It was his mastery of the Greek world that enabled Alexander to look to the east. The Macedonian forces sent into Persia by Philip were in trouble. A new king, Darius III, had gained control of the empire. He had suppressed the revolts in Egypt and Babylon, and his commanders in the west, notably a Greek mercenary leader, Memnon ofRhodes, had pushed the Macedonians back to the Hellespont. Alexander
Repeated the claim of his father that he was the avenger of the Greeks. The claim had never looked good in the mouth of the victor of Chaeronaia and did not improve by being taken up by the destroyer of Thebes.
The decision to resume his father’s campaign against Persia seemed particularly foolhardy. It was true that the Persian empire had been in steady decline since the fifth century. The satrapies had become hereditary, allowing local families to consolidate themselves as local dynasties, so losing the vigour appointed officials would bring to the administration, but this was still a relatively strong state. It had a large army and considerable resources. Its very size would ensure that any invading army could easily become isolated and vulnerable to annihilation. Nor did it make much sense for Alexander to leave Greece behind this early in his reign. There was such
Widespread resentment on the mainland that half of the Macedonian troops had to be left there just to keep order. Alexander had no heir, and, if he were to die, Macedonia and its territories were likely to collapse into anarchy.
Alexander’s temperament ensured that he would take the risk. The prize of Persia was simply too tempting to pass by, and it was a fine opportunity to prove himself to his father’s commanders who had been primed for the invasion. The superb army created by his father was still intact. Its core was the Companions, an elite cavalry force of perhaps 1,800 men whose leaders traditionally enjoyed a rough comradeship with the king. They were supported by a similar number of highly trained Thessalian horsemen, and with other mercenaries there may have been a total of 5,000 cavalry. In the infantry Macedonians also formed a core, of perhaps 3,000 well-disciplined men. They were armed with their long pikes (sarissae) and light armour and marched in cohesive phalanxes that could be assembled in various formations according to the demands of the terrain. They were backed by light infantry. Those recorded include javelin men from the mountain regions of Thrace, archers from Crete, and Illyrians. All could be used on difficult territory. There also seem to have been some 7,000 traditionally armed hoplites from Greece itself, but, after the campaign began, little is heard of them. It may have been that Alexander simply could not trust them, particularly in battles where they would come face to face with the fellow Greeks that Darius was to use as mercenaries. In total, with Macedonians, Greek ‘allies, and mercenaries, Alexander’s was a balanced and flexible fighting force of some 37,000, not enormous in comparison to the army with which Xerxes had invaded Greece, but effective if used with imagination. It was supported by the siege machines, including the torsion catapult, which had been perfected under Philip. To accompany the enterprise there were surveyors, engineers, architects, scientists, and a historian, Callisthenes. Another 10,000 men from Philip’s original invasion force awaited them across the Hellespont.
To pay for this army Alexander had to scour the Macedonian treasury, and so the demand for booty with which to maintain his men was an important impulse in what followed. It was not just money that bound the troops to Alexander. The traditional loyalties enjoyed by a Macedonian monarch were reinforced by Alexander’s own charismatic style of leadership that embraced the high-risk strategy of fighting at the forefront of any battle.
The accounts of the campaigns that followed come down from sources of the Roman period. Of the five major sources none is earlier than the late first century Bc, while the major lives of Arrian and Plutarch date from the early second century ad, three to four hundred years after the death of Alexander. These authors did use earlier sources, some from participants in the campaign itself, including Callisthenes and the memoirs of Alexander’s general, Ptolemy, but it has proved impossible to disentangle and evaluate these accounts. (Arrian’s was so popular that many of the earlier sources on which he had relied were discarded and lost to future generations.) As the painstaking analysis of these sources by the historian A. B. Bosworth has shown, Alexander’s exploits, as they have come down to us, are encrusted with later legend. This legend has persisted so that as recently as 1948 the historian William Tarn was able to argue (in his Alexander, Cambridge, 1948) that ‘Alexander lifted the civilized world out of one groove and set it in another’. Today historians, more sensitive to imperialist propaganda, offer a more restrained assessment of Alexander’s achievements. Bosworth’s sober analysis has been particularly influential here.
World History
