Alexander the Great

by Philip Freeman

  It was still deep winter in the Khawak Pass as the Macedonians entered the steep valley leading into Bactria. The journey over the pass was almost fifty miles long, but the path was so narrow up the mountainside that most of the time the men were forced to walk single file. For an army the size of Alexander’s, this meant the line of men and horses stretched back for many miles. There was little food to be stolen from the natives in these heights, so the men and animals were forced to carry all their supplies and fodder up and over the mountains. The packhorses and mules that could not keep up were quickly devoured, often raw, as there was little wood available for cooking.

  Somewhere in this area the native guides showed Alexander a peak rising almost three thousand feet above the trail on which they said a god had been chained when he stole fire from the heavens. They even pointed out the scratches on the stone made by the eagle sent by the angry lord of the gods to peck at the thief as punishment. Alexander immediately recognized this tale as the Greek myth of Prometheus, the Titan who had stolen fire from Zeus to give to men and was punished by being chained to a pillar in the distant eastern mountains. His liver was eaten every day by an eagle, only to grow back again each night. At last he was rescued by Hercules, a reputed ancestor of Alexander. The king must have taken comfort that he was passing through the same lands that Hercules once traveled, daring the impossible just like his legendary forefather.

  Alexander at last reached the frozen summit of the pass and found it unguarded by Bessus, who had never dreamed the Macedonians would dare such a difficult route. The view to the north stretched for miles over more mountains and valleys, but the king knew that at the end of the trail were the plains of Bactria leading to the Oxus River and the steppes of central Asia. It would take days for his entire army to move over the pass and down to the warmer lands below, but Alexander had the satisfaction of knowing he had not only outflanked Bessus, but had crossed the mighty Hindu Kush.

  As the army came down from the Khawak Pass, the Macedonians moved from winter ice to blistering summer heat in a matter of days. To make the situation worse, little food or fodder was available in a land that had suffered the scorched-earth policy of Bessus. The few cities of Bactria quickly fell to Alexander, but even here supplies were limited. And worst of all for the king, Bessus was nowhere to be found. He had chosen a strategic retreat across the Oxus River into Sogdiana accompanied by Spitamenes, a Sogdian lord who had served the Persians for years. They brought with them thousands of Sogdian cavalry perfectly suited for hit-and-run strikes against Alexander on the endless plains of central Asia. Most of the Bactrian warriors, however, when they learned that Bessus was abandoning their homeland to the Macedonians, deserted the satrap and returned to their villages in the hills.

  Alexander appointed his old family friend Artabazus as the new satrap of Bactria and headed north to the Oxus after Bessus. The farther north they marched under the summer sun the worse conditions became. The land was covered with barren sand dunes stretching to the horizon, so that experienced travelers moved only at night using the stars to guide them—a trick Alexander quickly learned. But so little water was available that the journey soon became a hellish trek for the men. Just a few weeks earlier they had been freezing to death in the Hindu Kush, but now they were dying of thirst and heat under the desert sun. Most of the soldiers trudged along mindlessly putting one foot in front of the other, while others simply stopped moving and stood fixed to whatever spot they found themselves. A few of the men broke into the wine stores and drained the skins, but this only made their thirst worse in the end. Day after day the army marched on toward the Oxus, with the weaker soldiers falling by the wayside to die in an empty land far from home. One of the scouts the king had sent ahead to the river came back with a skin full of water for his sons in the ranks, but when he saw Alexander he poured a cup and offered it to him. The king refused and bade him save the water for his children.

  When at last the army reached the Oxus, they were strung out for miles behind Alexander. He lit a fire on a nearby hill to guide the stragglers to camp and stood by the road himself to encourage the troops. Many of the men who struggled to the banks of the river plunged into the stream and began to drink greedily, even though they knew better. Some vomited and others choked to death, as their parched bodies were unable to handle so much water so quickly after a long period of thirst. When the remainder of the soldiers arrived at last, some had had enough. The historian Arrian says only that Alexander decided to decommission some of the older Macedonian veterans and Thessalian cavalry and send them home with large bonuses, but this cannot be the whole story. These were the very soldiers who had been closest to Parmenion. The march across the Bactrian desert must have been the last straw for men already on the verge of mutiny at the murder of their old commander. Rather than face an open rebellion, the king bought them off and sent them away, even though it left him with a shortage of men just as he was entering a crucial phase of the war.

  The Oxus was swift, cold, and deep because it was fed by melting snows at its headwaters in the high Pamir Mountains to the east. Alexander’s trusty corps of engineers at first tried to drive piles into the stream for the foundation of a bridge, but the current soon tore these apart. Even if they had been able to build a bridge, there was not enough wood available in the surrounding desert to span a river half a mile wide. To make matters worse, Alexander had no boats and Bessus had made sure there were none to be found in any of the villages along the river. The king therefore resorted to the same trick he had used on the distant Danube six years earlier. He ordered his men to stuff their tents with whatever dry straw and grass they could find and use these as floats to swim downstream across the river. The first soldiers across the river stood guard as the rest of the men paddled with all their might, but the army was so large that it took five days to complete the crossing.

  Once in Sogdiana, the Macedonians must have felt that they had reached the very edge of the world. To the north was the Jaxartes River and the great steppes of central Asia, a boundless grassland stretching seemingly forever. In the east were more mountains and deserts. Sogdiana was a strange and beautiful land, but unnerving to men unaccustomed to endless horizons.

  It may have been this deeply unsettled feeling that led Alexander to commit one of the most barbaric acts of the entire campaign. As they were moving north, they came to a village on the steppe and were surprised to be greeted in Greek by the inhabitants. These were the descendants of the Branchidae, priests of Apollo at Didyma near Miletus on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Alexander had visited the ruins of the oracle five years earlier and must have marveled to find the great-great-grandchildren of the priests so far from home. Their ancestors had been deported by Xerxes in the previous century to protect them from the hostile Greeks after they had collaborated with the Great King and burned down their own temple. But this was ancient history to their descendants, who had become citizens of Persia and embraced their new land, though they still maintained their old language, religion, and many of their customs. They were thrilled to see a king from the Aegean world, though they had never even visited their ancestral home, and welcomed Alexander warmly, surrendering their city to him with celebration.

  However, when Alexander had retired to his tent for the night, he called together the soldiers of Miletus serving in his army and asked them what he should do about the Branchidae. These men of Miletus had been raised since childhood with an abiding hatred for the traitorous priests and wanted revenge, though some felt the events happened so long ago that they were best forgotten. The king thanked them and said he would consider what to do during the night. The next morning, Alexander entered their town and was again welcomed by all the people. But their joy turned to horror when they saw the soldiers entering behind him with swords drawn. Every man, woman, and child was killed in spite of their cries for mercy in Greek and the olive branches they held before them. The town was sacked and the houses as well as the city walls were f
lattened. Even the nearby sacred grove was cut down and the stumps pulled up so that no trace remained of the Branchidae.

  When the Sogdians heard that Alexander was in their country, they began to have second thoughts about Bessus. His credibility was already at a low point, as he had abandoned Bactria without a fight, so there was little objection when Spitamenes and his men entered his tent one night and arrested the satrap. They then sent a message to Alexander saying they would gladly hand over Bessus to him if he would send a party to lead him back to the Macedonian camp. The king suspected a trap, but the opportunity to seize the murderer of Darius without a fight was too tempting to resist. He sent his friend Ptolemy with a strong force into Sogdiana on a fast ten-day march to retrieve the prisoner. While he was approaching the village where Bessus was being held, Ptolemy received a message that Spitamenes was now uncertain about whether he should hand over his captive, so Ptolemy surrounded the village with his soldiers. By this point the Sogdian leader and his officers had fled, so the Macedonian captain left most of his troops encircling the area and entered the town with only a handful of men. It was a tense situation with the potential for ambush, but Ptolemy dealt with the matter boldly, marching into the hut where Bessus was detained and dragging him away before anyone had time to object. He then sent a messenger back to Alexander asking what he should do with the captive satrap. The king told him to put a wooden collar on Bessus and tie him naked to a pole along the road that the army would soon pass.

  When Alexander arrived at the village, he got down from his horse and approached the prisoner. He asked by what right he had seized the Great King in the first place, betraying a sacred trust that bound him to a man who was both his relative and benefactor. How had he dared put him in chains, then murder him like a slave? Bessus could only weakly respond that he had not acted alone and that he thought Alexander would be pleased. If the satrap still entertained any hopes that his story would have a happy ending, they soon vanished. The king first had him flogged, then cut off his ears and nose, the traditional Persian punishment for traitors. He then ordered the mutilated prisoner to be delivered into the hands of Darius’ family. When Bessus arrived, the former Great King’s brother and other relatives inflicted every possible torture and humiliation on him, then cut him to pieces.

  The crossing of the Hindu Kush and the parching deserts of Bactria had been hard on the men, but it had also taken an enormous toll on the horses. Alexander now took advantage of moving through some of the finest horse country in the world and acquired new mounts for his cavalry. These animals would prove especially effective in the upcoming battles on the steppes of Sogdiana. The king then led his army almost two hundred miles north across the plains and highlands to the ancient walled city of Marcanda, or Samarkand, a royal city of the Persians in central Sogdiana. In centuries to come this town would become one of the major trading centers of Asia, but for now Alexander made it one of his key garrisons in what he assumed would be a quick campaign in the northern reaches of his new empire.

  From Samarkand the king struck north to the Jaxartes, like the Oxus a major river running from the great Himalayan massif to the Aral Sea. The Jaxartes was the farthest boundary of the Persian Empire in central Asia. Beyond it lay the untamed land of the Scythians, as the Greeks and Persians called all the tribes of the steppes stretching back to the lands north of the Danube in Europe. It was here that things first began to go wrong for the king in this wild region. Alexander had assumed that the surrender of Bessus by Spitamenes meant that the Sogdian lord had acknowledged him as the new Great King. All he would need to do now was show the flag in a few forays around the country, perhaps found a city or two, then head back to Bactria so he could be on his way to India before the snows began to fall. Even the sudden massacre of some of his Macedonian foraging parties by local tribesmen was dismissed as a random act by impetuous barbarians. Still, it was not the sort of thing Alexander could allow to go unpunished. The king took a large contingent of his fastest troops and attacked the Sogdian warriors as they hid on a mountainside. These men of the steppes were not easily intimidated, however, and drove back the first Macedonian assault with a shower of arrows. Many of the king’s soldiers were injured, including Alexander himself, who suffered a shot in the right leg that broke his fibula. His physicians patched the wound as best they could, then the king struggled back to the mountain and directed the fight until his men finally took the high ground and killed most of the Sogdians. For the next few days, the Macedonian cavalry and infantry argued over the right to carry the wounded king in his litter until Alexander finally settled the matter by having them bear him in turn on alternate days.

  As he recovered back on the Jaxartes, Alexander laid out both his immediate and long-term plans for Sogdiana. The Persians had established seven garrison towns on the river to fortify their northern border against Scythian raids. Alexander planned to strengthen these and establish new posts of his own, most important a city called Alexandria Eschate (“Alexandria the Farthest”) near the site of the largest of the Persian forts. The city was well positioned, guarding the western edge of a large basin leading to the steppes, with high mountains to the east. But Alexander’s plan was not merely to defend the borders of his kingdom. His stated ambition was to use the town as a base to invade Scythia in the future. This is the first hint we have in the ancient sources of the young king’s scheme for expansion after he had secured all the provinces of the Persian Empire. Cyrus and his successors had fought in this region for two hundred years, but they never intended anything more than to hold the frontier against the tribes beyond the Jaxartes. Alexander dreamed of conquests greater than those of any of the previous Great Kings, reaching even into the endless steppes of Asia. And as he had only just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday, he could reasonably hope that there were still many years ahead of him to lead his army to the ends of the earth.

  But diplomacy had its uses as much as war. While he was on the Jaxartes, delegations came to him from various Scythian tribes, including the Abii on the steppes far to the west of Sogdiana. The Abii were known to the Greek world, probably through their colonies on the Black Sea, as a poor but honorable people who waged war only in self-defense. Alexander greeted all the envoys warmly and affirmed his desire for friendship with their people. As proof of his good intentions, he sent back with them several of his Macedonian companions, including a man named Derdas who was a relative of his treasurer Harpalus. These men were in for the adventure of their lives as they traversed the steppes of Asia with their new Scythian friends. But before sending them off, Alexander called them aside and ordered them to gather all the information they could on the tribes, their military capabilities, distances, major rivers, water and food resources, and anything else that might be useful to an invading army in the future.

  At this point Alexander invited Spitamenes and the other Sogdian lords to a conference across the Oxus in Bactria. He was anxious to clear up any misunderstandings aroused by his slaughter of the Sogdian rebels on the mountainside earlier and to settle affairs in the province before he set out for India. But the local nobles were understandably hesitant about walking into a fortified Macedonian town. Often in the ancient world such settings were a prelude to arrest or murder of the guests. They had no way of knowing this was not Alexander’s style. He might ride fifty miles in a night to kill them all in their beds, but he would never violate the sacred duty of a host. Nevertheless, Spitamenes and his fellow lords refused, sending the whole province of Sogdiana into rebellion. The seven cities of the Persians along the Jaxartes were quickly retaken and their Macedonian garrisons massacred.

  Alexander’s response was characteristically swift and decisive. He struck north and personally led his army back to the Jaxartes to recapture the frontier outposts. The Sogdians were great horse warriors, but they had little experience at defending a besieged town. The first city the king attacked, ironically named Gaza, had only low earth walls. Unlike the town of the same
name in Palestine that had put up a fierce resistance to the Macedonians, the Sogdian fort fell almost immediately as Alexander’s men climbed over the walls with hastily constructed ladders. The men of the town were killed while the women and children were added to the army’s spoils. The next day he moved to the second city and took it in similar fashion, then went on to seize the third the following day. He sent a large cavalry force on to the fourth and fifth cities to take them before they had time to organize an effective resistance, so that within a week the king had recaptured five of the seven frontier forts and enslaved thousands of Sogdian women and children.

  The sixth town was named Cyropolis after the first Great King, who had died in battle not far away fighting the Scythians across the Jaxartes. This city was the greatest of all with high walls and defenses designed by the Persians. Alexander had his engineers bring up siege engines to batter down the walls, but the fortifications turned out to be more substantial than the king had anticipated. It was then he noticed that the river flowing into the city exited the walls through a narrow channel. There might be just enough space in this opening for a man to squeeze through and enter the town undetected. He therefore led a small group of soldiers down into the channel and under the walls while the main force of his army distracted the defenders with a full-blown assault on the front gates. Once he was inside, Alexander and his men overpowered the guards and opened the gates to his troops. But the thousands of Sogdian warriors in the city did not give up so easily. They knew the fate of their comrades in the other cities and so put up a fierce street-by-street defense against the Macedonians. One Sogdian defender enjoyed a moment of delight before his death when he threw down a heavy stone, smashing Alexander square on the face and neck, knocking the king to the ground unconscious. His men feared he was dead, but he arose and showed them he was still alive, although he must have suffered a terrific headache for days. Adding this injury to his still-unhealed leg wound did not put the king in a good mood. At first he had planned to spare the city, as it had been founded by Cyrus, but now he ordered his troops to slaughter everyone in the town—the texts do not mention sparing the women and children—as well as all the inhabitants in the seventh city, which he took soon after.