During the first two years of the war, Alexander twice faced the Persians in a set battle: first, on the banks of the Granicus (May 334), and then at Issus in Cilicia (November 333). Both were victories for the Macedonians, but neither was decisive, and the Persians were twice able to mount dangerous counterattacks on the West Anatolian littoral and in the interior of Asia Minor. At this stage, Alexander while at Miletus decided to dismiss his fleet (summer 334) and threw himself into the effort of conquering the coasts. His progress was held up for months, from January to the summer of 332, by the resistance of Phoenician Tyre. But that summer marked a turning point for the expedition. For the first time Alexander’s rearward lines were secure. The Macedonian fleet was reconstituted in 333 and effectively took the initiative against the Achaemenid squadrons. Throughout this period, Darius continued actively to prepare his troops in Babylonia.1
The landing took place in spring 334, with the Persians apparently making no attempt to use their maritime superiority. The satraps of Asia Minor drew up their army on the bank of the Granicus, where they were defeated and driven off the field by Alexander (May 334). This victory allowed him to march southward through Asia Minor, liberating the Greek cities, punishing any who resisted and removing tyrants allied to the Persians. Sardis, the center of Achaemenid control, surrendered readily. By contrast, Halicarnassus, which had been fortified by Orontobates and further strengthened by Memnon, mounted a fierce resistance to Alexander, forcing him to abandon, for a time, his efforts to take the city (end of summer 334). At Miletus (summer 334) Alexander sent his fleet home, having decided that his best strategy against the superior Achaemenid fleet would be to attack its bases and sources of supply. After leaving Halicarnassus in autumn 334, he embarked on a tough winter campaign (334/333), and despite the resistance of several cities, including Aspendos, he was able to seize the Lycian and Pamphylian coast. He then advanced via Pisidia and Greater Phrygia towards central Asia Minor, and while awaiting the final surrender of the garrison, installed Antigonus Monophthalmos at the satrapal capital Kelainai. Alexander spent several months at Gordion (spring 333), where he received reinforcements from Greece and Macedon. Meanwhile Memnon, who had been ordered by Darius to reconquer the coast, mounted an extremely dangerous counterattack along the Asia Minor coast, but he died in the summer of 333 (July–August) outside the walls of Mytilene on Lesbos.
In about May or June of 333, Alexander proceeded towards Cilicia, only touching western Cappadocia, which he turned into a satrapy (though in name only), and breached the Cilician Gates, which the Persians had left inadequately defended. He captured Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, and established there the first imperial mint striking coins in his own name. While King Agis of Sparta was trying to link up with the Persian admirals, Darius deployed an immense army, but the eventual confrontation at Issus was unsuccessful for the Persians (November 333). This victory gave Alexander hostages in the persons of the mother, wife, daughters, and a son of the Great King, who were captured at Damascus after the battle. It also improved his finances through the seizure of the treasuries in Damascus;2 but above all, it enabled him to march against Phoenicia, which he needed to control in order to deprive the Persians of their maritime forces. Most of the Phoenician cities—Arados, Byblos, Tripolis, and Sidon—for a variety of reasons, offered no resistance and “were allowed to retain” their traditional institutions. By contrast, Tyre put up a lengthy resistance to the Macedonian siege, during which time the Persian armies tried to mount a counterattack to Alexander’s rear in Asia Minor.
At the beginning of spring 332, Alexander won a major victory when the Phoenician and Cypriot contingents left the Persian fleet and joined his side. Tyre fell a few weeks later. At this point, the plan Alexander had formulated at Miletus—namely, to gain the upper hand on the naval front—had proved more or less successful.
In the course of the following year, the two adversaries continued their preparations for the battle that each hoped would be decisive. Alexander seized Egypt, retraced his steps to Tyre, and from there marched towards the Euphrates and Tigris. Meanwhile, Darius gathered his forces. And all the while Agis of Sparta went on with his preparations to move against Macedon.3
Alexander was now sure of the forces to his rear and so continued his conquest of the Phoenician coast; only Gaza resisted vigorously until November 332. Now, accompanied by his fleet under the command of Hephaestion, he arrived in Egypt, where its satrap Mazakes, known from his coinage (Fig. 2), was without his military forces and surrendered the satrapy to Alexander.
The Macedonian fleet simultaneously continued the reconquest of the islands and cities that had been occupied by the Persians in 333 (including Chios and Lesbos). In November 332, the Macedonian admiral Hegelochos was able to make a positive report to Alexander and hand over the pro-Persian tyrants, of whom those from Chios were deported to Elephantine Island.
Alexander knew very well how to show his respect for Egypt’s gods and temples, and his stay in Egypt from the end of 332 to the spring of 331 was marked by two important events: his journey to the Siwa Oasis, where he consulted the oracle of Amun, and the foundation of Alexandria (the first city of that name), which was destined to become a center of major importance under Alexander’s successors, the Ptolemies.
Fig. 2. Reverse of a silver coin struck in the name of Mazakes, satrap of Egypt, c. 333/332 BC. Imitation of the Athenian owl type. The satrap’s name, in Aramaic, is at the right. Cabinet des Médailles (Paris), Inv. 1973.1.190, all rights reserved.
Alexander left Egypt in the spring of 331, after reorganizing its administration. He retraced his route as far as Tyre, along the way putting down a revolt in Samaria that is mentioned by Quintus Curtius (IV.8.9–10):
[Alexander received] news of the death of Andromachus, whom he had placed in charge of Syria; the Samaritans had burnt him alive. To avenge his murder, he hastened to the spot with all possible speed, and on his arrival those who had committed this heinous crime were delivered to him.
This is all we know of the revolt, but it shows at the very least that this region continued to be restless after Issus.4 After entrusting the province to another governor, Alexander moved towards the Euphrates via Damascus and Aleppo. One source of anxiety continued during this period, namely the situation in Europe, where Agis III of Sparta was a growing threat.
Alexander’s aim now was to defeat Darius and take him captive. He succeeded in his first aim at Gaugamela on October 1, 331,5 but failed to capture Darius. Opposition in Persis (Fars) and Darius’s attempt to turn the situation round prevented Alexander from mounting an immediate attack on the Iranian Plateau. When Alexander was free to leave western Iran after the burning of Persepolis (May 330), Darius was abandoned by his chief commanders, who assassinated him and left his corpse in a Parthian village (July 330).6
While Alexander was in Egypt, Darius gathered reinforcements. He deployed an immense army east of the Tigris at the site of Gaugamela. The battle (October 1, 331) remained undecided for a considerable time, but was eventually won by the Macedonians. Darius abandoned the field and, following a meeting in Arbela, reached Ecbatana in Media, where he hoped to raise fresh troops. Meanwhile Alexander moved towards the great royal residences of the empire: Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, and Pasargadae.
The European situation continued very worrying. Agis III was again engaged in open warfare, but was defeated by Antipater at Megalopolis in October of 331, at about the time of Alexander’s victory at Gaugamela.7 In response, Alexander increased the favors extended to the Greek cities in order to persuade them to remain loyal. But anxieties about the situation in Europe were not a major factor in Alexander’s plans, and they do not explain his decision to burn the palace of Persepolis in the spring of 330.
Alexander’s advance enabled him to take control of the major Achaemenid residences. Babylon offered no resistance despite its military strength; in fact the Achaemenid commanders and the Babylonian community leaders came out of the city to welcome the conqueror. They accepted Alexander’s authority, and in a text of the period he is even accorded the archaizing title “King of the World.” In Babylon, Alexander took a decision of major significance, namely the appointment of an Iranian satrap. He was also able to appropriate the huge Achaemenid treasuries in Babylon and Susa. The march to Persepolis was more hazardous. Alexander had to fight against the Uxians, a tribe of herds-men who controlled a pass on the route between Fahliyun and the Persian Gates and then do battle against the Persian troops who were occupying the Gates. He reached Persepolis in mid-January, and for several months he was undecided as to his course of action; eventually he decided to destroy the city, which was the symbol of Achaemenid domination.
In spring 330 Alexander began his pursuit of Darius, who had decided to withdraw eastward. As Alexander was now sure of his control in Europe, he disbanded the Greek contingents of the League of Corinth, which had not really played any significant part during the conquest. This put an end, once and for all, to the fiction that the campaign was a “Hellenic war.” The decision was taken at Ecbatana in Media, as he was about to follow Darius onto the Iranian Plateau. Meanwhile, a plot was formed against Darius, and his chief commanders abandoned him. Bessos and Nabarzanes arrested the Great King, held him prisoner, and then murdered him in the summer of 330. Although his advance had been very rapid, Alexander had thus failed to take Darius alive. Henceforth he cast himself in the role of the Great King’s avenger.
The next phase was one of the most difficult, perhaps the most difficult, of the entire expedition. Before marching on India, which he had already planned to conquer, Alexander had to overcome resistance in the eastern satrapies: mainly in Areia, Drangiana, Sogdiana, and Bactria. At the same time he had to deal with Macedonian opposition emanating both from the ranks of the army and from its commanders.8
Initially, Alexander tried to reach Bactria, where Bessos had proclaimed himself king, adopting the name Artaxerxes. The army took the old route, known later as the Khorassan Road, via Parthia and Areia. But he was called back by the revolt of Satibarzanes in Areia, who was supported by Bessos. Alexander had to subjugate the satrapy anew; he then decided to approach Bactria from the south, conquering Drangiana, Arachosia, and the Parapamisadae. This offensive undermined Bessos’s plans: he abandoned Bactria before being surrendered to Alexander.9 From then until 327, the Sogdian chief Spitamenes and a number of petty local princes led the resistance.
Alexander now increasingly adopted features of Achaemenid kingship, received Persian nobles into his entourage, and began to behave more and more like an absolute ruler, behavior that provoked fierce opposition among the Macedonian nobility. The chief episodes in the story of the struggle between the king and his inner circle are the trial of Philotas and the execution of Parmenion, the murder of Kleitos and the proskynesis affair.
For their part, rank and file Macedonian soldiers were by now openly disgruntled. The savagery of the guerilla war had demoralized them, and they wanted to go home.
Map 1. Alexander’s conquest: the main routes and battles. For a close up of the area in the gray box, see map 2.
Maps 2 and 3. Alexander’s 329–27 campaigns in Bactria and Sogdiana. Map 3 (above) provides a closer view of the boxed area in map 2 (left). Copyright Claude Rapin and the French Archaeological Mission in Uzbekistan (MAFOUZ), 2009.
At the same time, Alexander embarked on a series of measures that would have important long-term consequences. He founded a number of cities and military colonies to control principal strategic points and to keep watch over the peoples in the satrapies and along the frontiers,10 but the policy aroused the opposition of Greek colonists in Bactria. Alexander also initiated a policy of collaboration with the Iranian aristocracy, a growing number of whom were appointed as satraps. Then, in 327, he married Roxane, the daughter of a Bactrian nobleman.
Once the eastern satrapies had been conquered, Alexander was able to embark at last on the conquest of India. Following a difficult march, the Macedonians reached the Indus in the spring of 326. In July the army won a victory over Poros on the banks of the Hydaspes, which seemed to open vast horizons to Alexander. He, however, set the limit to his conquests on the banks of the Hyphasis river (summer 326), and then sailed down the Indus. Afterwards he returned to Persis and Elam, moving along the coast of the Persian Gulf.11
During the summer of 327, Alexander left Bactria and headed for Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus, a location of prime strategic importance controlling the principal routes. Part of the army he entrusted to Hephaestion and Perdiccas, with orders that they gain control of the right bank of the Cophen (Kabul River) and prepare for the arrival of the rest of the army on the Indus. Alexander threw himself into the conquest of the region traversed by the tributaries of the left bank of the Cophen. In the spring of 326, after a difficult march, he reached the Indus and joined up with Perdiccas and Hephaestion, who had reached the river some time before.
Several Indian princes submitted to Alexander, including Omphis and Taxiles, to whom Alexander granted their kingdoms. Taxiles informed him of the danger presented by another Indian ruler, Poros. The battle against this formidable foe was fought on the River Hydaspes in July of 326. It was probably the toughest battle fought in Asia by the Macedonians, who were terrified by the charging elephants of Poros’s army. Alexander’s “elephant coinage,” whose date of issue is disputed, commemorated the heroic deeds of the Greeks and Macedonians on the Indian campaign (Fig. 3).
Alexander’s troops were now suffering battle fatigue. Anxious to return to Macedon and frightened by rumors of the potential dangers of an expedition beyond the Hyphasis, they mutinied and demanded that the king stop the war of conquest. Alexander was forced to move on to the next stage of his plans: namely, sailing down the Indus and returning via the Persian Gulf. This campaign resulted in the often brutal subjugation of several Indian peoples and gained Alexander control of the main routes linking India and the Persian Gulf.
Fig. 3. Reverse of the silver coin known as the “Poros decadrachm,” illustrating combat between Indians (on an elephant) and a horseman (Alexander?). Cabinet des Médailles (Paris), Inv. 1978–21. Photo: copyright O. Bopearachchi. Drawing from A. B. Bosworth (B15 [2003] 164, fig. 4).
During the two final years following Alexander’s return from India, his actions went far beyond the bounds of his original aims:12
• He persisted in plans to gain control of the Persian Gulf, mounting three expeditions as a prelude to the conquest of the Arabian coast. The construction of a fleet and a harbor in Babylon formed parts of the same project;
• He took over the administration of the hydraulic system in Babylonia and Elam;
• He subjugated those peoples who still refused to acknowledge him as king (the expedition against the Cossaeans in 323);
• He capped his policy of collaborating with Darius’s lieutenants by concluding marriages at Susa (324), and through the formation of a Macedonian-Iranian army (324/323).
• It is possible but by no means certain that he contemplated a campaign to the West.
When Alexander died in Babylon on the night between the 10th and 11th of June, 323,13 he had conquered the entire Achaemenid empire, as it had been formed by Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius I, and their successors. Despite the precarious nature of Macedonian control in certain regions, this was a huge achievement. But how did Alexander manage to overcome the various forms of opposition that he faced in the course of his military progress? What were his aims, and how long had he been planning the enterprise? What was the nature of the resistance organized by Darius, and how extensive was it? These are the questions we shall now consider.
This chapter is no more than a narrative and chronological introduction, in a very stripped down form. In my discussion of each of the major stages, I am indebted on the one hand to Arrian’s chapters, which remain fundamental to all reconstructions of events, and, on the other, to current historical commentaries on Arrian (Bosworth), Quintus-Curtius (Atkinson), Justin (Yardley-Heckel), and Plutarch (Hamilton).
1 See Arrian I.11.3–8, 12–29, II.1–24: Bosworth, Commentary I (1980); 96–257; Atkinson, Commentary on Q. Curtius I (1980): 77–324; Yardley-Heckel, Justin 11–12 (1997): 104–150; Hamilton, Plutarch. Commentary (1969): 36–64. On Alexander’s campaign in Asia Minor, see also P. Debord, L’Asie Mineure au IVe siècle, Paris-Bordeaux 1999: 427–92.
2 For the inventory of the treasure taken by Parmenion, see Athenaeus XIII.608a and Briant, History: 293–94. Contra E. F. Bloedow (“ ‘Back to Damascus.’ The Story behind Parmenion’s Mission to Seize Dareius’ Field Treasure and Baggage Train in 333 BC,” Prudentia 29 [1997]): 131–42), I do not think that we have to see here a desire on Alexander’s part to relegate Parmenion to a position of secondary importance. Parmenion had, in fact, been put in charge of leading the expedition in Syria (Q. Curtius IV.1.4).
3 See Arrian II.25–27, III.1–5; Bosworth, Commentary I (1980): 257–85; Atkinson, Commentary on Q. Curtius I (1980): 324–74; Yardley-Heckel, Justin 11–12 (1997): 150–57; Hamilton, Plutarch. Commentary (1969): 64–78.
4 There is also some inferential evidence on the Samaria revolt; see the appendix. For the administrative arrangements, see Bosworth, “Government of Syria,” CQ 24/1 (1974): 46–51.
5 The exact date is given by a Babylonian tablet, which dates the battle to the 24th day of the month Ululu of Darius’s year 5: Van der Spek, AchHist XIII (2003): 297–99; Kuhrt, Persian Empire I (2007): 447–48.
6 See Arrian III.6–22: Bosworth, Commentary I (1980): 285–348; Atkinson, Commentary on Q. Curtius I (1980): 374–479; Yardley-Heckel, Justin 11–12 (1997): 157–80; Hamilton, Plutarch. Commentary (1969): 90–116.
7 Given the gaps in the documentation, the precise chronology of Agis’s war, as it relates to Alexander’s progress across Achaemenid teritory, remains debated.
8 See Arrian III.23–30, IV.1–22; Bosworth, Commentary I (1980): 348–79, II (1995): 13–141; Atkinson, Commentary on Q. Curtius I (1994): 164–260 [ends at VII.2.38]; Yardley-Heckel, Justin 11–12 (1997): 198–235; Hamilton, Plutarch. Commentary (1969): 116–61.
9 There continues to be much uncertainty and debate about these campaigns; see A. B. Bosworth, “A Missing Year in the History of Alexander the Great,” JHS 101 (1981): 17–37, and G. Grenet and C. Rapin, “Alexander, Aï Khanum, Termez: Remarks on the Spring Campaign of 328,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 12 (1998): 78–89. On the recently published Aramaic documents from Bactria and the information to be gathered from them, see the appendix.
10 A German-Uzbek team has brought to light a fortress that the archaeologists date to 328; it would have been founded by Alexander in the course of his Sogdiana campaign; see L. M. Sverchkov, “The Kurganzol Fortress (on the History of Central Asia in the Hellenistic Era),” Ancient Civilizations from Scythia and Siberia 14 (2008): 123–91.
11 See Arrian IV.1.23–30, V–VI.1–28; Bosworth, Commentary II (1995): 141–360 (ends with the mutiny on the Hyphasis), Arrian V.29; Yardley-Heckel, Justin 11–12 (1997): 235–68; Hamilton, Plutarch. Commentary (1969): 161–87.
12 See Arrian VI.28–30, VII; Yardley-Heckel, Justin 11–12 (1997): 269–99; Hamilton, Plutarch. Commentary (1969): 187–217.
13 The date of his death is mentioned in passing on a Babylonian tablet (“The king is dead”); see e.g., R. J. Van der Spek, in Orientalia 69/4 (2000): 435.
