The Macedonian king was well aware that the war was not yet over. An alternative was to continue the hunt for Darius, who was plunging eastward past Media through a rough and unfertile landscape which a large army would find awkward to cross. His aim was to put as much distance as possible between him and his pursuers, buying time to raise a third army.
The Great King had with him Bessus’s Bactrian cavalry, which had withdrawn from the battle relatively unscathed, a retinue of senior Persians, and a few of the Golden Apple guards. During his flight he was joined by some two thousand Greek mercenaries who had regrouped after the battle.
This was not a large force and, ideally, the Great King remained Alexander’s chief strategic target. But we may safely assume that the Macedonians had little topographical knowledge of the eastern half of the empire, and Alexander made a point of not straying into territory which had not undergone a logistical analysis. In his military career so far, he had always sent scouts ahead of the main body of the army and tasked them to assess the nature of the terrain and negotiate supplies from the locals. No exception was to be allowed on this occasion.
There was a third and more attractive option, and this was the one Alexander chose. It was to march south down through Mesopotamia to the fabled city of Babylon with its Hanging Gardens and luxurious lifestyle. He intended to encamp his army outside the city walls for a month’s relaxation inside them and then proceed to Susa and palatial Persepolis.
The enemy corpses on the battlefield were beginning to stink in the heat, and the Macedonians did not linger. Pausing only to pick up the treasure Darius had abandoned at Arbela, they marched south. The distance from Gaugamela to Babylon was nearly 290 miles and, when necessary halts are taken into account, the journey through the fertile lands of Mesopotamia lasted three weeks.
It would take a further three weeks to reach Susa, and the king was worried that the treasure stored there might be removed and taken east to Darius. So he sent a senior officer to ride at top speed to Susa to warn against this and to require the city’s capitulation.
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THE MACEDONIANS SAW THE high walls of Babylon appear in the distance. Alexander had formed them up in battle order, just in case of any trickery. Through a gate, a long procession was winding its way toward them. Priests and government officials led, and every sector of the community, bearing gifts, was represented. There in the throng was Mazaeus. After Gaugamela he had fled to the city, with which he had a personal association as his wife was Babylonian. Together with his grown-up children, he presented himself as a suppliant and formally surrendered the city to the Macedonian conqueror. The defection of a member of the Great King’s inner circle was a coup for Alexander and had presumably been negotiated in advance. It was a blow to Darius’s authority and would encourage others to follow suit.
The Persian in charge of the citadel and the Babylonian exchequer was highly competitive and refused to be outdone by Mazaeus. He carpeted the road with flowers and garlands. At intervals on either side, he set up silver altars and heaped them with frankincense and all kinds of perfume. Behind him as he walked came a moving zoo—lions and leopards conveyed in cages and, more usefully, cattle and horses. This was his present for Alexander—generous if inconvenient.
Zoroastrian wise men, or magi, chanted holy songs; after them walked Chaldean astronomer-priests, whose role (as we have seen) was to reveal and interpret heavenly movements and seasonal changes. Musicians followed; they usually sang the praises of Persian kings, but presumably rewrote their lyrics in favor of the Macedonian conqueror.
The cavalcade was rounded off by Babylon’s cavalry; dressed in exotic uniforms they were chocolate soldiers rather than serious warriors.
The king rode into the city on a chariot, passing through the huge Ishtar Gate, with its glazed lapis-lazuli bricks, with its animals and rosettes, into a grand processional avenue that had been built by Nebuchadnezzar in the seventh century B.C. Alexander immediately took possession of the Southern Palace and the treasury. He may have had himself crowned king of Babylon.
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FAR FROM ENCOUNTERING ANY HOSTILITY, the Macedonians were welcomed with open arms. Babylonians fondly remembered their glorious past. They had twice had their own empire, first of all briefly in the eighteenth century B.C. under the famous lawgiver Hammurabi; then, for a hundred years from the last quarter of the seventh century, they had ruled a wide-stretching territory from Egypt in the west to the Persian homeland, Persis, in the east. It was during this last period that the Hanging Gardens were built, and it has been estimated that for a time the city was the largest in the world, boasting a population of more than 200,000.
In 539 Babylon fell to the Persians and was governed thereafter by the Great King. At first sight, Alexander’s arrival promised freedom from the foreign yoke. Sensitive to local feelings, he met the astronomer-priests and took their advice on appropriate sacrifices to the gods and in particular to Bel-Marduk, the city’s guardian deity, whom Greeks saw as a barbarian version of Heracles.
In a bid for popularity he ordered the rebuilding of the great temple of Marduk, the Esagila. The Great King Xerxes is reported to have destroyed it, but it may simply have fallen into decay with the passage of time. Either way, Babylon’s new ruler wanted it put to rights. The gesture may have been less appreciated when he made it clear that the local authority would have to pick up the bill.
We are not told if the Chaldeans briefed him on their astronomical records of the recent lunar eclipse and its political significance. It would seem likely that they did, for it was their duty to make their revelations available to the government of the day. In that case, Alexander will have learned at this early stage that his luck would continue for eight years, but no more. Iron must have entered the soul. In consolation, he must have gratefully recognized the parallel with Achilles, who preferred to die young but famous rather than long-lived and unknown. It is said that the court historian, Callisthenes, commissioned translations of the Astronomical Diaries and sent Aristotle a list of lunar eclipses in past centuries.
In the short term, there were issues to be addressed at once. What was to be done about the administration of the city and the province of Babylonia? Mazaeus had already taken control and Alexander named him as his permanent satrap (to guarantee security, Macedonians were given matching military responsibilities). They had probably been in confidential contact in the weeks following Gaugamela before coming to an understanding. But the appointment was unpopular in every quarter. For the patriotic Persian, Mazaeus was a deserter; for the Babylonian, who had thought he had been liberated, he was a symbol of Persian oppression; and for the true-blooded Macedonian he was living evidence that their king was going native.
But what else could Alexander have done? As the army marched farther and farther east it met fewer and fewer Greek-speakers. Even the king’s cloud of traveling experts knew little of the peoples through whom they passed, nor were they personally familiar with local elites. The Babylonians spoke a version of Aramaic and only a tiny minority will have understood Macedonian or Greek. Their chief secondary language must have been Persian. It is highly unlikely that any Macedonian officer was fluent in either tongue, although interpreters were on the payroll.
From a practical point of view, a senior and trustworthy Persian nobleman was an obvious solution to the problem. Mazaeus turned out to be loyal and dependable; before he died in office a few years later, he was living evidence that further resistance was pointless, for the Macedonian king intended to retain Darius’s officials in important posts provided they cooperated.
Alexander also appointed Mithrenes as satrap of Armenia. He was the Persian who had surrendered Sardis, the capital of Lydia, to him three years previously. The promotion was a mixed blessing, for Armenia had not yet been conquered and the new governor was obliged to fight for his job. We he
ar no more of him, so he was probably killed in the attempt. These two senior Persians were the first of many to be promoted to senior positions under the new regime.
While the business of government was being conducted at the palace, the army was encouraged to relax. Other-rankers were probably encamped outside the city, but spent their leisure in town having a good time. The local inhabitants feasted them lavishly.
The prudish Roman historian Curtius expressed his feelings about Babylonian degeneracy:
The moral corruption there is unparalleled….Parents and husbands permit their children and wives to have sex with strangers, provided this wickedness is paid for….The Babylonians are especially addicted to wine and the excesses that go along with drunkenness. Women attend dinner parties. At first they are decently dressed, then they remove all their top-clothing and by degrees disgrace their respectability until (I apologize to my readers for spelling it out) they finally discard their most intimate garments. This revolting conduct is characteristic not only of prostitutes, but also of married women and young girls, who regard such disgusting fornication as “being friendly.”
It may be that this garishly colored account reflects the ritual of divinely endorsed prostitution, which seems to have been an immemorial tradition in Babylon. Many centuries before, the lawgiver king Hammurabi gave protection to the women involved. Premarital sex was practiced with strangers, although it was followed by strict conjugal chastity. Apparently, the act was associated with the divinity Mylitta (whom the Greeks identified with their goddess of love, Aphrodite). We are told that it had to be done at least once in a woman’s life and was compulsory; earnings were handed over to the goddess. More probably, the custom may have been restricted to sexual priestesses.
Writing in the fifth century B.C., Herodotus evoked the scene:
There is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has tossed silver into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the precinct; but while he throws the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta.”…It does not matter what the fee is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred.
Whatever we make of these claims, Babylon was evidently a free-and-easy billet and, like all soldiers, the Macedonians enjoyed breaking a period of enforced celibacy.
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AFTER A MONTH’S HOLIDAY, the Macedonians were on the move again. Their destination was Susa.
Alexander was approaching the empire’s heartland. Until now he had crossed through subject populations who regarded him with goodwill, but now he faced opposition from inhabitants for whom he was the enemy. In effect, his army was a moving island in a hostile sea. He had always made sure to obtain advance information on roads, resources, terrain, and climate, but in future this would be much more difficult, albeit more essential than ever.
The march led through abundant country, and supply was easy enough for the time being, but after Susa Alexander tended to divide his troops into two or more groups. Each would take a different route and so would need to consume less food and water. Sometimes the main body would stay behind and Alexander would advance alone with a fast-moving special force. Only when he had subdued a hostile territory would he call forward the rest of the army.
During the march Alexander was joined by Amyntas, son of Andromenes, with substantial reinforcements from Macedonia. Amyntas had been dispatched after the siege of Gaza and now returned with 500 Macedonian cavalry and 6,000 infantry, 4,100 Thracian cavalry, and 4,000 infantry and just under 1,000 cavalry levied from friendly states in the Peloponnese. Alexander took the opportunity to review the performance of his senior officers, making promotions on merit rather than seniority. In the cavalry he abolished tribal groupings, and squadrons were led by men of his own choosing He also introduced improvements to the living conditions of the rank and file. All received generous bonuses from the money surrendered at Babylon.
Soldiers in the ancient world expected their wages to be supplemented by the rewards of victory—plunder plucked from the flames of enemy cities. But Alexander had no intention of letting his men loose on the empire’s rich and civilized urban centers. To do so would simply create unnecessary political, economic, and social difficulties for the Great King, a post he expected soon to hold.
Diodorus comments: “He brought the whole force up to an outstanding devotion to its commander and obedience to his commands, and to a high degree of effectiveness, looking toward the battles to come.” Up to a point. His men did adore him and he did look after them well, but underneath the cheeriness and pride in victory, early stirrings of opposition could be detected. Some asked themselves whether this war would ever end.
Amyntas brought with him fifty grown-up sons of Macedonian noblemen to act as an intimate bodyguard. These were the Royal Pages. They served the king at dinner, brought him his horses when he went into battle, and accompanied him on the hunt. They also took turns to be on guard outside his bedroom door. These young men were, in the politest sense, hostages for their fathers’ good behavior, but they also marked a stage in the development of Alexander from an informal leader, a first among equals, to a ruler with a formal court where access to the king’s person was ever more carefully controlled.
With Amyntas and his men came some potentially very bad news. Alexander had learned as long ago as the siege of Tyre that Greece was unsettled and Sparta was agitating for revolt. Now he was told that a general he had appointed as a governor in Thrace was involved in an insurgency. The threat this posed was very real, and Antipater had been compelled to lead a substantial force against him and to raise a fleet (which in due course won a convincing victory). Meanwhile Alexander had ordered reinforcements for his Persian campaign. Soldiers were beginning to be in short supply.
King Agis saw that these pressures on Macedonian military capacity gave him a unique opportunity. He left Asia Minor for Crete, where his brother was bringing the island under Spartan control. Here he signed up eight thousand Greek mercenaries who had taken refuge there and, probably in spring 331, sailed with them to the Peloponnese. Despite Sparta’s unpopularity among its neighbors he negotiated an anti-Macedonian alliance with a number of them and was soon leading an army of twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry. Agis inflicted a stunning defeat on a Macedonian force, which greatly enhanced his credibility among mainland Greeks.
Sparta’s chances were improving. As an Athenian orator put it later: “Alexander had withdrawn to the uttermost regions of the North Star, almost beyond the borders of the inhabited world, and Antipater was slow in collecting an army. The whole outcome was uncertain.”
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IT WAS AT THIS POINT that Amyntas left for the east. He knew nothing of subsequent events and, unsurprisingly, his report alarmed Alexander. There was little he could do to help, but around this time he wrote to the Hellenic city-states announcing that all tyrannies had been abolished and that they lived under their own laws (this was more public relations than fact, for a number of tyrannies backed by Macedonia existed on the Greek mainland). As a reminder of the official purpose of the war, he commanded the citizens of Plataea to rebuild their tiny ruined town in Boeotia, as a symbol of the great victory nearby which saw the end of the Persian invasion in 479.
At his next stop, the empire’s administrative capital, Susa, Alexander ordered a senior officer to take to Antipater the considerable sum of three thousand talents, to be used at will. At Susa he discovered a pair of statues looted from Athens by the Great King Xerxes in 480. They commemorated two youths, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who assassinated the brother of the then tyrant of Athens—an event that paved the way to the creation of a democracy. Har
modius and Aristogeiton were heroes of the people and Alexander took care to send the statues back to Athens. This was the latest of a number of conciliatory gestures. They seem to have worked. When Agis attempted to win the city to his alliance, it continued with its cautious policy of nonalignment.
The Spartan made a bad mistake when he used force to gain allies in the Peloponnese. He laid siege to Megalopolis, the leading city of Arcadia in the north of the peninsula. People began to wonder whether his true objective was less to confront Alexander than to recover Sparta’s old domination of southern Greece.
The siege came to nothing and wasted valuable time. Above all, it allowed Antipater to come to terms with the Thracians, recruit soldiers from states in the north, and march down to confront Agis. Soon Antipater commanded an army of about forty thousand men.
At a battle outside Megalopolis, Agis and his troops fought the Macedonians bravely, but he was badly wounded in the thigh and bled heavily. He was taken back to his camp, but the battle was lost. When he saw enemy soldiers approaching, Curtius writes that he “gave orders that he be put down.” Not being obeyed, he covered himself with a shield and started brandishing his spear. Nobody would risk hand-to-hand combat with him, and he was killed at long range with javelins.
With this defeat the insurrection ended and Greek city-states made what peace they could with their Macedonian overlord. Alexander received the good news on the way from Susa to Persepolis. He ought to have been grateful, but he liked to make light even of a threat that could have brought his Persian campaign to a halt. He commented on Antipater’s victory: “It would seem, my men, that while we were conquering Darius here, there has been a battle of mice over there in Arcadia.” But when he first learned of Agis’s campaign he had been rightly alarmed. What would the point have been of conquering Persia if he lost Macedonia?
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