Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  The city of Susa was the old capital of the kingdom of Elam, a land of southern Mesopotamia stretching into the Zagros Mountains of Persia to the east. It was once a large territory encompassing parts of Persia before the ancestors of Cyrus the Great took over the highlands. Elam served as the main conduit of trade between the east and Mesopotamia for goods such as timber and minerals. The people of Elam, like the Sumerians, wrote on clay tablets in cuneiform script thousands of years before Alexander. Once the Persians brought the Elamites of the Mesopotamian plain into their empire in the sixth century, they made their tongue one of the official languages of state. The language of Elam was unrelated to any other in the area, though it may have shared a common origin with those spoken in ancient times in parts of India. In any case, it was an important means of communication in Alexander’s new empire and required that the king employ scribes who were fluent in the language.

  After a march of twenty days from Babylon, the Macedonian army arrived at Susa. The royal palace spread out there on three steep hills was the setting for the biblical tale of Esther, while just below the citadel lay the tomb of the prophet Daniel. Chief among the features of the Great King’s palace was the open audience hall with dozens of pillars more than sixty feet high. Suppliants approaching the royal chamber would climb a series of stairs past stunning gold reliefs of the king’s guard and a larger-than-life statue of the first Darius himself. Tribute from the whole empire was built into the palace as a reminder of the awesome power of the king—cedar wood from Lebanon, ivory from India, walls decorated by Egyptians, stone shaped by Greek workers from the Aegean coast. Inside the hall was an explosion of color, with golden images of sphinxes and lions, while the capitals of the columns were carved like the heads of gigantic bulls. Across the river next to the vast complex stood the smaller palace of the Great King Artaxerxes II, built in the time of Alexander’s grandfather. This Persian king constructed a less imposing but still opulent structure as a retreat from the endless demands of the royal court. An inscription there prayed that the gods would grant him and his palace protection from all evil, that the place might be a paradayadam for him. In later Persian, the same word would become pairidaeza and pass into Greek as paradeisos, or paradise.

  Alexander had sent one of his officers directly to Susa after the battle at Gaugamela with a demand that the local Persian satrap, Abulites, prepare the city for surrender along with a stern warning to leave the treasury untouched. The satrap had complied and now sent his own son to meet the king and escort him to the city by way of the nearby Choaspes River—an important symbolic gesture as this was the stream from which the Great King drank. Abulites met him there formally to surrender Susa and bestow on its new king regal gifts of the finest purple cloth, dromedaries, and imported Indian elephants. More important to Alexander, the satrap also brought along a staggering forty thousand talents of gold and silver bullion, enough money to fund the Macedonian army and indeed the whole empire for years to come. Alexander must have appreciated the additional gift of thousands of minted gold coins commonly known as darics that depicted the first Great King Darius as an archer. The king now had treasure at his disposal beyond his wildest dreams.

  When Alexander climbed the stairs to the citadel of the city and entered the royal audience hall, he stared in disbelief at the glorious decorations and spoils collected for two centuries from throughout the empire. He noticed on one side the statues of the two Athenian youths Harmodius and Aristogiton taken by Xerxes during his invasion of Greece. The young men had plotted to assassinate a ruling tyrant of Athens, but were killed and later elevated to the status of heroes. Alexander ordered the statues sent back to Athens with his compliments—perhaps as an ironic comment on the Athenian view that he himself was now the greatest tyrant of all. Nonetheless, the citizens of Athens were grateful for their return and set them up beside the path leading to their Acropolis.

  At the far end of the reception hall was the royal throne of Darius himself. It was death for anyone but the Great King to sit there, but Alexander very deliberately made a public show of mounting the dais and placing himself grandly on the throne. The only problem was that the new king was shorter than average height and his feet dangled above the lowest step. This was both embarrassing and undignified, so one of the quick-thinking royal pages pushed aside the mounting block and substituted a table of greater height on which Alexander could rest his feet in royal splendor. The king then noticed that an elderly eunuch in the corner was quietly weeping. When asked why he was so sad, the servant replied that he had long served the Great King his meals on that very table and was heartbroken to see it used as a footstool. Alexander was about to order the table removed lest he be accused of callously breaching protocol and offending the gods, when Philotas, the son of general Parmenion, urged him to stop. It is an omen, he declared, that the table once used by your great enemy has now become your footstool. Alexander saw the wisdom in such symbolism and ordered that the table from that day forward remain where it was.

  The king settled into the palace and saw that the family of Darius, who had been traveling with him since Issus, was made at home in their old quarters. He had no need to drag them along behind him any longer on campaign, so he ordered that they remain in Susa and be assigned tutors to learn the Greek language. Alexander was especially anxious to leave a good impression with Sisyngambris, the mother of Darius, and made a present to her of fine cloth that had just arrived from Macedonia. To show his affection, he even offered to send her Macedonian women who would teach her and her granddaughters how to weave the splendid cloth for themselves. What the king did not know is that he had just insulted the queen mother in the worst possible way. Persian women of the royal court did not work cloth—this was a task for slaves. When he heard that Sisyngambris was sulking in her quarters and discovered why, he called on her personally and offered his most sincere apologies. In his country, he explained, queens and princesses like his own mother and sisters considered it an honor to weave fine cloth. It took much explaining, but eventually Sisyngambris understood that the gesture was not intended as an insult.

  Winter was settling on the Zagros Mountains to the east as the new year began at Susa. If Darius expected Alexander to wait in comfort in the warmth of the palace, he should have known better. After only a short stay at Susa, Alexander commanded his army to prepare to march. He left behind the satrap Abulites in his previous office, following the pattern he had established with Mazaeus at Babylon, but once again appointed loyal Macedonians to command the military. Alexander had conquered the Mediterranean provinces and Mesopotamia for his empire, but the heart of Persia and the provinces to the east still lay ahead. Up until this point of the campaign, the natives through whose lands he passed saw him as a potential liberator or at least as a means to drive out the Persians. But once he crossed the mountains and moved toward Persepolis, he would be nothing but an invader in hostile territory. He knew the Persians would fight all the more bravely for their homeland. Beyond them lay the Bactrians, Scythians, and Indians—all among the best warriors in the world, who would also be fighting for their own lands. The battle for the west may have been won, but the hardest part of the war was just beginning.

  7

  PERSEPOLIS

  IS IT NOT PASSING BRAVE TO BE A KING

  AND RIDE IN TRIUMPH THROUGH PERSEPOLIS?

  —CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

  A few days east of Susa, Alexander and his army left the warm plains of Mesopotamia and entered the snow-covered mountains of Persia. These highlands were occupied by a people known as the Uxians, whose king, Madates, was a cousin of Darius. Although related to the royal family, they were a people apart who granted passage through their lands only to those who paid their price. Every Great King since Cyrus had given gold to the Uxian brigands to allow his men to travel the narrow gorges that were the only practical road between Susa and Persepolis. It was a bitter humiliation for the king of Persia to pay tribute to bandits, but given the i
naccessible nature of the mountains no army had ever been able to subdue them or drive them out.

  Messengers from the Uxians came to Alexander at his camp in the foothills and greeted the king with respect. They welcomed him to their land and—lacking loyalty to any but their own—had no objection to his passing through the mountains to attack Persepolis. But there was the small matter of the tribute payment. They would let his army cross in peace as long as he paid the same toll as the Great King. Alexander must have been a study in self-control at this moment, for he smiled and bid them to wait for him in the mountain pass, where they would receive his payment.

  Darius and his predecessors may have given in to these highland bandits, but Alexander was not about to start his march into Persia by submitting to blackmail. He intended to teach the Uxians a lesson they would never forget. The king took several thousand of his best troops and led them through a narrow backcountry trail into the mountains accompanied by guides from Susa. There he found a number of Uxian villages nestled in the high valleys. One by one, he fell on them in the night and killed everyone he could find, many of them still in their beds. He took what little goods they had, mostly fine horses and sheep, but his real object was terror.

  As he moved toward the pass where the Uxian warriors were guarding the main road, he sent his trusted lieutenant Craterus with a brigade of crack mountain troops into the peaks above them, knowing this is where the natives would retreat when he struck. The Uxians trusted the inaccessible terrain of their mountain home to protect them from enemies, but they had never dealt with men from the highlands of Macedonia and Thrace. These soldiers had grown up in mountains as rough as those they found themselves in now and felt perfectly at home scrabbling over rocks and ledges where wild goats were at home.

  Alexander suddenly swept up from below toward the Uxians guarding the pass, so surprising them with his speed that they fled into the surrounding hills—only to find Craterus and his men waiting for them there. Many were killed outright by sword and spear, while others were thrown off the rocks to their deaths. A few escaped to spread the news of the unstoppable new king and his ferocious army. Alexander was right behind them with his men, destroying village after village as they made their way through the highlands. Their king Madates was so distraught that he sent messengers by a secret path to Susa to plead with the mother of Darius, his own mother-in-law’s sister, to intervene with Alexander and save his people. Sisyngambris was reluctant to get involved in military affairs, but for the sake of family she consented and sent a letter to Alexander begging him to spare the Uxians from destruction. The king was probably still feeling guilty about the misunderstanding with Sisyngambris over weaving cloth, so he gave in to her plea and pardoned Madates and all those Uxians who would surrender. He left their remaining villages intact with the provision that they would now pay to him as tribute one hundred horses each year along with five times that many transport animals and thirty thousand sheep. In mere days, Alexander and his men had done what the Persian Empire was unable to accomplish in two hundred years.

  The Macedonians continued their march eastward ever deeper into the frozen mountains separating them from Persepolis. The direct route into Persia lay through a high pass called the Persian Gates, a narrow gap surrounded by impassable cliffs on all sides. The only other option was a long detour to the south, but this would take many extra days of travel. Alexander knew from scouts that the local Persian satrap, Ariobarzanes, was waiting for him with a considerable force guarding the Gates, but he didn’t believe their numbers would be significant. Still, they had the advantage of terrain and would be difficult to dislodge. Ariobarzanes was an experienced war leader who had fought against Alexander at Gaugamela and was still loyal to Darius—but more to the point, he was still loyal to Persia. He was determined to prevent the invaders from moving into his homeland.

  Alexander considered the situation and once again made an unexpected move. He decided to split his forces, sending most of the army the long way around with Parmenion to approach Persepolis from the south. It may be true that the king was looking for an excuse to once again operate independently from the old general, but his main concern was reaching Persepolis before the Persians were able to remove the treasury. The only way he could do this was to push rapidly with a minimal force through the heavily protected Persian Gates. Ariobarzanes clearly expected him to turn his whole army south when he heard the pass was guarded, thereby buying time for the defense or at least the evacuation of the capital. Knowing this, Alexander did just the opposite and gave up the advantage of his superior numbers for a risky attack. It was not a plan any reasonable general would have attempted, but, once again, Alexander was not a reasonable general.

  With only a few thousand Macedonian and Thracian mountain troops, Alexander set off at a breakneck pace up the valley leading to the Persian Gates. The approach was through a steep defile with cliffs rising on both sides. The king could see in the distance that Ariobarzanes had built a wall across the gap leading over the pass. There were a great many Persian soldiers manning the wall, but Alexander believed his men could overcome them and moved into formation into the narrowest part of the valley just before the wall.

  Suddenly, there was a thunderous crash from the ridges above as boulders came crashing down onto his tightly packed men. Missiles launched from catapults in the hills above, javelins thrown by Persian soldiers, and arrows from thousands of archers fell like rain on the Macedonians as they tried to clamber up the snow-covered cliffs to get at the defenders. But the cliffs were so precipitous they kept sliding back on top of their own companions, all while hundreds of their fellow soldiers were dying around them. Alexander had led his men into a perfect trap. Ariobarzanes allegedly had forty thousand men guarding the pass, but even if there were a quarter of this number, no enemy—not even Alexander—could hope to take the Persian Gates in a direct assault. The king ordered his soldiers to raise their shields above their heads in a protective tortoise formation, but men still kept falling under the massive stones from above. Alexander at last had no choice but to order a retreat, leaving the bodies of many of his best soldiers lying broken in the narrow gorge before the wall.

  Alexander was not accustomed to defeat and the shame bore heavily on him. The reckless overconfidence that had served him so well in the past had cost the lives of hundreds of his bravest men. He considered calling on Aristander the prophet to ask the gods if he had somehow offended them, but decided that it was more important at the moment to inspire confidence in his discouraged men. To lose a battle was hard enough for them, but to be forced to abandon the broken corpses of their friends was unthinkable. The dearest duty for any soldier was to bury a fallen comrade so that he might journey on to the underworld. Alexander knew that Ariobarzanes would probably permit him to retrieve the dead under a flag of truce, but the humiliation would be too much to bear. He decided to leave the bodies behind and follow Parmenion around the long southern route to Persepolis—or somehow find a way to outflank the Persians holding the Gates.

  The Macedonians had managed to capture a few prisoners during the assault and Alexander ordered them brought before him. Under threat of the most horrific tortures imaginable, he asked them if there was any way around the Persian Gates. All shook their heads, but there was one man among them who spoke Greek. He was a native of Lycia in southern Asia Minor who years before had been captured and exiled to this distant corner of Persia. He labored in the local mountains as a shepherd and had been drafted by Ariobarzanes to help defend the pass. He told Alexander that there was a rocky trail that led behind the Gates, but it was a narrow backcountry track suitable only for summer travel by a few sheep, not by an army of thousands. Alexander looked him in the eye with what must have been a terrifying intensity and asked him again if there was any way his soldiers could make it through this secret path. The Lycian repeated that it was simply impossible.

  It was now that Alexander remembered a prophesy he had heard when he w
as still a boy. At some point when he was dreaming of war against the Great King, he had sent to Delphi to ask if he would ever conquer Persia. The messengers returned from the oracle with word that he would be led into Persia by a wolf. He had forgotten this curious response for years, but with this man from Lycia before him it began to make sense. The Greek word for “wolf” was lykos, practically the same as Lykios, a Lycian. In Alexander’s mind this could not be a coincidence. He told the prisoner that his entire army would be following him over the sheep trail that very night. The man begged Alexander to be reasonable. Men in full battle armor would never make it through the path and would certainly blame him for their failure. The king replied that whatever a shepherd could do for his flock, the army of Alexander could accomplish for the sake of eternal glory.