I | INTRODUCTION |
Alexander the
Great (356-323 bc), king of
Macedonia, conqueror of the Persian Empire, and one of the greatest military
geniuses of all times.
Alexander, born in Pella, the ancient capital
of Macedonia, was the son of Philip II, king of Macedonia, and of Olympias, a
princess of Epirus. Aristotle was Alexander's tutor; he gave Alexander a
thorough training in rhetoric and literature and stimulated his interest in
science, medicine, and philosophy. In the summer of 336 bc Philip was assassinated, and
Alexander ascended to the Macedonian throne. He found himself surrounded by
enemies at home and threatened by rebellion abroad. Alexander disposed quickly
of all conspirators and domestic enemies by ordering their execution. Then he
descended on Thessaly (Thessalia), where partisans of independence had gained
ascendancy, and restored Macedonian rule. Before the end of the summer of 336
bc he had reestablished his
position in Greece and was elected by a congress of states at Corinth.
In 335 bc as general of the Greeks in a
campaign against the Persians, originally planned by his father, he carried out
a successful campaign against the defecting Thracians, penetrating to the Danube
River. On his return he crushed in a single week the threatening Illyrians and
then hastened to Thebes, which had revolted. He took the city by storm and razed
it, sparing only the temples of the gods and the house of the Greek lyric poet
Pindar, and selling the surviving inhabitants, about 8,000 in number, into
slavery. Alexander's promptness in crushing the revolt of Thebes brought the
other Greek states into instant and abject submission.
II | ALEXANDER’S CONQUESTS IN THE EAST |
Alexander began his war against Persia in the
spring of 334 bc by crossing the
Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) with an army of 35,000 Macedonian and Greek
troops; his chief officers, all Macedonians, included Antigonus I, Ptolemy I,
and Seleucus I. At the river Granicus, near the ancient city of Troy, he
attacked an army of Persians and Greek mercenaries totaling 40,000 men. His
forces defeated the enemy and, according to tradition, lost only 110 men; after
this battle all the states of Asia Minor submitted to him (see Battle of
Granicus). In passing through Phrygia he is said to have cut with his sword the
Gordian knot.
Continuing to advance southward, Alexander
encountered the main Persian army, commanded by King Darius III, at Issus, in
northeastern Syria. The size of Darius's army is unknown; the ancient tradition
that it contained 500,000 men is now considered a fantastic exaggeration. The
Battle of Issus, in 333, ended in a great victory for Alexander. Cut off from
his base, Darius fled northward, abandoning his mother, wife, and children to
Alexander, who treated them with the respect due to royalty. Tyre, a strongly
fortified seaport, offered obstinate resistance, but Alexander took it by storm
in 332 after a siege of seven months. Alexander captured Gaza next and then
passed on into Egypt, where he was greeted as a deliverer. By these successes he
secured control of the entire eastern Mediterranean coastline. Later in 332 he
founded, at the mouth of the Nile River, the city of Alexandria, which later
became the literary, scientific, and commercial center of the Greek world.
Cyrene, the capital of the ancient North African kingdom of Cyrenaica, submitted
to Alexander soon afterward, extending his dominion to Carthaginian
territory.
In the spring of 331 Alexander made a
pilgrimage to the great temple and oracle of Amon-Ra, Egyptian god of the sun,
whom the Greeks identified with Zeus. The earlier Egyptian pharaohs were
believed to be sons of Amon-Ra; and Alexander, the new ruler of Egypt, wanted
the god to acknowledge him as his son. The pilgrimage apparently was successful,
and it may have confirmed in him a belief in his own divine origin.
Turning northward again, he reorganized his
forces at Tyre and started for Babylon with an army of 40,000 infantry and 7,000
cavalry. Crossing the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, he met Darius at the head
of an army of unknown size, which, according to the exaggerated accounts of
antiquity, was said to number 1 million men; this army he completely defeated in
the Battle of Gaugamela, on October 1, 331 bc. Darius fled as he had done at Issus
and was later slain by one of his own satraps. Babylon surrendered after
Gaugamela, and the city of Susa with its enormous treasures was soon conquered.
Then, in midwinter, Alexander forced his way to Persepolis, the Persian capital.
After plundering the royal treasuries and taking other rich booty, he burned the
city during a drunken binge. His domain now extended along and beyond the
southern shores of the Caspian Sea, including modern Afghanistan and
Baluchistan, and northward into Bactria and Sogdiana, the modern Western
Turkistan, also known as Central Asia. It had taken Alexander only three years,
from the spring of 330 bc to the
spring of 327 bc, to master this
vast area.
In order to complete his conquest of the
remnants of the Persian Empire, which had once included part of western India,
Alexander crossed the Indus River in 326 bc, and invaded the Punjab as far as the
river Hyphasis (modern Beās); at this point the Macedonians rebelled and refused
to go farther. He then constructed a fleet and passed down the Indus, conquering
its peoples in a campaign of horrible slaughter. The fleet reached the river’s
mouth in September 325 bc, and
Alexander sent it under the command of Nearchus, a Cretan, to explore the
Persian Gulf. After leading a small expedition along the coast, Alexander
returned overland across the desert to Media. Shortages of food and water caused
severe losses and hardship among his troops. Alexander spent about a year
organizing his dominions and completing a survey of the Persian Gulf in
preparation for further conquests. He arrived in Babylon in the spring of 323
bc. In June he contracted a fever
and died. He left his empire, in his own words, “to the strongest”; this
ambiguous testament resulted in dire conflicts for half a century.
III | ALEXANDER’S METHODS |
Alexander was one of the greatest generals of
all time, noted for his brilliance as a tactician and troop leader and for the
rapidity with which he could traverse great expanses of territory. He was
usually brave and generous, but could be cruel and ruthless when politics
demanded. The theory has been advanced that he was actually an alcoholic having,
for example, killed his friend Clitus in a drunken fury. He later regretted this
act deeply. As a statesman and ruler he had grandiose plans; according to many
modern historians he cherished a scheme for uniting the East and the West in a
world empire, a new and enlightened “world brotherhood of all men.” He trained
thousands of Persian youths in Macedonian tactics and enrolled them in his army.
He himself adopted Persian manners and married Eastern wives, namely, Roxana
(died about 311 bc), daughter of
Oxyartes of Sogdiana, and Barsine (or Stateira; died about 323 bc), the elder daughter of Darius; and
he encouraged and bribed his officers to take Persian wives. Shortly before he
died, Alexander ordered the Greek cities to worship him as a god. Although he
probably gave the order for political reasons, he was, in his own view and that
of his contemporaries, of divine birth. The order was largely nullified by his
death shortly after he issued it.
IV | LEGACY |
To bind his conquests together, Alexander
founded a number of cities, most of them named Alexandria, along his line of
march; these cities were well located, well paved, and provided with good water
supplies. Greek veterans from his army settled in them; young men, traders,
merchants, and scholars were attracted to them; Greek culture was introduced;
and the Greek language became widely known. Thus, Alexander vastly extended the
influence of Greek civilization and prepared the way for the kingdoms of the
Hellenistic period and the conquests of the Roman Empire.
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