Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

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  RELATIONS BETWEEN OLYMPIAS AND Alexander did not suffer permanent damage because of her cruel treatment of Philip’s last wife, Cleopatra, and her daughter.

  Mother and son remained close. According to a story told by Plutarch, Olympias “confided to him, and to him alone, the secret of his conception.” The obvious implication was that he was the son of a divine father, probably Zeus, adulterous ruler of the Olympian gods and husband of touchy Hera. The idea attracted Alexander’s passionate interest and evidently he talked about it. Embarrassed, she is said to have repudiated the claim with a witty remark. “Will Alexander never stop slandering me to Hera?”

  People around the young king were worried for the future if he left Macedonia without marrying. Both Antipater at home and Parmenion with the advance force in Asia were keen that he first find a wife and procreate. The fact they had nubile daughters may have played a part in their thinking, but they were making a more serious point. They knew that the young king was a reckless risk-taker on the battlefield and the chances were high that he would not survive the forthcoming campaign. There was no obvious heir and the kingdom would face a period of upheaval, and as in past centuries very probably sink back to its old status as a second-rate power.

  The anxiety was understandable. Everyone could remember that Philip had married at the first opportunity—years before he became king—and then frequently thereafter. This was how a bachelor leader on whose life many people’s fate depended was expected to behave.

  Alexander was having none of it. He was eager for action and spoke vigorously against his generals. “It would be a disgrace,” he pointed out, “for one who has been appointed by Greece to command the war, and who had inherited his father’s unconquerable army, to sit around at home enjoying a marriage and waiting for children to be born.”

  Mothers had no formal or legal role in the marriage of their sons, but we have seen that Olympias did not hesitate to interfere in Alexander’s sex life and she must have had a view on the generals’ advice. She was the chief woman in his life, and a wife would have been an obstacle between her and Alexander. To judge by what is known about Olympias’s character, their close one-to-one relationship would be damaged if a third person were allowed to join it. If she was asked for her opinion, we can safely guess that she told Antipater, whom she loathed, and Parmenion to mind their own business.

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  MEMNON AND HIS BROTHER Mentor were crafty Greeks from the island of Rhodes. They made a good living as mercenaries and were excellent military tacticians. They were also skilled at changing sides while remaining masters of their fate. Their employers got the best out of them by not being too unsuspicious.

  The brothers were close to a high-ranking Persian, Artabazus, the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia in northwestern Anatolia. He fathered a very large number of children (eleven boys and twelve girls, startlingly by the same woman). One of his daughters, a beauty, was called Barsine; Mentor married her. He died and Memnon stepped into his shoes.

  Artabazus turned his coat and joined a satraps’ revolt against the Great King. He found himself on the losing side and in 352 he and the brothers took refuge at the Macedonian court. It was here that Alexander, still a small boy, first met Barsine, who was some years older—probably in her late teens. (Their paths were to cross again in future years.) However, the exiles made their peace with the Great King and returned to the fold. Artabazus became one of Darius III’s most loyal supporters, and Memnon was sent with five thousand mercenaries to deal with Parmenion and his advance force.

  Originally dispatched by Philip with ten thousand men, the old Macedonian general had enjoyed mixed fortunes. In 336 he had pushed down the coast and many Greek cities along the seaboard rose against their Persian master. Altars were erected to Philip and in Ephesus a statue of the king was placed inside the temple of Artemis. But then the offensive had faltered. In the following year, while Alexander was scoring victories in Greece and Thrace, Memnon campaigned with great effectiveness and drove Parmenion back into the Troad (now the Biga Peninsula, in northwestern Anatolia) and the Hellespont.

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  MEANWHILE DARIUS WAS READY to deal with the Macedonian king once and for all. Since seizing the throne in 336, he had put down native revolts in Egypt and probably in Babylonia. He emerged as a tough and competent ruler. By the summer of 334 he had mobilized a fleet of some four hundred war galleys and ordered the gradual mobilization of the western satrapies. He sent some cavalry reinforcements, but otherwise saw no reason to involve himself personally in the campaign. Alexander was a menace, but a local one. In total, the Persians mustered an estimated force of fifteen thousand cavalry and five thousand or six thousand Greek mercenaries.

  The Persian command debated whether it would be sensible to station their forces along an east–west mountain range. This would have the advantage of restricting the Macedonian intruders to the northwestern corner of Asia Minor, but the greater disadvantage of risking an attack in the rear by insurgent Greek cities at the same time as they attempted to destroy Alexander or at least to push him back into Europe. To avoid being sandwiched, it was decided to move eastward and establish a headquarters at Zelea, a town near Cyzicus on the Black Sea.

  On hearing that the Macedonian army had crossed into Asia, a war council debated what to do next. Present were four commanders and two satraps, Spithridates of Lydia and Arsites of Hellespontine Phrygia. Memnon was also in attendance. He strongly advised the Persians not to risk taking on the Macedonians. They outnumbered the Persian infantry, were far superior in fighting quality, and had Alexander with them in person, whereas the Great King, hundreds of miles away in Susa, was a conspicuous absentee.

  According to Arrian, Memnon spelled out the action they should take: “Instead, they should march on, destroy fodder by getting the cavalry to trample it down, burn the crops in the ground, and not even spare the towns in their path. Alexander will not stay in the country if he is denied provisions.” This was good counsel, for a large army could not survive without a continuous supply of food for its soldiers and hay or grass for its animals. However, Arsites, whose province would have to bear the brunt of this scorched-earth policy, vehemently disagreed.

  He said he would not permit the burning of even a single house belonging to the people in his charge. Others at the meeting feared that Memnon, being a wily and untrustworthy Hellene, was deliberately delaying hostilities to persuade Darius to keep him in employment. Their suspicions seemed to be justified when the enemy left Memnon’s Phrygian estate unharmed (in fact, Alexander did not mean to show friendship, but to feed misgivings). Memnon’s track record as a former rebel against the Great King made it hard for him to defend himself, although on this occasion his advice was correct.

  Eventually, it was decided that the Persians should seek battle on ground of their choosing.

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  ALEXANDER WAS BROKE, as he admitted ruefully in a speech Arrian has him give to his troops years later:

  My inheritance from my father consisted of a few gold and silver drinking cups and less than sixty talents in the treasury [a silver talent was worth about 6,000 drachmas]. There was also about 500 talents’ worth of debt contracted by Philip. I myself borrowed another 800 in addition to this.

  Philip had consistently overspent, despite an estimated income of a thousand talents a year from his Thracian mines. To all the stated reasons for the Persian expedition, we must add a financial one.

  Alexander admitted that neither he nor Philip could afford not to mount an invasion. (Even if they had decided to stay at home, they would still have been driving on fumes.) We do not know whether the Greeks paid for their military and naval contributions, but, even if they did, the daily payroll for the expeditionary force was punishingly large. On the reasonable assumptio
n that an infantryman’s daily wage was one drachma a day and a cavalryman’s two drachmas, it probably added up to some seven talents.

  Alexander probably paid for his Balkan campaign by looting and slave-market sales. When he left Pella for Phrygia in west central Anatolia in the spring of 334, he had enough money to maintain his army for no more than a month. Financial pressure argued for a decisive battle as soon as possible, as Memnon very well knew or guessed. Only then would Alexander be able to amass booty after a victory, levy taxes from the liberated Ionian cities, and raid provincial Persian exchequers.

  He was open with his officers about his impending bankruptcy. Plutarch reports that Alexander would not board ship at the Hellespont until he had inquired into all his Companions’ financial circumstances. He gave an estate to one, a village to another, and the revenues of some port or community to a third.

  When he had shared out or given away all the royal property, Perdiccas asked him, “But, king, what are you leaving for yourself?” “My hopes!” replied Alexander. “In that case, then,” said Perdiccas, “those who serve with you will have a share of them too.” With this, he declined to accept the property that had been allotted to him, and several of Alexander’s other friends did the same.

  If one reads between the lines of this famous anecdote, it is evident what was really happening: the king was borrowing from his entourage and putting up the collateral. If he was not immediately victorious, his ambitious plan would dwindle into a humiliating demobilization.

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  HIS OMNIPRESENT SCOUTS WARNED Alexander that they had located the enemy on the far side of the river Granicus, a mountain stream originating at Mount Ida. He at once marched in battle order toward it. He formed his heavy infantry into two phalanxes and posted the cavalry on either side. He ordered the baggage train to follow behind. These dispositions meant that he could defend himself if harried by cavalry (the rear phalanx could about-turn and face the rear if necessary). More to the point, he would be able to spread out speedily into his actual line of battle with cavalry on the wings and infantry in the center.

  It was the afternoon of an early spring day in 334 and, if possible, the king wanted to wrong-foot the Persians by moving at once to an engagement. A short sharp attack before evening fell would cause astonishment and so enhance his chances of winning.

  When the Granicus came into view, Alexander gave it a hard stare. It was a shallow, fordable stream, about thirty or so meters wide, which ran across a flat alluvial plain. The water did not fill the bed but meandered to and fro over a clay floor covered with rounded stones. At most it would reach a man’s knees. On either side there were steep banks up to three meters high. These would have been a serious obstacle except for the fact that here and there were gentle gravel slopes leading up from the riverbed to the plain.

  On the far side of the Granicus, set back a little from the riverbank, stood some 20,000 enemy cavalry about sixteen troopers deep and extending for some two and a half kilometers. On a ridge farther behind them, twenty thousand infantry kept watch; perhaps some eight deep, they were mainly Greek mercenaries.

  If the Persians were expecting to fight that day, they had no plans for the infantry to enter the action. This is very odd and can perhaps be put down to incompetence (but let us not forget that the capable Memnon was still with the army). More plausibly, the Persians were bivouacking in the order in which they had arrived on their march from Zelea. They thought the Macedonians would not attack so late in the day. Just in case the attack came, though, they guarded the river and would only form up for battle the next day; they probably intended to withdraw the cavalry to the wings and bring the infantry down from the ridge into the vacated center.

  But there was not to be a next day.

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  PARMENION WAS EFFECTIVELY ALEXANDER’S military deputy and usually commanded the left wing in battle. He had been his father’s foremost general from the beginning of the reign. Now in his mid-sixties, Parmenion had three sons, two of whom held senior appointments in the army. The eldest, Philotas, commanded the Companion cavalry, a crucial posting which he filled efficiently and loyally. However, if we recall Alexander’s dressing-down during the Pixodarus marriage scandal, Philotas was in the room at the time and may have informed on the prince or perhaps was held up as a paradigm of good behavior. Either way, he did not endear himself to Alexander. Nicanor commanded the hypaspists (elite infantry who acted as a flexible link between the phalanx and the Companion cavalry). The third son, Hector, seems to have been too young as yet for a major command.

  Alexander was much indebted to the old general for conniving in the execution of his fellow commander and son-in-law, the influential and popular Attalus. It is sometimes said that Alexander resented this obligation, but was in too weak a position to dismiss the well-established and well-respected Parmenion and his sons. However, there is no evidence that he wanted to do so. The three men served him well. Parmenion’s alleged unpopularity at court is justified by claims that the king had a habit of rejecting his advice; however, there were other occasions when it was accepted. The worst that can be said is that the one was elderly and cautious and the other young and audacious.

  While the Macedonian high command was deliberating its next move, Parmenion spoke. “It seems to me, sir, that our plan is for the time being to make camp on the riverbank just as we are.” In his opinion the riverbank was a dangerous obstacle and the army should attempt an unopposed crossing early next morning. He warned that “a failure at the very beginning…would threaten the outcome of the entire campaign.” Alexander abruptly dismissed the recommendation. He ordered Parmenion to take up his position on the left while he made his way to the right (the traditional post of honor for a commanding general).

  For a while the two armies took no action, standing behind each riverbank. There was a deep silence.

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  LIKE A BOXER, THE KING intended to deliver a left jab followed by a right punch. He drew up his army along the front for the same length as the Persian line. He placed the Thessalian, Greek, and Thracian horse under Parmenion. The center was occupied by the infantry: the phalanx and then the hypaspists. Next to them was a special assault force comprising the scouts and Paeonian light cavalry from Thrace together with a squadron of Companion heavy cavalry that was to lead the way.

  The right wing was dominated by the Companion cavalry under Philotas; finally, the line was completed by the small but deadly contingents of Agrianian javelin throwers and Cretan archers.

  We can deduce Alexander’s plan from what happened. It was to weaken the cavalry “wall” along the Persians’ left wing so that when the king led the Companions to crash against the wall it would crumble.

  First, the Agrianians and Cretans moved to their right, seeking to outflank the Persians. The effect was to draw the enemy along upstream, eventually thinning its line. Then the assault force advanced across the river up a gravelly slope. This was an almost suicidal act of bravery, but its highly trained members were expendable. They were, in effect, a loss leader or (to use the imagery of chess) a pawn sacrifice. Their task, no doubt understated in the pre-battle briefing, was to soak up the Persian defense at whatever cost. The Persian cavalry were tempted to the bank of the Granicus and showered their javelins down on the attackers, who responded as best they could with thrusting spears. A few defenders, led by Memnon and his sons, rode down onto the riverbed.

  Macedonian lives were being lost. It must have been hard holding back, but the king waited. At last, when the mauled survivors of the assault force were retreating, he judged the right moment to have come. To the sound of trumpets he led the Companions in a wedge-shaped formation, supported by some hypaspists, and delivered the coup de grâce. He had little difficulty in pushing his way up another of the gravelly slopes, for the Persians had already delivered
most of their missiles and now, being at the river’s edge, they were in no position to build the necessary momentum for a charge. Alexander and some Companions reached the top of the bank, but in disorder.

  From the beginning, the Persian high command had been able to see Alexander because of the attention shown him by his awed entourage and because of the magnificence of his armor. He wore tall white feathers on either side of the crest of his helmet and was carrying the antique shield he had obtained at Troy. The Persians gathered opposite him, for their simple battle aim was to kill the king. Apparently, they pulled back from the river until they had a clear sight of him on level ground and then rode pell-mell in his direction.

  From the Macedonian viewpoint, this was the most dangerous moment of the battle. Alexander, at the heart of the mélée, received two blows on his breastplate and three on his shield. Arrian describes the scene:

  A fierce fight developed around him, and in this time brigade after brigade of the Macedonians made the crossing with little difficulty now. The fighting was from horseback, but in some respects it was more like an infantry battle, a tangled mass of horse against horse and man against man.

  This was a struggle worthy of the Iliad.

  The Macedonians were beginning to make headway when Alexander’s lance broke. He asked a groom for his, but that too had snapped. Luckily old Demaratus of Corinth, who had bought the horse Bucephalas for Alexander when he was a child, was among the crowd of Companions and volunteered his lance.

  The king saw Darius’s son-in-law Mithridates riding out far in front of the others and bringing a body of cavalry with him. He charged ahead and knocked Mithridates off his horse with a thrust in his face. A Persian nobleman brought down his ax with all his strength upon Alexander’s head. He sheared off part of Alexander’s helmet and one of its plumes, but failed to wound him. Alexander knocked him off his horse and drove his lance into his chest. Meanwhile, another of Darius’s sons-in-law had raised his scimitar against Alexander from behind. Cleitus, the grizzled commander of the Royal Squadron (and brother of the king’s long-ago wet nurse), sliced off the Persian’s arm with a single swipe of his sword. Alexander only avoided death by one man’s fast reaction.