Among the myths that persist about Alexander the Great is that he founded 57 ancient cities. Mostly, though, what he founded were military outposts, and according to modern scholars, only six cities can be directly attributed to Alexander by either literary or archaeological evidence. We do know, though, that the ancient world through which Alexander passed ended up with many cities named Alexandria.
The first Alexandria, and one Alexander certainly founded himself, was in Egypt. Alexander located the city near the mouth of the Nile, on the Mediterranean Sea, intending it to develop into a center of commerce between Egypt and the Mediterranean. He helped plan the city, designing the streets to run in a grid pattern of straight lines.
A diverse population of Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Syrians, and Jews soon settled in Alexandria, which remained a center of commerce, culture, and learning for the next thousand years. About 1,000 ships could use its docks at a time. Its library, built shortly after Alexander's death, was famous throughout the ancient world. It contained the world's largest collection of scrolls—about 500,000 volumes—and scholars came from all over the world to study them.
Today, Alexandria is a thriving city of about 3 million people. It is the second largest city in Egypt, and is still Egypt's chief port. Merchant ships have sailed to and from its harbors for the last 2,300 years. Historians consider the city of Alexandria to be among the most important results of Alexander's conquests.
Places, including Agranians (natives of modern Bulgaria), Thracians, Cretans, and Paeonians, and was broken up into units according to nationality. Each unit had its own distinctive armor.
Infantry soldiers were called hoplites, and they generally fought in a formation called a phalanx, which was developed by the Greeks. But Philip transformed the Greek phalanx into a devastating formation, the Macedonian phalanx. In the Greek phalanx (the word is Greek and means “finger bone”) soldiers were arranged in rows. The men stood in solid ranks, forming a tight rectangle. Their shields covered their own left shoulders and overlapped each other, so that each hoplite’s shield also protected the man to his left. But because of their heavy shield, held in the left arm, the Greek hoplites could only use a relatively short spear in the right hand.
Philip replaced the large shield with a smaller one slung over the left shoulder. This enabled the new phalanx to carry a long lance, called a
Sarissa, in both hands. The sarissa was made of wood and had an iron tip. It was so long-estimates are from about 16 feet to as much as 24 feet-that even those carried by men in the back rows protruded beyond the front row of men. From the front, a phalanx resembled a giant porcupine or hedgehog: It was 16 rows deep, and the sarissas of the first five rows pointed forward, producing an impregnable forest of armor-piercing iron. The other rows held their sarissas at an angle upward, forming an effective protection against objects hurled at them. A phalanx operated much like a modern-day tank It could move in a straight, angled, or curved line, or swing around as a solid mass to face the opposite direction.
Tactics and Strategy
Warfare involves both tactics and strategy. Tactics are the techniques and procedures used by soldiers in the heat of battle, and strategy is the overall battle plan, worked out in advance. Alexander came up with brilliant strategies that were later adopted by other generals, such as Napoleon. But a good strategy only works if the enemy does exactly what they are expected to do. Since this rarely happens, it is equally important for a great general to be good at tactics—the art of maneuvering forces in combat. Alexander is also considered one of the greatest tacticians in military history. These two gifts are rarely combined in one military leader.
Held horizontally and thrust forward during a charge, the sarissas sliced through the enemy while keeping the members of the phalanx at such a distance that they could not be attacked themselves. This was a great advantage in itself. But additionally, when these awesome weapons were held upright together, they created a wall of spears, shielding from the enemy’s view any maneuvers going on behind the phalanx. This was a great aid to surprise moves. Seeing the deadly wall of a phalanx’s spikes coming toward them must have had a terrifying effect on Alexander’s enemies.
The phalanxes were generally used to pin down the enemy’s army so the cavalry could attack. The Companion cavalry was an elite body of up-perclass Macedonians led in battle by Alexander himself. He adopted this innovation from his father. A highly disciplined cavalry could turn an enemy’s flank, cut off its retreat, or pursue fleeing soldiers, and Philip’s cavalry was just such a body. The Macedonian cavalry changed the nature of warfare, in particular because the phalanx was such a sophisticated and terrifying method of attack, later adopted by other leaders. Alexander went on to develop his father’s methods further, employing them to great advantage across two continents.
Alexander’s cavalry squadrons were divided into platoons. Their commanders were chosen for personal merit rather than race or birth. Armed with sarissas and outfitted with open-faced iron helmets and short body armor that protected their chests and backs, these troops were the most effective cavalry in the ancient world.
The cavalry used formal, strict formations, such as wedges and diamonds. The officer at the tip of the formation would find weak points in the enemy’s line and then order a charge. Even though they had no stirrups and only makeshift saddles (stirrups and saddles had not yet been invented), the cavalry charged at a gallop, brandishing their sarissas. They were trained to respond immediately to commands on the field of
Battle. They could drive home a charge and then immediately reform, ready for another order. The phalanx and the cavalry trained together to coordinate their actions.
Alexander’s use of huge siege machines at Tyre introduced a new age of warfare. Between 332 and 326 B. C.E., the invading king mounted 15 sieges. His mechanics and engineers developed special weapons for sieges, including battering rams, catapults, and mobile towers.
Formidable Formation
The Macedonian phalanx was an innovation of Philip II. Soldiers carried small shields and long lances.
Special catapults could hurl 175-pound stone blocks as far as 500 feet onto a battlefield or over a wall. They were also used to hurl large arrows and possibly even poisonous snakes and hornet nests. Ballistae were another kind of siege weapon. Similar to huge crossbows, these stable weapons shot arrows that were up to three feet long. Soldiers would often set fire to the giant arrows before launching them.
Although the Macedonian army was a much stronger fighting force than its navy, Alexander used many different kinds of ships in his cam-
Paigns. The most famous were Athenian triremes-Greek battleships that had three banks of 200 oarsmen each. They weighed up to 2,200 pounds but were swift and easy to maneuver. The oarsmen rowed in unison at a speed of up to 18 beats per minute. The beat of a gong or a drum was used to maintain this rhythm.
The main weapon of the trireme was a battering ram that protruded from the bow at water level. It was made of oak and reinforced with a bronze cap. The rowers propelled the trireme against an enemy hull. The ram pierced the hull, while the rowers back-pedaled to free their trireme from the sinking ship. Naval artillery was also an innovation of Alexander’s navy. Onboard weapons included large catapults and smaller swiveling catapults.
The navy sailed on seas, rivers, and small bodies of water. The triremes were swift and powerful, but because they carried so many men there was not a lot of room onboard for provisions. This meant that typically they could not stay at sea for long stretches at a time. The triremes traveled from one island to the next, or stopped frequently along the shore, and they almost always beached for the night.
World History
