Alexander the Great

by Norman F. Cantor

  Philip had recruited horsemen from Macedonia and neighboring Balkan countries and made them undergo several years of training. The long training was necessary because although the horses had saddles and bridles, the stirrup had not yet been imported from India (it did not reach Western Europe until AD 750). The Macedonian cavalry’s horses were imported from countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania.

  Despite this careful breeding, the Macedonian cavalry rode into battle on horses that were not more than two-thirds the size and weight of horses used in the late Middle Ages or today. In the absence of stirrups, the cavalry had to guide the horses with their thighs and knees while holding onto the horses’ manes. The cavalry was equipped with throwing spears and small shields, but its favorite and most reliable weapon was the short sword. The cavalrymen wore iron breastplates and helmets. The Persian cavalry was similarly armed and horsed, and there was little difference in quality between the Persian and the Macedonian cavalry. The difference lay in Alexander’s tactical genius when he attacked the Persians.

  Arrian provides a graphic account of Alexander on the battlefield:

  When the armies were now closing in on each other, Alexander rode the whole length of the line calling on his men to show courage. He addressed by name, and with appropriate honours and titles, not just the generals, but squadron leaders, company commanders and any of the foreign mercenaries that had some reputation for their superior rank or their courage. And the cry came back to him from every quarter—he should lose no time now in making his attack on the enemy. Even so, Alexander continued to lead them forward, in battle order, at a measured pace, despite now having Darius’ force in view; he did not want to have any component of his phalanx become distended through too swift a march and so cause it to disintegrate. But when they were within javelin range, Alexander’s entourage and Alexander himself (he was positioned on the right) charged to the river ahead of the others, intending to strike alarm into the Persians with a lightning attack and to minimize damage from the archers by coming swiftly to hand-to-hand combat.10

  The critical difference between the Persian army and the Macedonian army was not in cavalry but in infantry. The latter was divided into a heavily armed and armored contingent—the phalanx—and light infantry called hypaspists (shield-bearers). The phalanx soldiers were trained to work in units of sixteen, closely packed together. Their eighteen-foot-long sarissas (spears with pikes at the end) were the terror of Europe and western Asia. The cavalry would advance first and throw the opposing infantry into disarray. Alexander’s soldiers tilted their sarissas forward then marched ahead in tightly packed ranks.

  “Nobody who faced them ever forgot the sight; they kept time to their roaring of the Greeks’ ancient war cry…. Their scarlet cloaks billowed, and the measured swishing of their sarissas, up and down, left and right, seemed to frightened observers like the quills of a metal porcupine.”11 These soldiers were well trained, disciplined, well fed, and very well paid. Not just the companions of Alexander’s cavalry had these benefits. He enriched the infantry phalanx and hypaspists as well. The light infantry consisted of many Balkan peoples and mercenaries drawn from all over Greece.

  Alexander crossed the Hellespont (Dardanelles) that separated Europe and Asia in 334 BC. It took 150 triremes (boats with three banks of oars) to transport the whole army. Not one Persian vessel was spotted—fortunately, because the expedition could have been ended before it got under way if Darius had been astute enough to contest the crossing. But the Persian command was not famous for military strategy, relying more on sheer numbers. It must be stressed again that had the king of kings, Darius III, maximized his military resources at any time, he could have put 150,000 cavalry and infantry into the field against Alexander and possibly have swamped Alexander’s army of 40,000. As it was, the Persian forces (initially including many Greek mercenaries) rarely numbered more than 75,000 in any engagement. The fact that the Persian emperor acted so minimally was probably due to his belief in the invincibility of his army and navy, which caused him to take the Macedonian threat too lightly in the beginning.

  Alexander sensed that his opponent was a weakling, too lethargic and confused even to summon his potentially much larger army for a particular battle. Darius had been surrounded by eunuchs and concubines too long. He was a soft man.

  According to Green:

  Ever since childhood he had dreamed of this moment: now the dream had been fulfilled, and he was entering on his destiny of conquest. Few men can ever have given such solid embodiment to their private myths. He was the young Achilles, sailing once more for the windy plains of Troy; but he was also captain-general of the Hellenes, whose task it was to exact just vengeance for Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. The two roles merged in his mind, as the two events had merged in history. Xerxes had made it clear that his expedition was the Trojan War in reverse; Alexander therefore in turn reversed the details of this most famous of all oriental attack [sic].12

  As Heinrich Schleimann would do centuries later, Alexander carried his well-worn copy of Homer’s Iliad with him, because he crossed the Hellespont at exactly the same place the early Greeks had. As Alexander marched through Turkey, he freed Greek cities in his path, but the Persian army kept in advance of him without offering any serious resistance.

  Memnon of Rhodes, Darius’s commander in Asia Minor, was a very good general. He had offered his services to Darius many years before, and even though he was a Greek and had traveled to Philip’s Macedonia, he had no liking for Philip’s son, Alexander. Getting little in the way of instructions from Darius, Memnon advised a “scorched-earth” policy because it was common knowledge that Alexander was in financial straits and would need the land and its produce to survive. Memnon felt this was the best solution to the Macedonian invasion. He requested permission to destroy the crops and other foodstuffs in the path of Alexander’s army, leaving Alexander’s army to starve and then—it was hoped—retreat.

  Foolishly the Persian lords would not let Memnon carry out his policy. Perhaps they were envious of the Greek general’s rise to power in their land, but more plausibly they had great estates with hordes of slaves and wanted to continue their easy living. Without scorched earth tactics and with the Persian lords seemingly willing to accommodate themselves to Alexander’s rule, there was little Memnon could do. He watched helplessly as the cities of Asia Minor, many of them Greek colonies on the coastline, surrendered peacefully with very little fight.

  Alexander allowed the Persian satraps and lords to remain in place for the time being. They had not opposed him as yet, and in fact had denied Memnon the tactic whereby the war would have ended before it began.

  Finally the Persian emperor could hesitate no longer. He put an army of 75,000 into the field under Memnon’s command on the banks of the Granicus River (now called the Kocabas River), which flows into the Sea of Marmara. It is noticeable that Alexander’s battles usually took place on the bank of a river. This site suited Alexander and his commanders but was less advantageous to the Persians. They had difficulty deploying their larger numbers in the narrow topography of a riverbank.

  The one weapon that was unique to the Persians, the scythed chariot, was also hard to deploy in a cramped, muddy riverbank. Had the Persian emperor used his potential army of 150,000 soldiers and deployed them on a wide plain away from the river, the outcome of the battle would undoubtedly have been very different.

  The Granicus River was about sixty feet wide, with a fast current. Alexander’s troops were going to have to charge down a steep embankment, go through the swift water, and then scramble up the slippery slope on the other side. This would obviously make them extremely vulnerable when they attempted to reassemble on the far side. Alexander, with characteristic bravado, wanted to cross immediately, even though it was late, they had marched all day, and the men were tired. His generals, led by Parmenion, advised that they wait until morning and cross farther downriver, where the current was not so fast. That way, they a
rgued, his men would be fresh and rested and could be on the other side of the river before the Persians knew what had happened.

  Alexander argued, but he eventually realized they were right. The battle took place the next day. Alexander drove his cavalry directly into the midst of the Persian army, first to the right, then the left. He lost his spear in the first charge, but he stayed right in the thick of the fighting.

  Plutarch gives us a vivid, albeit somewhat inaccurate, account of the early phase of the Battle of Granicus:

  Alexander plunged into the river with thirteen cavalry squadrons. He was now driving into enemy projectiles and heading towards an area that was sheer and protected by armed men and cavalry, and negotiating a current that swept his men off their feet and pulled them under. His leadership seemed madcap and senseless rather than prudent. Even so, he persisted with the crossing and, after great effort and hardship, made it to the targeted area, which was wet and slippery with mud. He was immediately forced into a disorganized battle and to engage, man against man, the enemies who came bearing down on them before the troops making the crossing could get into some sort of formation.13

  Alexander lost his lance and his horse (not Bucephalus, who either was lame at the time or was considered too valuable to use in this battle), and he suffered a head wound where a saber blow from a Persian nobleman penetrated Alexander’s helmet and cut completely through to the skull. Alexander fell off his horse, and the battle continued over him. Somehow he managed to get back astride, and with his rallying companions, he broke the Persian flanks and they retreated. Memnon got away, but an estimated 2,500 Persian cavalrymen were killed.

  Alexander won the Battle of Granicus by using his cavalry as a disruptive force aimed directly at the Persian army. He drove his cavalry right into the middle of the Persian infantry. This shock deployment of cavalry seems to have been first used by Alexander. Previously cavalry had been used only in flanking maneuvers.

  After the Battle of Granicus, Alexander buried the dead, both Macedonians and Persians, on the battlefield. The Persians generally cremated their dead, rather than bury them, so what seemed to Alexander to be a magnanimous gesture was actually a slap in the face to their religious observances. He was always inclined to give recognition and honor to the dead among his opponents. First he killed them; then he buried them with military honors. (The British were still following this tradition in World War I.)

  Many of the Persian soldiers were Greek mercenaries. These Alexander had rounded up and sent back to Macedonia to work as slaves in the mines. In this way Alexander gave a severe object lesson to any other Greek who might contemplate fighting for Darius. Technically the Greek mercenaries were traitors to the Greek alliance, of which Alexander was the head. Some of the spoils of war were sent home to Olympias, who was acting as regent in Alexander’s absence. In addition he sent three hundred panoplies back to Athens to be dedicated in the Parthenon with the inscription, “Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks—Lacedaemonians (Spartans) excepted—these spoils from the barbarians who dwell in Asia.”14

  At this battle Darius had to recognize the serious threat that Alexander posed to his entire empire. Asia Minor was now open to him. Perhaps even Alexander, with his visions of conquest, was unable to recognize how long and dangerous the rest of the journey would be. For Aristotle, the Athenian philosopher and Alexander’s tutor, the known world ended in India. (China was still outside the Greek recognizance.) And India was where Alexander wanted to end up, after he conquered the Persian Empire.

  It is uncertain if Alexander had any clear-cut plan for the Persian Empire in mind. Did he intend to merely defeat Darius or completely replace him? It seemed that he was going to keep going and wherever he ended up was where he would be. He was an adventurer as much as a conqueror.

  Alexander had left Greece and its problems in the hands of Antipater (along with his mother), with the orders that he was to squelch any incipient signs of rebellion by whatever means were necessary. He could install dictators and oligarchs freely to control the population and quell any dissent that arose.

  Along his road between the Battle of Granicus and the upcoming major Battle of Issus, Alexander knew that he had to control the population in Asia Minor, since it would be at his back as he moved farther into the Persian Empire. Most of these provinces and cities were ruled by heavy-handed tyrants, and since part of Alexander’s modus operandi was to appear to be a liberator, he did the reverse of what he had ordered for Greece: Where he found a tyrant, he freed the people. He had no problem in his own mind of playing the role of tyrant in one place and liberator in another. He had no scruples about using whatever means served his purposes.

  As Alexander marched his army inexorably toward the capital city of Susa, he was gratified to see that his victory at Granicus had convinced many of the Persian satraps that they would be better off surrendering peacefully. The governor of Sardis was the first of them to capitulate, along with his garrison. At each juncture Alexander replaced the Persian governor with one of his own choosing, spreading his Macedonian officers around with the apparent intention of not permitting unlimited power to be held by any one of them. He appointed a department to collect taxes and tribute from the satrapies to separate the monetary function from the governing functions. This improved civil administration, but it also kept control of the finances out of the control of the governors.

  Otherwise he permitted all the other mechanisms of government to run as they always had. He allowed the customs of the country to remain in place and made no attempt to impose Greek ways on anyone. Alexandrian freedom meant no more than a guarantee against enslavement.15

  In Ephesus he commissioned a portrait of himself from a local painter, his plan being to be astride Bucephalus in the picture. When Alexander saw the finished product, he did not like it. The artist then had him bring the horse to the studio, and another picture was produced, this time with Alexander astride the horse with a thunderbolt in his hand, reminiscent of Zeus. This one he liked. It was one of the first times in history that art was used as propaganda. It suited Alexander at this point to hint at his godlike stature, and self-deification was obviously an idea that he was toying with.

  Ambassadors from Greek communities in Asia Minor continued to come to him, offering submission and allegiance in exchange for his permitting their “democracies” to continue. Alexander was very generous with these cities, remitting their Persian taxes but insisting they join the Hellenic League, so that it then became their duty to give cash contributions to the war effort. Though a tax by any other name is still a tax, Alexander did not seem to have any problem dealing with this concept.

  While Alexander was consolidating his support with the towns in Asia Minor, the Persian fleet was anchored off the coast trying to provoke an engagement. The naval abilities of the Persians were far superior to those of Alexander, and he had no desire to engage in any naval battle at this point in his journey. Eventually the fleet sailed away to establish a new defense at Halicarnassus.

  Memnon had petitioned Darius for command of the army of lower Asia and command of the fleet, sending his wife and children to Susa as a guarantee of his loyalty. Since he was the only competent general the Persian army had, Darius gave the command to Memnon as Alexander marched south toward Halicarnassus.

  The rightful queen of this city, Ada, had been driven from her throne by a usurping relative who had since died, and the city was being governed by an administrator appointed by Darius. Instead of marching straight to Halicarnassus, Alexander sidetracked to the town of Alinda, where Ada was living in exile. The inhabitants of Alinda were thrilled at the opportunity to have their rightful queen restored. Here Alexander was able to achieve true liberation. Ada voluntarily surrendered her forces to Alexander, and in return he gave her back her throne. She and Alexander developed an emotional bond, and she showered Alexander with gifts. He called her “mother,” finding her much more amenable than his actual (maniacal) mother, Olympias.
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  “Ada pampered Alexander, sending him many cooked delicacies and cakes every day and finally sending men thought to be the most talented cooks and pastry-makers available.”16 She must have learned that Alexander had a sweet tooth. When Ada died, she made Alexander her heir to inherit her city.

  Alexander had said that his father, Philip of Macedon, was only his “so-called” father. As stated previously he preferred to regard the supreme deity Ammon Zeus as his true father. Now he had divested his mother, Olympias, of her biological status in preference of the more amiable and loving Ada of Halicarnassus. Thus Alexander had liberated himself from both his biological parents.

  All through Asia Minor, Alexander followed the same pattern: He found cities under Persian rule, many of which were disaffected, and restored their “freedom.” He replaced the Persian satraps with Macedonians, collected a “contribution” instead of a tax, and left their customs and institutions alone; and they gave him homage instead of giving it to Darius. This had been a rather peaceful conquest so far. But the fun was about to end; Alexander had restored Ada to her throne, but now he had to take the town of Halicarnassus.