Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  One reason for his swift depature from Egypt had been the news of a winter revolt to the north in Samaria. During the siege of Gaza, the Persian governor of Samaria had surrendered himself and his troops; shortly afterwards, he had died and a Macedonian had been put in his place, only to be burnt alive by the natives while Alexander was in Egypt. Alexander's retort was curt. He destroyed the main town of Samaria and executed all rebel leaders who were handed over; the rest were tracked down and killed in their desert hideout, where their bodies, seals and documents remained until their recent rediscovery. Alexander's one and only way with rebels was ruthless, and the finds in the Wadi Dalaych caves are a harsh reminder of what it meant to cross the path of a son of Zeus.

  Ruin of the Samaritans meant delight among the Jews, and when Alexander resettled Samaria, it is probably true that he gave part to the Jews as a tax-free present. There had been much commotion in Jerusalem because the Persian governor of Samaria had recently married the high priest's daughter; the two peoples now split apart and the ruin of Samaria may have hastened the establishment of a rival Samaritan temple on nearby Mount Gerizim. Though Alexander would have met the Jewish leaders, the story that he did obeisance before the Jewish high priest is obviously a Jewish legend. Perdiccas was probably ordered to settle Macedonian veterans at Jcrash and other nearby sites, first of the many colonists who would later turn the area into a second Macedonia.

  From Samaria Alexander made his way north to the remains of Tyre where he was met by his Levantine fleet. It was now mid-May, but Tyre was to detain Alexander until late July; there was sense, however, in this inactivity. Not until Darius had summoned a grand army from all over his eastern provinces would Alexander strike inland; he did not want another Issus, but a decisive conflict which would resolve the mastery of Asia in a total victory over all the troops of the empire. Like the 'conquering' of the Persian fleet by land, this bold strategy was well-conceived. Had Darius refused its challenge, he could have held such cities as Babylon or Hamadan in the centre of his empire and exhausted Alexander in siege after siege, burning the food supplies wherever possible. Alexander may already have heard that Darius was summoning a full imperial army; if not, he had nothing to lose by delay, rightly believing that the Great King would eventually give in to the temptations of a big pitched battle. The one mistake would be to march inland against a vanishing enemy, and Alexander was too intelligent a strategist to make it.

  As he waited, danger was mounting behind as well as before him. For the past fifteen months he had been aware of the unrest in southern Greece which had been inspired by Sparta and her tireless King Agis, but as yet he had not taken Agis any more seriously than had the Persian admirals who had bargained with him. Since landing in Asia, Alexander had drawn 11,000 fresh troops from the Balkans and recently ordered another large force, many of whom were to be recruited from southern Greece. It was perhaps the news of this fourth draft which finally encouraged Agis to open revolt; he had returned from his victories in Crete with a small flock of mercenaries; Issus' Greek survivors were with him, and with their usual poor timing, the Spartan assembly had evidently voted for war.

  From Tyre Alexander took the necessary measure. He sent a hundred Cypriot and Phoenician ships to Crete to undo Agis's work and to clear the sea of its rash of pirates, while one of his proven admirals was to sail to Greece and 'assist as many of the Greeks in the Peloponnese as could be trusted over the Persian war and were not paying heed to the Spartans'. By this one order, he went straight to the heart of the matter, realizing that many Greeks hated Sparta's past too much to lend her any help. With Issus won and the Persian fleet disbanded, the open rebellion had come a year too late, and far more Greeks would join Antipater than Agis when it came to a pitched battle.

  By diplomacy he tightened his hold on the situation. During the naval war the strategic sea bases of Chios and Rhodes had been strengthened with garrisons; now they complained, and the garrisons were ordered to be removed. The loyal Mytilene had defied the Persians' navy longer than any city on Lesbos, and so she was refunded the costs of her resistance and granted neighbouring land. Once again, Athens sent envoys to beg for the release of the Athenian prisoners and this time she added one of her state galleys to the embassy's flotilla as a special proof of her sincerity. It was now, too, that Achilles the Athenian was sent to plead with his namesake's rival. Pleased by a name, Alexander released the prisoners, but tempered his favours with discretion, retaining the crews of the twenty Athenian warships as a hostage and so forcing Athens to turn down Agis's calls for assistance. She still feared for the lives of some 4,ooo citizens in Alexander's keeping and believed, rightly, that a Spartan call to free the Greeks would be too mistrusted to succeed.

  These favours were repaid as befitted the mood of the moment. At Athens, the second of the two state galleys is known to have changed its name from the Salaminia to the Ammonias within a year of its partner's successful embassy. There is no precedent for naming a ship so obviously after a god, and although perhaps the ship had been used to take presents from Athens to Ammon, it is far more probable that its new name referred to Alexander's new favour for Ammon, heard in the camp at Tyre. In hope of future favours such small flatteries were worth while, as Mytilene also showed in a more sincere mood of gratitude; on the city coinage, Alexander was soon to be shown wearing a plumed helmet which was adorned with the ram's horn, symbol of Ammon. These coins are fine local evidence of the way that the news of his pilgrimage spread and was known to matter to him; by decree of the city, he was to be honoured with a sacrifice on his birthday, an honour otherwise reserved for Gods. Mytilene, understandably, was paying Alexander worship; once again, his 'divinity' had sprung not from his own demands or arrogance, but from a community's civic gratitude for a notable public favour.

  Satisfied that no more could be usefully done to Sparta, Alexander continued to while away in Tyre the months of May, June and July. He sacrificed again to Melkarth; he rearranged his financial officials, appointing two tax-collectors for western Asia whose duties have caused much scholarly dispute ever since, because there is no evidence to decide them. To Alexander the patience of his army was a more immediate problem, as it was nearly two years since the Foot Companions had fought in formation or the Companion Cavalry had ridden against an enemy. News came from the camp that the soldiers had divided into two factions, one under a leader they called Alexander, the other under a leader called Darius; they had begun by throwing lumps of earth at each other, then they had taken to fisticuffs, and now they were fighting it out with sticks and stones. It was just what Alexander must have feared, so he parted the two sides and ordered the two leaders to fight a duel while their army sat and watched: he would equip Alexander and Philotas, Parmenion's son, would equip Darius. The Alexander was victorious and was granted in, good humour, the ownership of twelve country villages and the right to wear Persian dress; deftly, a disaster had been turned into an entertainment, and the victor's rewards were the first intimation of the oriental honours which Alexander would take for himself when the real Darius died.

  To keep up the amusements, Alexander held processions and arranged for literary festivals and athletic games. Among the kings of Cyprus who had joined his fleet the patronage of Greek culture had long been a lively political issue. Greek music and drama had already found a home elsewhere in Cyprus and the only Cypriot king whom Alexander penalized was ruler of the one Phoenician harbour city on the island where Greek influence had most often been resisted. With a wise grasp of character, Alexander invited his Cypriot kings to finance and sponsor a festival of the arts. With that passionate extravagance which had long distinguished Cypriot history, they competed in the production of the most magnificent plays and recitals; choruses sang Greek dithyrambs; the most renowned Greek actors put on Greek tragedies, and although Alexander was disappointed that his friend Thettalus did not win first prize, he must have been glad of the entertainment for his men. Several Cypriot kings and nobles a
ccompanied him on his march to India, and one of them was to be distinguished as the ablest of his governors in an Iranian province; not for the last time, Cypriots had helped Alexander out. Meantime he would have been turning two dominant problems over in his mind.

  The first was his supplies. Balkan reinforcements and the recruitment of natives and prisoners had more or less equalled all losses and the provision of local garrisons; the proportion of cavalry to infantry had risen because foot soldiers were more exposed to wounds and disease, and so some 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry were waiting to march through desert to the Euphrates, a three-week journey for which 2,000 supply-wagons were a fair estimate, given that the army could not live wholly off the land. Native grain stacks may have lain along the road, while beyond the river there was a choice of two routes, both of them famously fertile, and the possibility of the Royal Road again, where post-houses kept enough provisions at least to satisfy the officers. In any case bulk supplies would have to be prepared in advance. The region round Tyre abounded in timber for the wheelwrights, while oxen and camels could be requisitioned from the natives, but it was proof of Alexander's anxieties that before setting out, he had 'dismissed the satrap of Syria for failing to provide his quota of supplies'. But these provisions were linked to a broader problem: when should he march inland and how could he be sure that Darius would be ready for the necessary pitched battle?

  The one glaring weakness in Alexander's army was the lack of proper advance intelligence, and the Mounted Scouts were not enough to put it right. Darius's army was based more than seven hundred miles to the cast at Babylon, a city which none of Alexander's officers had seen; unless

  Darius was to reveal when he was ready for battle, Alexander might well find himself marching inland with no hope of the pitched encounter he wanted. But Darius had reason to announce his plans. Once he had martialled his gigantic army, he would not wish to keep it waiting in the Babylonian plains, richly supplied though they were, for boredom and indiscipline would soon affect it. In the confused accounts of Darius's peace offers, a third and final one is recorded while Alexander delayed at Tyre; this is almost certainly wrong, but it is likely that Darius did send a message, not of peace, but of his readiness for battle, thus influencing its timing to his own advantage. Alexander acted at once and was compelled to leave Tyre at a moment which was not entirely suitable; his latest reinforcements from the Balkans, summoned the previous winter, had not yet reached him, although they had probably set out by road for Asia. Some 15,000 men, they were to be caught between Asia and Europe, unable to help Alexander against Darius or Antipater against the Spartan king Agis in the two pitched battles which were about to occur.

  In mid-July, Alexander sent Hephaistion ahead to bridge the broad waters of the Euphrates in two places and prepared to follow when the carpenters and engineers had done their work. For Darius, there could be no surprises, provided he planned competently. Alexander was bound to bridge the Euphrates at the usual point of Thapsacus. Afterwards he had a choice of two different roads: either he could turn right and follow the Euphrates south-east to Babylon in the footsteps of Xenophon, along a valley plentifully supplied but broken by canals which could be dammed against invaders; or he could go north from the Euphrates and then swing right to skirt the hills of Armenia, cross the more distant line of the river Tigris and then turn south to Babylon on the Royal Road. It was unthinkable that he should try and march across the blank desert that filled in the angle between these two routes; he was bound to take one of them, but until Darius knew which, he could not choose his battlefield. The northerly loop to the Tigris was longer and more hazardous as it involved crossing the river's very fast current; the way to force Alexander on to it was to devastate the only alternative. Then there could be no doubt that battle would be joined north of Babylon, conveniently near the main road from the Upper Satrapies. So Darius sent his most experienced satrap Mazaeus to wait on the Euphrates with 3,000 horsemen, many of them hired Greeks, and to bum the south-eastern valley route as Alexander advanced to the river. Seeing the devastation, Alexander was bound to turn north for the sake of his army's stomach, whereupon Mazaeus could return to the main army, having determined the site of the battlefield.

  The satrap Mazaeus set out as ordered, a man probably in his late fifties and highly distinguished for his past. For thirty years he had governed a satrapy in the west, first in Cilicia and then as Supreme Satrap of Phoenicia, Cilicia and 'Syria both beyond and inside the Euphrates'; in his new mission this local experience would serve him usefully. Possibly he had family connections at Babylon, possibly he could even speak Greek, as two-thirds of his advance party were Greek mercenaries and his coinage as satrap had long shown Greek influence; certainly, he knew the obvious bridge-point of the river Euphrates, the city of Thapsacus, probably on the river bend at Meskene and before Hephaistion could organize his two artificial bridges for Alexander's crossing, he had taken up his position on the far bank. Satrap and royal favourite thus faced each other for several days, Hephaistion not daring to finish his bridges for fear that Mazaeus would wreck them, Mazaeus waiting to witness Alexander's own approach from Tyre through the desert. When Alexander did arrive, Mazaeus turned back his horsemen and disappeared to burn the valley of the Euphrates as ordered and so to block it against Alexander's advance. He had fulfilled his mission, but there is room for a little imagination. Two thousand Greeks had waited with him on one bank of the river; on the other bank, several thousand more had fretted at the delay he was causing. As they waited, the two troops would shout to each other in their shared language. Hephaistion, perhaps, would offer promises and the two commanders may even have exchanged messages by the time that Alexander arrived. By no means the last had been heard of Mazaeus. He was to command the entire right wing in the coming battle, and no section behaved more inexplicably than the Persian right, who threw away an apparently certain victory and fled from the field which they should have encircled. Mazaeus went with them to Babylon, where a week or so later he was reinstated as governor, retaining the right to issue his silver coins. It is conceivable that the battle of Gaugamela was partly won on the banks of the Euphrates and that Mazaeus's reinstatement was less a sign of magnanimity than of a prearranged reward.

  In Mazaeus's absence, Alexander finished the two bridges by lashing rafts together with chains of iron, some of which still survived on the site four hundred years later, rusted but believed to be genuine. Once across the river, he took the only unburnt route, as Darius had intended, 'keeping the Euphrates and the Armenian mountains on his left and marching northwards because everything was more convenient for his army; the horses could find fodder, supplies could be taken from the land and the heat was not so scorching'. He must have had local guides to help him, as no Greek handbook had described his route. At the foot of the Armenian mountains he swung east and followed the well-worn road to the river Tigris, halting whenever more supplies were needed. In Armenia, meanwhile, his Greek prospector had heard of the natives' rich mines of gold.

  From the Euphrates to the Tigris, the distance was just under three hundred miles, paced as usual by the Macedonian surveyors, but Alexander lingered for five to seven weeks on a journey which could have been finished in a fortnight. On the road, he captured spies from Darius's army who told him 'that Darius was encamped on the river Tigris, meaning to stop him if he crossed. His army was far larger than that at Issus.' Only then did Alexander hasten forwards. When he arrived at the Tigris Darius was not to be found and the Macedonians were able to cross unopposed, their infantry wading through the headlong current, their cavalry lined on either side of them to break the rushing force of water which came above their waists. On the far bank, Alexander rested his army, leaving them to live off the fertile countryside; on 20 September, the moon eclipsed and Alexander sacrificed to the Sun, Moon and Earth, showing that he understood the natural cause of the portent. It was still possible to believe that these natural causes were themselves the effects o
f an omen, and the prophets and seers agreed in the prediction that during this very moon, battle would be waged and Persia's own eclipse had been foretold.

  Alexander's safe and leisurely crossing of the Tigris seems almost too fortunate to be credible. At the same river seven hundred years later, the Roman Emperor Julian was opposed on the far bank by a full force of Persian cavalry, when the country behind him had been so thoroughly burnt that his army could only retreat at the risk of starving, while the river current before him was flowing so arrow-swift that he had to destroy his many ships, knowing they could never negotiate it. Alexander had crossed at the obvious ford, the modern Abu Dhahir, where the Persians' own Royal Road ran through the river and led south-east to Gaugamela and Arbela, Darius's eventual place of battle. His movements had been predictable from start to finish, for only two routes led to the Tigris and one had already been burnt; spies, even, had warned him of opposition on the Tigris and yet, after a month in which to manoeuvre, Darius had left him with food and a free passage.

  Timing alone cannot excuse the Great King. Perhaps he had unwisely delayed at headquarters until Mazaeus had galloped back from the Euplirates, 600 miles distant, with the news that Alexander had indeed turned northwards as expected; perhaps his headquarters were still as far south as Babylon. But even then, in the latter half of August, three weeks or more remained before Alexander would have reached the Tigris, time enough for a large force of cavalry to hurry 400 miles, at most, and occupy the Royal Road's crossing, Alexander's obvious choice of the four possible fords. Horsemen, as Julian was to find, could hold the river with the help of its current, and serious devastation would starve any enemy into retreat. The plan, it seems, had been discussed, for when Darius's scouts had been captured, they warned Alexander of plans for resistance on the Tigris; like true spies, they may only have invented the plan to deceive their captor, but three days later, on the far bank, a small force of cavalry did appear and try to bum the grain stacks. Perhaps Darius had hesitated, then ordered them north to the river too late; quickly applied, the idea could have worked, especially if linked to that burning of crops and scorching of earth which King Shapur II was to use so effectively against Julian's Romans in the same area. Here, at least, there was no excuse; Darius, it seems, had been stupid as well as slow.