Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Besides the Cypriots, one final blessing arrived in Sidon: 4,000 hired Greek reinforcements who had been summoned the previous spring from southern Greece. If they had marched by land they may have brought news more welcome than their numbers, for during the winter, Alexander had been unaware of a desperate danger to Asia Minor and the Royal Road behind him. Persian troops had fled northwards from Issus into the desolate wilds of Cappadocia which he had scarcely troubled to subdue that very autumn, and in the winter months they had streamed west with the help of the native tribes and cavalry in an effort to break out to the coast and link up with the Persian admirals. Three pitched battles of much moment had been fought, and Philip's veteran officer, the one-eyed Antigonus, had covered himself in glory from his neighbouring satrapy in Phrygia. Each time the Persian fugitives had been routed, perhaps with the fresh help of these reinforcements, again, in Darius's absence, the enemy's plan was notable for its vigorous sense of the possible, but it had been frustrated even before Alexander had heard of it. Antigonus had won the day, and Iranians only survived in Anatolian hideouts where their numbers had been too reduced to be a disturbance. It had been a winter of extreme danger and ferocity and the victories which saved it deserve as much credit as most of the pitched battles in the front line.

  Returning to Tyre, Alexander found that the mole had been severely damaged by a spring gale in his absence. However, his new sea power made up for the loss and his next step was to challenge the outnumbered Tyrian warships with his own. But the Tyrians had blocked their harbour and they could safely refuse battle, restricting their losses to three rammed ships; short of a decisive new strategy, Tyre seemed certain to stand, at least until a thorough blockade, no easy business, could starve her to surrender. But behind the lines brains were being brought to bear in one of the many international meetings of Alexander's career. As well as sailors, engineers had joined Alexander from Cyprus and Phoenicia and then were now enjoying an exchange of ideas with their Greek equivalents.

  Their first suggestion was valuable enough to be imitated by several subsequent kings: two large ships were to be lashed prow to prow and a battering ram was to be suspended above their decks so that their crews could row it up to the island's walls. They would anchor directly beneath doubtless protected by roofs of hide, and thus work the rams against the stonework as if they were still on dry land.

  Though these battering-ships lessened the need for a full-length mole, Alexander was much too efficient a besieger to limit his assault to one area; the combination of varied troops and weaponry was his military stock-in-trade, and the mole, therefore, was rebuilt at an angle to the prevailing wind, the tallest siege-towers ever known were commissioned for its tip, complete with drawbridges, and all the while, stone-throwing catapults were to keep up a barrage against the wall from both ship and mole. The Tyrians were every bit as energetic; they repaired their breaches and put into practice the schemes of their own engineers.

  To cushion the arrows and boulders, they hung long leather skins stuffed with seaweed along their battlements and set up large wheels of marble which they revolved with an unspecified mechanism; their whirring spokes were enough to break the missiles' course. They dropped rocks into the sea against the battering ships, which were already foundering in rough water, and hoped to prevent the crews from anchoring within range; by a master stroke, Alexander's men replied by hauling up the rocks on rope lassoes, loading them into their stone-throwers and hurling them far out of harm's way. Undaunted, the Tyrians sent armoured ships to cut the Macedonians' anchor cables and when these were beaten off by guards, they resorted to underwater divers, a familiar force in Greek warfare, who cut through the ropes until the Macedonians changed their anchor cables to solid chain. Patience was running out and a blockade had not brought Tyre any nearer to surrender.

  When the battering-ships did manage to anchor at the foot of the walls they fared little better. The Tyrians used slurp poles to slice through the ropes by which the rams were swung and followed this up with sheets of flame from their flame-throwers. Against the siege towers on the mole they fitted tridents to long ropes and harpooned the enemy on their various levels, dragging them like speared fishes into the sea. Those who ventured on to the tower's drawbridges were trapped in large fishing nets and flung down on to the rocks. Workers at the foot of the wall were showered with sand which had been heated in upturned shields. Red hot, it poured inside their body armour and drove them to a frenzy.

  This gallant resistance to naval blockading and battering continued from April until early July and against it the stone-throwing catapults could make little headway. Now that the Phoenician fleets had surrendered there was more to be said for swearing a truce with Tyre and moving south to Egypt, but Alexander refused to leave an enemy city behind him as long as Persian admirals were at large in the Aegean and southern Greece was unsettled by Sparta. Only one of his Companions is said to have backed his opinion in council.

  A tempting alternative was not hard to find. While Tyre still stood Darius sent a second communication, offering a large ransom, his daughter's hand in marriage, friendship and alliance and all the lands up to the river Euphrates, later to be the furthest eastern boundary of the Roman Empire. It came at a very opportune moment, and when Alexander put it to his friends, he may well have thought first of the judicious forgery which was mentioned in connection with one of Darius's letters. But its reception was agreed, presumably because it was recorded by Callisthenes, writing up the court's personalities to please his patron. 'If I were Alexander,' Parmenion is said to have commented, at least in the official myth of his king, 'I would accept the truce and end the war without further risk.' 'So would I,' answered Alexander, irrefutably, 'if I were Parmenion.'

  On this defiant note, a refusal was sent to Darius who also heard, through a eunuch escaped from camp, that his wife had died in childbirth and that Alexander had given her a magnificent funeral, a tribute which he had no political need to pay. The news of her death and Alexander's refusal of the peace offer finally determined Darius to muster a truly grand army from the Punjab to the Persian Gulf, a task which would take a whole year; it was evident that the Aegean offensive would now fail, as the Levantine fleets had surrendered, although his admirals still put up a resourceful struggle with the help of that scourge of Greek sailors and sea trade, the pirate. The coast of western Asia had been thoroughly harassed by land and sea in the past nine months, despite the attempted closure of its ports. Cos had been retaken and fifty pirate long-boats had helped raid even the apparent stronghold of Miletus, restoring a Persian governor and exacting badly-needed money. Ephesus's new democracy may have been similarly disturbed, and as if by design, the wild mountain tribes of three satrapies in Asia Minor had drawn off Alexander's generals in punitive expeditions. These were their last signal successes, for Alexander's second Greek fleet had finally put to sea. It at once cleared the Hellespont, then freed its islands and pursued the Persians southwards. Their henchmen were rooted out with them, not least the Athenian soldier of fortune, Chares, who had set himself up in Mitylene less than three years after he had crowned Alexander at Troy: he throve on chaos and disorder, but not for the first time he had changed sides too late and was expelled by the Macedonian admirals.

  Back at Tyre, the next incident selected by the historians was centred on Alexander himself One July morning, after careful preparation behind screens of hide, the Tyrians sailed out in their thirteen smartest warships, meaning to surprise Alexander's Cypriot fleet which had been beached in the north harbour while its crews had left as usual for lunch. Their adventure began auspiciously. They approached in hushed silence, then raised their cox's call, plashed their oars and rammed three royal Cypriot quinqueremes to pieces before the crews could return. Alexander was lunching in the southern harbour but had not returned to his royal tent as usual; he hurried to his quinquereme on hearing of the sortie, and sped round the city with ships to the rescue, urging his crews to ram and sink the T
yrian attackers. His own role was conspicuous, its results important, for his surprise retaliation deprived Tyre of her swiftest ships. Their sortie was said to have been prompted by a festive bout of drinking, but it was more likely to have been inspired by hunger, as Alexander had long been mounting a blockade on both harbours. Without their best warships the Tyrians were now more hemmed in than ever. Even Carthage had withdrawn her offers of help.

  After two days' rest, the Macedonians were able to follow up their naval victory. In keeping with Alexander's methods, the final blow was to be delivered by varied weapons at various places. Battering-ships were to breach given points in the wall, machine-bearing ships would give cover and two more shiploads of infantry were to emerge down newly devised drawbridges and storm a way through any breaches. Meanwhile the fleet was to attack both harbours, north and south; archers and catapults were to be carried round the island in a flotilla of warships in order to create an unpleasant diversion. Such a mixture of concentrated and diversionary tactics is the mark of a great general, able to see his decisive chance and seize it. As planned, walls were rammed until they tottered, artillery rounded off the damage, warships and archers drew off the defenders, drawbridges dropped downwards and the Shield Bearers poured into the breach, led by their captain Admetus, with Alexander heading the second wave. Admetus, first to mount the wall, died a hero's death. Alexander was quickly astride the battlements to fill his place. Conspicuous both in armour and performance, he speared some, stabbed others and hurled Tyrians down into the sea. As the infantry followed his lead Tyre fast fell to Macedonian hands, no longer having the ships to keep its attackers at bay. A last-ditch stand by the shrine of the city founder was to no avail.

  Enraged by Tyrian atrocities and the seven-month length of the siege, Alexander's army killed some 8,000 of the citizens and enslaved a further 30,000 of those who had not already been shipped in safety to Carthage and Sidon; on Alexander's orders, 2,000 more were crucified along the shore. The cruelty was not wholly wanton, for as the army burst upon the city, a truce had been announced for all who might take refuge in shrines or temples. Though most of the Tyrians were now too stubborn to comply, those who did so were spared, including Azemilk, King of Tyre, and the thirty envoys from Carthage whom it would have been unwise to violate. Azemilk was to be restored to his kingship and the city was to be resettled with loyal garrison troops and native survivors; as a sign of the times, it was given a Greek constitution.

  On the following day, Alexander paid his overdue sacrifice to Heracles or Melkarth, dedicating the catapult which had first broken the city walls and consecrating the sacred ship of Tyre which he himself had been responsible for sinking. Never can the god have received such a bloodstained sacrifice: 'Tyre', said a Macedonian historian, possibly Callisthenes, 'had fallen in the month of July when Aniketos was official magistrate at Athens.' But the magistrate's name is known to have been Nikeratos; the word Aniketos means Invincible and in a forgivable burst of enthusiasm, even the name-date of the year was altered to suit Alexander's invincibility as a besieger.

  Encouraging, explaining, 'sharing the hardships in person', whether on the mole or among the cedars of Lebanon, Alexander had deserved his touch of historical glamour. As usual, the histories centre their story round the king, but there is one chance reminder that the new Achilles could no longer sack cities in the manner of his Homeric forbear, 'laying them low by the might of his own spear'. In a work on technical engineering, Diades the Greek from Thessaly, pupil to King Philip's inventor, is later described as the 'man who besieged Tyre with Alexander'. The fall of the city perhaps owed more to the drawing-board than will ever be known.

  Once Tyre had fallen, Alexander could continue south through the coastal plains to Egypt, sure of the surrender of lesser cities in Syria and Palestine. Dor, Ashdod and Straton's Tower made terms because they depended on Tyre and Sidon, but a mere hundred miles south he ran into more obstinacy. Gaza, that large and ancient Philistine city, bestrode his route two miles from the sea, and from the Lebanon's trade of frankincense and the Arab's trade in spices, it had long grown very rich. It was garrisoned by hired Arabs, and it was urged to resist by its oriental governor Batis, who went down in history as ugly, fat and a eunuch.

  Gaza's most formidable defence was its own mound, for like many cities in biblical lands it was perched on a 'tell' or heap of its earlier layers of habitation, from which it surveyed the open desert. It was well provisioned, and as soon as Alexander ordered the machinery which had been shipped from Tyre to be reassembled his engineers protested that the city was 'too high to take by force’. Undeterred, Alexander 'thought that the more impossible it seemed, the more it must be captured; the feat would be so extraordinary that it would greatly unnerve his enemies, whereas failure would be a disgrace if ever the Greeks or Darius should hear of it*. Gaza, like Tyre, was too strong to be left on Alexander's one route of communication, and this must have weighed as heavily as any attractions of the impossible.

  Alexander's solution was characteristic. The citizens of Gaza prided themselves in their steep fort; very well, if the city was too high, then the ground level must be raised to meet it. Orders were given that against the south wall of the city a mound was to be built up, 400 feet wide and 250 feet high according to Macedonian estimates, though these are surely an exaggeration, for the siege only lasted two months and it would have been impossible, even unnecessary, to pile up so much sand in the time available. The method of such a mound was extremely old; it had been used two centuries earlier by Persian generals. Now it was to serve a new purpose: catapults and siege-towers were to be hauled to its top, presumably, on wooden ramps, and the defenders were to be battered from a point which overtopped them. At the same time, sappers were to dig tunnels under the walls to cause them to subside, an effective method against cities set on a 'tell' of earth and one which was standard practice; in 83 B.C., when the Romans were besieging a town in Asia Minor, the defenders even stole out and released a bear and a swarm of wasps down the enemy siege tunnel in order to discomfort their diggers.

  Battered by artillery and rammed from the siege-towers, the city walls of Gaza soon subsided into the sappers' tunnel. As the Macedonians poured in, the natives resisted heroically and Alexander himself sustained two wounds. One came from an Arab who knelt as if in surrender, only to stab with a dagger concealed in his left hand, the other, more serious, from an enemy arrow-catapult whose bolt cut through the king's shield and breastplate and embedded itself in his shoulder causing a wound which 'was treated' with difficulty. Nonetheless Alexander saw his purpose fulfilled: at the fourth attempt, the Macedonians managed to mount the 'tell' and scale its shattered walls on movable ladders. Once inside they opened the gates for the entire army, and by late October, despite a vigorous defence, Gaza had fallen.

  If only more details were known, the capture of Gaza would surely rank among Alexander's most remarkable exploits. As at Tyre, he had forced through a constructional scheme of admirable daring with an almost outrageous sense of what was possible, for to have prevailed on an army, weary from the trials at Tyre, to heap up a huge sand mound in the heat of late summer is no small tribute to Alexander's inspiration: as for his generalship, once again he had shown that pugnacious sense of style and that readiness to attack by several means at once which single out the great besieger. No other general in ancient history can boast of two siege successes comparable with the fall of Tyre and Gaza in ten consecutive months.

  About the treatment of Gaza more is known, and even in antiquity the information aroused warm comment. The male inhabitants were killed to a man, mostly during the capture of the city, whereas all the women and children were enslaved, in keeping both with the customs of the time and with Alexander's habitual treatment of 'rebels'. The city itself was re-populated with native neighbours and used as a fortress for the rest of the war, proof of how Alexander had valued its site. Batis's fate was more discussed: Alexander's officers are not known to have ref
erred to it, but camp gossip said that thongs were passed round his feet and lashed to the back of Alexander's chariot, and the horses then dragged him round the city while Alexander compared his punishment to that of Homer's Hector at the savage bidding of his slayer Achilles. As time passed, the description of the incident grew more lurid, but that is no reason to doubt it; in Thessaly, for example, men still dragged a murderer's body behind their horses round the grave of his victim, and Alexander was accompanied by a large contingent of Thessalian cavalry. They could well have suggested a punishment which appealed to their ruler's Homeric pretensions; at Gaza, Alexander had been wounded twice, and his army always took especially fierce vengeance on cities that gave him a wound.

  The fall of Gaza had opened the way through marsh and desert to Egypt, and so after nine months of bloodshed, Alexander could enter unchallenged the most powerful kingdom in Darius's empire. During the past nine months he had introduced Syria and Palestine to the Macedonian weaponry which would sweep to and fro across them for more than a century in wars for their forests, fleet and precious metals; Gaza had been repopulated and Tyre resettled with a Greek form of government, but there can have been few thanks among the families of the thousands who had died for the beginnings of the flood of Greek culture which would overwhelm them with such rich results in the course of the next hundred years.