On the Thinker

[Alexander III of Macedon, 356-323 BCE.]

At the age of 20, Alexander III became king of Macedonia. Along with the Great King of Persia, he was the most powerful man in the world at the time. He had a 13-year reign, representing the pinnacle of Greek expansion. His death marks the end of Classical Greece and the start of the Hellenistic period. His legacy comprises two of his greatest contributions to history; a flexible, integrated army and the idea of world conquest.

Alexander first demonstrated his leadership quality at the age of 18 at the battle of Chaeronea in August of 338 BCE. His father Philip appointed him commander of the Macedonian heavy cavalry. The Macedonians crushed the league of Greek city-states resisting them and Philip furthered his plans to bring war to Asia Minor against Persia. However, Philip was assassinated in 336 BCE and Alexander managed to rally his father's generals behind him and suppress an attempted revolt by the Greek city-states. Shortly after becoming king, stories of Alexander's god-like qualities began to proliferate. He was treated like a demagogue.

Alexander's character is hard to grasp. He was undoubtedly influenced by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who tutored him from the age of 13. The information we do have comes primarily from Ptolemy I, who was one of Alexander's top generals and subsequently became the first Macedonian king of Egypt. These questions about Alexander's personality remain largely unanswered.

Alexander fully intended to continue his father's quest of invading Asia Minor and attacking the Persian Empire. The Persians relied on satraps, or local rulers to defend the borders of their empire. The Persian infantry was also demonstrably inferior to the Greeks and Macedonians. Alexander's force consisted of 30,40-000 men. His force consisted of the following units; heavy infantry, light infantry, heavy cavalry, light cavalry, and heavy Thessalian cavalry. Their first significant encounter with Persian forces came in 334 BCE at the battle of Granicus River. After his victory here over King Darius, Alexander committed his first serious mistake when he briefly lost control after discovering that Greek traitors had been fighting for the Persians. He began to slaughter them, but eventually stopped. Thus, Greeks fighting for the Persians would not surrender to him again. The result of this victory was that the Persian army in Asia Minor was destroyed. Cities along the coast capitulated to him including Sardis, Miletus, and Halicarnassus. After sending his fleet to destroy Miletus, Alexander sent it home, his second strategic mistake. The Persians would retake Miletus and Alexander would scramble to reassemble his fleet to stop them.

In 334 BCE, he spent the winter in Gordion, which housed a chariot tied with a famous knot. Alexander left Gordian having cut the knot, thereby fulfilling the legend that he would rule all of Asia. Alexander had huge problems moving his host of 30-40,000 in Asia Minor. He headed east and sent his most trusted general, Parmenion, into Central Asia. He had removed the Persian navy's ability to campaign in the Aegean by conquering the coastal cities and installing his own satraps, part of his methodical plan to sack the Persian Empire.

In order to deliver a swift attack and capture cities otherwise out of reach, Alexander split up his forces into flying columns, which moved much faster than his standard army. His move east brought him into conflict with King Darius again, who hoped to stop him from entering Persia. The two met at the battle of Issus in November of 333 BCE. Alexander used reconnaissance to learn of Darius's position. However, his reconnaissance did not reveal that Darius had moved north of his forces. Nonetheless, throughout the course of the engagement he manages to create a gap in the Persian line into which he sent his heavy cavalry. This was his trademark finishing assault, and it caused the general retreat of the Persian army. After Issus, Alexander captured Darius's pregnant wife and all of his daughters (whom he treated well). After he fled, Darius sent an offer of peace, which Alexander refused. He also began calling himself Great King of Persia at that point.

Alexander wanted to leave a pacified Mediterranean behind him, which is why he did not march directly into Persia. He headed south, down the coast, and most Phoenician cities surrendered to him. In the winter he arrived at Tyre, which wanted to remain neutral. After sacrificing to their god Melqart, Alexander proceeded to siege the city until August 332 BCE. He killed 8,000 Tyrians, crucifying 2,000 of them. Everyone else was enslaved except for those supplants at the altar of Melqart. This showed the importance of religion to Alexander. Indeed religion was important to the ancient Greeks in general, as they would almost always consult the gods before taking significant action.

Egypt was the next obstacle for Alexander. On the way, he encountered the fortified city of Gaza. He enslaved the city. When he arrived in Egypt, there was no war to fight. They welcomed him as a liberator from their Persian overlords. He took all the titles of an Egyptian king, including Pharaoh and Son of Ra (the sun-god). While in Egypt, he visited the oracle of the god Zeus-Ammon (the Egyptian equivalent of Zeus) in the middle of the Siwah Oasis. After his visit, he became confident that he was the son of Zeus, and he encouraged the rumors. In Egypt he also sacrificed to the sacred bull Apis. He also founded the first Alexandria in Egypt in 331 BCE.

Darius had been forming a new army of Bactrians and Sogdians. He had also learned the importance of Alexander's heavy cavalry. Some estimates put the number of his new force at 200,000 men. This vastly outnumbered Alexander's 30-40,000. However, Darius also included scythed chariots and 50-100 Indian elephants in his army. Darius flattened the plain of Gaugamela for his chariots, infantry, and elephants. His idea was to use his elephants and chariots to open a hole in the Macedonian line and then encircle the divided units with massed infantry. Alexander had been using reconnaissance to learn of Darius's position. The armies engaged in one of the most studied battles in history. In a display of his tactical genius, Alexander rendered the chariots and elephants ineffective and managed to create an opening in Darius's line. He charged through with his heavy cavalry at a slant. Darius fled (he was later killed by the treacherous Persian Bessus) and the Persian army was routed.

After Gaugamela, Alexander realized the wealth of the Persian Empire. He swiftly moved through the four Persian capitals, Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, and Ecbatana. Alexander and his men found wealth beyond their imagining. It enabled the successor kingdoms after Alexander to buy expensive armies, not something seen with the Greeks or the Macedonians thus far. The Persians had been able to purchase armies with their immeasurable wealth.

In 330 BCE, Alexander ordered Parmenion and his son Philotas executed for a supposed plot against his life. The loss of Parmenion was huge for his army's morale. In 329/8 BCE, he began to march beyond the known Greek world into the northeast Persian Empire. He passed through Bactria, Sogdiana, and into the mountain range called the Hindu Kush (500 miles long). In 328 BCE he killed his friend Cleitus in a drunken rage. He was indisposed after this, and continued to drink heavily. He also began dressing like a Persian king around this time. He began to allow his new Persian subjects to practice proskynesis. His Greek and Macedonian men did not observe the practice. This created a problem for Alexander. He wanted the Greeks and Persians to unite, and uniting their customs would have been a great way to achieve that unification.

Alexander married Roxana, a Bactrian princess, in 327 BCE. Some describe it as a political marriage, but a Bactrian princess was not a significant position of political authority. It is probable that he really loved her. In 326 BCE, he crossed the Indus River. By this time, his troops wanted to return to Macedonia. They had invaded Asia eight years before, had crossed deserts, oceans, snow, mud, some of the tallest mountains in the world, and now they were in rain forests. They began to agitate for a return home, even staging two mutinies (in 326 & 324 BCE). During their crossing of the Indus, Alexander's engineers finished building a fleet and constructing siege weapons.

The first serious resistance Alexander encountered in India came at the Hydaspes River. The Indian King Poros and his force (including elephants) engaged Alexander. It is here that Alexander's reconnaissance failed him again. He failed to anticipate crossing islands in the river, which almost led to disaster. However, Alexander's cavalry won the day again and Poros surrendered. Alexander's beloved horse Bucephalus was killed in this battle.

Finally, Alexander decided to march home since his men would not continue further into India. He had been leaving garrisons at cities behind him to keep open the lines of supply and communication. He had left many Macedonians in charge of pockets of unknown territory he had conquered in India and Persia. The engineers had finished the fleet and Alexander's men sailed down the Indus. Alexander did not want to march back the way he came. He split up his forces and sailed down the Indus. When he stopped temporarily to conquer a few Indian tribes, Alexander was almost killed by one of them, the Mallians. Alexander had scaled the walls of their city himself and was shot by an arrow. He teetered on the brink of death for days. After his recovery, his force set out again. They split up again at the mouth of the Indus. In 325 BCE, they traversed the Gedrosian Desert. The trek over it to Babylon was Alexander's biggest mistake. Thousands of his infantry died in the desert. He finally made it to Babylon in 324 BCE.

In 324 BCE, Alexander fell into terrible depression after the death of Hephaestion, one of his most trusted generals and his alleged male lover since childhood. He died from fever or possibly typhoid, though Alexander suspected Roxana had poisoned him. In 323 BCE, Alexander married another one of Darius's daughters. However, on June 10th, he died suddenly. We do not know how for sure. He might have been poisoned, succumbed to fever, or been infected from the Mallian arrow wound. After his death, Roxana had his new Persian bride murdered.

After his death, his empire broke into three parts; Egypt, Syria, and Macedon/Greece. All three eventually fell to Rome, the last being Egypt in 30 BCE under Cleopatra. The age of the polis was over. The age of the citizen was over. Government was now based on subjects, on Roman rights. The world that followed was a debasement of what had been before. There was an attempt to recreate Classical Greece in the Hellenistic period.

Alexander's unique examples provide insight into how he conquered the known world in so little time: