The envoys were terrified and returned to their city with his message. The Tyrian elders discussed the situation and concluded that they were safe from Alexander. Their city was half a mile from the coast, separated by deep water and protected by powerful currents and violent winds. They were far out of range of catapults and other artillery on the mainland. The walls surrounding their town had never been breached, not even by invaders who had besieged the city for years. The Macedonians had no navy to prevent the Tyrians from coming and going in their own ships as they pleased. Their visitors from Carthage also promised they would provide any supplies or help Tyre might need. Let Alexander try to take their city—they would laugh at him from the walls as they watched.
The citizens of Tyre had seen invaders come and go for centuries with little effect on their vast commercial network. The Phoenicians were a Canaanite people who spoke a language closely related to Hebrew. Squeezed into a narrow coastal plain along the arid eastern Mediterranean shore, they naturally looked to the sea for their livelihood. Beginning in the eleventh century B.C., cities such as Tyre and Sidon began establishing trading posts at ever more distant locations to the west. Cyprus, Sicily, northern Africa, and Spain were all the sites of early Phoenician colonies in the Mediterranean. Carthage on the African coast across from Sicily was the most famous and successful of these outposts, maintaining close ties to its mother city, Tyre, throughout the centuries. But the Phoenicians did not stop at the Straits of Gibraltar. They sailed out into the Atlantic, perhaps as far as Britain to the north and Senegal to the south. Herodotus relates that they even circumnavigated Africa. Along their way they traded with many peoples and developed a reputation as shrewd businessmen—and as thieves and pirates. Greek literature from the time of Homer is replete with stories of wicked Phoenician traders who steal children and sell them into slavery. Whatever the truth of this, they certainly spread their crafts and culture throughout the ancient world. The Greek alphabet was borrowed and adapted from the Phoenicians by the eighth century B.C., so that the aleph, bet, and gimel of Phoenician became the alpha, beta, and gamma of Greek. These wide-ranging traders were especially known for trafficking in the cedars of Lebanon from the coastal mountains of their homeland and a rare purple dye derived from the murex shells of the Lebanese coast. Their Hebrew neighbors admired the skill of the Phoenicians and employed them in the building of King Solomon’s temple, but they also condemned their religious practices, such as the alleged sacrifice of children to their gods.
The siege of Tyre began with the demolition of older parts of the town on the mainland for construction materials for a causeway to the island. Alexander then sent parties deep into the mountains to cut cedar trees for the many poles his engineers would need to drive into the seabed. He also sent messengers to the high priest in Jerusalem requesting supplies and reinforcements for him at Tyre. He informed the Jews that the tribute they had previously paid to Darius would now go to him. If he had any hesitation, Alexander counseled, he should rest assured that choosing the friendship of the Macedonians over that of the Persians would be to his benefit.
At first the construction of the causeway went well. The water near the shore was shallow and it was not difficult to drive the piles into the soft mud. The space in between the timbers was filled with abundant rubble, providing a firm foundation for a wide road into the sea. The causeway would have to bear the weight of thousands of men and heavy machinery, so great care was taken in its construction. Alexander was present every day, conferring with the engineers, encouraging his men, and carrying stone after stone into the sea himself.
The Tyrians found all this terribly amusing. When the weather was fair, they would row small boats up to the Macedonians just out of arrow range and mock the soldiers. They shouted out that such famous soldiers had now become mules bearing loads on their backs like donkeys. They asked if Alexander thought he was Poseidon, god of the seas. But as the mole progressed steadily seaward week after week, the laughter of the Tyrians ceased. They still didn’t believe that the Macedonians could ever reach their island, as they had now come to the deepest part of the channel and their work had dramatically slowed, but the Tyrians began to worry that the causeway might get close enough for Alexander to reach their walls with his artillery. In response, they evacuated some of their women and children to Carthage. They then began a concerted effort to hinder the construction project by every possible means. The Macedonians were now within arrow range of the high walls of the city, so the Tyrians showered them from above without ceasing. Because the Macedonians were stripped of their armor for work, they were vulnerable. Some of the arrows were dipped in pitch and set afire any equipment they hit. At the same time, triremes from the city would sail up to the causeway and pummel the builders with missiles. In response, Alexander ordered towers wheeled onto the causeway manned by archers to strike back against the ships. He covered these towers with hides to block arrows from the city walls and allow his men to work in safety.
In response, the ingenious Tyrians constructed an incendiary juggernaut. They found an old cavalry transport ship and filled it with all the dry timber they could cram into its hold. Then they raised the sides of the ship and added wood chips, sawdust, and anything else at hand that was flammable, stuffing sulfur into the cracks and pouring pitch on top. They rigged a double yardarm onto the masts to which they attached cauldrons full of flammable liquid. Then they added extra ballast to the stern to raise the bow high into the air to allow the speeding ship to ride high onto the causeway when it hit.
They waited until a strong wind was blowing toward the mole and then launched the ship towed by several triremes pulling it with all their might. When the Macedonians saw this very strange vessel approaching, they could not understand why the Tyrians would bother to attack them with a large horse boat. Then they started to worry as the vessel drew closer with flames beginning to shoot from its deck. The skeleton crew on the fire ship then jumped overboard and swam toward the waiting triremes, which had just cut their lines and pulled away. With the blazing ship rushing toward them, all the terrified Macedonians could do was run for their lives. Just as the ship flew onto the causeway and into the towers, the yardarms on the masts burned through and dropped the cauldrons onto the fire below. When the liquid hit the flames, it exploded into a raging inferno unlike anything the Macedonians had ever seen. The causeway was engulfed in fire and the towers burned like matchsticks. Any unfortunate builders still alive on the mole were picked off by archers in the Tyrian triremes or by raiding parties that dashed onto the mole. As the gods would have it, there was a terrific storm that night that pounded the remains of the damaged causeway with towering waves, loosening the piles and sending tons of rock and rubble into the water. By the next morning, months of hard work had disappeared beneath the sea.
As Alexander surveyed the ruins of all his efforts, he debated with himself what he should do next. Every day he delayed at Tyre meant more time for Darius to collect a larger army. But if he left Tyre unconquered, it would continue to serve as a base for the Persian navy and, even worse, as a glaring emblem of his failure. He therefore decided to begin again on an even grander scale with a wider causeway and more protection for his men. However, he now knew he was not going to take the city with engineers and infantry alone. He had to have ships to conquer Tyre.
After resuming construction on top of the broken remains of the old causeway, he led some of his men back to Sidon to collect whatever boats he could find. It was there his luck began to change. The Phoenician kings of Sidon and Marathus, having heard that Alexander now held their cities, deserted from the fleet of Darius in the Aegean and sailed home to join the Macedonian forces. This added eighty superb triremes and their crews to his navy. Over the next few days, other ships arrived from the Greek island of Rhodes, the Cilician cities of Soli and Mallus, the towns of the Lycian coast, and even a fifty-oared ship from Macedonia commanded by Proteas, the son of Alexander’s childhood nurse Lanice. Jus
t as the king was welcoming these vessels, he saw a fleet of ships from Cyprus sailing into the harbor of Sidon. The Cypriot kings had decided that the Persians were on the losing side of the war and begged Alexander to accept their service. He was glad to forgive any past transgressions, especially as he now had more than two hundred warships at his disposal.
First, Alexander decided to make a quick strike against the Arab natives in the nearby mountains who had been leading a guerrilla campaign against his woodcutting teams. He needed those trees for causeway piles and siege engines, and was not about to let highland brigands ruin his plans. He personally led a tough squadron of Thracian warriors and archers up through the beautiful Beqa’a valley to put an end to the raiding. It was just the sort of mountain fighting both he and the Thracians relished. For some unknown reason, Alexander’s old tutor Lysimachus, who had accompanied the expedition into Asia, asked if he could come along, assuring the king that he was no weaker than Phoenix, the elderly teacher of Achilles who had traveled with his pupil to Troy. Alexander must have laughed, but he had a soft spot in his heart for the old man and agreed.
The troops rode swiftly into the mountains, but were forced to leave their horses behind when the terrain became too steep. They marched up into the highlands, but Lysimachus was having a difficult time keeping up. Alexander sent the rest of the men ahead the first day to make camp but remained behind with a handful of friends to walk beside his tutor. The king encouraged Lysimachus and half carried him up the trails, but by nightfall they were far behind the main party and lost in the mountains. It was already spring, but when darkness fell the temperature plunged. Alexander had not planned to bivouac and so had no shelter or fire. The small band of Macedonians huddled together as the king tried desperately to keep his elderly teacher from freezing to death. Then in the distance Alexander saw the light of a campfire. He left Lysimachus and worked his way by himself through the trees toward the glow ahead. As he approached, he saw that there were two men keeping watch over a cluster of sleeping Arab raiders. With utmost care, Alexander crept up alone behind the guards and silently slit their throats. He then stole a flaming stick from the campfire without waking any of the men who slept around it. Moving as fast as he could through the darkness, he reached his own camp and kindled a roaring fire for his companions. The Arabs awoke and saw the nearby blaze, but ran off thinking a large force had suddenly descended on them. Alexander spent the rest of the night next to Lysimachus, warming his old friend and perhaps suggesting that next time he should remain in town.
When Alexander returned to Sidon after defeating the Arab hill tribes, he found four thousand Greek mercenaries awaiting his commands. He had sent Cleander to recruit them over a year earlier, but the Macedonian had little luck until the defeat of Darius at Issus. Now, with a major victory under his belt and plenty of gold in his treasury, Alexander had no trouble recruiting professional soldiers from Greece. The king packed everyone on board his new fleet and set sail for Tyre in battle formation. Naval warfare was a novelty to Alexander, but he took to it like a born sailor. He placed the Cypriot and Phoenician squadrons on the left nearest the land and took command on the right, with the newly arrived Macedonian galley serving as his flagship.
The Tyrians had heard reports that Alexander had recruited a fleet in Sidon, but they had no doubt they could overcome any pathetic armada the Macedonians were able to scrape together. They positioned their fleet on the north side of the island to strike hard against the ships Alexander sent their way. What they didn’t expect that spring morning was more than two hundred warships bearing down on their city. Alexander was hungry for a battle at sea, but the Tyrian admiral in charge signaled his fleet to retreat quickly into the protected harbor on the north side of their town. The Macedonians saw their Tyrian counterparts turn toward home and so began a race to see who could reach the harbor first. It was a close contest, but the Tyrians sacrificed three of their triremes to block Alexander’s advance and allow the remainder of their fleet to enter the city safely. They then blocked the narrow mouth of the northern port with triremes facing outward, forming a daunting wall across the harbor’s entrance. Try as he might, Alexander could not break through and seize the city from within as he had hoped, so he decided on the next best thing and blockaded both the northern harbor of the city and its southern counterpart facing toward Egypt. Unless they could find a way out, the grand battle fleet of Tyre was trapped.
Alexander’s engineers had been working around the clock while he was away and now redoubled their efforts to repair and expand the causeway. There were setbacks, such as a powerful storm that struck the mole, tearing into the new construction. The tempest also drove onto the causeway what one ancient historian called a giant sea monster. It rested part of its body against the rubble for a long time, then swam off into the sea. This was probably a whale, not uncommon in the Mediterranean, but certainly a creature unfamiliar to the mountain-born men of Alexander’s army. Superstitious and hopeful as always, both the Macedonians and Tyrians took the appearance of the beast as a sign that Poseidon was on their side.
After weeks of continuous labor under the shelter of improved protective towers, the Macedonian causeway at last drew close enough for Alexander to reach the walls of Tyre with his artillery. He rolled powerful stone-throwing catapults down the mole until they were in position, then launched a nonstop volley against the city. At the same time, he placed improvised battering rams on the ships of his fleet and covered the vessels with sturdy shields above. They pounded the sea-facing walls of the city even as the defenders facing the causeway were showered with enormous boulders.
The Tyrians, however, knew how to fight back. The people of the city shot flaming arrows on the Macedonians to keep them away from the walls. They heated great shields full of sand until the contents were glowing red, then rained them down on the soldiers. This hot sand worked its way into the breastplates of Alexander’s men in a torturous manner. The men stopped wearing armor in response, but then they were vulnerable to archers on the walls above. The Tyrians also set up rotating wheels on the walls with rapidly turning spokes to deflect arrows and missiles launched at them. Blacksmiths of the city forged barbed tridents tied to ropes that the defenders launched against the shields of the Macedonians, pulling the shields away and exposing the attackers. Some threw down fishing nets to engulf and disable Alexander’s men. The people of the city also arranged large screens of animal skin to blunt the force of rocks launched from catapults. Divers were sent to cut the ropes of the Macedonian ships until Alexander ordered the ropes replaced by chains. Swinging scythes were placed on the seaward side to eviscerate any Macedonians who approached. The workshops of Tyre were kept busy night and day producing these and other ingenious instruments of war to use against Alexander’s men.
Week after week the assault and defense continued with neither side able to make any headway. The Tyrians, to ensure the gods would remain on their side, tied down their statues in the island’s temples with golden chains. The ships of the city made a valiant effort in the early summer to break loose and attack the Macedonian fleet, but were driven back into harbor. The people of Tyre finally pinned their hopes on a relief force from their daughter city of Carthage. But an embassy of thirty ambassadors from that city somehow made their way inside the walls to inform the elders that they were, most regrettably, involved in a demanding war in the west against the Sicilian city of Syracuse and were unable to help their ancestral home.
Almost a year had passed since the battle of Issus and more than six months had wasted away without victory over Tyre. Alexander now celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday with a new determination to take the stronghold at any cost. Then, as the scorching month of July came to a close, the Macedonian causeway finally reached the island.
Alexander gave his men two days to rest, then launched a massive assault on the city from all sides. Towers were rolled down the mole to stand ready with bridges to reach over the walls, but the initial b
reakthrough was to come by sea, not land. The king boarded the lead ship and ordered his fleet to attack the seaward walls around the city at every spot so the Tyrians would not know where to concentrate their defense. One of his armored ships with a battering ram at last broke a hole in the wall, then backwatered to allow a trireme with crack Macedonian marines to anchor at the gap. The assault squad was led by a brave officer named Admetus, who led his men into the breach. This captain was soon cut down, but men continued to pour into the hole, including Alexander himself, who was the first on top of the city walls. The Tyrians countered with everything they had against the invaders, but other ships took advantage of their distraction to push through the triremes blocking the two harbors into the heart of the city. The mass of the army then moved down the causeway and up the towers to cross over into Tyre.
The ferocity of the slaughter was staggering. The Macedonians had spent seven long months laboring to take the stubborn town. They had seen many of their friends crushed by stones hurled from the walls or burned to death by fire bombs. They were angry, exhausted, and passionately hated the people of Tyre for putting them through hell. Alexander didn’t even try to hold them back as they killed every man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on. The Tyrians fought back street by street with the desperation of those who have no hope of mercy. Thousands died within the first few hours of the attack. Some made a last stand at a shrine dedicated to Agenor, the legendary founder of Tyre. Alexander himself led the charge against them and killed all the defenders. But by then the Macedonian bloodlust was cooling and the citizens still alive were rounded up to be sold into slavery, some thirty thousand souls in all. Those few who made it into the temple of Hercules seeking sanctuary were spared by the king, including the Carthaginian envoys. But two thousand men of fighting age captured in the attack were taken to a mainland beach across from the city and crucified—the most agonizing form of death known in the ancient world. Now, at last, with the city taken and funerals conducted for the many Macedonians who fell there, Alexander walked to the center of the ruined town and offered his long-delayed sacrifice at the temple of Hercules.
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