The army marched in the spring of 334. Alexander was aware from the beginning of the Homeric nature of a campaign onto the Asian mainland near Troy. Once on Asian soil he offered honours to the memory of Achilles from whom he claimed descent. The Trojans were now enlisted as honorary Greeks united with the mainland Greeks against the barbarians and the small settlement on the site of Troy was showered with gifts.
Almost immediately Alexander faced his first battle. The local Persian commanders had drawn up their forces on the far side of the river Granicus. The river was a difficult obstacle with deep banks and the Persians must have hoped they would be able to pick off the Macedonians with their cavalry as they crossed. In the event the vanguard of the Macedonian cavalry managed to get across and hold off the Persian charges while Alexander and the bulk of cavalry made their crossing. Alexander led the next charge. The whole campaign was put in jeopardy when he almost got struck down in the melee, but he was rescued by Cleitus the Black, one of the commanders of the Companions, and the Persian cavalry was gradually pushed back. Then the Macedonian infantry moved in to surround the Persians. Their weapons and discipline proved so superior that the result was a massacre with perhaps nine-tenths of the enemy infantry left dead. Many were Greek mercenaries who offered to surrender. However, Alexander, determined to give a lesson to other Greeks, refused to spare them.
The victory at Granicus was so decisive that it left the coastline of Asia Minor with all the cities of Ionia open to Alexander. The march was now southwards, first to the administrative centre of Sardis, capital of the old kingdom of Lydia, then through some of the great cities of the coast, Ephesus, Priene, and Miletus with its fine harbour (now completely silted up), where a Persian garrison briefly resisted until overcome and massacred. Alexander knew that these cities had to be held to prevent the Persians using them as harbours for a counter-attack in the Aegean while he was moving inland. There had to be some recognition of these cities’ liberation. They were released from their Persian tribute and encouraged to set up democratic governments. A promise by Alexander to contribute to Priene’s building of her fine temple to Athena Polias survives on stone (and is now in the British Museum). However, Alexander could not resist meddling in the internal affairs of these cities, and ‘contributions’ to his campaigns soon replaced the tribute they had paid to Persia.
Finally, Alexander reached Halicarnassus, the home town of Herodotus, historian of the Persian wars. Here the Persian garrison under Memnon of Rhodes, recently appointed by Darius III as commander of the west, was prepared to resist. There was bitter fighting along the walls of the city and Macedonian losses were heavy. The Persians finally withdrew into two citadels that could be freely supplied by sea, and with no effective naval forces at his command, Alexander was forced to leave the city unconquered. His hopes of securing his rear were dashed. Halicarnassus held out for another eighteen months, and the Persian fleet was able to sail freely in the Aegean. It was only the death of Memnon in 333 and the call by Darius for troops to come to his aid in the east that prevented the Persians holding large areas of the Aegean and perhaps even invading Greece.
Alexander left memories of this humiliation behind him (and they were glossed over by later chroniclers such as Arrian) and moved east across the rich plains of Pamphylia to the wealthy town of Aspendos (now famed for its magnificent theatre and aqueduct from the second century ad). The town was Greek in origin but it was still bullied into paying a vast sum in tribute. Troops were left to pacify the area while Alexander turned northwards, through the rocky passes and uplands of Pisidia to Celaenae, the capital of Phrygia. Finally in March 333 he arrived at Gordium on the plains of central Turkey. Here took place one of those legendary events that have become central to any account of Alexander’s life. There was an ancient wagon whose yoke was tied to its pole by a complicated knot. An oracle had prophesied that anyone who untangled the knot would be lord of all Asia. The story goes that Alexander was baffled at first, and then in a fit of impatience slashed through the knot with his sword. His ‘achievement’ was trumpeted as evidence of divine aid for the expedition.
However, even after a full year of campaigning and one crushing victory, Alexander was still on the fringes of the empire. Its heartland and its king Darius still lay ahead. Up on the great plains of Anatolia he now began to run short of food. The crops would not ripen until August, and news was also coming through that Darius was at last gathering his forces for a counter-attack. The only hope was to move southwards again to the more fertile plains of Cilicia. This meant crossing the rocky uplands of Cappadocia and forcing a narrow pass into the coastal plain. In fact the local Persian commander was so intent on destroying the ripening crops of the Cilician plains in advance of the Macedonian arrival that the pass was left virtually undefended and Alexander was soon through. He was in the Cilician capital Tarsus before the Persians could defend it. This was the first Persian city with treasure to plunder, but the exhilaration of the troops was dampened when Alexander caught a fever while bathing in the river and hovered for days between life and death.
His troops must have been highly apprehensive. Darius had been raising levies of troops all spring and summer. The bulk of his men were Persians and Medes, but one account suggests they were joined by as many as 30,000 Greek mercenaries. The total size of the army is unknown, but it must have easily outnumbered Alexander’s, and Darius, a seasoned commander, remained confident he could crush the intruder. As the army set out from Babylon towards Cilicia, it was relaxed enough to be accompanied by the royal treasure and the princesses and concubines of the court.
The two armies met in September on the eastern end of the Cilician Plain just above the Gulf of Issus. In the manoeuvres before the battle Darius tried to get between Alexander and his supply lines, and he finally drew up his armies behind the river Pinarus, which flowed into the Gulf. It was not an ideal spot as there was too little space between the mountains and the sea to allow the Persians to fully deploy their superior numbers. The Macedonian attack was launched, as always, by Alexander personally at the head of his cavalry, which he had positioned on the right of the line opposite the Persian infantry. The attack was a success and the infantry fell back, allowing Alexander to bear left towards the centre where Darius himself was to be found. The two are shown facing each other in the wonderful mosaic of the battle found in a house in Pompeii (now in the Archaeological Museum in Naples). Elsewhere, however, things were not going well. The Persian cavalry charged and forced back the Thessalian cavalry on the Macedonians’ left flank, while the Macedonian infantry became dangerously disorganized when crossing the stream.
What saved the day was the disintegration of Darius’ bodyguard under the impact of the Macedonian cavalry. Darius was forced into flight and with his disappearance Persian morale collapsed. There was a headlong stampede, the Persian cavalry trampling back over their own infantry as they escaped. Figures passed down of 100,000 Persian dead as against 500 Macedonians are certainly an exaggeration but they suggest the perceived magnitude of the victory. The royal baggage train and the princesses as well as Darius’ mother were appropriated by Alexander and he preserved them as if they had now become part of his own heritage. For the first time Alexander was able to reward his troops lavishly.
Darius’ nerve was shaken by his defeat and for the first time he was prepared to negotiate. He sent to Alexander that he was prepared to treat Alexander as a friend and ally but was not ready to surrender any of his territory. Alexander refused. He would talk only when Darius came to him as a subject. This was an impossible humiliation for the Persian king and he began assembling another army. Meanwhile, Alexander chose not to move further inland but to continue south along the coast of Syria and towards Egypt, one of the richest prizes of the empire. It was also important to gain control of the entire coastline to stop it being used as a base for Persian counter-attacks on Greece although the Persian fleet had been defeated by Antigonus the One-eyed, one of Alexander’s gifted Macedonian commanders.
The first Phoenician cities welcomed Alexander. However, at the city of Tyre, reached in February 332, there was a check. The old city on an island offshore housed a shrine to the city god Melqart. Alexander equated Melqart with his own ‘ancestor’ Heracles and demanded to be allowed to enter the shrine to worship. He was refused and had little option but to order the siege of the city. It seemed an impossible task. The island was skilfully defended and could call on help from the sea. For seven months Alexander had to deploy a large force and exercise every ingenuity, including the construction of floating siege towers, before the walls were breached. The retribution was terrible. Eight thousand defenders died and a further 2,000 were crucified. The survivors were dispersed and new inhabitants had to be sought from the interior to replace them.
The siege of Tyre suggested a lack of balance in Alexander’s personality. He was beginning to see himself as something more than a human being, beyond the normal restraints of human behaviour. Perhaps he had absorbed something of this from his father. At Olympia, a year before his death, Philip had dedicated a small circular temple, the Philippeion, to himself and his family with Alexander among those portrayed in statues. It was just inside the sanctuary to Zeus and so an intrusion into the sacred space. The sense that Alexander himself was half divine was consolidated as he moved towards Egypt. By responding sensitively to Egyptian culture Alexander found himself welcomed as a liberator from the deeply resented rule of Persia. He was soon accorded the ancient honorific titles of the pharaohs, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, son of the sun god Ra, and went through a formal coronation at Memphis.
However, Alexander was more interested in the ancestry of Greek than Egyptian gods. In early 331 he made a difficult journey across the Libyan desert to the oracle of Ammon at Siwah. Ammon was a local god but he was commonly equated with Zeus, and in his private consultation with the priests Alexander appeared to gain the belief that Zeus had recognized him as his own son. (Plutarch’s story is that the intended greeting of the priests was ‘child, paidion, but, not being Greek-speakers, they substituted an ‘s’ to make paidios which Alexander gratefully interpreted as pai Dios, ‘son of Zeus’.) It echoed earlier stories that had circulated in Macedonia that his conception had in fact been divine. (Olympias, different sources reported, had been impregnated by either a serpent or a thunderbolt.)
A distance between Alexander and his commanders was becoming apparent. Darius, brooding on his defeat, now offered Alexander his empire to the west of the Euphrates and an enormous ransom for his family. The commanders were eager to accept. It marked a massive extension of Macedonian territory that could now be consolidated in peace. Alexander refused. He was set on the humiliation of Darius and forced the Persian monarch to continue the war. He may have felt that his legitimacy as ruler of Persia could be achieved only by directly replacing Darius. This would explain the single-mindedness with which he was to hunt Darius down.
World History
