulk of the Persian Empire accepted Alexander as its ruler. It took a couple of years of campaigning in Bactria and Sogdia (modern Afghanistan) to bring the eastern part of the Persian Empire under his control. He then passed through the Khyber Pass in 327 and entered north-west India (modern Pakistan) where he defeated the armies of the local rulers, especially that of Porus. The battle of the Hydaspes against the army of Porus ranks as the fourth of Alexander’s great battles. In 325, under pressure from his army, Alexander reluctantly left India and turned back westwards, returning to Iran in 324, and Mesopotamia in 323, where he died at Babylon in mid-summer.
In order to bolster his position as the new ruler of Macedonia, Alexander spent lavishly on gifts for the Macedonian elite and soldiery, and we hear as a result that when he crossed into Asia Minor in 334 his treasury was nearly empty and he had with him only a month’s pay for his army. This meant that he urgently needed to win control of territory in Asia Minor from which he could obtain funds and supplies to keep his army going. Even if substantial funds and supplies had been available in Macedonia for his use, they could not easily have been forwarded to him: bulk transport in antiquity went overwhelmingly by sea, and a large Persian fleet controlled the sea and its shipping lanes. As a result, Alexander needed to fight and win a battle as soon as possible to give him control of territory. Initial opposition to Alexander’s invasion was in the hands of the local Persian governors of Asia Minor, who had concentrated their regional forces into a united army near the Hellespont, on the east bank of the small River Granicus. To aid in seeing off Alexander’s invasion, the Persian king Darius III had sent to join the satraps (governors) a substantial force of Greek mercenary hoplites (reputedly twenty thousand men, though the number seems exaggerated) under an excellent Greek general—Memnon of Rhodes—who was to act as military advisor to the Persian satraps.
Memnon understood the reality of Alexander’s situation—his need to fight a battle soon to win territory and booty—and advised the Persians to avoid battle at all costs, adopting instead a “scorched earth” strategy. The Persian force should leave the Granicus and march inland, into the interior of Asia Minor, drawing Alexander and his army after them. As they marched, the Persians should remove all supplies, burn farms and settlements, and poison wells and springs, leaving so far as possible nothing for Alexander’s army to eat and drink. Meanwhile light and highly mobile cavalry and infantry forces should harass Alexander’s column of march, and any foraging parties he sent out to seek supplies. After a month or so of this treatment, Memnon suggested, it might be time to engage Alexander’s exhausted and demoralized army in battle, on suitably advantageous ground. The response of the Persian grandees was to the effect that the Persians were not in the habit of fleeing from their enemies, of avoiding a fight, of destroying their own lands. As a proud conquering people, the Persians were determined to fight, and believed in their ability to win. Thus Alexander got exactly what he wanted and needed: as he approached the River Granicus from the west, he found the army of regional Persian forces there awaiting him. Victory over this one force, since it was made up of the collected security forces of the provinces of Asia Minor, would effectively open all of Asia Minor up to his occupation.
The battle was a rather straightforward affair. The Persians drew up their forces on the eastern bank of the river, challenging Alexander and his men to attack through and across the stream bed, a potentially tricky undertaking. But the Persians made a fundamental error in the disposition of their forces, which greatly eased Alexander’s task. Distrusting Memnon and his Greek mercenaries, they stationed them as a kind of reserve well to the rear of the line of battle; and in order to attack Alexander’s army as it struggled up, in considerable disarray as they hoped, from the stream bed, they stationed their best troops—their cavalry—right on the eastern bank of the river. But holding ground and fighting an enemy force from a standing position is what heavily armed infantry are good at; cavalry fight best in motion, charging at or around the enemy. The Persian disposition of forces was thus exactly the opposite of what it should have been: the Greek mercenary hoplites should have held the river bank and disputed the crossing, with cavalry stationed to the rear to charge at any enemy forces who broke through or got around the infantry. Commanding the Macedonian heavy cavalry on the right, Alexander instructed the battalion commanders of his phalanx to lead their troops across the stream as best they could, covered on the left flank by allied Thessalian cavalry under Parmenio. Meanwhile detachments of light cavalry, and of archers and slingers, made their way across the stream in front of Alexander to harass the enemy line. As Alexander surveyed the situation, he noticed a gravel slope that made a part of the river bank easy to mount, and concentrated his harassing forces there. Before long, they succeeded in disrupting the enemy line at that point enough to make a cavalry charge feasible, and Alexander led a charge across the river, up the gravel slope, and into the enemy line, where he turned in towards the enemy center and began to roll up their line of battle.
In this way a crushing victory was achieved by Alexander’s forces in short order. As the Persian line of battle fell into disorder under Alexander’s attack, the phalanx battalions and supporting Thessalian cavalry got across the stream, up the bank, and began to support Alexander and the Macedonian cavalry. The only moment of anxiety came when Alexander was hit on the head by a sword blow from a Persian cavalryman. Though his helmet saved his life, part of it was sheared off by the h
eavy blow and, as Alexander killed the cavalryman who had attacked him, another Persian darted forward to strike Alexander’s now unprotected head. Alexander was saved from near certain death by the swift action of the commander of his royal cavalry squadron, Cleitus the Black, who intervened in the nick of time, hacking at the arm of the Persian and sending his blow awry. The Persian cavalry, attacked from the side by Alexander’s cavalry and from in front by the pike phalanx, broke and fled; and the Greek mercenaries in the rear were surrounded and for the most part killed. Memnon got away with a few Persian leaders and some thousands of men, and fled south, eventually occupying the well fortified Greek city of Halicarnassus and making a stand there, hoping to hold out until Persian reinforcements could reach him. All of Asia Minor was open to Alexander. He pursued Memnon and his forces down the Aegean coast, sending detachments of troops out to receive the surrender of local cities and communities, Greek and non-Greek, until he reached Halicarnassus, which he besieged and captured after heavy fighting. Alexander then spent the autumn and winter months marching in a grand arcing campaign through southern and central Asia Minor, doing only minor fighting but receiving the surrender of the local communities and territories. In spring of 333 he reached Cilicia, the region of Asia Minor bordering Syria, having left behind the senior commander Antigonus the One-Eyed in charge of central Asia Minor (Phrygia) with orders to complete the pacification of the region.
Before and After Alexander Page 17