Alexander the Great
Macedonia unites Greece's City-States and Ends Democracy | Alexander Inherits Power | Successes by the Aegean Sea | Alexander to Egypt | Conquests to Afghanistan | Plans and Death...
Macedonians are believed to have had as ancestors the Dorian Greeks. Their kings admired Greek civilization and encouraged Greek ways in their realm, including the learning of Greek technical skills. Macedonians worshiped Greek gods and spoke a dialect of Greek. But it was a dialect difficult for the Greeks south of them to understand. Greeks to the south of the Macedonians looked upon them as uncouth barbarians. They made jokes about them. Greeks looked upon the murderous dynastic intrigues that had marked Macedonia's history as tribal antics. Dynastic disputes in Macedoniahad provided Athens or Thebes an excuse to intervene there. But the attitude of the Greeks toward Macedonia would be in need of adjustment. Rather than Greeks from south of Macedonia dominating Macedonia, Macedonia was to dominate them.
In 359 BCE, the Macedonian king, Perdiccas III, was killed fighting an invasion by the Illyrians. His infant son succeeded him, and Perdiccas' twenty-two year-old brother, Philip, was made the infant's regent. Thebes and Athens backed pretenders to Macedonia's throne and Paeonian tribesmen continued to raid Macedonia from the north. Philip pushed aside his infant nephew. Perhaps he had the child murdered. Then he made himself king, taking the title Philip II.
Ruling from the city of Pella, Philip needed a few months to strengthen his army. He bought time by bribing the Illyrians and the Paeonians. And he bought time by appeasing Athens, ceding to Athens the city of Amphipolis. In 358, with his strengthened army, he invaded Paeonia. Then he led his army against the Illyrians, killing seven thousand in one battle and reversing the defeat of the year before. That year he transferred Macedonians to his kingdom's northern plain, splitting hostile groups and defining the frontier against the Illyrians. The following year he helped stabilize his western frontier by marrying Olympias, the daughter of King Neoptolemus of Epirus.
Philip was determined to strengthen his realm and to unite it into a nation. He recognized that Macedonia could become a great power, and he saw opportunity in the divisions and quarrels among the Greek city-states. He recognized that Macedonia had much in natural and human resources. Macedonia was developing agriculturally. Unlike many Greek states to the south, Macedonia was economically self-sufficient. It had timber. It had great mines on its northwestern and eastern frontiers. Its plains were abundant with fruit, sheep and cattle. It had grass pastures for horses. Philip encouraged trade, which provided him with more revenues. Macedonians were hard working, hard fighting and unaccustomed to soft living and luxuries. And Macedonia had a great abundance of unquestioning, obedient men who lived for war.
Philip added to the loyalty of his subjects by creating a service for teenagers as Royal Pages, which helped foster the spirit of national identity among them and their parents. But Philip's greatest instrument of unity was his army. It was a national army, professional and highly disciplined. He trained it constantly and kept it permanently mobilized, rewarding talent with promotions and bonuses. It was an army with an elite cavalry, with men superior in horsemanship to those in Greece. It had siege weapons, and it had a new formation called the phalanx – rows of soldiers packed closely together, unweighted by body armor and carrying pikes fifteen feet in length, which was longer than those carried by the Greeks to the south.
The unity with which strengthened the Greek city-states when they faced Persia's invasions in the 400s was not available for them against the power of Macedonia. Feeling sufficiently strong vis-à-vis Athens, in 357 Philip took back Amphipolis, a gateway to Thrace. Athens, with its powerful navy, failed to win back Amphipolis or to prevent further expansion by Philip. And, in 356, Philip took the Thracian city of Crenides and renamed it Philippi, a city from which he began controlling neighboring gold mines.
Greek cities invited Philip to join them as an ally in their quarrels with other Greek cities. And, skilled at diplomacy as well as at war, Philip made alliances. He deceived those he planned to swallow, and he fought when he had to. In 353, Philip took the city of Methone on the coast just south of Pella. He advanced south of Mount Olympus. In 352 he began dominating cities in Thessaly. In 350, he absorbed the city of Stagira, just south of Amphipolis, and within two years he held all of Chalcidice.
These successes gave Philip more land with which to support horses, more men for his armies and more revenue. He had more land to give to nobles as rewards for their loyalty, and the nobles, impressed by Philip's military successes, were now firmer in their recognition of his authority. Philip's military successes made common Macedonians feel more secure. It lifted their optimism and morale and brought him more enthusiastic support.
In 339, Philip moved his army into central Greece. Thebes and Athens were alarmed and put aside their warring to join forces against Philip and his Greek allies. The following year, Philip defeated them both. Philip garrisoned Macedonian soldiers in Thebes and stripped the city of its power in Boeotia. And he offered Athens an alliance with favorable terms that Athens was glad to accept. Philip now dominated Greece except for Sparta.
Philip created a federal constitution and a council of representatives for his league of Greek cities, and he made the city of Corinth the meeting place where these representatives would settle issues that arose among them. He held all the member states responsible for contributing to order within the league: for defense against brigandage, against piracy and against trouble from those seeking a redistribution of wealth or abolition of debts. The league's politics were to be conservative, bringing an end to the trend toward reform and democracy that had begun with Solon more than two hundred years before.
Alexander inherits Power
King Philip II of Macedonia wanted to free Greek cities in Asia Minor from Persian domination, to extend his league's naval power – which was mainly Athenian – and to extend his league's commerce. He wanted to settle people deep into Asia Minor as a buffer against Persia, and he saw opportunity to punish Persian royalty for their ruinous attacks on Hellenic sanctuaries the century before.
Philip saw weakness in Persia. There had been trouble in Persia's recent history: jealousies within the Persian royal family; corruption; palace and harem intrigues; and there had been regicide. Darius II, who had ruled to 404, had been unpopular and had spent much time quelling revolts. Under Artaxerxes II, the subject peoples of the Persian Empire had become restless. Artaxerxes III had massacred his brother's family and gained the throne in 358 BCE, and he ruled by terror until he had been poisoned in 338 by one of his eunuch ministers. And Persia's aristocracy – the backbone of its military – had been growing soft. Their moderation in eating and drinking had given way to eating as a preoccupation, with meals lasting from noon to night. And they had grown accustomed to being waited on by numerous slaves.
Philip was assassinated by one of his former close companions who had a bitter grudge against him. When the assassin ran to a horse to escape, Philip's bodyguards killed him, and it was never known for certain whether the assassination was the work of this lone individual or a conspiracy. Philip's generals supported his son, Alexander, as Philip's successor, and Alexander restored his mother, Olympias, as queen. She had been divorced by Philip, a humiliation that had offended Alexander and for which Olympias found retribution. Olympias resorted to the killing that was to be common with succession and dynastic rule. She had the young woman Philip had recently married executed, and she also executed the daughter that this young woman had by Philip.
Alexander held an inquiry into who might have conspired with the assassin, and it concluded with an announcement that the assassination was the work of Persian agents. The historian Peter Green describes Phillip's assassination in detail. He writes of Philip's repudiation of Olympias casting doubt on Alexander's legitimacy and of Philip's conviction that Alexander and Olympias were plotting his overthrow.
Philip's passing created hope for freedom among some Greeks. And, in 335, Thebans heard and believed a rumor that Alexander had also died. They revolted and trapped a Macedonian garrison in their city's citadel. Alexander led an army to Thebes, and in street fighting they overpowered the Thebans. The Thebans were scattered and many sold into slavery. All other Greek resistance to Macedonian domination suddenly ceased, and Alexander returned to pursuing his father's plan to liberate the Greeks in Asia Minor.
In 334, Alexander started his army eastward toward Asia Minor. It was an army of nearly forty thousand, including secretaries, scientists and philosophers. Security on the home front was supplied by a remaining military force under the command of his most trusted general, Antipater
Successes by the Aegean Sea
In the spring of 334, less than two years after the assassination of Philip, Alexander led an army eastward into Asia Minor. It was an army of nearly forty thousand Macedonians, Greeks and Balkan troops, accompanied by secretaries, scientists and philosophers. Security on the homefront was supplied by Greece's navy, and more than 12,000 foot soldiers and cavalry in Macedonia and Greece under the command of Alexander's most trusted genera, the aging Antipater.
Alexander inherited an efficient military machine, and he had learned lessons in good military strategy and diplomacy. Moreover, among kings he was exceptional: he could plan like a master chess player, and in battle he was bold and quick in seeing sudden shifts in advantages and disadvantages. He was perhaps foolhardy about his own safety but not toward the safety of his troops, and, because of his care and tactics, his casualties would be lighter than his enemy's.
Alexander's opponent was Darius III, 46, in his second year as Persia's King of Kings. Darius underestimated Alexander's strength, but he sent against him a force three times as large, a fore that included able horsemen and around 20,000 Greek mercenary infantrymen, largely men who had run from Greece with the defat of their cities Philip.
Alexander's army crossed into Asia Minor at Hellespont and found Darius' army waiting a few miles away, on the opposite side of the Granicus River. On horseback, Alexander led a charge across the river and was met by Darius' force, without Darius, who remained at home in Persepolis. Alexander emerged from the hand to hand combat victorious. Most of Darius' leader general were killed. The disorderly ranks of the Persian infantry had been easy targets for the long spears and solid ranks of the Macedonians, who cut them to pieces. Darius' Greek mercenaries remained in formation and refused to surrender. Alexander's forces changed, and only around two thousand of the mercenaries survived, to be sent as slaves to work in Macedonia's mines.
Winning Hearts and Minds
Following his first victory against the Persians he honored the dead Persian troops as well as his own, and he paid a special honor to the Persian commander who had come close to killing.
The historian who accompanied Alexander, Callisthenes (nephew of the famous philosopher Aristotle), described Alexander's victory as the work of the Greek goddess of revenge, Nemesis – a revenge for Persia's misdeeds against the Greeks more than a century before.
News of Alexander's victory spread fast through the Mediterranean region, and Greek cities in Asia Minor began setting up democracies and opening their gates to Alexander. Awed by Alexander's success, various cities proclaimed Alexander a divinity.
But the Greek city of Miletus and a couple of other cities resisted, and Alexander overpowered them. Alexander was always ready to punish rebellion, as he had against Thebes, but he also wished to win hearts and minds. In the fighting at Miletus he offered a pardon to Greek mercenaries and citizens holding the inner city, and, respecting the courage of the Greek mercenaries there, he offered them service in his own army. In Asia Minor his forces limited their taking of spoils mainly to armor and weapons. They took no more captives to sell as slaves, and Alexander forbade reprisals against civilians.
By the end of the year 334, most of the Greek cities on the western coast of Asia Minor were declared free. Cities that had been ruled by Persian satraps were now garrisoned by Macedonians and their Greek allies. These cities were allowed to run their own local affairs, with Alexander unopposed to any inclinations they had toward democracy. Where local people were accustomed to a Persian system of administration, Alexander accepted the Persian system, and he improved it by dividing what had been the powers of the local Persian governor into three different offices: civil, military and financial.
Aristotle had advised Alexander to turn those non-Greek he defeated into slaves, but Alexander had begun a policy of winning respect and cooperation from the Persians. Alexander accepted a Persian soldier into his entourage and he happily let himself become the adopted son of a princess – soon to be queen – of the non-Greek royal house of Caria, in Asia Minor's southwest.
Alexander to Egypt
Alexander and his army marched into the middle of Asia Minor in pursuit of Darius, leaving behind them the pacification needed for expanded conquest. They passed the winter of 334/33 at Gordium, and they waited there into the spring for reinforcements and local crops to ripen. Meanwhile, Persian's fleet of 300 warships and some 60,000 men sailed for the Aegean Sea from their ports along the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean. By the end of April the fleet had established bases for itself at various islands in the Aegean, and the fleet threatened Alexander's line of communications to Macedonia and Greece.
Alexander sent money to his homefront commander, Antipater, to strengthen defense in Greece. In June he left Gordium with an enlarged army. He veered away from the Persian empire's old Royal Road, turning toward sura, along the way leaving those who surrendered to him in charge of their cities. His march was delayed for two month as he lay sick, perhaps from malaria.
In November at Issus, on the Mediterranean coast just north of Syria, he and his army fought their second great battle against the Persians. This time Darius led his troops, and Darius fled from the battle ignominiously, followed by many of those he had commanded. He fled eastward through Mesopotamia, leaving behind his family, his harem and his treasury. Alexander treated Darius' family and harem with tact and courtesy, and with this victory Alexander considered himself King of Asia.
From Isis, Alexander moved southward through Syria, taking one Mediterranean seaport after another. In January 332 he and his army came upon the Phoenician city of Tyre, a naval base and home for many crewmen in Persia's navy, a city of fanatical fights and a city that was a bitter enemy of surrounding city-states. Alexander began a seven-month siege of Tyre, and against Tyre he used catapults, rams and finally swords. The many who did not surrender were put to death, and the women and children of Tyre were sold into slavery.
The loss of Tyre broke Persia as a naval power. Syrian and Cypriot contingents of Persia's navy deserted. Alexander's Greek navy regained control over the Aegean Sea and one by one Darius' miliary forces were compelled to withdraw from the Aegean islands.
Alexander set his next goal as Egypt. He bypassed Jerusalem, his entourage believing that Judah, heretofore dominated by the Persians was an unimportant priest-state run by ineffectual stargazers.
Alexander and his navy confronted the well-fortified Phoenician city of Gaza, which for Alexander was a gateway to Egypt. At Gaza as at Tyre the fighting was bitter. It lasted two months. Gaza's defenders fought to the last man. Alexander sold its women and children into slavery, and he repopulated the city by allowing people to settle there from surrounding areas.
While supplied by his navy, Alexander and his army marched across the Sinai desert into Egypt, where his reputation preceded him. Happy to see the end of Persian rule, the Egyptians welcomed Alexander as a liberator. They had little choice, for they no longer had the cohesion nor an army that could resist him. Egypt's priesthood hailed Alexander as pharaoh – as a king of kings. Like the pharaohs, he was declared a god. He became the guest of Egypt's king, staying at the king's palace in Memphis. And in Memphis, Alexander made sacrifices to Egypt's gods, including the bull god Apis.
Concerned about his glory and his relationship with the gods, in February 332 Alexander and a small party with camels crossed the Egyptian desert to an oasis and holy place called Siwah (560 km or 348 miles west of the Nile River at Cairo and about 200 kilometers south of the Mediterranean coast.) There the Egyptian god Amun-Ra was believed to dwell, a fusion of the god Amun and the sun god Ra. Godly fusions were not terribly rare. It was common among the Greeks to see their own gods in foreign deities, and for some time Greeks and Macedonians had visualized Amun-Ra as another manifestation of Zeus.
Alexander and his party traveled in the coolness of twilight and night. They endured a sandstorm. They crossed an area infested with snakes and became lost, and their water supply was just about finished. Their journey became mythic in its telling. Alexander's historian, Callisthenes, would claim that they were rescued by gods: two crows that flew in front of them to show them the way.
At Siwah, Alexander was welcomed by the local high priest as a great conqueror and as the son of Amun-Ra. Alexander welcomed the proclamation. It was Macedonian and Greek tradition that the successes of a military hero might be a sign of his being the son of a god and divine. And when news of Alexander at Siwah reached Alexander's mother, Olympias, it reinforced her claim that Alexander's birth had been divine.
In early 331, three years after his first battle against Darius, Alexander sailed north with the flow of the Nile, and he found a place he thought perfect for a city. There he founded Alexandria, soon to be Egypt's new capital, a city that would be populated by people from neighboring villages and towns and by retired Macedonian, Greek and Balkan veterans from Alexander's army. Like a Macedonian city, Alexandria's inhabitants were subject to royal edicts, but otherwise they were self-governing, with an assembly and a city council.
Also in early 331 Alexander and his army started to pursue Darius again. He marched with his army toward Babylon, where Darius had been organizing a force for a showdown, a force with chariots and elephants from India.
Along the way, during the early summer, Alexander campaigned against a rebellion in Sumania. A few followers of Jehovah had captured and burned alive the governor representing the Persian overlord. Samarians surrendered those responsible to Alexander – most likely trying to save themselves – and Alexander had the murderers executed on the spot. The effort to save themselves didn't work. As a further lesson against such rebellions, Alexander expelled Samaria's inhabitants. And in their place he invited Macedonians to populate the city.
n October, 331, Alexander defeated Darius near a town called Gaugamela. Darius had been slow in correcting his troop positions, and he had failed to delegate enough command to subordinates. When he thought he saw Alexander's army over-powering his army, he fled with his retinue – the second time that he deserted his troops.
Alexander and his men went on to Babylon. The Persian governor of Babylon surrendered the city, and Alexander's army entered the city in triumph. Babylon's local priesthood made a show of welcoming Alexander, who in turn displayed his respects. Alexander consulted the local priesthood on the correct worship of the Babylonian god, Marduk, and he made animal sacrifices to Marduk. He pleased the priesthood by ordering the restoration of Marduk's statue and the temples that the Persians had long before destroyed as punishment for a revolt. Men of wealth in the area, wishing to make peace with Alexander, gave him great sums of money. For Alexander's soldiers it was time for another rest, and they spent their pay on Babylonian women.
n December, with a refreshed army of about 60,000, Alexander fought his way southeastward through mountains. Then he swept through an open plain of woods, canals and estates toward Darius' capital city, Persepolis. There he took control of Darius' palace. Alexander seized a wondrous amount of money from the Persian treasury. Then he stooped to the tradition of vengeance, the same vengeance that his father, Philip, had planned. Those in Persepolis were to pay for the misdeeds he believed the Persians had committed some 150 years before, when Xerxes had invaded Greece. Alexander turned the city over to his troops, who stormed through its streets, slaughtered, plundered, and stripped women of their jewelry
Alexander and his men then pushed north along a mountainous course toward the Caspian Sea, to Darius' summer palace where, according to reports, Darius and Persian troops were encamped. Darius and his troops became aware of Alexander's approach, and they began a hard ride eastward. Alexander and 500 of his toughest men went ahead of the rest of his army. They rode across forty-four miles of desert, and at dawn, near the town of Damghan, they came upon Darius' force. Alexander had hoped to leave Darius as a subordinate king, subordinate to him. But before Alexander and his men could reach Darius, one of Darius' commanders, Bessus, Darius' cousin, with a group of accomplices, assassinated Darius. Moved by the sight of Darius' corpse, Alexander covered it with his cloak.
Bessus ran with his body of men farther east, and he proclaimed himself Darius' successor. Pursuing them, Alexander pushed into what today is northern Afghanistan: Bactria. With reinforcements that arrived from Greece and Macedonia, Alexander fought local rulers and independent tribes whom the Persians had only barely managed to dominate. Alexander inflicted heavy casualties. Hoping to create peace in the area, he encouraged tribal people to adopt a settled way of life, and he founded new towns
Alexander marched into the Hindu Kush, from whose summit Aristotle believed one would be able to see the end of the world. And in these mountains local people showed Alexander the rock where the mythical Prometheus was said to have been chained after he gave the gift of fire to humanity.
With help from local rulers, Alexander managed to capture Bessus, who at the town of Bactra (today, Balkh) was placed standing naked in front of Alexander. Alexander asked him why he had killed his king and kinsman. Bessus tried to justify himself. He was flogged – a punishment of Macedonian tradition. And, in keeping with Persian tradition, Bessus' nose and ears were cut off. Then he was sent to be tried by a Persian court, which had him executed.
Having defeated Darius III , Alexander considered himself as King of the Persians. He strengthened his army by bringing more Persians into his ranks, including Darius' brother as one of his companion soldiers. In the area of Bactria, Alexander founded more towns. He married a local chieftain's daughter, Roxana, apparently more for good relations with a local ruler than for love.
As king of the East he began borrowing from the pomp of the Persian throne, and those who came to see him had to prostrate themselves before him in recognition of his divinity. This was easily accepted by the Persians and other Easterners, but Alexander's Macedonian and Greek troops found it embarrassing and considered it a part of the slavishness and inferiority of Eastern people.
In 327, Alexander journeyed 400 miles from Bactria into the Indus valley, toward what he thought was the end of the world. There he sided with petty kingdoms that wanted him as an ally against their enemies. Alexander hoped to advance to the Ganges River and make it his eastern border, but after a march of 100 miles his troops refused to go farther east. With his Macedonian troops, Alexander was still a leader by persuasion, as warrior-kings were traditionally. Unable to persuade them to continue, and seeing what he thought were unfavorable omens, he and his men, in September 335, began their return to Babylon. They arrived in the spring of 323, and Alexander planned to make Babylon the capital of his great empire.
Alexander hoped that commerce would help tie his empire together. He decided to exploit new commercial possibilities and to make Babylon the center of an enhanced world commerce. Already his warring had created a new demand for iron. His conquest of Persian treasury had put more money into circulation, and his conquests had broken down trade barriers. Already he had stimulated economic activity by building new ports and by founding new cities and seventy military colonies in the conquered territories. Alexander began planning for the building of docks along the Euphrates at Babylon and for the clearing and dredging of the Euphrates River to the Persian Gulf. He planned to colonize the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf. And he planned to have Arabia circumnavigated and explored.
Alexander was laying plans to extend his conquests to Sicily and Italy – to unite more of the world under his rule. But a fortuity intervened. Alexander became ill. As he lay dying he was asked who was to be his successor. In keeping with what Peter Green describes as Alexander's devotion to Homeric glory, "the strongest," he is reported to have said, words that according to Green may or may not be historical.
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