Alexander and the Battle of Gaugamela
Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) begins at the end. Alexander (Colin Ferrell) is at death’s door, lying in his sick bed, surrounded by his ambitious generals. He makes one dramatic effort to pass on his signet ring and bestow legitimacy upon one of his successors, but dies before he can do so. The scene jumps ahead forty years from Babylon to Alexandria, Egypt. Here we witness a much older Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), one of those generals, dictating his account of Alexander to a scribe, Kadmos. Ptolemy laments that, after Alexander’s death, his generals tore the short-lived Macedonian empire apart. Now, Ptolemy laments, ‘there is no one left to remember’ the great deeds of Alexander. ‘He was a god,’ says Ptolemy of Alexander, ‘or as close as anything I’ve ever seen. He changed the world. Before him there were tribes and after him all was possible. There was suddenly a sense that the world could be ruled by one king and be better for all.’
Ptolemy continues his dictation and the scene shifts to Macedonia in the days of Alexander’s youth. He is loved fiercely by his mother, Olympias (Angelina Jolie), and admires but comes to resent deeply his father, King Philip II of Macedon (Val Kilmer). In his schooling he learns to wrestle, learns about geography, learns how to win and lose well in competitions. His father takes him down into the royal Macedonian catacombs and inculcates in him the legends of gods and heroes. In short he is trained to be a hero and a king. And so he shall be. When Philip is murdered, a death many then and now attributed to Olympias, Alexander becomes king of Macedonia.
At the close of these segments covering Alexander’s early years, the camera returns to Ptolemy, continuing his account. Philip is murdered and Alexander king. The Greeks who had been subject to Philip broke their treaties under Alexander. Alexander subdued them and destroyed the polis of Thebes for its treachery. This object lesson in the dangers of rebellion quelled Greek resistance. Once Greece had been re-secured, Ptolemy narrates,
At 21 Alexander invaded Asia with an army of 40,000 trained men. Liberating one city state after another, he conquered all of western Asia south to Egypt, where he was declared pharaoh of Egypt, worshipped as a god. It was in Egypt that the respected oracle of Siwah declared him the true son of Zeus. He finally provoked Darius himself to battle in the heart of the Persian Empire near Babylon.
The camera follows Ptolemy’s line of sight, panning across and up the large mosaic wall map from Babylon to the plains by the village Gaugamela.
The Battle of Gaugamela, Alexander’s greatest single victory, is the critical battle scene for Stone’s epic. The director invested a great deal of effort to recreate the battle as authentically as possible. To that end he worked with historian Robin Lane Fox, whose biography of Alexander, now more than three decades old, is still very much the standard treatment of the Macedonian conqueror.1 Fox, in his commentary on the DVD version, refers to Alexander as ‘a film which is an epic drama with an unusual reference to history as a springboard,’ but also a film that ‘was never conceived or presented as a historical documentary’.2 He makes an important point. One cannot listen to the director’s notes without recognizing that Oliver Stone took great pains to learn as much as possible about the historical Alexander and capture the drama of that historical Alexander on film. His consultant is a leading expert on Alexander. We should expect then that when the film diverges from the historical evidence, it does so not through any lack of care on the part of the director and consultants, but because, in the end, Stone made an epic film, not a documentary. Alexander, in short, is a perfect case study for the strengths and limitations of film capturing the face of battle and for how historical elements can be transmuted in the making of an epic film.
Macedonian Warfare
Macedonia, the kingdom of Philip and Alexander, was located in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula. It was a minor power in the days of the Persian invasion of Greece. Culturally Greek though looked on as barbaric by many of the Greeks who found the Macedonian dialect incomprehensible, the Macedonians played a minor role in the political and military struggles of the fifth century. Politically fragmented into the spheres of powerful landed nobles and exposed to constant raiding from the tribes of Illyria to the northwest and Thrace to the northeast, the Macedonian kings were relatively weak. A gradual evolution took place in Greek warfare of the fifth century and the fourth, however, and King Philip II of Macedon (359–336 BC) took advantage of cutting edge ideas in warfare to create the Macedonian army and make Macedon supreme in the Balkans.
Philip, in short, instituted the military reforms that allowed his son to exceed him so in fame. The Macedonian victories against the Persians, not least of all at Gaugamela, were triumphs for a new form of army, one very different from the hoplite phalanx that fought an earlier generation of Persians. He turned the Macedonian army into a standing army with regularly scheduled pay for the soldiers, an important change from the militia armies that characterized most of Greece. Having a professional force allowed him to conduct regular training in all manner of complex manoeuvres that were normally beyond the militia citizen-soldier.3 He also overhauled the logistical systems of the army, making it more efficient and effective as a campaign army. Previously, and as was common in Greece, each soldier was attended by a servant who helped him with his armour, cooked, and performed a variety of other services. Philip ended this practice and set the standard that every ten soldiers would be supported by one servant, reducing the number of non-essential personnel – and mouths to feed – significantly. Supply trains were streamlined further. Now soldiers were trained to carry their own emergency rations, as much as thirty days’ worth, and cover up to thirty miles in a days’ march if needed. Any food beyond the bare rations of olives and bread had to come from foraging in the local countryside. These measures made the army swifter on the march and less vulnerable to attacks on its supply lines.4
But it is the functioning of Philip’s highly trained army in battle that is most important for analyzing the film Alexander. The core of the Macedonian army under Philip consisted of three forces: Foot Companions, who provided a phalanx, Companion Cavalry, and Hypaspists. The phalangites of the Foot Companions numbered about 9,000 and normally occupied the centre of the Macedonian battle line.5 The smallest core unit was the syntagma of 256 soldiers.6 These troops were trained over years of service to shift efficiently their depth and formation as circumstances demanded, from a wide formation, eight soldiers deep, to a column 120 deep. They were also trained to make about-faces and to shift from an open marching order to closed ranks where each soldier occupied less than three feet of space and soldiers’ shields fit closely together.7
These phalangites were trained to fight equipped with the new panoply Philip had assigned them. Gone were the 7–8ft spears and the 3ft diameter heavy hoplite shields. The former stretched and the latter shrank. Instead of the spear, phalangites now carried the sarissa. A monstrous pike up to 18ft long, it had a foot-long iron head, metal butt spike with a counterbalance, and was made from two shafts of cornel wood joined by a bronze tube at the centre. Armed with this, the first four or five ranks of soldiers could extend their spears past the front line and attack, offering a formidable challenge to an enemy.8 Managing this pike was a strictly two-handed affair. Gripping a traditional hoplite shield, or any shield with a handgrip for that matter, was impossible. Instead, the phalangites carried the aspis. A round shield of bronze about 18in. in diameter, the aspis was held by an elbow strap for the left arm and a shoulder strap so that both hands remained free to manage the sarissa.9 In addition to this a phalangite might wear a helmet and greaves.10 The men in the front of formation were the most heavily armoured with a light corselet of linen or leather that could be reinforced with some metal but was far lighter than the body armour of a fifth century hoplite.
How many eyes did Philip have?
Diodorus Siculus, likely drawing from the fourth century historian Ephorus, reported that Philip lost one eye during the siege of Methone, an Athenian stronghold (16.34.5). While Oliver Stone’s Philip has clearly lost the use of an eye, Robert Rossen’s Philip from the 1956 Alexander the Great has the use of both his eyes.
The phalanx had two primary functions. The first was to engage the enemy’s infantry, thereby preventing them from manoeuvring and enabling the Companion Cavalry to strike a blow on the flank or rear. The second was to pressure the infantry once it had been disrupted or disordered by cavalry, to give a final shove and break it apart. Though the Macedonian phalanx was generally effective at these tasks, it had its own particular weaknesses. The need for the phalanx to remain tightly knit and orderly meant that it was challenged by anything other than completely flat terrain, which caused it to grow disordered. This was the case even for these professional Macedonian soldiers who had trained for years, testimony to the difficulty of manoeuvring in a phalanx. Furthermore, the sarissas were a terrifying enough experience for enemy armies, but less useful should that enemy be able to close within the spear lengths and attack with sword or short spear. Though the phalangites were highly trained, the formations still moved at a very lumbering and limited pace compared to light infantry. Finally, with shields hung from the left shoulder and elbow, the phalangites were extremely vulnerable on their unprotected right flank.11
It was to protect the right flank of the slow moving phalanx that Philip formed the Shield Bearers, or Hypaspists. These troops were equipped in a full hoplite panoply of helmet, greaves, cuirass and shield. They bore swords and possibly short stabbing spears. Crack troops, they were normally positioned on the phalanxe’s right flank. Thereby they joined phalanx to cavalry and prevented enemy outflanking on the right.12 Swifter and more flexible than the phalangites, the Hypaspists were employed in a variety of different military roles.
The metaphor of a hammer and anvil is often used to describe Philip and Alexander’s tactics. The phalanx was the anvil, the steady base that pinned enemy infantry formations in place. The Companion Cavalry was the smashing hammer.13 They were an elite group of lords provided by Philip with abundant Macedonian farmland to enable them to train and stable warhorses. When Philip took the throne they numbered perhaps 600. When Alexander succeeded him, that number had increased to 4,000.14 The Companion Cavalry were shock cavalry, meaning that they were intended for close combat with enemy cavalry and infantry. They were well armoured for fighting up close, wearing a metal or leather cuirass and pteruges to protect the lower abdomen. For head protection many wore what is known as a Boeotian style helmet. An unusual looking helmet, it consisted of a skull-cap with a brim flaring from the cap and rippling to resemble cloth. They carried a spear slender enough that it commonly snapped on impact and a sword for when it did. Like all ancient riders, the Companions had no stirrups and had to have an impressive amount of horse skill to charge and fight without losing their seats.15
The Companion Cavalry used the wedge as their core formation and this offered several advantages. First, the pointed formation allowed easier penetration of the flanks or rear of infantry formations. Equally as important, the wedge had only one leader for the riders to follow, allowing the formation to wheel and manoeuvre sharply, much more sharply than could a rectangular formation. So, while the infantry served as anvil in the centre, the Companion Cavalry on the right of the battle line engaged any enemy cavalry on that side, defeated it, then wheeled to hammer the enemy battle line in the flank or rear.16
These three forces were the core of the Macedonian army that Alexander inherited from Philip. It was balanced in its types of units – phalanx, cavalry, and a flexible infantry battalion. As needed, Philip and Alexander supplemented these units with foreign specialists. Slingers and archers, light cavalry and infantry, even Greek hoplites, they made the already balanced force even more flexible in its capabilities.17
Philip had achieved striking political and military successes during his reign, forcing the tribes around Macedonia and the Greek polises to accept Macedonian hegemony. After the defeat of the latter, Philip formed the League of Corinth, which the defeated Greek polises had no choice but to join. Ostensibly it was as a general commissioned by the League that Philip prepared for his next great undertaking. He would invade Persia and seek to redress the wrong of Xerxes’ invasion 150 years before. When Philip was assassinated in 336 BC, he had already dispatched a small expeditionary force under his loyal commander, Parmenio, across the Hellespont and into Asia Minor.18 In the aftermath of Philip’s murder, Alexander outmanoeuvred rival claimants to the throne and won the blessing of the army to succeed Philip as King Alexander. Then he had to deal with rebellious Greeks, Illyrians and Thracians who took Philip’s death as a signal to revolt. Only when he had firmly seized the reigns of the fledgling empire, by the end of 335 BC, could he undertake the expedition against Persia that Philip had planned.19
Several major sources for Alexander’s campaigns, none of them eyewitnesses, have survived. The most notable are Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and Arrian. Diodorus included Alexander in his ‘universal’ – essentially Mediterranean in his day – history. Curtius and Arrian both wrote histories specifically focused on Alexander’s campaigns while Plutarch wrote a biography of Alexander. Generally speaking, Arrian’s and Diodorus’ accounts are considered the most sound. Arrian is of particular value because he seems to have relied mostly on the best possible original sources for Alexander’s campaigns. One was the official history of Callisthenes, that Alexander sanctioned until the end of 331 BC when he had Callisthenes jailed for treason. The hype of this official account was compensated for, historians suspect, by his reliance on the accounts of two of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy and Aristobulus.20
Back to Alexander. Though the Macedonian army had perhaps 50,000 soldiers all told21 and the total forces upon which Persia could draw numbered in the hundreds of thousands, Alexander confidently marched his way into the Persian Empire from western Asia Minor. At the Granicus River in 334 BC, he won his first major victory of the campaign, defeating the forces of the Persian regional governors. Thence he worked his way through Asia Minor subduing recalcitrant cities and tribes as needed. At the close of 333 BC, the Macedonian army had carved a path through to the southeastern edge of Asia Minor. There near the town of Issus, Alexander and his Macedonians clashed with a second, larger Persian army under the command of Darius himself.22
Alexander the Great and the Battle at the Granicus River
Robert Rossen’s Alexander the Great (1956) is full of the pomp and pageantry of ancient epics shot in the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike the more recent Alexander, this film includes a scene of the battle at the Granicus River. Unfortunately, however, despite the rich costuming of the combatants, the scene does little to illustrate the factors at work in the battle. The Macedonian and Persian cavalry stare at one another from across the river. Then Alexander (Richard Burton) leads his horses across the river and the Persians engage midstream. There are shots of more cavalry entering the river and then the scene devolves into masses of duelling horsemen with no clear formations and only their costumes to separate friend from foe. The sword blows appear tentative at best and many of the actors look like they are struggling to manage their horses and thus unable to put more energy into swordplay. Eventually the Persian cavalry flee, though not for any clear reason, and the audience is meant to understand that the battle has been won.
The Macedonians prevailed. Darius fled inland to regroup. Meanwhile, the Macedonian army worked down the Phoenician coastline, capturing Tyre and Gaza after substantial sieges. With these victories Alexander had seized the Mediterranean coastline of Asia and ended any threat to his supply lines. At the end of 332 BC, Alexander, thanks as always to his stalwart soldiers, came to Egypt. Here he was named Pharaoh of Egypt. He spent a few months there then another few months on the Phoenician coast stabilizing his conquests just a bit. Then he headed inland, northeast to Mesopotamia and, he hoped, a decisive battle against Darius. The army crossed first the Euphrates River, then the Tigris. They marched southeast down the east bank of the Tigris until scouts had located the Persian army by the end of September 331 BC. On 1 October, on the wide, flat, and dusty plains by the village of Gaugamela, the two armies met. It was to be both kings’ decisive battle.23
Alexander’s Battle of Gaugamela : Film Style
Aptly for a film crafted to capture the facets of Alexander’s genius for command, the battle scene begins with a close-up of Alexander on horseback, surveying the arid, treeless plains of Gaugamela. Then the scene shifts to Alexander’s tent and the review of the battle plan with his generals. He moves blocks representing units across the dirt and instructs his officers. ‘Brave’ Parmenio and his son Philotas will command the left wing and hold the line for an hour or two. ‘Unbreakable’ Antigonus along with Perdiccas, Leonatus, Clearchus, and Polyperchon, will command the phalanxes at the centre. Alexander finishes his assignments and reveals the grand plan for the battle:
If you pin them on the walls of your sarissa’s here in the centre, their cavalry will follow me out to the right. And when bold Cassander breaks, stretching their left a hole will open, and I and my cavalry, our revered Cleitus, Ptolemy and Hephaestion will strike through that gap and deal the death blow.
He punctuates his words by knocking over the block representing Darius and his guard.24
This segment of Alexander stands out among ancient battle scenes in most films for presenting a detailed view of the actual battle plan. Still, Stone takes some conscious historical liberties in the name of constructing a drama, mostly with the commanders. Though Stone places Philotas on the left with his father Parmenio, both Arrian and Diodorus agree that Philotas commanded the Companion cavalry on the right. The names of Perdiccas and Polyperchon appear in these sources’ accounts as commanders of phalanx battalions. Leonatus, Antigonus, and Clearchus, however, are not named as phalanx commanders.25 Ptolemy was not in a command position that day, but Stone includes him to reinforce continuity for the viewer, since Ptolemy is the narrator of the film. Cassander was neither present that day, nor particularly known for his command abilities. In this scene, however, he becomes a cavalry commander. Ultimately these represent changes in the historical record for the sake of the drama. According to Stone, these changes were made to enable audiences to form connections early on with certain key characters from the film. Clearly, though, another goal was to avoid confusing viewers with unnecessary complexities, such as the historically very complicated command structure of Alexander’s army.26
Alexander, in the drama, gives a simple deployment and a simple directive for the officers that day. Phalanx on left, cavalry on right, and Hypaspists joining the two. Bait Darius into developing a gap in his line and strike at him directly through the gap. Of the battle itself audiences will only see a series of shots from the director that are meant as parts of the whole. If they are to understand that Alexander was a master tactician, the film needs to convey the critical tactical plan comprehensibly and in a short span of time. This scene achieves that. What is left out, however, is significant: how exactly the infantry on the left was to hold against an overwhelming Persian force was one of the most pressing tactical problems of that day. Estimates of Darius’ forces that day range from a quarter of a million to a million soldiers. Taking the smaller estimates for sake of argument, Darius commanded, perhaps 250,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry. Against this, Alexander could only field perhaps 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry.27 In sum, the Persians outnumbered the Macedonians more than five to one. Darius’ best tactic in such advantageous circumstances is apparent even to modern eyes: use the overwhelming superiority in numbers to flank one or both sides of the Macedonian battle line and cause confusion and destruction. Indeed Darius selected the plains near Gaugamela precisely because he believed, perhaps rightly, the limited space for his forces to manoeuvre previously at Issus caused his defeat. Here in this literally level playing field there was plenty of room for him to deploy fully all his cavalry and his war-chariots.28
Historically Alexander’s plan was to deploy so that he and his cavalry could catch King Darius himself – killing, capturing, or driving off the king would hammer a presumably irreparable dent in morale. It was a bold plan; some might say foolhardy. While he was off with his cavalry, the rest of his army faced the serious problem of encirclement. Alexander, in the historical sources, took several steps to counter this that are excluded from the cinematic account. First the main battle line was angled so that the left was farther away from the Persian line. This meant it would take longer to engage the Persians, optimal since the tactical plan was for Alexander’s right wing to draw out Darius’ left and cause a gap in the line. Next, he deployed a second line of infantry behind the main battle line. Finally he positioned soldiers at each end of the main battle line, angled back from the main line. These flank soldiers would, if need be, swing back and join with the second line to perform a defensive rectangle if need be.29
The complexity of these technical details makes it that much easier to appreciate why Stone left them out rather than overwhelm or bore an audience not necessarily versed in things having to do with Alexander, antiquity, or planning and executing military campaigns. But the core of the plan is factual: the left held, the right pushed to open a gap in the centre, and Alexander and his cavalry headed straight for King Darius. Unlike most films where the tactical plan is ignored for a battle, indeed where it is difficult to understand what the larger army is doing at all, Stone’s approach invites viewers to consider the audacity and brilliance of Alexander’s tactics.
It is worth taking a moment to compare the complexity of the tactics in this scene with those in Troy and 300. Neither the historical battles of those periods nor their representations in film suggest much was required in the way of special tactics. The armies of mostly infantry more or less massed together in a loose or orderly fashion and simply fought. A century and a half after the Persian Wars, however, Alexander commands an army consisting of different kinds of infantry, cavalry, and ranged units to engage in a complicated series of manoeuvres. Taken together, scenes from these three films illustrate well the significant changes in the size and complexity of battles in the Greek world.
The battle plan is simplified, but faithful to the critical historical points. The soldiers are, if anything, even more authentic. The core of the Macedonian army was its phalanxes of pikemen, the Foot Companions. To show the deployment on the morning of battle at Gaugamela, Alexander starts with a shot of pikes, the several hundred that made up a syntagma, bristling skyward over a small dusty slope. Slowly the soldiers bearing those pikes appear over the hill. Each carries a uniform, round shield, the aspis, much smaller than the shield of the classical Greek hoplite. Their helmets vary with the individuals in the phalanx. Some wear rounded helmets, others helmets that curve in the shape of a Phrygian cap. Most are open-faced though a few are closed Corinthian-type helmets. A few even have faceplates moulded with human features. Others have sweeping cheek pieces. As their helmets vary, so does their body armour. Corselets of stiffened linen or leather are most common, though some have metal muscled armour. They have greaves and wear white tunics. The shields are strapped to the soldiers’ forearms, leaving hands free to manage the long pikes. Anyone impressed by the length of the sarissas in the film should note that, historically, those sarissas were even longer, 18ft instead of the 10–12 of the cinematic pikes. Stone himself points this out in the director’s commentary; presumably the shorter pikes were used for practical purposes since he notes, ‘these are long spears that require a lot of muscle control in the heat.’ Stone also notes how proud he was of what his soldier re-enactors could achieve in such a short time. Indeed, it is helpful to remember that the Macedonians were professionals. These reenactors, despite their modern military careers were no more than skilled amateurs in the ways of the sarissa phalanx. Still, the soldiers are highly authentic recreations of fourth century Macedonians.
No less authentic are the phalangites’ formations. Each unit consists of 16 ranks and files of soldiers, matching the historical size of the syntagma. At the right of each unit is a horn player and a soldier carrying a red square standard, serving as a focal point about which the troops can manoeuvre. The standard bearer calls, ‘phalanx, turn right’, turns to the right, and we see the soldiers rotate quite smoothly in their positions, effectively executing a right face. Drums set the pace for all the manoeuvres. The phalangites look very well trained. And yet, Stone offers the following comment on this scene:
The logistics of training these soldiers … was very difficult. In the time we had, the weeks we had, it was not possible to match the precision with which the real Macedonian phalanx must have done it [i.e. marched and manoeuvred] but these guys tried.30
And while it is true that the training of the Macedonians seems to have allowed them to execute turns and wheels near flawlessly, these reconstructed Macedonian warriors, played by volunteer military veterans from across Europe, present highly organized, unified bodies of troops. Imagining the historical troops manoeuvring in a more orderly fashion only serves to emphasize the visual point further: the Macedonian pikemen were highly trained and skilled professionals.
Though the camera does not show Alexander’s Companion Cavalry until the army begins its advance, they are also clearly costumed with an eye toward authenticity. Riding without benefit of the stirrup, they are clad in muscled metal breastplates. Most wear the Boeotian-style helmet. Each carries a long spear. The Persian forces on the other hand, are varied in their levels of training, equipment, and battlefield functions. The infantry tend to have no body armour but carry either rectangular tower shields extending from their chins to the ground or slightly smaller oblong shields covering chin to knee. Those with tower shields carry spears, those with oblong shields, swords. If the Persian soldiers in 300 are caricatures, these look like the real deal. They wear head scarves to ward off the sun and sport immaculately curled beards in the style displayed on mosaics and sculptures throughout the empire.31 The Persian cavalry on the left are cataphracti, well armoured riders that wear helmets, breastplates of scale mail, and guards for arm and thigh. They carry lances and are clearly meant to engage in close combat with the enemy. One documented force in the battle, war elephants, was left out of the scene because Stone wished to introduce them more dramatically later in the film.32
The establishing shots of these forces provide a useful contrast to those in 300, illustrating important changes in Greek warfare. The Spartans and their allies at Thermopylae, embellishments and exaggerations aside, are shown as a small group of trained citizen soldiers equipped uniformly and fighting in a lethal, but uncomplicated, formation, the phalanx. Now, in Alexander the Macedonian army is much larger. The force that the Greeks mustered at the Battle of Plataea – referenced at the end of 300 – was the largest that the Greeks had ever fielded, in the tens of thousands.33 Before and after this conflict, Greek armies were normally only a few thousand hoplites. The Macedonian army was on the scale of the Greek force at Plataea, and the armies of Alexander’s successors were normally in the tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands.
This size became commonplace. In short, the armies of Alexander and his successors were orders of magnitude larger than the Greek armies of the early fifth century. To organize such a large force required a degree of professionalization achieved by Spartans perhaps in the fifth century, but no other Greeks at that time. The phalangites had to be well trained professionals, well organized into well led units. This required regular drills and excellent leadership. Of course not all the extra soldiers were phalangites. From the moment Alexander announced his battle plan, it is clear that this Macedonian army is an army of specialists, both infantry and cavalry.
Morale through Leadership and Organization
The establishing shots of the army and Alexander’s address to his soldiers also casts light on another, equally important facet of Alexander’s generalship: the care with which he tended to the morale of his officers and soldiers. During the strategy meeting the day before Gaugamela, the camera shows him praising and encouraging his officers: ‘Brave’ Parmenio, ‘bold’ Cassander, ‘unbreakable’ Antigonus, and so on. That night he walks around the camp, exchanging pleasantries with the men, joking, smiling, reinforcing what clearly are already strong bonds. On the morning of battle, Alexander rides slowly along the front of his troops, accompanied by some officers. As he surveys the army he singles out individual phalangites by name, noting their heroics in earlier campaigns, or achievements in the Olympics, praising their strength and courage. He even makes note of those whose fathers served King Philip and shows he knows them and their brothers.
Now he enters that standard of Hollywood and ancient history, the battle speech. ‘You’ve all honoured your country and your ancestors and now we come to this most distant place in Asia where across from us Darius has at last gathered a vast army ….’ The film cuts to a close-up of an eagle as he wings across the battlefield and surveys the setup of the Persian forces. Stone’s high level shot suggests tens of thousands of soldiers gathering together into formations. Alexander continues: ‘But look again at this horde and ask yourselves, who is this great king who pays assassins in gold coins to murder my father, our king, in a most despicable and cowardly manner? Who is this great king Darius who enslaves his own men to fight? Who is this king but a king of air?’ During this part of the speech, the camera closes in on the Persian army around Darius. Two-wheeled two-horse chariots are arrayed in front of cavalry, infantry with square shields and only clothing for body armour, and Greek-style hoplites. Some camel cavalry are revealed. The camera remains at longer range mostly and the shots of individual Persians are short. The impression is one of size – Darius has fielded a massive polyglot army with units from all the regions of the empire.
Alexander continues his speech. ‘These men do not fight for their homes. They fight because this king tells them they must. And when they fight, they will melt away like the air, because they know no loyalty to a king of slaves!’ Now the camera moves in closer to the Persian forces. Their mounted lieutenants call to them with short commands, more likely getting the men in line than offering any particular words of encouragement. The camera closes in on the Persian warriors’ faces: serious, grim, and thoughtful.
‘But we are not here today as slaves,’ Alexander reminds his soldiers. ‘We are here today … as Macedonian free men! And all their arms, their numbers, their chariots and their fine horses will mean nothing in the hands of slaves.’ On these notes of his speech the Macedonians erupt in cheers. The comparison to the Persian forces is deliberate: the film demonstrates that Alexander’s pre-battle rituals have far more positive effects on Macedonian morale than those of the Persians. He is not done.
Some of you, perhaps myself, will not live to see the sun set over these mountains today, for I will be in the very thick of battle with you. But remember this, the greatest honour a man can achieve is to live with great courage, and to die gloriously in battle for his home. I say to you what every warrior has known since the beginning of time: conquer your fear and I promise you, you will conquer death! Someday I promise you, your sons and grandsons will look into your eyes. And when they ask you why you fought so bravely at Gaugamela, you will answer, with all the strength of your great, great hearts: ‘I was here this day at Gaugamela … for the freedom … and glory … of Greece!’ Zeus be with us!
He dons a golden helmet with the metal on top moulded into locks of hair, a high central crest with red horsehair and a feather to either side. Consummate performer that he is, he yells his final words and begins riding up and down the ranks, quickly building cheers from the crowd.
Did he give this speech? Probably not to the whole army: what use would it have been to most of the 40,000? Far more likely that he did what Arrian said, addressed his commanders with stirring words, and bade them each to talk to the soldiers under their command.34 What these episodes, from the strategy meeting and the troop review to the speech, illustrate, however, is the great personal charisma Alexander used to motivate and move his men to face extraordinary dangers and toils. Above all, he led from the front, risking all the same dangers his men did, whether scaling a fortification wall or charging at the enemy. He had the wounds to prove he did not shirk his duty.35 More than this, however, Alexander genuinely seems to have cared about his men and their welfare, to treat them as brothers-in-arms, not inferiors. An oft-quoted passage from Arrian reveals this so well:
At this point in my story I must not leave unrecorded one of the finest things Alexander ever did. Where it actually took place is uncertain … The army was crossing a desert of sand; the sun was already blazing down upon them, but they were struggling on under the necessity of reaching water which was still far away. Alexander like everyone else, was tormented by thirst, but he was nonetheless marching on foot at the head of his men. It was all he could do to keep going, but he did so, and the result (as always) was that the men were better able to endure their misery when they saw that it was equally shared. As they toiled on, a party of light infantry which had gone off looking for water found some – just a wretched little trickle collected in a shallow gully. They scooped up with difficulty what they could and hurried back with their priceless treasure to Alexander; then just before they reached him they tipped the water into a helmet and gave it to him. Alexander, with a word of thanks for the gift, took the helmet and, in full view of his troops, poured the water on the ground. So extraordinary was the effect of this action that the water wasted by Alexander was as good as a drink for every man in the army.
Arrian, himself a commander, concluded that this laudable action was proof ‘of his genius for leadership’.36 Indeed Alexander seems to have had an affinity with his soldiers rarely seen among ancient or modern generals. He put this to use, calling for his men to endure all manner of hardship on the campaign.
The Course of Battle
Director Stone is determined to keep the main outlines of the battle as clear as possible for viewers, going so far as to use captions to identify the parts of the Macedonian battle line. From here to the end of the battle scene, the film constructs, through a series of shots, the plan in motion. The overall effect is impressive. Though the long shots taken from the vantage point of the eagle winging overhead provide an impossible perspective, they give audiences a better sense of the overall structure of the battle. The close-ups emphasize the experiences of the units and the individuals in them.37
Alexander ends his speech and rides to the right past his cheering soldiers. When he reaches the cavalry he calls, ‘Cassander, four columns go!’ and the cavalry begin their drive to the right. Watching from across the dusty plain, Darius wonders aloud where Alexander is going. Then he gives a simple order to Bessus: ‘Envelop him.’ Bessus stirs the Bactrian heavy cavalry to action, wheeling to the left to intercept Alexander. The dust rises from their horses’ hooves, an excellent reminder of how much of this battle would be obscured to any witness. Meanwhile Alexander, more detachments of cavalry falling in behind him, passes another squad of cavalry and calls, ‘Hephaistion, go!’
The camera cuts to the Macedonian centre, helpfully labelling it onscreen for viewers. Here in the centre the one-eyed Antigonus barks commands to the phalanx, the front rows lower their spears with a shout, and the centre shuffles forward, slowly, and in unison. Trumpets blare and the soldiers call out a cadence. Shots on the other side show Persians warriors chanting a rhythmic shout and clashing weapons on shields to bolster their courage.
And still Alexander rides, he and his cavalry in a desperate race to outpace Bessus and his squadrons. Or perhaps more accurately they raced to extend Bessus’ cavalry so far left that the necessary gap opened in the Persian centre. Darius sees this push left and notes to a subordinate, ‘He makes a mistake, Pharnakes.’ Confident in his vast numerical superiority – and rightly so at this point – Darius orders his archers deployed in the centre with him to loose their arrows at the Macedonians. They release their bowstrings, and arrows fill the sky, heading for the Macedonian centre. The phalangites raise their shields as much as they are able. Unlike the hoplon, illustrated in 300, which provided essentially full protection from arrows, the Macedonian shield offers far less protection and cannot be manipulated easily when its bearer is wielding a two-handed pike. Strictly speaking, the raised sarissas in the ranks farther back could serve as a screen for arrows, but that does not happen here.38 A number of phalangites fall. Arrows, whistling, pierce Macedonian abdomens and limbs. The wounds are gruesome, but the phalanx continues its march. Now Darius orders light cavalry lancers and chariots to charge with infantry behind. The chariots have blades extending from the wheel hubs. Each has a driver and two archers. Again and again he sends units forward: camel cavalry, horse cavalry, infantry with hand axes, and so on. As these forces begin their charges, the camera shows Macedonian phalangites shouting their cadence and moving forward steadily.
Now the camera shifts to the Macedonian left, again helpfully labelled. There are soldiers here armed as Greek hoplites. Given the information provided by the film, it is not entirely clear who these soldiers are supposed to be. The Hypaspists, historically, were on the right side of the phalanx for this and most other battles. Perhaps they are the Greek mercenary hoplites that Arrian says occupied the second rank and were instructed to defend the left flank. This would fit with what is historically authentic, but these troops were left out of the tactical discussion in Alexander’s tent. Whoever they are supposed to be, the officers tell the men to keep steady, ‘Bend if you must, but never break, and keep watching the cavalry on the left.’ Whether he means the allied cavalry or Persian, the point is clear. The task for the left is to hold and avoid encirclement at all costs.
The Macedonian officers call for their troops to hold steady as the Persian forces charge from a distance, dust clouds rising. The eagle again flies overhead from the Macedonian left to right. What is meant to be a literal bird’s-eye view of the battlefield reveals the phalanxes organized in their square formations but not in a single straight line – the left wing is angled away from the Persians and the right bending towards it. This vantage point also illustrates the relative disorder of the Persian forces compared to the Macedonian. Both are important elements of the battle. Macedonian professionalism created outstanding unit cohesion and Alexander’s risky but effective strategy of slanting the left of the line back contributed to the ultimate victory.
Again the camera shifts back to a dust-obscured Alexander, identifiable by his helmet, and riding with his cavalry to the right. Cut to Bessus momentarily urging his riders onward. The cavalry forces are still driving to the Macedonian right, each still, apparently, trying to outflank the other. Quick shots of Ptolemy and Cleitus follow as Alexander calls to all to ride faster and Bessus does the same with his cavalry.
Now the camera returns to the centre and the onslaught of the chariots. They are few in number and widely spaced, the whir of their scythed blades amplified for the audience. Antigonus yells an order to the troops in the centre: prepare to repel chariots. A close-up of the phalangites’ legs follows. They side-step to create lanes in their formation, spaces through which the chariots can pass without harm. Those closest to the chariots and too slow to side-step, find their legs removed by the scything wheels, a bloody end indeed. Mostly, however, the chariots pass harmlessly and are caught by second line troops. One particularly authentic shot shows a chariot stop cold, its horses simply unwilling to charge into the second line’s wall of pikes. This entire part of the scene comes directly from Diodorus Siculus’ account of the battle:
The scythed chariots swung into action at full gallop and created great alarm and terror among the Macedonians … As the phalanx joined shields, however, all beat upon their shields with their spears as the king had commanded and a great din arose. As the horses shied off, most of the chariots were turned about and bore hard with irresistible impact against their own ranks. Others continued on against the Macedonian lines, but as the soldiers opened wide gaps in their ranks the chariots were channelled through these. In some instances the horses were killed by javelin casts and in others they rode through and escaped, but some of them, using the full force of their momentum and applying their steel blades actively, wrought death among the Macedonians in many and various forms. Such was the keenness and the force of the scythes ingeniously contrived to do harm that they severed the arms of many, shields and all, and in no small number of cases they cut through necks and sent heads tumbling to the ground with the eyes still open and the expression of the countenance unchanged, and in other cases they sliced through ribs with mortal gashes and inflicted a quick death.39
Alexander makes it look easy. Too easy. It is not entirely clear whether this account should be believed. In particular if the Macedonian phalangites were already in close formation, packed tight, how exactly would they make way sufficiently to form wide lanes through which the chariots could pass? It is an unanswered question.40
Another high angle shot of the battle shows the Persian forces streaming in and the phalanxes losing a bit of their organization in the front ranks but still maintaining their basic formation. Now the camera tracks and pans back to the left. Slanted back as it was in the initial setup, the phalangites on the left are still unengaged, but now the Persian infantry close. The phalanx slowly advances, and light-armed infantry race forward in the small gaps between the units of phalangites. Such attacks, historically, at best increase the stress of attacking soldiers and injure or kill occasionally; they do not stop the attack. Now the charging Persian swordsmen engage the phalanx and we see the devastation of the Macedonian sarissa up close. Starting with a long shot, then a medium shot on a group of phalangites, the sequence ends with a shot of Persians impaled on the Macedonian sarissas. The pikes project some 8–10ft in front of the soldiers and the Persians must manoeuvre between them or be perforated with deadly result. Manoeuvring between them is, to say the least, extremely difficult. The later Greek historian Polybius commented on this in his comparison of the close-order Macedonian phalanx with the open Roman maniples of swordsmen:
One Roman must stand opposite two men in the first rank of the phalanx, so that he has to face and encounter ten pikes, and it is both impossible for a single man to cut through them all in time once they are at close quarters and by no means easy to force their points away, as the rear ranks can be of no help to the front rank either in thus forcing the pikes away or in the use of the sword. So it is easy to see that, as I said at the beginning, nothing can withstand the charge of the phalanx as long as it preserves its characteristic formation and force.41
Even were the Persians’ infantry as closely packed as the Macedonians, which they do not seem to have been, the reach of their weapons would make it so that one Persian faced the points of five Macedonian sarissas. As Polybius says, nothing could stand up to a phalanx operating as designed. The level plains of Gaugamela provided the perfect terrain.
Finally, the moment has come; a gap has opened in Darius’ line. Seizing the opportunity, Alexander commands a hard wheel to the left and the horses oblige, kicking up even more dust. The Hypaspists are close enough, apparently, to aid in the attack on the gap. He tells the Macedonian forces to drive for the hole, though surely none can hear him at this point. Meanwhile in the Macedonian centre, blinding dust obscures everything, and the camera must descend through it to see the struggle there. Things get a bit fanciful in order to emphasize the brutality of the battle. Antigonus and a number of phalangites have started to engage in hand-to-hand combat with swords and rocks. This counters the specialized purpose of the phalanx and obscures that important reality, a sarissa-armed phalanx could be in serious trouble if enemy infantry closed within sword range.42
The camera cuts to Parmenio and Philotas on the left, walking behind the engaged phalangites and giving orders. Parmenio sends a messenger to warn Alexander about the thin left flank. But things continue to degrade for the Macedonian left, which is steadily outflanked. Subsequently Parmenio sends Philotas himself to tell Alexander of the danger: ‘And if he won’t listen, then survive me and avenge this betrayal!’ Historically, some of the Persian forces exploited a gap that appeared in the Macedonian line. Instead of using the opportunity to sever left from right and destroy the Macedonians the forces that broke through were driven by the promise of loot to move on to the baggage in the Macedonian camp. Somehow – exactly how is unclear – part of the second line in the Macedonian army rallied and turned against the would-be camp raiders from behind. Meanwhile the forces of the Persians placed tremendous pressure on the Macedonian left, but somehow the men under Parmenio’s command held on.43
Alexander is in the thick of it, he and his companions plunged like a dagger into the now dangerously thinned centre of Darius’ army. The horses are intermixed with each other and with infantry. The men duel from horseback, swords swinging. Alexander grabs a Persian by the shoulder and impales him on his sword. The man falls with Alex’s sword lodged in his gut and Alexander dismounts to retrieve his weapon. A Persian clubs Alexander while he is intent on the sword. Before the Persian can deliver the killing stroke, however, Cleitus literally disarms him and admonishes Alexander to pay attention. Historically this episode happened years earlier at the Granicus River, Stone notes, but he wanted to illustrate the close relationship between Alexander and his officers. Alexander continues to fight on foot and we see other Macedonian infantry around him. Other Companion Cavalry dismount to fight, apparently thinking it more advantageous to be on foot now. It is an all-out brawl; close quarters slashing and stabbing and no lines. But then what should one expect from the fighting as the Macedonians and Alexander drove toward the centre, drove onward toward Darius? There was no way for the cavalry and support infantry to penetrate the thousands of soldiers in the Persian centre without losing at least some of their own cohesion as they worked their way into any gaps they could.
In the climactic shots of the battle scene, Alexander looks through the dust and sees that Darius is not too far off. He tells his two comrades to find their horses; certainly no easy task. Since the melee still continues, it is not clear exactly who accompanies Alexander in this last segment – perfectly authentic confusion for anyone watching through the dust, noise, combat, and confusion. Alexander grabs a javelin to throw at Darius and rides through what seems to be a relatively clear space with pairs of combatants here and there fighting. It is hard to imagine Darius would have such space in front of him and the space appears more likely to be the result of staging the shot for Alexander’s desperate gambit. He rides up to the infantry in front of Darius, casts the spear unopposed, but misses. Now Darius’ infantry challenge him and those of his companions who have just arrived – apparently Alexander launched this final attack essentially by himself and his troopers needed time to react to their leader’s impetuosity. But Darius himself, fear openly on his face, has had enough. He flees the battle
The centre of the Persian army has collapsed with the assault of the Macedonians and the flight of the Persian king. Alexander sees Darius flee and tells the Companions they need to catch him before he reaches the mountains. Just then Philotas arrives. He reports that the left is crumbling and the Persians are attacking the Macedonian baggage. Alexander roars in frustrated anger. ‘If you chase him you risk losing your army here,’ Philotas cries. ‘And if we capture him we gain an empire,’ Alexander cries in return. The indecision is palpable but quick. Darius is left to flee and Alexander returns to tend to his left. The battle scene is over.
Alexander shows what a historically authentic cinematic view of ancient battle can look like. The film deftly mixes a variety of viewpoints to reconstruct the battle. The top level of strategy and tactics is provided in the planning session in Alexander’s tent and the eagle-eye views of the battlefield. The close-ups of Macedonian phalanx and companion cavalry give us the face of battle: a brutal, bloody, and at Gaugamela, dusty affair. What is perhaps most striking about the whole battle scene in Alexander is that even with a preliminary strategy session and bird’s-eye views, even with text appearing to label helpfully the Macedonian Left and Centre, it is still often not clear to the viewer exactly what is happening in any given shot and how the action of a shot fits into a grander narrative of the battle. This confusion reflects a reality that is often missing from battle studies. There simply is no position, no viewpoint from which one can capture the totality of a battle. The high level shot loses the actual struggles of the soldiers in the field. Close to see the actual fighting, however, and the general relationship of one unit to another and the states of the battle lines are lost. Stone’s vision of Gaugamela paradoxically illustrates the futility of fully reconstructing such a battle by providing vignettes of the battle. Perhaps this is one place where one can declare that history has really joined drama in a way that does enough justice to both.
Taken together Troy, 300, and Alexander illustrate the continuity and change in Greek combat over five centuries. With Troy we see a heroic culture at war and, unsurprisingly, the individual hero plays a large role. Though reinforced by his comrades, the hero leads the charge, fighting his rivals in the pockets of space between forces when not engaged in a formal battle-stopping duel. The moments where Achilles’ Myrmidons cluster together to block arrows with their shields or the Trojans lock shields together and thrust back the Greek mob, however, point to the development of the phalanx illustrated in 300. That splendid fantasy film does so much right in delivering the rhetoric of hoplite combat even though its battle scenes do not always support the rhetoric. It may be that the pull of a heroic aristeia is too much for filmmakers to ignore, and the camera in an epic film demands individual moments of glory. When 300 lapses into the vignettes of individual heroes, the film loses its value as a depiction of hoplite battle. But the grand moments when the focus is on the phalanx itself are instructive to behold. In those moments one can clearly see the transition from the more fluid and amorphous formations of Homeric warriors to the disciplined and orderly rank and file, the cohesive collaboration of the Spartan phalanx.
Alexander completes the set. At the dawn of the Hellenistic world the armies are massive. Troy’s emphasis on hero-sized armies obscures this important point: Archaic Greek battles were small-scale affairs. The fighting in the Persian Wars was on a larger scale. The battles of the Macedonians and their successors were larger still. Size alone, however, was not the most important change in the face of battle. Most importantly armies came to be composed of a variety of unit types, each specialized in a particular type of combat. The phalanx of 300 became the phalanx of pikemen depicted in film. Unlike the Spartans, however, the phalanx no longer fought on its own. Light infantry and Hypaspists, archers and all manner of cavalry played their part in this time of large-scale battles between armies of specialists. The tent scene in Alexander illustrates the greater complexity well. Where the battle plan in 300 could be reduced to a simple ‘stand and fight’, Alexander’s plan has a number of roles and manoeuvres. Taken with a critical eye to separate the inaccurate elements, then, these three films in their best moments depict the broad transformations in Greek warfare.