Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  The shortest path from Tyre to Babylon was fewer than five hundred miles along a straight line east from the Mediterranean coast. However, only a madman would have led his army on this route, across the desert wastes of Arabia. Alexander instead followed patriarchs and kings throughout history by taking an arching route along the Fertile Crescent north beneath the mountains of Lebanon, then east across the highlands of Assyria, and finally south along the Tigris and Euphrates to Babylon. The distance was almost twice as far, but it was the only practical route, especially in summer, as it provided ample water, forage for horses, and cooler temperatures.

  It was probably during this journey that the wife of Darius, whom the Macedonians had captured after the battle at Issus, suddenly died. The ancient sources present a confusing picture of the timing and cause of the queen’s demise. Some say she died earlier during the siege at Tyre just a few weeks after she was taken, while others place her death during the long traverse to Mesopotamia. The cause is listed by some as exhaustion and grief, but several historians claim she died as a result of complications from childbirth. Given that it had been two years since she had seen Darius, this tradition paints a darker picture of her relationship with Alexander, one in which the king did not treat her with as much deference as he once claimed he would. In any case, all the sources agree that Alexander gave her a splendid funeral.

  It was also on this journey that a battle took place, though not precisely between Macedonians and Persians. As with all ancient armies, there were large groups of camp followers that trailed behind Alexander’s soldiers wherever they went on campaign. These were merchants, pimps, prostitutes, and assorted civilians who provided services to the army on an unofficial basis. Generals may not have approved of them, but they were as much a part of warfare as dusty sandals and dysentery. One evening when business was slow and the workers were bored, the camp followers divided themselves into two groups and placed commanders over themselves, calling one Alexander and the other Darius. They started by throwing all the dirt clods they could find at each other, then progressed to hitting their opponents with fists before they finally took up sticks and stones to begin killing each other for real. The king heard of the fight almost immediately and rushed to the scene. It was a delicate situation. If Alexander couldn’t control the motley band of civilians following his army, the disorder and lack of discipline might spread to his troops. So, in a brilliant move once again displaying his understanding of human nature, he called the two leaders of the factions forward and made them fight in Homeric single combat before the entire army. This not only defused a tense situation, but provided welcome entertainment for the troops. As thousand of soldiers gathered around, the pseudo-Alexander and false Darius fought each other. The army—always as superstitious as village grandmothers—began to see the outcome of the fight as an omen of the great battle to come. Luckily for the king, the counterfeit Alexander won the contest after an exhausting brawl. The real Alexander then rewarded the victor with a Persian cloak and appointed him governor of twelve villages.

  After several weeks of marching, the Macedonians at last reached the town of Thapsacus on the Euphrates at the beginning of August. Even along the Fertile Crescent, the temperature was scorching and the cool water of the river must have been a welcome relief to the weary soldiers. The Euphrates rises in the mountains of Armenia and flows south to the Persian Gulf roughly parallel to the Tigris, which is many miles to the east. The fertile land between the Euphrates and Tigris was called Mesopotamia (“the land between the rivers”) by the Greeks. Alexander had sent his best friend, Hephaestion, ahead earlier with an engineering corps to build a pontoon bridge across the river. His companion had succeeded admirably and the bridge was ready, but Hephaestion had deliberately left the last span on the far side unfinished to prevent the enemy across the river from attacking it.

  Beyond the wide Euphrates, Alexander could see several thousand Persian horsemen watching, the first soldiers of Darius he had seen for almost a year. They included a large contingent of Greek mercenaries led by Mazaeus, satrap of Babylon. Their mission was not to prevent his army from crossing; instead they were an advance force assigned to watch the river and report to Darius when Alexander crossed. Since in the mind of the Great King there was little doubt the Macedonians would follow the Euphrates south, he had already given Mazaeus orders to burn all the crops along the river on his way back to Babylon.

  But by now Darius should have learned that Alexander delighted in doing the unexpected. The Macedonians did cross the river, but instead of turning south, Alexander marched his men northeast beneath the mountains of Armenia toward the Tigris and the old Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Mazaeus left at once to report the news to Darius, who was not pleased at this turn of events. He had spent the last two years planning a confrontation with Alexander on the plains north of Babylon. The Great King expected Alexander to behave like any rational general and lead his army along a well-watered and established road. Instead, the Macedonian king was making a long, slow detour in the wrong direction. It was obvious that Alexander was now intending to lead his army all the way to the Tigris before turning south. It was also clear that Darius would quickly have to change his plans.

  While Alexander and his army marched across northern Mesopotamia, the Great King was moving his army. He may have been caught off guard by his enemy’s unexpected shift to the east, but he was fully able to adapt—a testament both to Darius and the skill of the Persian military commanders. The Great King had learned many lessons at the battle of Issus two years earlier. The first was never allow superior numbers to be negated by fighting on a narrow plain. He believed that if he had forced Alexander to battle on a broad field as he originally had intended, he would have eliminated the Macedonian threat before the Macedonians had ever left Asia Minor. Another lesson was to increase the number and quality of his heavy cavalry forces as a response to Alexander’s superb infantry. With their speed and maneuverability, well-armed horsemen could be an effective counter to the Macedonian foot soldiers and their sarissa spears. Darius had also realized that the long spears of the Macedonians gave their infantry an important advantage over his foot soldiers, so he had ordered extended lances be distributed to his men on the ground as well. The final lesson the Great King had learned at Issus was to take full advantage of the many nations of his empire to gather together a vast army. Darius was determined to outthink, outride, outfight, and absolutely overwhelm Alexander with superior numbers. With these goals in mind, he led his enormous army north along the Tigris in search of the perfect battlefield.

  Alexander had at his command a little fewer than fifty thousand fighting men, mostly Macedonians, with a fair contingent of Thracian and Thessalian auxiliaries. Darius, on the other hand, had at least twice that number of soldiers, perhaps many more, drawn from the best warriors of lands stretching from Syria to India and north to the steppes of Asia. He was particularly strong in highly skilled cavalry from the east of his empire. There were also Indians from the highlands near the Khyber Pass who had brought war elephants with them—the first time any army from the Mediterranean world would face these beasts in battle. Mountain tribesmen from distant Bactria and Sogdiana were present, led by a kinsman and potential rival of Darius named Bessus, who served the Great King as satrap of Bactria. The mounted archers of the Sacae were also there, fierce and independent warriors from the plains of Scythia who prided themselves on fighting as allies, not subjects, of Persia. Arachosian tribesmen from the frontier mountains west of the Indus had made the long journey to Babylon, as had Parthians and Hyrcani from the highlands south of the Caspian Sea. The Medes, cousins of the Persians, were also on hand, along with their neighbors the Cadusians, Sacesinians, and the Albani from near the Caucasus Mountains. Arab horsemen from the shores of the Red Sea had traveled to fight with Darius. Local Babylonians also joined in the campaign, as did Armenians and Syrians, along with Cappadocians from Asia Minor, who had supposedly surrendered to Alexande
r two years earlier. There were many Greek mercenaries on the march as well, professional soldiers who still preferred service to the Great King over fighting for an upstart Macedonian ruler. And, of course, thousands of Persians formed the heart of the army around Darius, brave men with a long tradition of cavalry warfare.

  The Macedonians arrived at the Tigris in mid-September. Though it was still summer, the river ran fast and deep through the only ford in the area. Alexander had not prepared a bridge, so he led his infantry into the water himself, struggling up to his chest through the current. After the men saw the king on the far bank, they were willing to try the river, but they foolishly placed on their heads bundles containing the spoils they had collected over the last three years, which threw them off balance in the water. Alexander told them to forget about everything but their weapons and that he would make up for any losses, but the Macedonians were not about to let go of their treasures. The king cursed their stubbornness, but waded back into the river and ordered them to lock arms as they crossed, forming a movable human chain supporting one another against the power of the stream. He also stationed cavalry upriver from the foot soldiers to help break the current. Once the exhausted army was across, Alexander made camp and gave everyone a day to rest on the far bank of the Tigris.

  Soon after, on the night of September 20, 331 B.C., an extraordinary event occurred that the Macedonians would long remember. As the men were finishing their evening meal under a clear desert sky, they noticed that the full moon was slowly becoming darker. It was not long before the entire lunar face was covered by the color of blood. It was a lunar eclipse, something most had seen before, but the timing of the event on the eve of battle threw even the most skeptical among the army into a panic. A contemporary but fragmentary Babylonian tablet recorded this very event, hinting at the disaster it foretold:

  TOTAL ECLIPSE . . . JUPITER SETS . . . WEST WIND

  BLOWING THROUGHOUT ECLIPSE, THEN EAST WIND . . .

  DEATH AND PLAGUE.

  Educated men like Alexander knew that the earth, moon, and sun were spheres and that an eclipse occurred when the earth was between the sun and the moon, casting its shadow on the lunar surface. But to most common people, certainly to the Macedonian soldiers, the movements of the heavenly bodies were a divine mystery. They began to fear that the bloodred moon was a sign from the gods that they would be slaughtered in the upcoming battle. Alexander heard the shouts of panic in his command tent and marched to the center of the camp with his seer Aristander to address the frightened troops. The blood on the moon, he assured them, was indeed a sign from the gods, but one that was favorable to them. Aristander had proclaimed that the darkened moon was a symbol of the Persians, who that very month would be eclipsed by the army of Alexander in battle. It was a delicate moment for the king that required a keen sense of mass psychology and crowd control, but as a cheer went up from the troops, he knew that they had believed him and been encouraged by the favorable omen. Alexander then sacrificed publicly to the sun, moon, and earth as a thanksgiving for this divine sign of victory.

  The Macedonians continued their march south across the plains with the mountains of Armenia on their left and the Tigris on their right. There was no sign of Persian forces until four days after crossing the river the scouts spotted a contingent of enemy cavalry in the distance. More scouts reported that there were no more than a thousand of these Persian horsemen, who were an advance guard of the main army. Alexander ordered several squadrons of his own cavalry, including Ariston, leader of the Paeonian cavalry, and his men from the highlands north of Macedonia, to follow him in pursuit of the riders. Ariston was a prince of the royal house of Paeonia and had proven himself in battle at both the Granicus and Issus. These highlanders prided themselves on their skill fighting from horseback and waged war with a barbarian ferocity foreign to civilized Greeks. Alexander, however, cared little for niceties as long as the job got done.

  As soon as Alexander and his men came over the hill, the Persians turned and galloped away as fast as their horses could carry them. The king caught up with them and began to cut them down on the run, killing most but keeping a few alive for questioning. The Paeonians were at the forefront of the fight and slew as many Persians as they could catch. Ariston had his eye on the enemy commander, a Persian named Satropates. The Paeonian captain charged his foe with spear held high and slammed the weapon straight through the man’s throat, knocking him from his horse onto the ground. Ariston then leapt off his mount and cut off the Persian’s head with his sword. With joy and pride, the prince then rode to Alexander and cast the head of Satropates at his feet, much to the delight of the king. The event became so celebrated in Paeonian lore that the local mint back home in the Balkans struck a coin with the god Apollo on one side and Ariston on the other, spear poised above his fallen foe.

  From the captured prisoners, Alexander learned that Darius and his army were close by, beyond the hills to the east of Nineveh, not far from the town of Arbela. They were camped on a broad plain at a site called Gaugamela. It was a small, quiet village with a name meaning “camel’s house” from the story of an ancient king who had once escaped from his enemies on a swift camel and fled there. He was so grateful to the animal that he built a home for it and commanded the villagers to care for it for the rest of its life. The camel was long gone, but the plain on which it grazed in contented old age still spread out for miles on the grasslands between the mountains and the Tigris. Unlike at Issus, there was plenty of open space for Darius to deploy his army. The Great King had spent the last few days meticulously leveling out dips and rises in the ground to give his cavalry and chariots a smooth surface on which to fight the upcoming battle. Darius would be taking no chances at Gaugamela.

  Once he knew the location of the Persian army, Alexander ordered his troops to leave behind all their gear except weapons and prepare to move out by night. The Persians were still about seven miles away, but hills separated the two armies so that neither had yet seen the other. They were only three miles apart at dawn when the Macedonians came over the last hill and gazed down onto the plain of Gaugamela. At least a hundred thousand Persians were encamped below them. A shudder ran through the army and even Alexander seemed worried. He called his generals together to ask their counsel. Should he attack now and gain the element of surprise over the Persians or wait? Parmenion urged the king to delay the battle and survey the field before committing to a fight since it was known that the Persians had readied hidden stakes and ditches. The general advised that it would be prudent to learn the lay of the land before they engaged the enemy. For once Alexander agreed and ordered his men to make camp drawn up in battle order to save time when they marched out the next day.

  Meanwhile the king took a squadron of cavalry and light-armed troops down into the plain to see the battlefield for himself. It was risky to draw so close to the Persian archers, but Alexander was determined to examine the ground his men would be fighting on the next day. When he returned to camp he again called his commanders together to give them their marching orders. There was no need for long speeches or flowery words of encouragement on the eve of battle, said Alexander. They were brave and competent leaders who had proven themselves repeatedly in action. But tomorrow they would be fighting not for Syria or Tyre or Egypt but for the sovereignty of all of Asia. Everything depended on the outcome of this battle. If the Persian army could be destroyed here and the Great King killed, the world would be theirs. They were outnumbered, but if they fought as he knew they were able then they would gain victory. But there must be no mistakes. Order and discipline were essential in the attack. The men must be silent when he ordered silence, shout when they needed to shout, and howl like wolves to inspire terror in the hearts of the Persians when the moment was right.

  The king dismissed his generals and ordered the army to have a good meal and rest, then retired to his own tent for the evening. Parmenion came to him there alone with a bold suggestion that was at odds with his more p
ublic advice—why not attack the Persians that very night while it was still dark? Alexander quickly rejected this suggestion with the retort that he did not steal victories. But there were more practical matters to consider in his decision to wait until morning. Night attacks were very rare in the ancient world for the simple reason that they were too unpredictable. The attacking army might gain the element of surprise at the onset, but the battle could quickly descend into chaos with soldiers killing their own comrades by mistake. In addition, Alexander was right that he could not afford to steal a victory from Darius. If the Macedonians did win in a night battle, news would spread that he was afraid to face the Great King in a fair fight. This could fan the flames of resistance for years to come. No, he needed to beat Darius openly in the light of day to prove that he was, as the Persians called their ruler, King of Kings. In spite of his words to his commanders, Alexander had no illusions that the rest of the empire would effortlessly fall into his hands even with a victory at Gaugamela. But to crush the mighty Persian army in open battle would be a great advantage in dealing with struggles yet to come.