Philip and Alexander: 359 to June 323
359
Greece/Macedon
Cotys, Great King of Thrace, is succeeded by his son Cersobleptes; possible breakup of kingdom as local kings in the outer regions, e.g. Berisades in the west, assert themselves.
Early? (or possibly late 360) – Death of Perdiccas III of Macedon in battle against the aged king Bardelys of Illyria; his infant son Amyntas IV may succeed as king, but with Perdiccas’ younger brother Philip (born 383) as regent (Roman account by Justin), or else Philip becomes king immediately by election by the Macedonian ‘people-in-arms’, the army assembly. The third-century BC biographer Satyrus says that Philip was king for twenty-two years (i.e. until August 336) so this would make him succeed as king only after August 358 and be regent until then; Diodorus has him reigning for twenty-four years (or his twenty-fourth year of rule?), which would suggest an accession date before August 359.
Argaeus, refugee pretender to the throne, is backed as candidate for kingship by Athens, which sends him with a mercenary force of 3000 men under Mantias to Methone, on the coast near capital of Pella; Argaeus is to hand back Amphipolis from Macedon to Athens in return. Meanwhile, a certain Pausanias, another pretender, marches on Pella from Thrace in the north-east with local help, possibly supported by local king Berisades. Philip’s three half-brothers, the sons of Amyntas III and Gygaea, are ruled out by the Macedonian assembly as they make a claim so (?) two of them now flee to the Chalcidian city of Olynthus for aid as Philip kills the third, probably Archelaus.
Philip rallies the army, recalls the garrison of Amphipolis, and probably reaches an agreement with Bardelys of Illyrias as the war soon ends; now or soon he marries Bardelys’ daughter or grand-daughter Audata. Philip then bribes or makes offers to the leaders of the rebel Paeonians in north-west Macedon to ally with him, and pays the Thracian king Berisades to murder his pretender Pausanias. He tells Athens that his withdrawing the garrison of Amphipolis means he is abandoning claims on it, and possibly makes it autonomous; Athens withdraws support from Argaeus, who has to pay his own mercenaries as he invades Macedon and he marches on Aegae; there is no support for him, and he has to retreat and is ambushed and either captured or killed in battle by Philip as he tries to retreat to Methone. Philip sends to Athens to agree an alliance, and surrenders any claim on Amphipolis. The alarmed Olynthians send an embassy to Athens to forestall this treaty and arrange a joint attack on Macedon, but are ignored. Philip subsequently radically reforms and extends the Macedonian army, building up a highly disciplined and manoeuvrable infantry ‘phalanx’ armed with long spears (‘sarissas’) and versatile light infantry skirmishes and cavalry, and probably founds the Macedonian siege-train of artillery.
?Great King Artaxerxes II’s son Ochus gets Tiribazus’ son Artepartes to kill his brother Arsames.
Ochus then leads an army south towards Egypt, preparing for an invasion next year.
358
Persia
Early? – Death of Great King Artaxerxes II after a forty-six-year reign, aged eighty-six(?); he has recently executed his latest heir, his second son Ariaspes, for an alleged plot (though this is possibly invented by his third son, Ochus, and guard-commander Tiribazus in order to remove the prince). Artaxerxes supposedly dies of grief at his sons’ behaviour. He is succeeded by his third and eldest surviving son, Ochus, now commander of his army and a ruthless operator who takes the royal name of Artaxerxes III. Allegedly up to eighty royal relatives are massacred so that Ochus will have no rivals for the throne. The invasion of Egypt is postponed.
Greece/Macedon
Philip defeats the Illyrians under Bardelys, probably near Lake Lychnitis. He routs the enemy using his newly constructed infantry ‘phalanx’ to smash through the Illyrians’ left wing then turns his cavalry on the centre; around 7000 Illyrians are killed and Bardelys is forced to surrender all the districts of western Macedon, including Orestis. Philip builds new cities to protect his western flank, and abolishes the autonomous and virtually independent tribal monarchies of Orestis, Elimeotis, Lyncestis, and Pelagonia; Macedon is virtually doubled in size as the area’s nobles and infantry are enlisted in his service.
Autumn – Philip marches into Thessaly to assist his new ally, the city of Larissa, and the leaderless Thessalian League against the city of Pherae; he becomes the ally of the League and can call on its cavalry for his army. He marries Philinna of Larissa as his third(?) wife as part of the alliance; she will have a son by him. Arrhidaeus (later king as Philip III) in the mid-350s but the boy is either born or becomes mentally feeble, allegedly due to poison administered by his next wife Olympias of Epirus.
358/7
Greece/Macedon
Alliance between Philip and king Arybbas of Epirus, head of the largest tribal chieftaincy of the kingdom (the Molossians); Philip marries the King’s niece Olympias, daughter of the late King Neoptolemus, who is probably in her late teens at the time; she is probably his fourth wife and supersedes his senior wife, Phila. Traditionally, he first meets her at the sanctuary on Samothrace in the northern Aegean.
357
Amphipolis, alarmed at the expansion of Macedon, sends envoys to Athens for help and invites the Athenians to take over the city; the assembly votes to send an expedition and sends two ambassadors, Antiphon and Charidemus, to Philip to negotiate his acceptance of this. He is apparently offered the Athenian-owned coastal city of Pydna in return for handing Amphipolis to Athens when he takes it, or so Demosthenes later claims. A letter from Philip to Athens promising to hand over Amphipolis is more certain.
Summer – Before the Athenian expedition arrives Philip has stormed Amphipolis. The anti-Macedonian leaders there are exiled, by the city assembly’s vote so the democracy is kept in being, but Philip does not hand over the city; instead he quickly attacks and overruns Pydna too. Athens declares war on him.
Alexander of Pherae, leading tyrant in Thessaly, is murdered by his estranged wife, who summons her brothers to infiltrate his bedchamber (which he has protected by being at the top of a ladder guarded by a ferocious dog) and catch him unawares one night. Tisiphonus, one of the assassins, takes power in Pherae (to 353).
Sicily
Dion sails from Zacynthus to Sicily with his invasion-force, led by him, his brother Megacles, and Athenian mercenary Callippus; he evades Philistus and the Syracusan fleet, and lands in friendly Carthaginian territory at Minoa. Dionysius II is absent in Italy with a fleet of eighty ships, and as he hurries back Dion sets off to Syracuse and is joined by 200 cavalry from Agrigentum and others from Gela. The people of Camerina receive Dion as a liberator, and an army of peasants rallies to him; allegedly the messenger sent from Syracuse by the loyal general Timocrates to warn Dionysius in Italy has his wallet containing the letter carried off by a wolf while he is resting by the roadside and he flees to evade punishment so the tyrant does not find out for days.
Dion arrives at the city of Syracuse with 5000 men, having sent a fake message to the Leontinoi contingent in the garrison that he is to attack their city first so they hurry home; once they have left Dion is informed, at night, and advances speedily to the city gates where the populace welcome him while the tyrant’s men are attacked. Timocrates cannot get back to the citadel of Ortygia and flees on horseback, and the mainland city is overrun apart from the fortified hilltop Epipolae quarter, which is soon overrun. Dion and Megacles are elected generals, with a governing board of twenty of whom ten are from Dion’s exiles. Dionysius returns by sea to secure the citadel of Ortygia a week later, and Dion besieges it; Dionysius is told that he must abandon his tyranny and leave, but will have his possessions guaranteed; private communications to Dion are banned by the latter to show the people he is a democrat who does not do shady deals. During the siege, Dion’s siege-engines are attacked by a sudden sally from the citadel by the mercenaries inside during a truce at the tyrant’s order and drive the citizens back until Dion arrives to help them; Dion reportedly fights Dionysius in person.
357/6
Greece/Macedon
Winter – Alliance between Philip and Olynthus; Philip will retake Potidaea for Olynthus and expel the Athenians, then hand it back to the Chalcidian League.
Sicily
The exiled Heracleides sails back to Syracuse to take advantage of the amnesty; he gets himself made admiral by the Syracusans, but Dion is suspicious, protests that this encroaches on his agreed position as supreme commander, and forces him to resign. The intriguer Sosis wounds himself and claims that Dion sent his ‘mercenary’ attackers with swords in an attempt to murder him, but is found out by forensic examination of his wounds compared with his details of the attack and a razor is found near the scene of the alleged attack, not a sword. Sosis is executed, but Philistus and the Syracusan tyranny’s main fleet arrives to back Dionysius up.
Persia
Revolt by Artabazus, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, against the new Great King Artaxerxes III Ochus; he enlists Greek mercenaries, including the brothers Mentor (who marries his daughter Barsine, later the alleged mistress of Alexander ‘the Great’) and Memnon of Rhodes.
356
Greece/Macedon
Early spring? – The new King Cetriporis of Thrace attacks the Thasian colony of Crenides in the mining district of Mout Pangaeum in south-west Thrace, on the eastern frontier of Macedon. The locals appeal to Philip for help, and he drives the Thracians out. He then annexes the region to secure the valuable gold and silver mines for himself, and later founds the city of ‘Philippi’ there to protect them. Grabus, king of the Illyrians, and Lyppeius of Paeonia in west Macedon come to Cersobleptes’ aid, and attack Macedon; Philip deals with Cersobleptes and probably the Paeonians too and sends his general Parmenion against Grabus. Athens backs Philip’s enemies, ineffectively due to the Aegean war.
Spring – At the spring Amphictyonic Council meeting, Thebes leads the way in demanding that the Phocians pay up unpaid fines for tilling ‘sacred’ land owned by Apollo on the plain of Cirrha near Delphi and Sparta pay up fines for illegally occupying the citadel of Thebes in 382–79. The two states refuse to co-operate.
Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium revolt against Athens and its Confederacy; King Mausolus of Caria supports them, and they assemble a fleet off Chios; Athens sends Chares and Chabrias with a fleet; Chabrias lands on Chios but is killed in battle, and Chares is defeated at sea so the attack is abandoned; Lemnos and Samos join the revolt and the Athenian colony of ‘cleruchs’ is driven out of the latter.
Athens sends Iphicrates, Menestheus and Timotheus with a fleet to assist Chares; the combined force attacks Chios, but despite bad weather Chares ignores his co-commanders’ advice and insists on fighting near Embata and is heavily defeated and loses many ships. Athens has to accept the independence of Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium; the Second Athenian Confederacy is reduced in power as more allies later follow.
Late June? – Philip defeats Cetriporis’ Thracians, then attacks nearby Potidaea while Parmenion deals with Grabus. Philip takes Potidaea, expels the Athenian colonists but sends them home unharmed and hands the city over to the Chalcidian League.
Mid-July? – Birth of Philip’s son Alexander ‘the Great’, which is legendarily announced to him on the same day as he hears that Parmenion has defeated Grabus. Also, he supposedly hears at the same time that his racehorse has won a race at the Olympic Games, but this would only occur about a month later.
Persia
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus is burnt down by a publicity-seeking arsonist, traditionally on the same day as the birth of Alexander ‘the Great’. It is then rebuilt as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Early summer? The democratic Syracusans’ ships defeat and capture Philistus, who is beheaded and dragged through the streets by jeering crowds.
Agreement between Dion and Dionysius II is planned to end the civil war, with Dionysius agreeing to evacuate Ortygia and leave Syracuse. Dion insists that the citizens have to see and accept these terms, and they turn the offer down as they hope to take the tyrant alive. Dionysius sails off to Locroi with most of his ships, leaving the wearying defence of Ortygia to his son Apollocrates and his mercenaries; the citizens are furious with Heracleides for not intercepting Dionysius at sea, and he has to propose a drastic agrarian distribution of land to the poor to regain their favour.
A democratic upsurge against any danger of a new tyranny is led by the ambitious Hypereides, and sees turbulence at the annual elections of new generals; eventually a board of twenty-five is elected, including Hypereides. Dion is under political attack and the new generals and democrats try to subvert his mercenaries to enter their service and so end his power, but are refused by the indignant soldiers; Dion removes himself from the turbulent city where he is now under suspicion, and as the city crowds throw missiles at his troops as they leave the city for Leontinoi Dion has to avoid a battle breaking out.
Greece/Macedon
Summer – Philomelus is elected as ‘hard-line’ general by the Phocians, and he sends envoys to Sparta to promise to get the Amphictyonic Council to reverse its fine of Sparta; in return King Archidamus lends him money to hire 5000 mercenaries.
Aided by his new troops, Philomelus seizes the temple of Apollo at Delphi as his headquarters and fortifies it, thus committing ‘sacrilege’; the Locrians, its current custodians, send troops to evict him but these are defeated, captured, and thrown off the cliffs.
Thebes leads moves to have the Phocians punished; Sparta stands aloof.
Autumn? – Chares prosecutes his fellow-generals for allegedly accepting bribes not to fight and so foiling his chances of winning at Chios; Timotheus is convicted, fined 100 talents, which he cannot pay, and flees abroad, but the others are acquitted.
Sicily
Nypsius of Naples, a mercenary in the service of Dionysius II, arrives by surprise with a fleet at Syracuse and sails into the harbour of Ortygia to aid Apollocrates in the citadel. The citizens cannot drive him out, but their ships defeat the tyrant’s ships in the harbour and they celebrate with a drunken feast; during this Nypsius attacks the siege-lines, routs the guards, and tries to overrun the city too; a panicking delegation recalls Dion as the city is set afire and sacked, and he returns from Leontinoi; as he approaches that night, the night after the feast and breakout, the Dionysian mercenaries are back in the citadel with their loot so the democrats try to refuse Dion entry, but they are taken by surprise as the mercenaries break out into the city again and Dion is able to enter the city to drive the mercenaries back into Ortygia. He is welcomed back to the city as he is able to protect it, and an uneasy truce follows.
Greece/Macedon
Winter – Philomelus sends envoys around Greece promising not to touch the cities’ treasuries at Delphi and urging support for Phocis against aggression led by Thebes.
Sicily
Dion forces Dionysius’ son Apollocrates to agree to evacuate Ortygia and sail off with the mercenaries his father hired, leaving Syracuse free but ruined by war and faction; Dion rules as effective chief magistrate.
Greece/Macedon
Autumn – The Amphictyonic Council declares a ‘Sacred War’ on Phocis to recover Delphi, at the motion of Thebes; Philomelus the Phocian general seizes some of the treasures of the Greek cities’ treasuries at Delphi to pay his troops, and attacks the enemy, especially Locris, where he defeats an army sent by Thessaly. He drives the Thessalians back with another victory at Argolas in eastern Locris, and the Thessalian city of Pherae appeals to Athens for help but most of the region backs the Thessalian League’s decision to ask Philip for help instead.
?Philip besieges Methone, the last Athenian city on his central coast; the strong walls require him to use siege-engines, and the defenders do so, too; a bolt from a catapult in the city hits Philip in the face and he loses the sight of one eye (probably the right, as seen from the body and the models found in what is probably his tomb at Verghina in 1977); his doctor Critoboulus attends to him successfully.
354
Spring? – Fall of Methone to Philip, before another relief-force sent by Athens can arrive; this secures all the Aegean coast of Macedon for Philip.
Pammenes of Thebes leads an Amphictyonic Coucnil-sanctioned army to defeat the Phocians at Neon, in the upper Cephissus valley; the Phocians are driven back up Mount Parnassus and Philomelus avoids capture by throwing himself off the mountainside, which is seen as appropriate for his sacrilege. Onomarchus is elected to succeed him as Phocian commander, and the Phocians restore their morale as the invaders fail to march on Delphi.
Demosthenes’ first speech to the Athenian assembly, ‘On the Symmories’, on foreign policy and finance. At around this time a new treasury, the ‘Theoric Fund’, is created by the proposal of the leading politician Eubulus, to finance the city and its port of Piraeus and help trade as well as its official purpose of aiding the poor, with a ban on using the money for any other purposes.
Sicily
Dion kills his rival Hypereides who is suspected of planning another coup, and is increasingly isolated and feared; (June) he is assassinated in his house by a group of his Zacynthian mercenaries led by his ambitious mercenary officer and close friend Callippus the Athenian, aged around fifty-three. His pregnant widow Arete, who has been a hostage in Ortygia until Apollocrates left, is imprisoned, released later, and flees to Dion’s ally Hicetas of Leontinoi.
Callippus rules Syracuse, but is soon deposed as he is attacking Catania and has to be content with ruling that smaller city; he is later deposed and ends up some time later as a mercenary commander at Rhegium, where he is murdered by some of his unpaid troops.
Persia
Death of King Mausolus of Caria; succeeded by his brother Idreius and widow Artemisia. The eponymous ‘Mausoleum’ tomb-shrine is built at Halicarnassus in his honour.
353
Revolt of satrap Artabazus of Hellespontine Phrygia against Artaxerxes III Ochus, aided by Orontes of Mysia; they defeat a Persian army sent against them.
Sicily
Hyparinus, Dionysius II’s half-brother, takes over the leaderless Syracuse as tyrant after Callippus’ expulsion.
Greece/Macedon
Philip campaigns in Thrace, to protect the eastern approaches to his new mines at Mount Pangaeum.
Onomarchus plunders to pay his extra mercenaries, bribes the Thessalians to back off, invades Locris and takes and sacks Thronium, and overruns Doris. He attacks Thebes and takes its ally Orchomenus, while the Theban general Pammenes is absent helping Artabazus’ revolt in Persia; Thebes drives him back from Chaeronea, while pro-Athens ruler Lycophron of Pherae in Thessaly attacks pro-Philip city of Larissa.
Philip aids Larissa, and Lycophron appeals to Onomarchus for help and so puts himself at risk of the wrath of the Amphictyonic Council; Onomarchus sends his brother Phayllus to aid Pherae, but Philip intercepts and defeats the latter; Onomarchus takes c.20,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry into Thessaly to confront Philip, and wins two battles against him – one by apparently luring him within reach of concealed catapults behind a hill and bombarding his men who flee. Philip pulls out of Thessaly with his men’s morale poor.
Summer? – While Philip is in Thessaly, Athens sends Chares to shore up its position in the Chersonese against King Cersobleptes of Thrace; he sacks Sestos, kills its male citizens and sells the women and children as slaves. Athens sets up a colony of ‘cleruchs’ there to protect its trade-route; Cersobleptes deserts Philip and recognizes Athens’ rights in the Chersonese, except to Cardia.
352
Philip returns to Thessaly with 20,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry, wearing laurel wreaths as they are now fighting in the cause of Apollo against the despoilers of Delphi; Lycophron of Pherae appeals to Onomarchus for help, and the latter enlists Athens (supposedly by bribes so that Athens will not have to pay for an expedition) as an ally; Athens sends a force to the port of Pagasae on the eponymous Gulf to keep Philip out and land Chares and troops there.
Philip takes Pagasae before Chares can arrive; he fights Onomarchus and the Phocian army at the battle of the ‘Crocus Field’ and the Macedonian cavalry routs the Phocian cavalry, leaving the latter’s infantry exposed to a charge by the Macedonian phalanx. Onomarchus and over 600 men are killed, and the survivors flee to the coast nearby and try to swim out to Chares’ ships offshore. Some 3000 prisoners are captured and then executed by drowning for sacrilege to Apollo.
Thessaly is left at Philip’s mercy, while Phayllus is elected Phocian commander and hires new troops with the ‘sacred’ loot seized from Delphi. Lycophron and Peitholaus of Pherae surrender and are allowed to leave for exile with their supporters; they join the Phocians.
Philip takes over Thessaly and evicts his enemies among its rulers; he is elected as ‘archon’ of the Thessalian League, and at around this time marries a Thessalian woman called Philinna by whom he has a daughter, Thessalonice (who will duly marry King Cassander of Macedon). He takes Pagasae and its port-revenues for himself.
August – Philip heads on for Thermopylae, but Phayllus manages to rally enough new mercenary troops with his offers of high pay to block the pass; Athens agrees with Eubulus’ suggestion to send 5000 infantry and 400 cavalry by sea to join them and protect themselves from a possible Macedonian attack. Philip returns home.
Autumn – The city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus and its western neighbour Perinthus aid Amadocus, king of central Thrace, to attack his expanding rival Cersobleptes; they besiege him in Heraion Teichos, near Perinthus, and Athens votes to send Chares and forty triremes to aid Cersobleptes but later changes its mind. Philip returns to Thrace to campaign against Cersobleptes.
Persia
Defeated rebel satrap Artabazus flees to Macedon as a refugee with his family, and lives there for some years until his pardon. He thus meets his future employer and overlord Alexander, and probably influences him in his positive attitude towards Persian culture. Also exiled to Macedon are Artabazus’ daughter Barsine and son-in-law/mercenary commander Mentor of Rhodes, and Mentor’s brother Memnon – who will later fight against Alexander and probably learns the new Macedonian military tactics that Philip is now using.
Assassination of tyrant Clearchus of Heraclea in coastal Paphlagonia; he is succeeded by his son Timotheus under the regency of Satyrus.
351
Greece/Macedon
Late summer? – Athens sends out a small force of ten ships, commanded by local expert Charidemus, to aid Cersobleptes on a false rumour that Philip is ill or dead.
October/November? Philip takes Heraion Teichos and hands it over to his ally Perinthus; he also probably deposes Amadocus as king of eastern Thrace in this campaign and installs his son Teres as a Macedonian ally, and kidnaps Cersobleptes’ son and uses him as a hostage to force a suitable settlement.
Some time in 351, possibly en route home from his Thracian expedition, Philip also either threatens militarily or wins over Olynthus to expel its anti-Macedonian leaders, replacing them with Lasthenes and Euthycrates.
Artaxerxes III invades rebel Egypt to attempt to overthrow Pharoah Nectanebo, who is aided by Greek mercenary forces commanded by Diophantus and Lamius.
Death of queen and co-ruler Artemisia of Caria; Idreius is sole ruler. ?Hermeias, a former slave and now a wealthy courtier, succeeds his ex-master Eubulus (who has recently made him co-ruler) as the tyrant of Atarneus in the Troad.
Sicily
Assassination of Hyparinus of Syracuse; succeeded by his brother Nisaeus.
350
Greece/Macedon
Philip attacks and defeats king Arybbas of Epirus, and takes his nephew Alexander, teenage brother of his own wife Olympias, back to Macedon as a hostage for his good behaviour. At around this time he annexes the northern Macedonian district of Paeonia, pushing back the local tribes, and the passes west into Epirus.
?Demosthenes delivers his ‘First Philippic’, urging Athens to persevere and make financial sacrifices to build up its resources and struggle to retake Amphipolis from the major threat of Philip rather than give up. From now on he builds his career on relentless mistrust of Macedon and increasingly personal hatred of Philip as a tyrannical threat to Greek freedom.
Persia/Egypt
Defeat of Artaxerxes III’s attempt to overrun Egypt.
349
Greece/Macedon
Tension between Philip and Olynthus after the latter gives refuge to his two surviving paternal half-brothers, Arrhidaeus and ?Menelaus; (summer) he demands their handover and (late summer?) on Olynthus’ refusal attacks the city, invading the Chalcidice.
September/October – Olynthus sends an embassy to Athens asking for help; the assembly is not that supportive but Demosthenes urges sending aid in his three ‘Olynthiac’ speeches, the first two during this mission. He wants to build up the Chalcidian League as a block to Philip’s advance and alleges that defeating him will not be difficult and then the fragile Macedonian state will implode and remove this unpopular usurper; the assembly agrees to send 2000 mercenary infantry ‘peltasts’ and thirty ships, commanded by Chares.
Peitholaus returns to Pherae, probably while Philip is preoccupied attacking Olynthus, and Pherae seizes Pagasae and refuses to continue sending its revenues to Philip; the Thessalian League asks Philip for help against Pherae and its ally, Phocis, and Philip marches into Thessaly and postpones the attack on Olynthus. Philip defeats Pherae.
348
Spring – Philip’s second attack on Olynthus; Athens sends Charidemus from the Chersonese to command a new force at Olynthus of eighteen triremes, 4000 mercenary infantry and 150 cavalry; he is sent money and supplies by Orontes, rebel satrap of Mysia who is made an Athenian citizen. He joins 1000 Chalcidian light infantry (‘peltasts’) and 200 heavy infantry to attack Philip’s recent acquisitions in the Pallene peninsula but cannot rescue Olynthus.
Spring – Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria, appeals to Athens for help against his aggressive neighbour Callias, tyrant of Chalcis; at Eubulus’ suggestion Athens sends a force led by Phocion; Demosthenes serves on the campaign. Eretria fails to send as much help as promised as Phocion heads for Chalcis, and he is besieged at Tamynae by Callias; he and his army drive off the besiegers and take many prisoners, releasing the Greeks as a goodwill gesture, and he goes to Eretria to arrest and depose Plutarchus. He is then sent by Athens off to Lesbos, and Molossus takes over at Eretria; he is evicted by the returning Plutarchus.
Fall of Apollonia and Torone to Philip, followed by (May/June?) Mecyberna, the port of Olynthus; he tells the Olynthians that either they leave their city or he leaves Macedon, but they refuse to surrender and appeal to Athens again.
Demosthenes deliver his third ‘Olynthiac’ speech, in favour of intervention and (vainly) using the Theoric Funds for the war; seventeen triremes, 2000 infantry and 300 cavalry are sent out under the returned Chares. The fleet is unable to sail because of adverse winds – the Meltemnian winds, which blow from the north-east across the Aegean (usually starting in June).
July – Athens has to accept the independence of all Euboea except Carystus to extricate itself from the campaign there.
August? The Olynthian cavalry defects to Philip in a clash outside the city. Euthycares and Lasthenes, the elected ‘hipparchs’ of Olynthus, betray Olynthus, according to Demosthenes due to bribes; Olynthus is stormed and sacked, and the city is razed and the survivors enslaved in hard labour in the Macedonian mines and fields. The Athenians in the city are sent to Pella as hostages. Philip executes his refugee half-brothers, and annexes all of Chalcidice to use its resources; Demosthenes later claims he razes thirty-two cities but this is unlikely. A few days later the Athenian fleet arrives too late, after a forty-day delay due to the wind.
August/September – Illegal capture of Athenian citizen Phrynon of Rhamnus by Macedonian pirates during the Olympic truce; he ransoms himself and goes home to ask the city assembly to complain to Philip. An Athenian embassy led by Ctesiphon goes to Philip to complain, probably around the time of the fall of Olynthus.
Philip sends Ctesiphon back to Athens with a placatory message saying he wants peace with a formal treaty and the war was a mistake. Philocrates son of Hagnon has a vote passed (unanimously) in the assembly for a mission to Philip, but this is subsequently declared illegal – possibly as violating the terms of Athens’ alliance with Olynthus over no unilateral peace-deals with Philip. Philocrates is prosecuted for putting forward an unconstitutional law, but is successfully defended – ironically, by Demosthenes. This all probably precedes the definite news of the fall of Olynthus.
Eubulus secures vote in Athens for a mission to the Peloponnese to gather support for a general alliance against and war on Philip; Demosthenes does not volunteer for it and instead it is the normally moderate Aeschines who leads it.
?Phalaecus the Phocian commander takes Coronea and Orchomenus from Thebes, showing up their inability to bring the ‘Sacred War’ to an early conclusion.
Autumn – Philip celebrates the annual festival of Zeus Olympios at Dium on the slopes of Mount Olympus, having left the final stages of the Chalcidice campaign to deal with the anti-Macedonian stance taken by tyrant Peitholaus of Pherae, Thessaly, who is expelled.
Spring/early summer – Peitholaus is sacked as Phocian commander for plundering temple treasuries; he and other past generals are prosecuted for corruption and embezzlement, and Deinocrates, Callias and Sophanes replace them; they attack Boeotia again, and Thebes appeals to Philip for help; he sends Parmenion with troops, alarming Athens.
Summer – Demosthenes, as a member of the ‘Boule’ for 347–6, proposes an expedition to Thrace and the Hellespont to stop Philip expanding eastwards and threatening their Black Sea trade-route. Chares is sent to the Chersonese and links up with the Thracian king Cersobleptes; garrisons are set up in the Propontis. Phocis is defeated by Thebes and Parmenion while fortifying the shrine-town of Abae; Phocis appeals to Athens and Sparta for aid and offers to surrender the towns controlling access to Thermopylae from the south, and this is agreed; Spartan king Archidamus brings 1000 men, and Athens sends fifty ships commanded by Proxenus. The fleet is also to help the anti-Macedonian town of Halus in southern Thessaly against pro-Macedonian Pagasae.
Death of the philosopher Plato, aged eighty or eighty-one, at Athens; his nephew Speusippus is appointed by him to succeed him as head of the ‘Academy’ school, and the disappointed Aristotle soon leaves for the city of Assos in the Troad. He soon ends up at nearby Atarnaeus, birthplace of his late guardian as a child, as he has been invited to advise the Grecophile tyrant, Hermeias. The latter is now or soon in diplomatic contact with Macedon, where Philip is considering a Macedonian expedition at the head of a Greek coalition against Persia (as promoted in Greece by the Athenian Isocrates) and Hermeias is a potential ally.
Sicily
Dionysius II regains control of Syracuse, but is soon challenged by his local rival Hicetas, tyrant of Leontinoi.
Persia
?Satraps Belasys of Syria and Mazaeus of Cilicia are commissioned by the Great King to suppress a Phoenician revolt, which is led by King Tennes of Sidon and backed by Egypt.
346
Greece/Macedon
Early? Athens sends envoys round southern and central Greece to invite states to send envoys to Athens for a council of war on whether to ask Philip for peace or attack him. Meanwhile, Parmenion attacks Halus, and Philip sends Iatrolces, one of the Athenian hostages taken at Olynthus in 348, to bring a peace offer to Athens. A second mission is undertaken by Aristodemus, an Athenian envoy sent to Philip at about this time by the assembly to ask what he proposes to do about the said prisoners and whom Philip sends back with a message asking for peace and an alliance. Aristodemus informs the Boule (and is later awarded a crown in congratulations for his peace efforts on the motion of Demosthenes), but the effect is spoilt by the simultaneous news that Phalaecus has been reinstated in command in Phocis and has sent the Athenian and Theban troops home. Possibly Phalaecus’ restoration to favour is a Phocian response to an overture from Philip offering to mediate and have the harshness of the expected peace-terms for them mitigated.
Left without an ally in Phocis, the Athenian assembly votes in favour of Philocrates’ proposal to send a ten-man delegation to Philip to ask his peace-terms. Demosthenes and Aeschines are on the mission.
March – The embassy arrives in Pella, via Larissa; Demosthenes ‘dries up’ with fear and is unable to deliver his planned speech to Philip, as stated later by (his foe so could have exaggerated?) Aeschines. Philip proposes keeping the territorial ‘status quo’ and a defensive alliance, binding on the allies of both sides, with no aid to any pirates; Athens attempts to have Amphipolis restored, to no avail, but their claims to the Chersonese and access to the Black Sea are accepted. Oropus will be restored and Athenian influence in Euboaea recognized; Philip will intervene to help bring Phocis to negotiate if he has Athens’ backing – in fact, he is probably already involved in this. The embassy leaves for Athens around ‘20th day of month Anthesterion’, that is, 18 March.
Early April – About a fortnight after leaving Pella, the embassy reports to the Boule in Athens. A Macedonian embassy arrives. Demosthenes proposes that the terms be discussed at the assembly one day and then voted on, with the Macedonians present, the next day; this is agreed. The debate and vote are put off for after the ‘Great Dionysia’ festival, which takes place on ‘9th to 13th day of the month Elaphebolion’, that is, 9–13 April.
‘18 Elaphebolion’ (15/16? April) – First day of assembly meeting, with debate on peace-terms; Philocrates proposes accepting the terms offered, abandoning their allies Halus and King Cersobleptes as Philip requires; the council (‘synedrion’) of the Athenian Confederacy calls for a ‘common/general peace’ with Philip, i.e. one to which other states can then be admitted, and as this can offer a way to help Phocis and Halus escape Macedonian punishment both Demosthenes and Aeschines support it. But the ex-embassy to Philip, Demosthenes included, are all aware that Philip does not want a ‘common peace’ as he will be unable to punish his foes.
‘19 Elaphebolion’ – Macedonian envoy Antipater is asked if Philip will agree to a ‘common peace’; he says not. Aeschines now backs peace with Macedon due to the gravity of situation, but Antiphon calls for no abandonment of the just cause of recovering Amphipolis from Philip, which will be abandoned if they accept the ‘status quo’ terms. (Demosthenes, rotating chairman of the assembly that day, cannot speak due to this role.) The assembly votes to accept Philocrates’ motion and send envoys to Philip to negotiate – but with the terminology of including their allies in the treaty, so hopefully they can get Phocis and Halus on that list.
Mid-April – Philip leaves Macedon to attack and defeat Cersobleptes, who is forced to accept terms and abandon Thrace West of the River Nestus to Philip (by mid-June).
Late April – The second Athenian delegation goes to Macedon, after a delay over who is to comprise it; the original ten envoys are to go. It arrives in mid-May to find Philip absent in Thrace, and Philip returns about ‘23rd day of month Thargelion’ (17 June?). Other Greek delegations are in Pella too; on Philip’s return he receives the embassies, and a joint Theban/Thessalian embassy asks him to invade and punish Phocis (and thus bolster Thebes’ power in the region by removing a rival and disconcerting Athens). Aeschines then asks Philip to carry out the Amphictyonic Coucnil’s decisions and intervene, but to punish the actual temple-despoilers among the Phocians, i.e. the individuals not the whole state which will foil Thebes, and the Athenian embassy is warmly received by the king.
Demosthenes presses Philip on the release of the Athenian prisoners from Olynthus, i.e. doing so now that Athens has agreed to a peaceful resolution not waiting for the actual treaty and thus stopping their use as a blackmail-counter. Philip promises to hand them over by the feast of the ‘Panathenaia’, about two months ahead, as a compromise; he swears an oath to the forthcoming peace, and sets out quickly for Halus to secure it without the Athenians finding out; his allies also swear, a few days later at Pherae in Thessaly on his march south.
The ‘Peace of Philocrates’ comes into effect, with Halus, Phocis, and Cersobleptes all left to Philip’s mercy – and due to Philip’s swift move Athens is unable to send any more troops to Halus to block his acquisition of it in an angry reaction to his not handing over the Olynthus captives yet, as Demosthenes is probably planning. Philip reaches Thermopylae (early July), and is let through by his secret new ally Phalaecus and the Phocian army.
Mid-July, after envoys’ arrival on ‘13th of month Skirophorion’/9? July – In Athens, the assembly is urged by Demosthenes to reject the sham peace and stand by Phocis, with him accusing Aeschines of being bribed to help Philip; the walls are manned in panic lest Philip march on Athens; however, three days after the envoys’ arrival a second meeting of the assembly votes to accept a conciliatory letter sent by Philip calling for alliance and to confirm the peace, extending it to Philip’s successors so long-term; Phocians (which of them is unclear) are to be told to hand over Delphi to the Amphictyonic Council or Athens will attack them.
The third embassy leaves to meet Philip, probably unaware he is already at Thermopylae; he is joined there by a Spartan army but a Theban army approaches with possible hostile intent to him and he asks Athens to send him troops to show goodwill. The Athenian assembly debates this on ‘20 Skirophorion’ (16? July) and with Demosthenes opposing sending any troops (or thus annoying his potential anti-Philip ally Thebes) it votes against sending any, defeating the conciliatory Aeschines. The Athenian embassy now halts at Chalcis, possibly alarmed lest the news of his not being given any troops annoys Philip; the Phocis general council surrenders personally to Philip, not to the Amphictyonic League, and (17? July) Philaecrus and his army of 8000 men are allowed to leave unmolested for the Peloponnese as Philip wants, not arrested for sacrilege.
With the ‘Sacred War over, the Athenian envoys return home; the Phocians in Delphi surrender, and the Amphictyonic Council meets with Philip nearby (possibly at or near Thermopylae); Athens sends an embassy, with Aeschines but not Demosthenes. The Amphictyonic Council votes to put a curse and outlawry on all who occupied Delphi and to seize their property, and Phocis is expelled from the League and has all its weapons and horses confiscated – no horses are to be bought until the large fine that is imposed on Phocis (sixty talents a year) has been paid off; all but one of Phocis’ towns are to be razed and the people are to move to undefended villages of limited size, with Philip sending troops to check that the Council is not victimizing the populace. Orchomenus and Coronea, taken by Phocis from the Boeotian League, are handed back to the latter, which razes them and enslaves the inhabitants; Halus is treated similarly by its new owner Pharsalus.
Philip gets the Phocians’ two votes on the Amphictyonic Council and the presidency of the Pythian Games; he returns the Athenian prisoners from Olynthus in time for the Panathenaic Games (mid-August) and Demosthenes urges the assembly (in his speech ‘On The Peace’) to accept the Peace of Philocrates as the only deal on offer and necessary to avoid an attack by the Amphictyonic League for alleged impiety in resisting the ‘sacred’ peace.
Philip presides at the Pythian Games (September) and returns to Macedon, leaving the Thessalians in control of the town of Nicaea guarding the pass of Thermopylae.
Isocrates composes and delivers his ‘Phili’, an oration calling on Philip to unite the Greeks and concentrate on attacking Persia in revenge for the invasion of 480.
Persia/Egypt
By this year Mentor of Rhodes has left Macedon and is in the service of Pharoah Nectanebo II of Egypt, as he commands an army sent into Phoenicia to assist a rebellion by the king of Sidon, Tennes, against the Great King. He is defeated and captured and taken into Persian service.
346/5
Idrieus, king of Caria, is commissioned to lead a Persian naval expedition to rebel Cyprus to overthrow the rebels, and enlists four thousand mainland Greek mercenaries commanded by the Athenian general Phocion; King Evagoras II of Salamis, son of Nicocles (d. c. 360) and grandson of Evagoras II (d. 374), also aids the successful campaign.
Artaxerxes III Ochus and an army of up to 300,000 invade Phoenicia, and Idrieus of Caria commands the fleet that blockades the city (presumably after the fall of Cyprus). Outnumbered, King Tennes of Sidon negotiates his surrender and hands over 100 top citizens of his city to the Great King for execution; when the city is occupied Artaxerxes massacres the elite and burns the place to the ground as an example.
345
Greece/Macedon
Demosthenes gets his ally Timarchus to prosecute Aeschines for allegedly corrupt accepting of bribes on the second embassy to Philip in 346; in reply, Aeschines prosecutes Timarchus for immoral living as an alleged male prostitute so he will be stripped of his citizenship and cannot act in a court; Timarchus is found guilty and sacked from citizenship.
Spring – Athens has to defend its current ownership of the sacred shrine of Apollo on Delos against a case brought by its ex-owners, the Delos islanders, before the Amphictyonic Council; Aeschiens is initially chosen to appear for Athens but is replaced by Demosthenes’ ally Hyperides. Athens wins the case.
345 or 344
Philip campaigns against the Ardaeoi tribe, one of the most powerful in Illyria on his north-west borders, under their ruler Pleuratus (probable ancestor of the kings of Illyria in the later third century). His campaign may be followed by the widespread transfers of population to less well-occupied areas of his kingdom testified to by the Roman historian Justin, or else this is an event of the late 350s.
?Philip enrols his wife’s kinsman Leonidas, an appropriately named enthusiast for Spartan austerity and military training, to train his son Alexander as a warrior.
?Philip’s precocious son Alexander displays his prowess on and is given the valuable but ‘uncontrollable’ horse Bucephalus (‘Ox-Head’), who is proving difficult to mount at a Macedonian horse-fair; reportedly, Philip says that he can have the horse if he can ride him and Alexander notes that the horse is frightened of his own shadow.
Summer – After the hostile Aleudae family have been restored to power in Larissa in another factional dispute, and anti-Macedonians have taken over Pherae too, Philip invades Thessaly; he expels the two new regimes and others of his foes and installs a board of ten men in each of various captured cities. He divides Thessaly into its original four rural regions as four new Macedonian provinces under his nominees as governors, thus creating a ‘tetrachy’ (‘rule of four’). Demsothenes presents this as conquest and slavery.
Persia
Death of Idreius, ruler of Caria; succeeded by Pixodarus.
Sicily
Arrival of Timoleon of Corinth (born c. 411) in Syracuse to assist the city, after it sends to its founder Corinth for a general to take command and end endemic factional strife and evict Dionysius II. The assembly of Corinth votes on who to send but no important citizens volunteer; an anonymous voice then successfully proposes Timoleon. He brings seven ships and 700 mercenaries, collects three more shiploads of volunteers at Leucas, and after a voyage apparently ‘celestially blessed’ by the sighting of a ‘torch’ in the sky (a meteorite?) puts in at Metapontum in Italy. Meanwhile, a large Carthaginian army under Hanno (50,000 men?) is overwhelming western Sicily, and Carthage has formed an alliance with Hicetas, tyrant of Leontinoi, who wants Timoleon stopped so he can have Syracuse himself. The Carthaginians attack Entella, whose Campanian mercenary garrison appeals for local help but gets little and is overwhelmed; the town is sacked. A Carthaginian galley puts into Metapontum – with Syracusan power eclipsed there is not a coherent local force to challenge their fleet – and Timoleon is advised by the Carthaginian envoys to give up his plans and return to Corinth, but he goes on.
Timoleon goes on to Rhegium; meanwhile, three days before his arrival there, Hicetas of Leontinoi is besieging Syracuse from his new fortress-camp at the ‘Olympeion’ outside when he has to go back to his city to collect supplies and Dionysius tries to ambush him to be routed. Hicetas takes advantage to hurry back to Syracuse ahead of Dionysius and storms the unguarded gates, and Dionysius can only secure the Ortgygia citadel where Hicetas blockades him.
A Carthaginian squadron intercepts Timoleon at Rhegium and demands a meeting with him and the citizens; he sends his other ships out of the harbour quickly and stays on, apparently to attend the meeting and promising that he will go home so the Carthaginians relax their vigilance; the meeting starts at the open-air theatre, with him in the audience so the Carthaginians can see, then with local help he slips out of the theatre and leaves the city in his own ship, evading their naval patrols offshore, which are intending to stop him. He lands at Tauromenium/Taormina in Sicily with his men, rallies the locals under Andromachus who lends him 1000 more men, and defeats the intercepting Hicetas at the battle of Adranum where he advances quicker than expected and catches the enemy having dinner in camp. He goes on to Syracuse with the aid of Mamercus, tyrant of Catane, and is welcomed, and Ortygia is blockaded; Hicetas holds on to the Achradina and Neapolis quarters with his surviving men.
344/3
Greece/Macedon
Winter? After the Thessaly expedition, Philip sends Python of Byzantium on a goodwill embassy to Athens, aided by Argos and Messene envoys, to reassure that he is keeping to the peace-terms of 346 and his Peloponnesian targets are not party to that treaty, and to offer to extend the peace/defensive alliance to include new allies if Athens wants this. The assembly agrees to this on Aeschines’ proposal. Demosthenes replies to Aeschines with the ‘Second Philippic’, accusing Philip of planning to destroy Athens and Megara and proposing an amendment to include assorted past or current Athenian colonies around the Northern Aegean (including ones occupied by Philip) in a revised treaty as explicitly Athenian possessions so Philip will have to accept this and hand them back or refuse these terms. His ally Hegesippus gets a vote passed demanding the return of Amphipolis, and the ex-Athenian island of Halonessus off Thessaly (seized by pirates then occupied by Philip) is also demanded. The assembly backs Demosthenes and Hegesippus.
Python has to report to Philip that Athens demands the lost Northern Aegean cities back as the price of extending the treaty of 346, and then Hegesippus arrives with the formal Athenian decision; Philip offers to give up Halonessus and is told that he can only ‘return’ it, i.e. accepting that he had no right to it in the first place, so he refuses.
343
Sicily
150 Carthaginian ships land at the Great Harbour of Syracuse to unload 5000 troops and attack the city; however, firstly Mamercus, tyrant of Catane, and then other locals bring help to Timoleon and Corinth sends him ten more ships. Some of the forts held by Hicetas and Dionysius II in Syracuse are handed over to him by their garrisons, and Corinth’s relief-force evades a Carthaginian squadron waiting at Rhegium and lands successfully.
Dionysius II negotiates the surrender of Ortygia, in return for being allowed to leave for Corinth with his private wealth; he is escorted through the areas of Syracuse occupied by Timoleon’s party to his camp to surrender, and is given a ship to sail to Corinth. Hicetas holds out in part of the city, but (?)disease on the unhealthy Great Harbour shores hits the Carthaginians; the latter are also unsettled by fellow-mercenaries of theirs in Timoleon’s camp asking their mercenaries to desert and save Syracuse from Carthaginian tyranny, and their general Mago embarks and sail off again. Hicetas is left on his own and has to retreat.
Greece/Macedon
Phocis starts to pay its fines for the last ‘Sacred War’.
In Athens, Philocates the ex-ambassador is put on trial, accused by Demosthenes’ ally Hyperides of accepting bribes from Philip; in fact, the gifts he received (as did other envoys who have not been prosecuted) were in the course of normal diplomatic courtesies and his proposal of alliance with Philip can be portrayed as in the common good not the result of bribes, but with the jury expected to be hostile he flees before his trial; he is sentenced to death in absentia and his property is sold.
Late summer? – Philip expels King Arybbas of Epirus, his untrustworthy Western neighbour, and replaces him with the latter’s nephew, Philip’s wife Olympias’ brother Alexander who has been his protégé/hostage in Macedon for a decade; Arybbas moves to Athens. He also sends an embassy to Athens proposing a ‘Common Peace’ and a joint naval expedition in the Aegean to put down piracy, but this is rebuffed.
September? – Demosthenes formally accuses Aeschines of misconduct on the second embassy in 346, for suspiciously lenient peace-terms and delaying the embassy to help Philip overrun part of Thrace before he had to accept a ceasefire in the agreed truce; he delivers his speech ‘On the False Embassy’ at the trial as prosecutor, while Phocion and Eubulus speak for the defence; Demosthenes does not have enough tangible evidence and Aeschines can point to his own participation in the embassy where he was not anti-Macedonian either, and Aeschines is acquitted by thirty votes.
Winter 343/342
Philip takes over part of Ambracia and Cassiopia, south of Epirus at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, and hands it to Epirus; the alarmed Ambracians send an appeal to Corinth for help, and the latter asks Athens to send expedition.
Philip summons the philosopher Aristotle (from Stagira in the north-east Chalcidice) from the court of Hermeias at Atarneus to serve as Alexander’s tutor – probably as his father was physician to Philip’s father, Amyntas III, and he may have met Philip as a boy there. This follows Philip’s secret diplomatic contacts with Hermeias, who is intended to assist a future Macedonian/Greek invasion of Asia Minor. A group of noble young Macedonians are collected as Alexander’s fellow-pupils, among whom are many of his future close friends and generals. As well as his closest companion and alleged later lover, Hephaistion (seen as ‘Patroclus’ to the ‘Iliad’ enthusiast Alexander’s ‘Achilles’) there are Ptolemy son of Lagus, the future Phaorah of Egypt (said in some sources to be really Philip’s illegitimate son, which Ptolemy himself probably played up or may have invented to gain Macedonian support post-323), Philotas son of the general Parmenion, Nearchus the Cretan, Lysimachus, and the future treasurer Harpalus. They are to live at the ‘Gardens of Midas’ at Mieza, west of Pella and away from the court.
Also in 343/2 (probably), the expelled ex-citizen Antiphon sneaks back secretly into Athens for an attempt to set fire to the Piraeus dockyard, which would destroy the Athenian fleet; he is arrested and prosecuted, defended successfully by Aeschines, but then tried again before the Areopagus with Demosthenes prosecuting; Demosthenes has him convicted and executed and claims Philip was behind the plot.
Persia
Artaxerxes III Ochus invades Egypt with a huge army, reportedly of 300,000 men including 14,000 Greek Ionian vassals, a force of 4000 Greek mercenaries under his generals Mentor and Memnon of Rhodes, 3000 Argives under Nicostratus, and 1000 Thebans under Lactanes; they defeat Nectanbeo II, who is outnumbered by about three to one, and take the cities of the Nile delta with Ochus’ Greek mercenaries encouraging their fellow-Greeks in Nectanbeo’s besieged garrisons to surrender in return for pardon. The last native ruler, Nectanebo II, flees up the Nile to ‘Ethiopia’/Nubia and Memphis falls and has its walls levelled; the elite is massacred, the city is subdued by a reign of terror, and the local religious shrines are pillaged, which turns the priesthoods definitively against Persia as will be seen in 332; the sacred bull of the god Apis is killed and served up for dinner in a deliberate act of contempt for the local religion.
After the expedition, Mentor takes command of the Great King’s Western army in Asia Minor, probably based at Sardes, and probably at this time secures the pardon of his father-in-law Artabazus who returns to the Persian court.
342
Callias, tyrant of Chalcis in Euboaea, goes to Macedon to interest Philip in helping him to set up an Euboean League, led by himself and Chalcis, but is sent home without any promises.
May/June? – Philip commences the systematic conquest of the Thracian kingdom after king Cersobleptes starts to attack the Greek cities on the Hellespont.
Summer/autumn? – Athens sends troops to assist Ambracia against the new pro-Macedonian king, Alexander of Epirus; they are successful and envoys are sent to Corinth (at its own request), Argos, Megaloplis, Achaea and Aetolia who agree to an anti-Philip alliance.
Sicily
Timoleon rules Syracuse unchallenged and restores order with a new law-code, a political truce if not harmony, and mercantile trade and prosperity. He razes the fortress of Ortygia and its walls as a symbol of his expulsion of the tyranny. His army bottles up but cannot evict Hicetas of Leontinoi, and he goes on to defeat Letpines of Engyum and Apollonia. While he is busy with Engyus, Hicetas attacks Syracuse, but he is driven off.
Timoleon compels Hicetas to abdicate and Leptines of Engyum/Apollonia to leave for Corinth; Demeretus and Deinarchus campaign on his behalf in western Sicily to help the local cities throw out their Carthaginian garrisons, and Entella is recovered from Carthage. The latter commences to prepare a new army of its best men to attack Sicily.
Greece/Macedon
During Philip’s Thracian campaign, the tyrant Plutarchus of Eretria is overthrown and the new regime takes neighbouring Porthmus and appeals to Macedon for help; Philip sends Hipponicus and 1000 mercenaries to aid them, followed by an expedition led by Parmenion and Eurylochus. Hipponicus installs Cleitarchus as ruler of Eretria and drives a pro-Athenian faction out of Porthmus, installing a pro-Macedonian triumvirate who face several revolts; Parmenion installs Philistides as pro-Macedonian tyrant of Oreus, alarmingly close to the Attic coast for the nervous Athenians.
Autumn – Philip completes the conquest of the Thracian kingdom, forces the tribes to recognize him as ruler and send tribute and troops, sets up a new local military command to be aided by loyal regional chieftains, and founds new cities including ‘Philippopolis’ (Plovdiv) in the Hebrus valley and Berroea (Stara Zagora). He then goes on to attack the ‘Getae’, in the Danube valley beyond the main Balkan range, and King Cothelas surrenders and sends rich gifts plus his daughter Meda to marry Philip (his sixth wife). His senior general Antipater represents him at the Pythian Games in Delphi.
?Artaxerxes Ochus has Hermeias of Atarneus summoned to his court on campaign in Asia Minor, arrested, sent to Susa for interrogation, and executed for treasonable contacts with Macedon.
?Pixodarus of Caria expels his sister and co-ruler, Queen Ada.
341
Greece/Macedon
Spring – Dispute between pro-Macedonian city of Cardia, in the Chersonese at the mouth of the Hellespont, and its neighbours who are Athenian settlers (‘cleruchs’); the Athenian mercenary commander Diopeithes is aiding the latter and committing piracy on passing Macedonian ships, and has arrested and tortured Philip’s envoy Amphilochus. Cardia appeals to Philip; he sends a small force, plus an ambassador to Athens to complain about Diopeithes. Demosthenes backs up Diopeithes in his speech ‘On the Chersonese’, saying the region is outside Philip’s agreed sphere of influence so he has no right to interfere there and his attitude implies aggression so Diopeithes should be sent help and his enemies killed as Macedonian agents, and Hegesippus also urges defiance of Macedon.
May? – Demosthenes’ ‘Third Philippic’ and ‘Fourth Philippic’, calling for Philip’s allies to be killed and money and troops raised for an expedition to deal with him and assistance sought from Persia. The assembly backs him, and Diopeithes is sent assistance and Ephialtes is sent as envoy to Great King Artaxerxes Ochus and apparently returns with money to hire allies.
Diopeithes dies some months later.
Callias, anti-Macedonian tyrant of Chalcis in Euboae, sends to Athens proposing anti-Philip alliance if they will support him in creating a new Euboean League dominated by Chalcis; Demosthenes persuades Athens to back him.
Summer – Cephisophoron and Phocion lead an Athenian army to attack Oreus (aided by Megara) and Eretria in alliance with Callias; Athens loans Calais ships to overrun pro-Macedonian towns on the Gulf of Pagasae opposite north Euboea, and he attacks Macedonian shipping as well; after the campaign Callias is voted an Athenian citizen and Athens agrees to his formation of an Euboean League.
Chares is sent with a fleet of forty ships to the Chersonese to bolster resistance to Philip.
Autumn – Callias of Chalcis sends envoys with Athenian ones to tour the Peloponnese to stir up anti-Macedonian feeling and sign up new allies for an Athenian war with Philip in defence of Greek liberty. He and Demosthens address the Athenian assembly afterwards and claim that all the Peloponnese and Megara will support them; Demosthenes is sent as envoy to Byzantium, at the eastern end of the Propontis, to arrange alliance to block threat by Philip to the trade-route there, and Hyperides is sent to Cos, Chios and Rhodes to acquire votes for sending ships.
340
Greece/Macedon
Spring – Philip sets out with c. 30,000 troops to overrun the pro-Athenian cities on the Propontis, and leaves the sixteen-year-old Alexander in Pella as his regent, assisted by his generals Antipater and Parmenion. This marks the end of Alexander’s education at Mieza; now, or in a couple of years, Aristotle leaves the Macedonian court to return to Stagira, which Philip has rebuilt as promised.
April – Demosthenes is voted an honorary crown during the annual festival of Dionysus in Athens, and receives it at a ceremony in the theatre.
Philip’s fleet enters the Propontis, and he besieges Perinthus on the nothern shore, around thirty miles west of Byzantium; his siege-engines smash breaches in the walls, but the city is built on a steep hill with close-set houses so when the outer wall is damaged the defenders retreat inside and barricade the gaps between the houses to good effect. Troops and supplies are sent across the Propontis by Arsites, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, on Great King Artaxerxes Ochus’ orders to help the defence, Byzantium loans some catapults to attack Philip’s siege-engines and troops, and the Athenian navy is nearby at Elaius commanded by Chares, ready to help if asked.
The Maedoi in the upper Strymon valley revolt in Philip’s absence; Alexander mounts his first, successful campaign to defeat them in the forests and hills with a swift attack, calling on his friend the ex-hostage son of the local tribal Agrianoi to assist him. He routs the rebels and founds a city of ‘Alexandropolis’ to emulate Philip, settled by Macedonians, and Antipater and Parmenion follow up to overrun the Tetrachoritae/Bessoi on the River Hebrus, the Dantheletai at the head of the Strymon, and the Melinophagi north-west of Byzantium.
August/September? – Philip leaves the siege of Perinthus to part of his army, and takes the rest on to attack the rebels’ ally Byzantium, on the triangular promontory at the east end of the Propontis at the mouth of the Bosphorus; Cos, Rhodes, and the Persians send the city assistance. Possibly Philip is hoping to incite Athens into showing its hand openly; if so this is successful, as the threat to the city’s trade-lifeline through the Bosphorus leads to the assembly voting to smash the stone recording the Peace of Philocrates and so to declare war on him. (Demosthenes later times the declaration of war as after the corn-fleet’s seizure, below, but this is unlikely.) Phocion and Cephisophon are put in command of a second fleet and sent to help Chares and Byzantium.
Philip succeeds in getting his men inside the walls of Byzantium one night, but is betrayed by the sound of barking dogs and driven out again – possibly this is also the occasion when the crescent moon, adopted as the city’s symbol (and hence taken for the Turkish flag?), lit up his men and so alerted the defence.
The second Athenian fleet heads for the Propontis (after the harvest, so September?); Chares is called off to a meeting of the local Persian satraps to arrange help for the two besieged cities, and in his absence Philip’s admiral Demetrius attacks the annual Athenian corn-supply fleet (230 ships?), which is assembling at Hieron; Philip confiscates the corn and all the Athenian ships (180), but allows the others to leave; he uses the timber of the Athenian ships for his siege-engines and returns the captured Byzantine, Cos, and Rhodian ships to their owners as a goodwill gesture, thus indicating his desire to end the sieges.
The second Athenian fleet blocks the Hellespont to Philip, but he sends a fake letter to Antipater saying that he is returning home due to a rebellion in Thrace and arranges for the Athenians to capture it; they sail off to look for and assist the rebels and Philip’s fleet can slip past them, as he marches back on a parallel course on land into Thrace and abandons the sieges.
Mamercus of Catane and Hicetas invite Gisgo the Carthaginian general to invade Sicily as their ally against Syracuse. Timoleon attacks them, and subsequently captures and executes Hicetas.
Persia
Mentor, mercenary commander of the Persian army in Asia Minor, dies and is succeeded by his brother Memnon who marries his widow, Barsine, daughter of Artabazus.
339
Greece/Macedon
Spring? – After having to lift the siege of Byzantium, Philip decides on war against the ‘Scythians’ on the lower Danube, who are ruled by aged king Atheas and are expanding southwards into lands that he now claims. The occasion of dispute is Atheas’ asking him to send military help against the Histrianoi during the war against Byzantium, Atheas’ foe, in 340/39 and promising to make Philip his heir in return but then changing his mind and sending the troops home without pay. Philip asks for unhindered passage to the mouth of the Danube to erect a statue to his ‘ancestor’ Heracles, but Atheas refuses and tells him to send the statue, which he will erect – if the Macedonians invade he will resist and turn the bronze statue into arrow-heads. Philip attacks the Scythians and defeats them in battle near the Danube, where Atheas is killed; his leaderless people submit as Philip’s vassals, possibly after or before he crosses the Danube into Wallachia.
Spring – The seasonal meeting of the Amphictyonic Council at Delphi, presided over by anti-Athenian Cottyphus of Pharsalus, sees Thebes’ local ally Amphissa accuse Athens of impiety in using the re-dedication of their trophy shields from the battle of Plataea (479) at the rebuilt (after 373 fire) Temple of Apollo at Delphi to change the inscription so that it insults the Thebans by pointing out that the shields were taken from the Persians and Thebans – reminding all of Thebes’ ‘Medizing’. The probable intention is to provoke Athens into refusing to pay a huge fine so the Theban-inspired allies can declare war on them – Macedon’s involvement is unclear. The leading Athenian delegate Aeschines is left to reply by his colleagues, and turns the tables by saying that Amphissa is guilty of sacrilege by cultivating sacred fields dedicated to Apollo on the nearby plain of Cirrha and has built a harbour on sacred land. The Council agrees with him, and next day orders Amphissa to do restitution or face a ‘Scared War’ declared at the next Council meeting; when the Athenians get home Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of being bribed by Philip.
Summer? – On his way home across Thrace, Philip’s way is barred by the local Triballoi tribe who demand a share of the loot; he refuses and they attack. In the battle he is seriously wounded in the leg by a spear (?accidentally by one of his men) and faints from loss of blood, and his men panic and retreat taking him with them, leaving the baggage-train, which the Triballoi loot. Philip is lamed, and takes months to recover.
June? – Before the next Amphictyonic Council meeting, Thebes seizes the Thessalian-held town of Nicaea on the road north of Thermopylae, evicts its Macedonian garrison, and installs its own troops in an act of challenge to Philip. The Council meets at Thermopylae, but neither Thebes nor Athens attends in protest at the alleged victimization of Amphissa – Demosthenes has persuaded the Athenians to stand by Thebes (and thus support its seizure of Nicaea), not by the Council. The Council declares a ‘Sacred War’ (the fourth) on Amphissa; Cottyphus, presiding, is to command the expeditionary force sent if the Amphissans do not pay a large fine, and Philip will be invited to succeed him.
Sicily
70,000 Carthaginian infantry and 10,000 cavalry land at Lilybaeum and march east towards Syracuse. Timoleon and a much smaller army (12,000?) head to intercept them, but en route Thrasius the Phocian (one of those exiled for his part in occupying Delphi) declares that they will be overwhelmed and it is folly to go on, leading a mutiny; Timoleon has to allow him and his supporters to leave the army.
(Midsummer; end of month ‘Thargelion’ according to Plutarch.) At the river Crimessus near Silenus Timoleon intends to block the invaders’ path, but he arrives to find that their advance-guard has already crossed; these are smaller than his army so he attacks at once and drives them back, but the rest of the enemy crosses to help their compatriots. The Greeks are driven back, but a violent storm hits the battle and blows wind and rain in the Carthaginians’ faces and they are defeated; they flee to the river and many are drowned while crossing. Timoleon pursues them to storm their camp, securing a major victory. The Carthaginians retreat west and all of Greek Sicily allies with Syracuse; later, Timoleon catches up with and expels the refugee Thrasius and his mercenaries.
338
Persia
Great King Artaxerxes III Ochus is poisoned by his chief eunuch, Bagoas; his son Arses succeeds, probably in his twenties at most as he is inexperienced, but Bagoas wields the real power.
Sicily
Peace between Carthage and the Greek states; the River Halycus is confirmed as the frontier.
Corinth sends 10,000 new settlers to repopulate Syracuse.
Italy
The Eurypontid king of Sparta, Archidamus (III) son of Agesilaus, is killed at Manduria in Apulia on an expedition to deal with tribal attackers of the coastal towns; from his age at the time of his youthful service in Asia Minor under his father in the mid-390s, he is probably over seventy. He is succeeded by his son Agis (III).
Greece/Macedon
Early – Philip joins in the ‘Fourth Sacred War’ as leader of the Sacred League and commander of its army, along with his own Thessalian, Dolopian, Phthiotian, and Aetolian allies, the last two presumably as long-term enemies of the Locrians; he marches round Mounts Oeta and Callidromous to the region of Doris, and fortifies Cytinium near the Gravia Pass to his target Amphissa. The locals block his route; he swings round south-east down the upper Cephissus valley into Phocis and seizes Elatia, on the road from Nicaea to Thebes, so he cuts Nicaea off from help and can strike at Thebes and Athens. At the news that Philip is in Elatia with an open road ahead of him there is panic in Athens, and the fearful assembly looks to Demosthenes for advice; he delivers one of his great orations, as he boasts later in ‘On The Crown’, advising resistance with the help of Thebes as the only way to deal with tyrants. He calls for all men of military age to muster at Eleusis and envoys to go to Thebes to negotiate an alliance against Philip; this is agreed.
Philip sends his own officers Amyntas and Clearchus and representatives of the Sacred League states to Thebes asking the Thebans to either join with him or stand aside as he marches on Athens, resisting at their peril, with the right to loot Attica if they join him and hand over Nicaea to its legal owners, Locris. Demosthenes arrives at Thebes too with the Athenian embassy, and the Theban assembly votes to back Athens and stand up to Philip; however, they require Athens to accept their hegemony of the Boeotian League and to pay two-thirds of the land war costs and all the naval war costs; the land army will be under Theban command, at Thebes.
Thebes sends troops to the Gravia Pass to block Philips’ route to Amphissa, with 10,000 Athenians headed by Chares and Proxenus. Another joint force occupies Parapotamii on the Boeotian/Phocis border; Athens and Thebes send envoys round Greece for help, but only Megara, Corinth, and Achaea sign up. Phocis backs Philip, but the Peloponnesians stand aloof.
Late spring – Philip calls on all allies of the Amphictyonic League to send troops to him; he and the Theban/Athenian/Locris forces manoeuvre against each other in the upper Cephissus valley; there are minor clashes with the anti-Macedonian forces holding Philip back. He returns to the Gravia Pass and allows a fake letter to be captured with information that he is about to abandon Cytinium; the enemy relaxes, and at night Parmenion advances suddenly on their lines and storms them; most are killed and by morning the Macedonians are in Amphissa. The Amphictyonic Council meets and banishes those held guilty of ‘sacrilege’, and Parmenion occupies Amphissa and then takes Naupactus on the Gulf of Corinth beyond to execute its Achaean garrison and hand it to Aetolia as promised earlier by Philip.
The enemies of Macedon evacuate Parapotamii and move back onto the plain of the lower Cephissus in Boeotia to await Philip’s attack; he advances from Elatia to Parapotamii.
Probably 2 or 4 August – Battle of Chaeronea: Around 30,000 Macedonian infantry (c.6000 of them allies, mainly Thessalians) and 2000 cavalry face around 30,000 infantry and 3800 cavalry; Chares, Lysicles and Stratocles command the Athenians and Theagenes the Thebans, the latter with around 12,000 infantry, including the ‘Sacred Band’ of 300 male lovers; Athens sends around 6000 natives and 2000 mercenaries and Achaea sends 2000 infantry. Battle is joined on a line approximately south-west to north-east, stretching across a plain between two ridges, with the town of Chaeronea on the hill above the southwest edge of the battlefield. The Athenians are on their left wing, nearest to Chaeronea, by the River Haemon, with the light infantry beyond them up the hill; the Thebans are on their right wing at the north-east end of the line, by the Cephissus. Philip is on his right wing, nearest the Athenians; his phalanx is on the centre and right, and Alexander commands the cavalry on their left wing near the Cephissus and opposite the Thebans. Philip moves his troops forward at an angle so his right wing clashes with the Athenians while his left wing is still some distance away from the Thebans; after the initial clash he pulls back in a feigned retreat, and the Athenians charge after him, leaving a gap between them and the allied centre. The Thebans have to move towards their centre to plug the gap, but the ‘Sacred Band’ stays put to guard their right flank by the Cephissus; then Alexander leads the Macedonian cavalry into the gap between the allied centre and right wing, and part of the cavalry turns right, onto the allied centre, while Alexander turns left to encircle the ‘Sacred Band’. The latter is annihilated to a man after a fierce struggle, and the Macedonian right wing stops retreating and turns on the allied left wing; the Athenians are smashed and driven back to the river behind them, with around 2000 killed and 1000 captured; Demosthenes is said to have dropped his shield and run away from his first major battle.
Philip holds a victory feast with a torchlit ‘comus’ (drunken Dionysiac procession), and is allegedly rebuked by an Athenian prisoner called Demades, a moderate opponent of Demosthenes, for behaving like the loutish Thersites not the lordly national coalition leader Agamemnon in the ‘Iliad’; he subsequently sends Demades to Athens to deliver his terms. The ‘Sacred Band’ are given a state funeral and their own burial-mound, still extant, with the ‘Lion of Chaeronea’ monument; nearby the Macedonian dead have another mound.
Philip requires Thebes to pay a ransom for their dead at Chaeronea, sells his Theban captives as slaves, and orders a recall of their exiles from whom an oligarchy of 300 serves as the new regime; a garrison is put in the Cadmea citadel and all the local towns that Thebes has demolished in the past for resisting it are rebuilt; the Boeotian League survives but as a confederation of equals with Thebes only having one vote.
Charidemus the mercenary takes command of the Athenain army as Lysicles is condemned to death for incompetence/treachery, all males under 60 are called up and those deprived of citizenship restored to it, ‘metics’ are enrolled in the army, and the women and children and treasure are evacuated to the Piraeus; imminent sack by Philip is expected, but he sends Demades as his envoy followed by Alexander and Antipater to return the ashes of the dead. Athens is required to agree to peace and send an embassy to Philip for this, but when these men (Demades, Aeshcines and Phocion) arrive at the Macedonian camp their city is not punished apart from losing its naval Confederacy and the ‘cleruchs’ settled in the Chersonese are to be recalled. Athens agrees with relief, and Demosthenes goes off on an overseas mission to collect grain-supplies out of the way of any reprisals; Philip and Alexander are granted citizenship and statues of them are set up in the Agora.
Autumn – Philip campaigns in the Peloponnese, having received the surrender of Megara and Corinth and garrisoned at least the latter. He visits his dynasty’s alleged home-town of Argos, and invades and burns the crops in Laconia but is defied by Sparta and does not attack the city. King Archidamus is probably absent campaigning in Italy at the time.
Winter 338/337
Philip summons representatives of all the Greek states to a meeting at Corinth, his military headquarters; Phocion tries to persuade Athens to stand aloof but is voted down, and only Sparta does not turn up. There, Philip announces the formation of what is generally known as the ‘Hellenic League’ or ‘League of Corinth’, officially the ‘Community of the Greeks’, with a common peace and elected delegates (‘synedroi’) sent by each state (the number probably proportionate to their military capacity) meeting regularly at a council (‘synedron’) with himself as leader, ‘hegemon’. All disputes between states are to be sorted out by the League, not by unilateral action; no state is to carry out any action that would undermine the current political order in its own or other states, interfere in another state’s affairs, or ally with a foe of the League; all are to swear allegiance to each other and to Philip and his descendants. There is to be a common military, financial, domestic, and foreign policy for League matters decided by majority vote and binding on all members.
?Philip meets the dispossessed ex-tyrant Dionysius II in Corinth.
337
The delegates go home, and their states duly ratify the League and elect the ‘synedroi’ for the second meeting of the League, which occurs at Corinth in the spring. There, the League is inaugurated and arrangements are made for an army to be collected for the invasion of the Persian empire, with Philip as leader.
Summer? – Back in Macedon, Philip makes his ?seventh marriage – to the young Cleopatra (renamed ‘Eurydice’), daughter of his general Attalus. Olympias is furious and probably plays on Alexander’s insecurities about his being superseded as heir. At the wedding feast, Attalus calls a toast to a ‘true-born’ new Macedonian heir, presumably a reference to Alexander’s Epirot mother, and Alexander throws a goblet at him; the drunk Philip tries to attack his son with a sword, but falls over as he jumps off his couch and Alexander sneers that he cannot get from one couch to another let alone to Asia. Alexander walks out and takes Olympias back to Epirus, where she tries in vain to get her brother King Alexander to invade. Alexander goes on to Illyria, presumably to arrange a tribal invasion, but is persuaded to come home by Philips’ envoy, the Athenian Demaratus. He returns, and possibly Olympias does so later or in 336 if she is present at her husband’s murder that summer.
336
Persia
The eunuch chief minister Bagoas murders Great King Arses, probably over fears that the latter is seeking to break away from his authority; he installs the ruler’s distant cousin Darius (III) Codomannus as the new ruler. Darius, possibly in his forties, is best-known according to one story for defeating a giant Cadousian swordsman in taking up his challenge to single combat while fighting in Artaxerxes Ochus’ army. The new ruler speedily poisons Bagoas and asserts his own authority.
Sicily
?Death of Timoleon at Syracuse (or 336).
Greece/Macedon
Early (or late 337) As part of his plans for invading Ionia, Philip arranges an alliance with or is approached first by Pixodarus, Persian vassal-king of Caria and son of the late Mausolus, who offers him the hand of his daughter Ada for Philip’s second but illegitimate son, Arrhidaeus (who is mentally unfit and incapable of ruling unaided in 323). Alexander gets to hear of this, and sends the actor Thessalus as his personal ambassador to Pixodarus to offer himself as husband instead – probably out of panic that Philip is thinking of making Arrhidaeus his heir. Philip finds out, and has Thessalus arrested and sent to him in chains for questioning; he arrests and questions his son in private (apart from Parmenion’s son Philotas, who Alexander will later kill), abuses him for meddling, and exiles his friends Ptolemy, Harpalus, Nearchus the Cretan, and the brothers Erigyius and Lysimachus.
Attalus, Parmenion, and the princely dynast Amyntas of Lyncestis lead 10,000 troops across the Hellespont to secure the Troad ahead of Philip’s invasion; some local north Ionian towns throw out their oligarchs/tyrants and Persian garrisons and join them, as do Tenedos, Lesbos, and Chios.
July/August – Philip arranges the marriage of his daughter by Olympias, Cleopatra, aged around fifteen, to her maternal uncle King Alexander of Epirus to keep him loyal while Philip is in Asia; at the wedding at Aegae, games and a theatrical festival are held. A parade is held in the open-air theatre in front of the envoys of the allied Greek cities. Philip’s image is carried in procession with those of the twelve Olympian gods – seen by some as blasphemy? As the King enters the theatre alone without bodyguards to impress the visitors that he is not a tyrant, he is stabbed fatally in the chest by an attendant officer called Pausanias, a noble from the Orestis district – possibly paid by Persia, and possibly arranged by a vengeful Olympias. According to the ‘back story’ of the assassin which reached Aristotle and the later historian Diodorus, Pausanias was an ex-lover of Philip’s who became jealous of his young successor, a kinsman of Attalus, and provoked the youth into proving his bravery on an Illyrian campaign by getting killed (344 or 337?); Attalus lured Pausanias to dinner, got him drunk, and had his stablemen rape him. In addition, Philip denied him justice out of partisanship for Attalus, or else gave him promotion but no personal vengeance so when Attalus became Philip’s father-in-law he decided on revenge. (It is the Roman historian Justin who is the first to explicitly mention Olympias as behind the killing.) Philip is aged around forty-seven. Pausanias tried to flee to waiting horses, but is caught as he trips over a vine-root and killed by Alexander’s friends – Alexander’s denigrators claim that he was ‘silenced’ to shield Alexander or Olympias. Demosthenes announces the regicide suspiciously early, claiming divine information, and calls for a vote of thanks to Pausanias; did he know in advance? He puts a garland on his house, although his daughter has just died, and is accused of tastelessness.
Alexander’s Empire
Accession of Alexander; purge of his rivals, in which Philip II’s nephew the ‘rightful king’ Amyntas IV is executed along with Amyntas of Lyncestis, an ex-royal princedom on the western borders of Macedon, and one of his two brothers – Alexander of Lyncestis is the survivor. (Was one of them the intended beneficiary of the assassination, or Amyntas IV?) Assassins are sent to the Macedonian force in the Troad to assassinate Attalus and take over his army; Parmenion, already to the south in Aeolis, hears of the murders and returns to the main base where he probably takes over the army. In Macedon, Olympias allegedly crowns Pausanias’ exhibited body with a garland to celebrate her husband’s murder. Alexander’s friends are recalled from exile.
October? – Thessaly revolts against Macedon, and a force blocks the pass up the Vale of Tempe into Thessaly from the coast; Alexander marches south to find this, and cuts a new route across the slopes of Mount Ossa to the south of the pass to circumvent it. The Thessalians surrender and confirm their alliance with Macedon and Alexander’s succession to Philip as their overlord, and he reminds them of his descent from the local hero Achilles. The ‘Sacred League’ has called a military force together and camped at Thermopylae, but now surrenders and he calls their League to meet at Delphi and elect him as leader. Thebes and Athens decide against resistance, and Athens votes him as an honorary citizen and sends him gifts. Alexander marches on to Corinth and is elected ‘hegemon’ by the Hellenic League to succeed Philip; Sparta refuses to send envoys to the meeting and claims that it leads and does not follow others, and is left alone. Probably the (apocryphal?) meeting between Alexander and the unimpressed philosopher Diogenes, founder of the ‘Cynic’ school at Corinth and an ascetic who lives in a barrel, takes place during this visit.
November? – Alexander returns to Macedon via a visit to Delphi to ask questions of the oracle of Apollo there.
335
Spring – Alexander invades Thrace to secure his rear from the restive tribes before his Asian campaign, sending ships up the Black Sea coast to the Danube in anticipation of crossing the river; a new unit of the tribal Agrianoi in north Macedon is added to the army, as light skirmishers and archers/javelineers. Antipater is regent in Macedon and probably Parmenion is by now commanding the ‘advance-force’ sent across the Hellespont by Philip. Alexander leaves Olympias in Macedon; she murders Philip II’s last wife, Eurydice, and her child in his absence.
Alexander faces a Thracian army drawn up behind wagon-barricades at the Shipka Pass, and organizes his men to either scatter to one side or lie down behind their shields as ‘ramps’ as the wagons are rolled downhill onto them so nobody is killed; the Thracians retreat into the forests, but in the following days of clashes are lured out by a hail of arrows and then charged by the infantry and the cavalry attack from the flanks where possible. The Triballoi tribe are overrun to the line of the Danube, and their king, Syrmus, flees to an island in the river; Alexander joins his (small) fleet at the Danube and crosses, using sewn-together and inflated tent-skins as rafts to take more troops over the river at one movement than his ships can manage – in the dark, some distance from the tribes waiting on the far bank. The latter are caught out as the Macedonians cross a field of corn under cover of the high stalks to emerge onto the open plain and charge them at dawn, and they are routed by a disciplined charge and flee to a small fortress and thence onto the open plains by horse. The Getae tribe and others beyond the river are awed into agreeing peace and sending gifts, and the Triballoi survivors on their island do so too; volunteers are enrolled to join the Macedonian army. Possibly also tribal envoys arrive from the upper Danube and modern Croatia/Austria to ask for alliance.
The Illyrians, led by their king Bardelys’s son Cleitus, have attacked western Macedon in his absence and taken Pelion; Alexander marches swiftly south to intercept the attackers and besieges Pelion, in a narrow valley. Another king called Glaucias brings a second Illyrian force to attack Alexander and blockades the pass out of the valley to Macedon; Alexander uses a ‘parade’ of his army’s infantry in the narrow pass in front of the Illyrian lines to suddenly charge Glaucias’ men and rout them; the cavalry and light skirmishers then head uphill to deal with the abandoned Illyrian guards there, who are driven back too. While this is going on, the rest of the army fords the river in the pass to secure the far bank under cover of catapults; Alexander then joins them. The Illyrians pull back to their main camp, and three nights later Alexander storms it in a surprise attack; the tribes flee and Pelion is captured.
On a rumour of Alexander’s death, Thebes revolts and besieges the Macedonian garrison in the Cadmeia citadel, killing some of them who are caught by surprise in the city; they are encouraged (and sent weapons?) by Demosthenes who urges Athens to send help; probably he has been sent money by Persia to pay for a revolt. Alexander is told and marches quickly south before it is known that he is alive let alone on the march. He reaches Thebes in fourteen days from Pelion, startling the rebels who initially assume it must be Antipater or his senior officer Alexander of Lyncestis in command; Alexander demands the handover of the rebel leaders and is refused this. Athens hastens to send envoys to make terms and abandons Thebes to its fate.
Three days into the siege, Perdiccas leads troops into the city hard on the heels of a retreating sortie (against orders according to Ptolemy’s account, but Ptolemy was a personal rival of his after 323) and is wounded; Alexander follows with the main army; Thebes is ruthlessly sacked, though this is mostly carried out by the allied Greek army from Thebes’ neighbours rather than as a deliberate Macedonian act of terror, and Alexander orders the city to be razed to the ground as a warning, leaving only the temples and the house of the early fifth century poet Pindar. The Thebans are enslaved.
Alexander sends to Athens to demand the exile of Demosthenes and seven of his fellow-anti-Macedonians Charidemus and Lycurgus with others; the alarmed assembly sends the moderate leader Phocion on an embassy to persuade him to pardon them, which he does (except for Charidemus). Also mediating is Demades, who takes over the leading role in the city from the discredited Demosthenes.
October? – Alexander returns to Macedon and holds the annual festival in honour of Zeus and the Muses at Dium near Mount Olympus, with games and a theatrical festival; Antipater is named as regent for when he leaves Macedon for Asia but Alexander does not marry to beget an heir before he leaves.
334
May – Alexander leaves Pella, and marches with an army of c. 35–36,000 men (32,000 infantry – 6000 Foot Companions in six regiments, 3000 ‘Shield Bearers’, 1000 skirmishers, 7000 Greeks, and 7000 Thracian/‘Celt’ infantry – plus 1800 Companion Cavalry and 1800 Thessalian cavalry and possibly 2500 Mounted Scouts and auxiliary cavalry – to the Hellespont. A total of 150 Greek allied warships are waiting at Sestos; he crosses to join Parmenion, taking the tiller of his ship and sacrificing a bull to Poseidon in midstream. He lands the first of his men in full armour in the manner of the Greeks landing for the Trojan War, which is supposed to occur at the chosen site of his landing (the ‘Bay of the Achaeans’), throwing his spear into the ground to claim the soil of the Persian empire.
He detours for a sightseeing tour of the site of Troy/Ilium, where he visits the then village on the site and is crowned by his helmsman (who is named after his ‘ancestor’ Achilles’ companion Patroclus’ father), and honours his ‘ancestor’ and exemplar Achilles by then racing around the walls of Troy, to place a garland on his tomb while Hephaistion does so at the tomb of Patroclus, his mythical exemplar. Alexander receives the ‘Shield of Achilles’ and a suit of armour from the temple of Athene nearby (the shield is, however, first heard of with him in 326/5) and leaves his own armour there as a gift; he sacrifices to the legendary king of Troy, Priam, so he will not hinder his conquerors’ descendants.
Alexander rejoins his troops at Arisbe, and advances east along the Propontis to the banks of the River Granicus where satraps Spithridates of Lydia and Asistes of Phrygia have arrived from Dascylium in Phrygia via Zeleia with the Greek mercenary commander Memnon to contest their crossing. Memnon has advised the satraps to burn the crops and retreat inland to make the invaders run out of supplies, but was ignored by the overconfident Persian nobles.
The Persians probably have 35,000–40,000 men, and Alexander over 45,000 due to his joining with Parmenion’s advance-guard.
Battle of the River Granicus (six days into the Greek march from the Hellespont): the Persians station their heavy cavalry on the high river-bank to contest the crossing, with their 20,000 Greek mercenary infantry behind. Possibly Parmenion advises camping overnight and attacking next day and is over-ruled, but this is not found in all sources and may be an apocryphal account featuring him as the ‘voice of caution’ as on later occasions. The Greeks do camp, and next day cross the river unopposed at dawn while the Persians are probably still forming up in their camp a mile or two back. The Persian cavalry charges ahead of the infantry at the Greeks, and Alexander leads a charge in reply; a cavalry clash follows and Alexander is nearly cut down from behind in the melee but his life is saved by senior officer Cleitus ‘the Black’, brother of his nurse, who cuts down his attacker. The Persians are routed, with several of their generals including satrap Mithrobarzanes of Cappadocia being killed; as their cavalry flees Alexander surrounds their Greek mercenaries, who refuse to surrender and are massacred; perhaps 2000 of them are captured and enslaved as traitors to the national Greek cause. Memnon escapes south into Ionia; Asistes kills himself; Alexander orders ceremonial funerals for the twenty-five dead Companion Cavalry and tax-remission for their families; the high-ranking Persian dead are also honoured.
Alexander orders that his troops are not to plunder the region, as they are liberating it; he makes the Macedonian Calas governor of local Hellespontine Phrygia, thus keeping on the Persian system of government, and makes the local tribes pay tribute at the same rate as they did to Persia; Parmenion is sent ahead to Dascylium; Alexander pardons the Persian headquarters town of Zeleia and advances to Ephesus, whose garrison has fled on news of the Granicus battle, entering it four days after the battle and evicting the Persian-allied oligarchy in favour of the democratic party.
Alexander marches on inland to Sardes, the Persian western capital and home of their regional treasury, where governor Mithrines surrenders; he appoints Asander, Parmenion’s brother, as governor of Lydia. The refugee Persian mercenary general Memnon heads for Caria with his fleet.
Parmenion conquers nearby Aeolia; Alexander announces that he supports the removal of all the pro-Persian oligarchies and tyrannies in Aeolis and Ionia in favour of democracy, which boosts his local support. He also refuses to impose tribute.
Alexander marches on across southern Ionia to Caria, where Orontobates the satrap holds out. He besieges Miletus, where the commander has changed his mind about surrendering on hearing that Memnon and the Persian fleet are on their way, and the main city is occupied but the citadel holds out; the Macedonian/Greek fleet under Nicanor arrives and occupies the outer harbour. 400 Phoenician ships of the Persian navy arrive to bolster the defence, but Alexander refuses to risk a naval battle; the rest of the city is stormed and the survivors of the garrison and oligarchy flee to an offshore island but have to surrender as Alexander pursues them there; the locals are pardoned and the 300 mercenary troops are enrolled in the Macedonian army. Miletus becomes a democracy.
The Persian fleet has to retreat, short of water as Alexander has sent troops under Parmenion’s son Philotas to harass their landing-parties from collecting any; it heads off into the Mediterranean and Alexander dismisses the Macedonian fleet as he prepares to head on by land alone.
Alexander enters Caria; exiled queen Ada, sister of the current pro-Persian king Pixodarus, joins him at her citadel of Alinda and adopts him as her ‘son’.
Alexander besieges Orontobates and Memnon in Halicarnasssus; his siege-engines are attacked in a major sally, but the latter is repulsed, its commander Ephialtes is killed, and some of his men are cut off retreating as the gates are closed before they can get back inside; the city surrenders before the damaged walls are stormed, and Memnon flees but Orontobates holds out in the citadel. Ada is restored as ruler, and there is no talk of democracy in Caria.
Alexander sends Parmenion on the inland route from Sardes directly east into Phrygia, heading for Gordium and receiving the reinforcements who are due to arrive for the 333 campaign en route. He allows his married troops to return home for the winter.
Alexander marches into Lycia, where the garrison of Hyparna surrenders; he rounds coastal Mount Climax, taking a path along the beach at low tide and so avoiding a detour and according to Callisthenes receiving divine assistance via the sudden lull in the southerly winds, which were blowing the sea across his route. He receives the surrender of and an honorary crown from Pisidia. At around this time there is apparently some revelation of a suspect message sent to Alexander of Lyncestis, commander of the Thessalian cavalry and princeling of a defunct ex-royal dynasty of a western Macedonian principality, from Darius via a Persian noble called Sisines who Parmenion arrests and sends to Alexander, but details are confused as to dates and import. Apparently, Alexander of Lyncestis is offered the Macedonian throne with Persian help.
Aspendus surrenders; Sagalassus is taken by storm; Alexander heads on north into Phrygia.
Midwinter 334/3
Alexander reaches Celenae, capital of the satrapy of Phrygia, which surrenders; he enters the two of Gordium on the Royal Road from Sarrdes to Susa, which is the designated rendezvous for Parmenion and reinforcements from Thrace/Macedon/Greek allies who are due shortly. While there, legend has it that Alexander inspects the ‘Gordian Knot’, the complicated tether that attaches the chariot of the founder-king Gordius of Phrygia to a pillar in the temple and which only the ‘King of Asia’ is supposed to be able to undo, and cuts it with his sword.
Alexander’s uncle and brother-in-law, King Alexander of Epirus, accepts an invitation from Greek cities in southern Italy, led by Tarentum, to aid them against local tribes and possibly also the Romans and Samnites to the west of these as ultimate threats to their security.
333
May? – Parmenion arrives with c.3000 Macedonians and 1000 Greeks and others; an Athenian embassy arrives to ask for the release of Athenians captured fighting for Darius at the Granicus, but is told that it must wait for the end of the war.
Alexander’s troops take Ancyra (Ankara), which surrenders, and overruns Paphlagonia; he leaves Gordium to march on to the Taurus mountains, with the general Antigonus ‘Monopthalmus’ (‘One-Eye’), aged around sixty and later a leading ‘Successor’, left in command at Celenae to subdue the central Anatolian tribes. Sabictus is installed as governor of Cappadocia.
Memnon campaigns with 300 ships in the eastern Aegean from his headquarters on Cos and takes Chios; Alexander is informed and sends 500 talents from seized Persian treasury at Sardes’ home to Antipater to pay for a fleet and 600 more with two officers to raise an allied Greek fleet.
Nearchus the Cretan, later Alexander’s admiral, becomes governor of Lycia on the south-west coast of Asia Minor.
June – Memnon dies at the siege of Mytilene; his widow, Barsine, the daughter of senior Persian satrap Artabazus who was once an exile at Philip II’s court, is apparently in Syria as she is later captured by Alexander there. The Persian fleet, now commanded by his nephew Pharnabazus, take Mytilene and forces it to become a subject ally (August) and so secures Lesbos, then goes on into the Cyclades, installing or restoring pro-Persian tyrants.
Late June/early July? – Hearing of the death of Memnon, Darius holds an emergency council-of-war of his generals in Susa as they await Alexander. Darius executes his mercenary general Charidemus the Athenian for alleged insolence in asking that he be placed in command of an army, dominated by 30,000 Greeks, to face Alexander. The court moves to Babylon and Darius decides to take command himself; a massive army is collected and moves on Syria.
The Persians send orders to Pharnabazus to take c.200 ships and deliver a force of hired mainland Greek mercenaries to Darius, landing them at Tripoli in Phoenicia; this delays the campaign and only about half the fleet returns to the Aegean to join the squadron that has been left there.
Datames and a northern section of this, ?ten ships, flees Antipater’s Macedonian admiral Proteas in an encounter after taking Tenedos.
July – Alexander crosses the Taurus through the ‘Cilician Gates’ pass into Cilicia; on arrival he plunges into the icy River Cydnus at Tarsus for a swim and gets a severe chill, and is about to drink some medicine given by his doctor Philip when a letter from Parmenion arrives alleging that Darius has bribed Philip to poison him. He hands the doctor the letter to read while he drinks.
Ptolemy and Parmenion’s son Asander defeat Orontobates, governor of part of Caria, and complete the conquest of the Ionian coast with Halicarnassus while allied ships take the Persian naval base at Cos; Alexander halts in Cilicia for around a month (possibly due to his illness), holds Games at Soli, and (early September?) advances via Mallus and Myriandros/Iskenderun.
Early October? – Alexander’s friend Harpalus leaves for Megara to rally Greek resistance to the Persian fleet; Alexander of Lyncestis is deprived of his cavalry command amidst suspicion of contacts with Persia, and may be arrested.
Parmenion sends word that Darius is nearing the ‘Persian Gates’ pass across the Amanus range from the Euphrates; Alexander advances to Myriandrus to meet Parmenion and they cross the Amanus into the Orontes valley in northern Syria looking for Darius’ army, which is somewhere to his east, inland.
Darius comes down to the coast to Alexander’s rear, capturing his ‘base camp’ hospital at Issus on the coast and mutilating the sick and wounded; Alexander is informed, sends scouts back along the coast who see the Persian camp-fires, and moves back through the pass to confront him. As a result Darius is fighting facing south-east on the Issus plain, Alexander facing north-west; the river ‘Pinarus’ is between the two armies.
?Early November – Battle of Issus: Alexander, possibly with 25–30,000 troops (5000 cavalry) and outnumbered, advances around ten miles from his overnight camp to the Persian position in the plain of Issus near a river (probably the Payas). Alexander commands his right wing with his Companion cavalry, with the ‘Shield-Bearers’ regiment on the right of the main infantry in the centre, the Foot Companions in the centre of the infantry, and the Greek mercenaries on the left of the infantry; on the left wing are the other Macedonian infantry and some cavalry with Parmenion in charge. The sea is to the left of Parmenion on the left wing; the hills are to the right (east) of Alexander’s right wing. The battlefield is fairly narrow so the Persians cannot overwhelm the Macedonians by outflanking on the plain; however, Darius sends some light infantry into the hills on Alexander’s right to outflank him and the Agrianoi are sent to drive them back.
Darius moves some cavalry to his right, on the west side of the battle by the shore; Alexander sends some Thessalian cavalry from his right to his left to confront them, out of sight behind the front line. Two Companion Cavalry squadrons plug the gap. Alexander’s cavalry on his right wing charges; the opposing Persian cavalry then charges onto Alexander’s advancing force but is repulsed; the Companion Cavalry pushes the Persian left wing back, then moves in on their infantry in the centre. Darius’ Greek mercenaries cross the river to attack the Macedonian infantry but are driven back by the Companion Cavalry taking them in the rear and retreat; on the Macedonian left Parmenion drives the Persian right wing back onto their centre. The Thessalians on Alexander’s left wing now charge on round the retreating Persian right wing to join the attack on their centre, and Darius is threatened with encirclement and turns his chariot to retreat; his brother Oxathres and other Royal Guards protect his flight as he has to abandon his chariot on rough ground and flees on horseback. 2000 of his Greek mercenaries also escape to join him, while another force heads for Tripoli to embark on the Phoenician fleet there.
The Persians lose supposedly 100,000 and the Macedonians around 300, according probably to Callisthenes, but this is unlikely; Alexander pursues Darius into the Amanus foothills but he escapes in the dark. Alexander returns to camp, and next morning inspects the high-ranking captives who include the Royal Family womenfolk. Traditionally, when he enters the royal tent with his officers the Great King’s wife, Stateira, does homage to Hephaistion by mistake (as he is taller?), and Alexander promises the family his protection and forms a friendship with Darius’ mother Sisygambis. The Great King’s son, aged around six, and two daughters are kept as hostages with his wife and mother, and the boy probably dies later as he is never heard of again. Letters are found in the Great King’s camp retailing his contacts with dissident Greeks, including possibly Demosthenes.
The Hellenic League sends Alexander a gold crown on news of the victory.
Italy
Alexander of Epirus forms the cities of southern Italy into a league and leads them in successful battles against the inland Lucanians, sending prisoners and hostages to Epirus.
Alexander’s Empire
January? – Alexander invades Phoenicia; Strato, son of the absent king who is in the Phoenician fleet at sea, surrenders the walled island city of Aradus, avoiding a long siege; Alexander is encamped there when Darius sends an embassy, apparently offering friendship and alliance (and a ransom of 10,000 talents?) in return for his family. Traditionally (but apocryphally?), Alexander writes back to Darius accusing him of murdering his predecessor, being involved in Philip II’s killing, and bribing the Greeks to rebel against Macedon and bringing up the sack of Athens with its temples in 480 and other blasphemies committed by Persia; he says that the gods are clearly on his side and in future Darius should address him as lord of Asia.
Sidon surrenders, and Alexander allows Hephaistion to choose the new king – Abdalonymus, the modestly living local descendant of the old royal family who is working in a (his own?) garden when the Macedonians come to interview him.
Chios returns to allegiance to the Greek cause; Cleander brings reinforcements from the Peloponnese to Alexander.
?Greek envoys sent to Darius before Issus, including Iphicrates of Athens, are arrested at Damascus and interned; so is Memnon’s widow Barsine, who apparently becomes Alexander’s mistress if her son ‘Heracles’ is indeed by him (he only appears in 323 as a candidate for the succession).
Tyre refuses to let Alexander enter their island city and sacrifice to ‘Heracles’ at his temple (that is, equivalent local god Melkart) there, and tells him to sacrifice in the mainland suburb’s temple instead. He besieges the island, and demolishes the mainland district’s buildings to build a ‘mole’ out to the walls (about half a mile away from land) for his siege-engines to use. Before the work gets underway, he sends an embassy for surrender; the defenders kill his envoys and throw their bodies off the walls. The causeway is protected from bombardment from the walls by two siege-towers erected at the seaward end, but the defenders send out ships towing a loaded fireship, which crashes into and burns the towers; Alexander has the mole widened and more towers constructed, and goes off via Sidon to collect timber for this from the forest of Mount Lebanon; after he leaves a storm damages the mole and holds up work.
Most of the Phoenician fleet in Persian service in the eastern Aegean deserts to Alexander now its homeland is under threat; Rhodes sends him ships, and the Cypriot kings arrive to pledge allegiance and give him 120 ships; he now has around three times the size of the Tyrian fleet, and can bottle the latter up in the island’s harbours and starve the city. Some 4000 hired Greek mercenaries arrive, as does a ship from Antipater in Macedon with news of plots by King Agis of Sparta and his Cretan allies.
On Alexander’s return, his engineers devise a plan to hang battering-rams from platforms at the mastheads of his ships, sail these up to the walls, and swing them at the top of the walls to breach the latter before men swarm across on ‘bridges’; this is tried out to add to bombardment at sea from ships and from the mole but the Tyrians drive the ship-board equipment back from the seaward walls with grappling-hooks and flame-throwers. Ships are harassed by divers and having their anchor-cables cut.
Darius’ wife Stateira dies while in Macedonian captivity, probably during childbirth. A second embassy arrives from Darius, offering the hand of his elder daughter as a Persian ally and all the lands west of the Euphrates; the siege is bogged down into a stalemate and most of the Companions have backed abandoning it at a recent council, and Parmenion traditionally advises Alexander to accept the Great King’s offer. He says he would accept it if he were Alexander; his king replies that he would accept if he were Parmenion and turns it down.
Alexander’s new fleet clears the eastern Aegean of Persian allies, and overthrows Chares the Athenian mercenary who has seized Miletus but who now flees. However, Pharnabazus ships 8000? refugee Greek mercenaries from Darius’ army from Phoenicia to Crete to be used for the planned revolt by his ally, Agis of Sparta.
Late July/early August? (seven months into siege) – Thirteen Tyrian warships emerge from the island harbour during ‘lunch-break’ for the Greek naval patrols to attack Alexander’s Cypriot allies’ ships while these are beached in the harbour on the northern side of the mainland, but Alexander is informed and leads a quick sally by sea from the southern mainland harbour to take the enemy attackers in the rear and destroy them. After two days’ rest Tyre is attacked by land and sea and attackers climb up siege-towers on the mole and on ships placed by the walls to storm the damaged walls while the Greek ships attack the island’s harbours, and the ‘Shield-Bearers’ lead the first breach of the walls, although their commander, Admetus, is killed. Alexander follows, and the city is stormed and sacked; 8000 of the populace are slaughtered and the rest (30,000?) who have not fled by sea earlier are enslaved, with the exception of those who manage to get to sanctuary in the temples, which Alexander has announced will be preserved. Envoys from their African colony of Carthage, which has lent the defence ships, are also spared. The city is handed over to a Greek garrison and settlers, but refugee king Azemilk is allowed back to rule nominally.
Alexander heads south for Egypt; the Jews are traditionally granted autonomy as Alexander passes their lands.
Batis, governor of Gaza, and his Arab garrison refuse to surrender; he believes the huge walls are too high for Alexander’s siege-towers, so Alexander constructs a massive ‘ramp’ to the walls to enable his engines to reach the top. The walls are also undermined by sappers, and when breaches are opened the Greeks attack. Alexander is wounded in the shoulder by a catapult-bolt on one of the early attempts to storm the walls, but (October? – two months into the siege) at the fourth attempt the city is taken; the men are killed and the women and children are enslaved, and according to some versions Alexander has Batis tied behind his chariot and drags him round the walls (if true, presumably as an echo of Achilles doing this to Hector at Troy).
Alexander enters Egypt unopposed as satrap Maxaces surrenders at Pelusium; possibly the garrison has been weakened by the recent plundering incursion of Amyntas, a refugee Macedonian exile in the Great King’s army, and his mercenaries after they fled from Issus in 333. The fleet sails up the Nile to Memphis, the ancient capital, while the army marches parallel.
14 November – Alexander is crowned as Pharoah at Memphis with Egyptian rites; he honours the local gods, especially Apis the sacred bull whose worship was profaned by past Great Kings, and goes down the western branch of the Nile to its mouth where he decides to found a new port and capital for the province, an exclusively Greco-Macedonian settlement.
?Revolt of Tarentum against the authority of Alexander of Epirus; he has to move his headquarters for campaigns to loyal Thurii.
331
Alexander’s Empire
Alexander’s Aegean fleet delivers prisoners from their round-up of rebels to him in Egypt; he sends the arrested Greeks home to be judged in their home cities and sends the leaders of the rebel garrison of Chios to serve as convicts at a fortress by the First Cataract.
January–February? – Alexander leads a picked force across the desert, south-west from Alexandria to the oracle of the god ‘Ammon’/Amun-Ra (identified with Zeus) at the distant oasis of Siwah. The mission is later written about (e.g. by Arrian in the second century AD) as a quest to discover his true identity and whether he is the son of a god, as well as (or instead of?) Philip II; he will adopt the two horns of the god Ammon on his coins. He has also been invited by the local Greek colony at Cyrene to visit them in return for an alliance and aid (a detail left out by Ptolemy, who conquered Cyrene and so reversed the initial ‘alliance’ policy), and possibly Greeks from Cyrene either tell him of the oracle or are among his guides. He goes along the coast to Paraetonium halfway to Cyrene, then south inland, travelling by night – with or without supernatural ‘help’ (crows or snakes) to assist him on the right route as some (Callisthenes? and Ptolemy) later write of the eight-day journey. Some of his senior officers are with him, probably Ptolemy, the later ruler of Egypt in 322–283, and at the shrine he is greeted as the ‘son of Zeus/Ammon’ (the normal nomenclature of the Pharoah) according to Callisthenes. Possibly his personal interpretation of this affects his increasingly bold view of his own exalted rank as a living ‘hero’ like Achilles or Heracles.
Alexander returns to Memphis where he holds Games; he appoints two Persians (one is Doloapsis the Egyptian) and two Greeks (one is Cleomenes of Naucratis, in charge of finances) as governors of Egypt.
7 April – Traditional date of the foundation of Alexandria, which Alexander lays out plans for with his architect Aristoboulus and others – though he may have planned the site on a visit in late 332 and this date be the start of construction months later.
Probably after 11,000 reinforcements leave Macedon for Alexander, King Agis of Sparta launches a revolt in the Peloponnese, aided by the force of mercenaries that he has brought back from Crete.
May – Alexander bridges the Nile at Memphis and sets out for Syria and Mesopotamia to confront Darius; Parmenion’s younger son Hector is accidentally drowned in the Nile, and possibly his elder brother Philotas comes under suspicion of a plot but is cleared. Alexander of Lyncestis, eldest of the three brothers of that western Macedonian exprincipality’s royal family, is imprisoned over this or another conspiracy. Meanwhile, the new Alexandrian (Persian) governor of the Palestinian province of Samaria, married to the daughter of the Jewish ‘High Priest’ at Jerusalem, has died and his Macedonian successor has been murdered in a native revolt; Alexander suppresses the Samaritans and hands part of their territory to the neighbouring Jews, hence possibly the later legend of his meeting and doing obeisance to the Jewish ‘High Priest’.
May–July – Alexander prepares his army at Tyre, and holds Games; he receives reports on the Spartan-led revolt in the Peloponnese, and sends a squadron of ships commanded by Amphoterus to the Aegean to keep the islands from joining in and then land in the Peloponnese to recruit allies, and 100 Cypriot and Phoenician ships are sent to Crete to overrun towns loyal to their recent ally Agis of Sparta. Chios and Rhodes send envoys to have their garrison removed, which Alexander accepts to win them over; Athens sends an embassy headed by the usefully named Achilles to flatter Alexander into releasing his Athenian prisoners from Darius’ navy, and he agrees but keeps the sailors in his service so they do not return home and defect to Agis.
Coeranus becomes his tribute-collector for Phoenicia, and Philoxenus for Western Asia Minor. Menander becomes governor of Lydia; Asclepiodotus replaces Arimnas in Syria. Harpalus becomes senior treasurer.
Memnon, governor of Thrace, revolts against Antipater but is defeated and is forced to surrender in return for keeping his post.
July – Hephaistion is sent ahead to bridge the Euphrates. Having trained his army back to war-readiness after a year without combat, Alexander follows a few weeks later; the bridging-work, at Thapsacus, is delayed by the arrival of Darius’ advance-guard on the opposite bank to block it, led by Mazaeus the evicted governor of Syria and Cilicia. These retreat when Alexander arrives and the river is bridged, with iron chains holding the wooden structure in place; Alexander avoids the direct route east to Babylon down the Euphrates valley as Mazaeus is burning the crops ahead of him to deny him fodder. He moves north-east across the hills to the Tigris, and crosses the river unopposed to find the land unburnt so his horses can feed.
20 September – Eclipse of the moon; Alexander offers sacrifices to the relevant gods ahead of battle. Darius is in the city of Arbela down the Tigris valley, while his troops prepare a battlefield at Gaugamela seventy miles away by levelling the plain for his scythed chariots.
21 September – Alexander advances on Gaugamela; he has around 47,000 troops, and estimates vary of Darius’ army with many exaggerations but it is clearly far larger, possibly 200,000 as they include levies from all the eastern satrapies to the Indus (plus 4000 Greek mercenaries).
29–30 September – Alexander orders his army to march on the Persian camp at night, ready for a surprise attack; they arrive at the final ridge before the camp to find that the Persians are all drawn up in battle array. On Parmenion’s advice (assuming that this is not apocryphal as Parmenion is always portrayed in the sources as the voice of caution), Alexander decides not to attack in case of traps and orders his men to camp; a delay will also cause the Persians to have to stand to arms for another day and so unnerve them.
30 September – Alexander and his officers investigate the battlefield on horseback, and note the pits and stakes ready to deal with his cavalry. He makes sacrifices at dusk, including (uniquely) to the goddess of Fear, and a Macedonian council-of-war is held; the officers urge a night-time attack but Alexander refuses.
1 October, Battle of Gaugamela – Alexander places the Foot Companions in his centre, with the 3000 of the ‘Shield-Bearers’ regiment on their right extremity; then himself and his cavalry Companions on the right wing, with 2000 archers and Agrianoi tribal light infantry in front. On the left wing are Parmenion and the allied Greek cavalry. Squadrons of mixed infantry and cavalry are on the flanks to protect against an enveloping movement by the far larger Persian army on the main wings’ rear, and 20,000 Greek and allied ex-Persian infantry make up the reserves behind the main wings. Opposite the Greeks, Darius is in the centre in his royal chariot behind a screen of fifteen Indian elephants, with Mazaeus in command of the right wing and Bessus, satrap of Bactria, and the troops from the Eastern provinces on the left wing. The content of Alexander’s speech is probably less rhetorical than the long-winded version in Curtius Rufus, but the reminder that they are fighting for all Asia and the command to raise a loud war-cry (in Arrian) are likely enough.
Alexander advances on the Persians, moving his right wing and centre at an angle rightwards to stop the Persians opposite overlapping them and thus opening a gap between his right-centre and his left. He moves onto stony ground beyond the levelled area that the chariots will not find easy to use; the Persian right wing light cavalry (especially ‘Scythians’ from the Central Asian steppes) moves out to his right to outflank him, and then charge; this attack is held and repulsed with an initial retreat to lure them forward against a smaller-sized foe, which reserves to the rear then reinforce. The remainder of the Persian left wing moves up to help the Scythians against Alexander’s right wing; the Persian scythed chariots charge in the centre, but the Greek archers and javelineers (especially the Agrainoi) pick their drivers off then attack the horses from close range so they career out of control, the Greek ranks opening up to let them pass by. With the Persian left wing having moved away from the centre to support the Scythians, there is a gap between their left and centre and Alexander now leads a Companion cavalry charge (4000 men?) into this. The cavalry crashes into the Persian centre infantry in front of Darius, and the Foot Companions (7000 men?) follow them; traditionally Alexander kills Darius’ charioteer, and the Great King soon retreats out of range onto the road to Arbela.
The Persian cavalry on their left wing attacks the Greek infantry, but is held by a smaller force in a phalanx; on the Persian right Mazaeus is pushing Parmenion back, and 3000 Persian cavalry apparently ride round the side of the Greek army to their baggage-train to rescue Darius’ family but ?his mother, Sisygambis, refuses to be rescued; Greek reinforcements drive the attackers off. Similarly, a Persian and Indian force slips through the gap beyond Alexander’s Foot Companions’ advance and breaks into the Greek camp to loot the baggage and is driven off by the Greek reserves. (Or is this two versions of one rescue-attempt?)
Alexander leads 2000 cavalry after the fleeing Darius, but? (not agreed among sources as to timing or content of message) receives a messenger from Parmenion saying he is in serious danger and ?turns back to charge the latter’s attackers in the rear. This may be the clash where sixty Companions are killed and Hephaistion wounded – or else that refers to the attack on Darius’ rearguard in the pursuit later. Possibly the ‘message from Parmenion’ was exaggerated (though unlikely to have been invented) in accounts written after the general’s execution in 330 to play up his poor generalship. With or without Alexander’s assistance, Parmenion repulses the Persians largely due to his Thessalian cavalry. Alexander returns to the hunt and arrives at the empty Persian headquarters at Arbela, at the River Great Zab at dusk; he has to call off the pursuit as Darius is too far ahead; Darius gets away to Ecbatana, capital of Media, across the Zagros Mountians to the north-east. The battle ends with unknown but massive casualties.
Autumn – Antipater defeats and kills King Agis of Sparta in battle at Megalopolis; the revolt in the Peloponnese collapses. Eudamidas succeeds his brother Agis as the Eurypontid king.
Italy
Alexander, king of Epirus, is killed in battle by the Lucanians in southern Italy on his expedition to assist the local cities against inland tribes; succeeded by his infant son by Philip II’s daughter Cleopatra, Neoptolemus II.
Alexander’s Empire
Alexander arrives at Babylon, which its governor Mazaeus (a senior commander at Gaugamela) has surrendered; Mazaeus and his sons come out to meet him a few miles away, and escort him to the city; he draws his army up in battle array before the walls in case of trouble, but a procession of the inhabitants emerges to welcome him with officials and priests; he enters the city in the Great King’s chariot for a ceremonial welcome and occupies the main palace. He orders the restoration of temples damaged by Xerxes and makes sacrifices to the god Bel-Marduk, thus allying with the priestly orders against the Persian monarchy. Mazaeus is made satrap of the province, with two Macedonan generals to guard him; Mithrines, ex-governor of Sardes, is given the satrapy of Armenia.
September–October? – Alexander spends five weeks celebrating and recuperating in Babylon.
Alexander sets out for Susa and Persepolis, leaving Darius untouched in Ecbatana rather than tackle the Zagros mountains in midwinter; around 15,000 Greek, Macedonian and Thessalian reinforcements arrive to join the army, which is now around 45,000 strong.
Alexander enters Susa, and occupies the royal palace. The local governor is retained; the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton the ‘tyrannicides’ looted by Xerxes from Athens in 480 are sent back to Athens in a highly symbolic gesture.
Late December? – Alexander marches on towards Persepolis; a local tribe who are usually given heavy bribes by the Great Kings not to interfere with traffic on the Royal Road are denied their money and resist, so they are suppressed and their chieftain intercedes with his aunt, Darius’ mother Sisygambis, who secures their pardon in return for paying tribute to Alexander.
The main army and baggage is sent on along the coastal road under Parmenion via Kazarun into the Persian homeland, while Alexander and a picked force of fast-moving Companion Cavalry, Foot Companions, and light infantry head inland for the pass of the ‘Persian Gates’ that block the direct route to Persepolis; four days later they arrive at the narrow pass to be bombarded with stones from catapults by a large force of Persians (40,000?) behind a wall blocking it. Alexander has to retreat out of range, and he has to contemplate leaving this route blocked until a local shepherd shows him a path round the mountains to the rear of the pass. He leaves most of his men (4000?) in camp with fires lit overnight to lull the Persians into security, and leads a smaller force along this narrow track over another pass in the snow; once they are over into the plain four brigades of heavier infantry are sent ahead to the bridge over the river before Persepolis, while Alexander and the others run back across the foothills to take the Persian Gates guard-force in the rear. The enemy are caught unawares, and a trumpet is sounded to alert the main Greek army to attack them too; most Persians are killed.
January – The governor of Persepolis surrenders; Alexander enters the Persian capital and tells the descendants of deported Greeks settled nearby the previous century that they can go home. The city is sacked, but the palace is retained temporarily as his residence; he sits on the Great King’s throne and allegedly (here or at Susa?) it is too short for his legs to reach the ground so he has to use a table as a footstool, to the distress of attendant court servants who Parmenion’s son Philotas jeers at.
Pasargadae surrenders; the royal treasure stored across the Persian homeland is collected and readied for movement west.
Demosthenes defends his past conduct to the assembly of Athens in his speech ‘On the Crown’, after attack by Aeschines.
?Olympias leaves Macedon, to Antipater’s relief, to assist her daughter Cleopatra in Epirus as regent for the latter’s young son Neoptolemus II.
?April – Alexander decides to move into Media after Darius; before he leaves he burns the royal palace to the ground. One version (derived from Ptolemy, via Plutarch) has it that this is arranged as a calculated act of symbolic revenge for the sacks of Athens and other cities in Greece in 480 and Parmenion advised him not to do it as it all now belongs to him; another version famously has it that it was decided upon at a final banquet in the palace, at the suggestion of Ptolemy’s Athenian courtesan mistress Thais, and Alexander drunkenly agreed and let her throw the first torch into the buildings before a general move to emulate her.
May – Alexander moves north from Persepolis on Ecbatana/Hamadan, and is joined by 6000 reinforcements; Darius retreats towards the Caspian Sea with a small mixed force of Persians and Greek mercenaries, and fails to hold the ‘Caspian Gates’ pass into Hyrcania; he plans to head for Bactria, but (early June?) is arrested in his camp by a group of nobles led by his cousin Bessus and the satrap Nabarzanes.
June – Alexander enters Ecbatana, and establishes his treasury and a rearguard garrison of 6000 troops there led by Parmenion. He dismisses his Greek and Thessalian troops who were enrolled for the war with Persia, implying that this is now over; Parmenion is to defeat the Cadousians to the south-west and Harpalus to be treasurer in Ecbatana.
Alexander sets out for a swift cavalry pursuit of Darius; he misses the disintegrating royal escort on the side-roads in an eleven-day search, and arrives in Ragae/Rayy to be told by two loyalists of where Darius is being held prisoner in his camp by Bessus and Nabarzanes. He gallops there, and in the desert near Damghan he and c.60 light infantry on fast horses reach the enemy camp where the rebel leaders stab Darius, leave him dying in a wagon, and ride off.
Darius is apparently discovered by a Macedonian searching the wagons, and is either dead or (later sources) dies minutes later; his body is sent to Persepolis for burial and his brother Oxathres joins Alexander’s ‘Companions’ as Bessus is hunted for rebellion and regicide.
Alexander marches through the forests of Hyrcania, on the south shore of the Caspian Sea; Nabarzanes the regicide, encamped nearby, negotiates his pardon (surprisingly) and surrenders to be sent home; according to some accounts his intermediary was Bagoas, Darius’ favoured court eunuch, who now goes into Alexander’s service and becomes his lover (and probably acts as a crucial agent in introducing him to Persian court manners). Bessus flees east into Bactria. Alexander pardons the last 1500 loyal Greek mercenaries of Darius, commanded by Paron, and those who entered his service before the Philip/Persia war opened are allowed to go home and the rest are enrolled in the Macedonian army at the same rates of pay. The local tribesmen are put down for raiding, and Alexander’s kidnapped horse Bucephalus is recovered.
Alexander camps at Zadracarta, at the south-east corner of the Caspian; more eminent Persians surrender and are enrolled in his army, and the ?octogenarian satrap Artabazus, mother of Alexander’s alleged mistress Barsine widow of Memnon, and his seven sons arrives.
Alexander reaches Mashad, as Bessus arrives in Bactria and claims to be the new Great King, assuming the upright ceremonial cap/tiara of state. He avoids heading straight, north-east, for Bactria, as satrap Satibarzanes of Areia to the south-east, a former commander at Gaugamela and in Bessus’ conspiracy, offers to surrender and comes to the frontier to do so. Alexander keeps him in office, and enters his province en route to Bactria and its capital of Zariaspa/Balkh; he burns the excess baggage in his camp so the army can move faster.
Satibarzanes raises revolt at his capital, Saticoana/Herat, kills his new Greek officers, and besieges the loyalists in the citadel there; Alexander hastens his army to the town, and the rebel army takes refuge on a wooded hill outside but Alexander fires the scrub and kills those who do not emerge to face his troops. He then batters down the town’s walls and kills or enslaves the inhabitants; ‘Alexandria’, now Herat, is founded on the site and garrisoned. Satibarzanes escapes into the mountains and flees to join Bessus.
?Alexander starts to wear Persian court dress and use their court etiquette, at least with Persian courtiers; this arouses disquiet among some of his more nationalist officers, possibly including Philotas, last surviving son of Parmenion (see below).
Late August? – Alexander is joined by 6000 reinforcements from Macedon; he marches south into Seistan, not east into Bactria, as its rebel governor, another assassin of Darius, flees to the Indus valley but is arrested there by the locals and sent back to Alexander to be executed. Alexander camps at Farah in the north of the province, where a story allegedly emerges of a plot to kill him known to or headed by his close aide and boyhood friend Philotas, commander of the Companion Cavalry (‘Hipparch’) and son of Parmenion who now commands the rearguard and supply-route to the west at Ecbatana. According to the version derived from Ptolemy, a junior officer called Ceballinus finds out from his brother that the latter’s lover, Dymnus, has told him that he is involved in a plot to kill Alexander; Ceballinus goes to the royal tent to report it to the senior officer on duty, Philotas, but the accused are not arrested so next day he tries again and is told that Philotas had no time to approach his busy sovereign. After another day without action, Ceballinus reports the matter to one of Alexander’s ‘Royal Pages’, his aristocratic teenage attendants; the latter tells Alexander at once in his bath, and the accused are arrested except for Dymnus who kills himself; however, the extent of the plot is unclear, and Philotas is at least suspected over his not reporting it earlier. The anti-Alexander accounts (mostly connected to Athens tradition, influenced by his treatment of their historian Callisthenes in 327, below) imply that Philotas was innocent and was ‘set up’ for opposing Alexander’s recruitment of Persian officers and governors and move towards adopting Persian court etiquette. Others imply that Philotas was guilty and planned to murder Alexander as charged, with or without the support of his father Parmenion. The Ptolemy-derived versions have it that Philotas has already aroused disquiet for an alleged plot back in Egypt in 332 but been exonerated, and that his boasts about he and his father doing everything for which Alexander has taken the credit have been betrayed by his mistress Antigone (?to Craterus).
Philotas is questioned casually by Alexander but denies everything, and is arrested on the advice of the King’s other senior commanders led by Craterus (Arrian and other Roman history versions); he is questioned, and (Ptolemy’s version) brought before the army for a traditional Macedonian trial where Alexander accuses him of plotting regicide; he cannot deny that he ignored information about a plot, and he is sentenced to death with the other plotters; the army kills them with javelins. Three officers (including the later ‘Successor’ general Polemon), brothers of an officer who fled as soon as Philotas was arrested, are tried before the army but are acquitted and their brother is asked to come back and is acquitted too; probably Alexander of Lyncestis, kept a prisoner since earlier plots, is executed too. More dubiously, a messenger, Philotas’ friend Polydamas, is sent speedily on a fast camel to Parmenion at Ecbatana; he arrives eleven days later, delivers Alexander’s instructions to some of Parmenion’s officers, and next morning lures Parmenion away from his officers into the palace garden. Polydamas gives him a ‘letter from Philotas’ to read, and he and the loyal officers stab Parmenion to death – possibly just as a precaution lest he revolt in Alexander’s rear, possibly as he has been implicated in Philotas’ alleged plans. (Was the letter from Philotas significant and did it refer to the plot, so as Parmenion seemed pleased at it this implies that he knew the plan to kill Alexander?) His other officers accept the King’s verdict that he was guilty and obey Alexander’s letter, sent with Polydamas, to let the latter take over at Ecbatana; the troops remain loyal.
September – Alexander and c.35,000 men head from Farah across Areia towards Arachosia (Helmand and the region west of Kandahar), with Cleitus and his 4000 men rejoining them en route.
November – Kandahar is occupied and renamed ‘Alexandria’ with a garrison of 4000 installed; Alexander crosses the ‘Paropamisadae’/Hindu Kush mountains north into the lowlands of Bactria, heading for Bessus’ headquarters at Balkh. Satibarzanes moves south from Bactria to invade Areia behind Alexander, who has to send 6000 troops back to deal with him. The army crosses the Hindu Kush in snowstorms, heads north-east to the Kabul region, and secures the passes into Bactria, which Bessus has left open as he did not expect an attack this year; Alexander winters at Kapisa, which is renamed ‘Alexandria-in-the Caucasus’ and given a Greek urban settlement.
329
May? – After seven months encamped around Kapisa, Alexander crosses the Khaiwak pass (11,000 feet) across the northern end of the Hindu Kush into the Oxus river-valley plains of Bactria. Meanwhile, the rebellion in Areia is put down by a mixed Greco-Persian force and Artabazus reportedly kills Satibarzanes in personal combat in battle near Herat; Bessus burns the crops around Balkh as Alexander approaches and flees to cross the Oxus; 6000 of his cavalry desert.
Early June? – Alexander occupies Balkh, and Artabazus arrives to report on the victory and is made the new satrap of Bactria. Alexander chases Bessus across the desert to the Oxus, having to travel by night due to the heat and reportedly refusing a drink of water from a helmet as all his men cannot drink (a similar story is told of him in the Makran desert in 325). He camps near Kilif on the south side of the river, and sends a force of veterans and invalids who will find the hard campaigning ahead difficult home with orders to father children for his future army. Bessus has burnt the boats in the river, so Alexander has the leather tent-skins blown up into inflatable rafts and the army crosses on those.
Alexander advances into Sogdia/Sogdiana, around modern Samarcand (Maracanda), and Bessus’ henchmen arrest him and send to Alexander to offer to hand him over to gain time for their own plans. Alexander agrees, and Ptolemy collects the prisoner from a village rendezvous and brings him in a ‘yoke’ like a Persian convict to the new ruler. Alexander arrives to find Bessus standing beside the road and asks why he betrayed and murdered his lord, and Bessus blames his subordinates for talking him into it; he is flogged and sent back to Balkh and on to Persia under escort of Darius’ brother Oxathres, to be executed and exhibited on a cross as a regicide according to Persian law.
Alexander crosses Sogdiana to the River Jaxartes (Amur Darya) at the furthest northeastern boundary of the Persian empire and ‘civilization’, and punishes the locals for attacking his patrols; he is wounded in the ankle by an arrow during a skirmish and has to be carried in a litter. The infantry and cavalry quarrel over who is to have the honour of escorting him so they take it in turns.
July – Alexander occupies Maracanda/Samarcand, the provincial capital, and reaches the Jaxartes; Alexander founds a new Alexandria (now Khojend) to replace the Persian fortress there. The nomad ‘Scythians’ on the far bank defy him. Meanwhile, a group of Bessus’ lieutenants, led by Spitamenes, have risen in revolt behind Alexander and their agents have encouraged local villagers to attack his garrisons so he burns assorted villages. The walled ex-Persian fortress of Kurkath (founded by Cyrsu ‘the Great’) is a more serious proposition than the poorly walled villages as it has high walls and Alexander does not have stones for his siege-train to use in bombardment, but the summer has dried up the riverbed passing through the town and exposed a gap under the walls at its exit so he leads his men inside that way; the town is destroyed as an example.
August? – The new ‘Alexandria’ is founded and built by the army; as Spitamenes attacks the garrison in Maracanda the Scythians north of the Jaxartes are emboldened to gather on the river-bank and defy Alexander, so he sends 2000 mercenaries off to relieve Maracanda and prepares his rafts to cross the river. The omens are deemed unfavourable, so he sets up his catapults on the bank and fires missiles across the river to break up the nomads; once they are demoralized he crosses the river on the rafts, their horses swimming alongside and archers firing at the Scythians to keep them back from the bank. The Macedonians land and their cavalry repels the enemy; as the Scythians move in for battle he leaves a smallish advance-guard in front of his main force to lure them on, then once the enemy are within reach his main cavalry and their new local mounted archers charge them. The Scythians lose 1000 men and flee to the safety of the hills; Alexander pursues them but catches dysentery from the poor water and has to give up the chase.
Spitamenes and his local cavalry archers attack, defeat, and later destroy the relief-force sent to Maracanda en route, at the Zarafshan River; Alexander takes 7000 Companion cavalry and light infantry in a quick dash to Maracanda, arriving within three days; Spitamenes abandons his attack and flees out of reach into the desert to the west. Alexander pursues him to the Oxus, but has to give up the search and retires to Balkh for the winter.
Some 21,600 reinforcements ordered from the west arrive, led by Asander and Nearchus the Cretan, later Alexander’s admiral.
Alexander winters at Balkh; the new satrap/governor of Ariea, Stasanor, brings his predecessor Arasces and Barzanes, ex-satrap of Parthia, there for ?execution. Scythian tribal envoys and Pharasmanes of the Chorasmians (south of the Aral Sea) submit.
Alexander marches back to the Oxus, and discovers some gushing oil-wells there; three army divisions cross the Oxus to tackle Spitamenes while two remain to garrison Bactria and the fifth, led by Craterus, founds an ‘Alexandria’ at the oasis of Merv.
Alexander campaigns in Sogdiana to suppress the local tribes while Craterus and Cenus pursue the fugitive Spitamenes.
Early autumn – Based at Maracanda/Samarcand, Alexander murders his veteran senior officer Cleitus ‘the Black’, co-‘Hipparch’ of the Companion Cavalry with Hephaistion and just appointed governor of Bactria to replace the aged Artabazus, in a drunken brawl. Boasting at a party about the respective merits of Philip II and Alexander as creators of Macedonian triumphs gets out of hand – due to the poor quality water and an epidemic of dysentery the Macedonians are drinking unwatered wine. Cleitus tries to insist that Alexander owes it all to Philip and has just used his creations, and reminds him about how he had to save the rash King’s life at the battle of the Granicus. (One account, not others.) He is hustled out of the room as Alexander looks for a weapon and hits a guard for not sounding the alarm as he demands. ?Later when Cleitus returns, or in the same brawl, he hurls another insult and Alexander snatches a guard’s spear and runs him through. Alexander sobers up and falls into a deep depression, starving himself for three days, and has to be talked round by his officers, while a priest obligingly says that the god Dionysus is to blame out of anger that Alexander forgot the day’s due sacrifice to him; the army condemns Cleitus to death so his murder was technically legal. ?Was Cleitus resentful at being sent off active service to be a governor as a form of punishment for his attitude to adopting Persian court ritual?
Most of the Sogdians surrender; Spitamenes manages to launch a raid on the town of Balkh while the army is away and mauls its garrison, but has to retreat to the desert and en route runs into Craterus who routs him and destroys most of his Scythian nomad cavalry; he is forced into hiding and killed by his followers who send his head to Alexander.
Alexander plans to introduce the Persian ‘kow-tow’ prostration, the ‘proskynesis’, to his court and to have Macedonians as well as Persians do it to make them equal, but this is fiercely resisted by a substantial section of the officers; he tries it out on his senior commanders and other friends at a private party (to avoid humiliation?), with those who do it then given the Persian royal kiss of admission into the ranks of ‘Royal Kin’ where they will be exempt from doing it in future. The historian Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew, objects to the practice as un-Greek and only fitting for the gods, and has already clashed with Alexander’s ally, the Thracian ‘sophist’ Anarxarchus, about it at a recent dinner-party – where Anaxarchus argued that Alexander would surely be given divine honours once he was dead so it was only anticipating this to treat him like a god for his divine achievements now. Callistenes apparently tries to acquire the royal kiss without having to prostrate himself first, but his omission is pointed out by a witness on the spot so he is denied one; Callisthenes encourages resistance.
Alexander winters at Nautaca.
Early – Final campaign opens to overrun the rebels in the mountains of eastern Sogdiana.
The veteran Sogdian chieftain Oxyartes centres resistance to Alexander on his ‘Sogdian Rock’ fortress, allegedly impregnable at the top of a cliff. Alexander arrives and launches a siege, and is told by Oxyartes’ envoys that he will only get up the rock if he can find flying men. He selects a group of picked volunteer mountaineers, with a promise of twelve talents to the first to the summit and less for the others; 300 men climb up the adjacent cliff in the dark to a point overlooking the fortress; then they signal their arrival and Alexander’s herald shouts up to announce to Oxyartes that Alexander has found his fliers. The chieftain has fled but his son surrenders the rock, and a banquet is held; it is arranged for the chieftain’s daughter Roxane (‘Little Star’) to marry Alexander, and Oxyartes is summoned to the camp to give his consent and assist Alexander in getting others to surrender too; after the wedding Oxyartes becomes governor of the surrounding province.
Alexander besieges the nearby ‘Rock of Chorienes’ (Koh-i-Noor mountains), where the deep ravine ahead of the main wall is filled in by soldiers with mud and earth once pegs and a series of hurdles have been put in place to prevent this cascading down sideways. Catapults are moved up to bombard the fortress, and the commander (Sisimithres) is persuaded to surrender by Oxyartes and is allowed to keep his stronghold as an ally; Alexander spends the summer at Balkh preparing for his invasion of India.
Some 30,000 Persian boys are enrolled as a new army to be trained in Persia in the Macedonian manner, ready for Alexander to use on his return from India; Hephaistion receives the Persian rank of ‘Grand Vizier’ as chief minister, ‘Chiliarch’ in Greek.
There is a conspiracy of some of the ‘Royal Pages’, high-born Macedonian youths serving as Alexander’s personal attendants, to murder him; they are tutored by Callisthenes and allegedly he has been inveighing about the King as a tyrant and bemoaning his autocratic behaviour and Persianized court etiquette. The leading plotter, Hermolaus, has recently been flogged and disgraced for illegally spearing the king’s designated boar on a hunt and his officer father has been sent home involuntarily to Macedon. The conspirators arrange for them to take over the roster in Alexander’s tent one night, but he is late back from a party and apparently is waylaid by a local woman fortune-teller camp-follower who says it will be unlucky for him to go straight to bed so he goes off to another party. The loyal pages are on guard by the time Alexander returns, and the plot leaks out; the youths are sentenced to death by the army and executed, with Hermolaus abusing Alexander as a tyrant according to Roman sources (possibly using anachronisms based on how a pupil of Aristotle’s nephew would be expected to treat a tyrant). Callisthenes is investigated and probably tortured over allegations that he inspired the plot, and is variously said to have been killed or kept in chains and died later in India. Possibly his correspondence reveals that Aristotle was ‘in on’ the plot too, given his poor views on the Persians.
Autumn – Alexander crosses the Paropamisadae/Hindu Kush to the Kabul region, aiming for India, and sends ahead to summon the local kings around the upper Indus (as part of the old Persian empire) to submit and bring him elephants at the Indus. Alexander marches down the passes on the north side of the Khyber Pass to subdue the local tribes, while Hephaistion takes the main army down the Khyber to the Indus crossing to build ships. Alexander subdues the tribes of Swat, and one of the latter’s town is identified as the legendary town of ‘Nysa’ once ruled over by the god Dionysus.
January? – Alexander is wounded in the ankle in a failed attempt to storm the walls of a hilltop fortress in the Kargala pass, ‘Massaga’; a mound is built across the valley before the fortress’ main entrance so catapults can be wheeled there and bombard the walls, but the earth collapses during another attack due to the number of men pressing across it and many soldiers are killed; the bombardment, however, kills the fortress’ commander and his men surrender. Their 7000 Indian mercenaries take service with Alexander, but next night are spotted trying to sneak out of the camp and desert so they are massacred.
March? – At the rock of ‘Aornus’ by the Indus (identified as Pir-Sar by Sir Aurel Stein in 1926), the locals are holding out on a rocky summit above the river, which allegedly even Heracles could not storm. Alexander fails to progress far in a day and a half of skirmishes in the woods on the river-bank below it, and sends out a force under Ptolemy and Eumenes with a local guide to take a prominent spur of the main ridge, which they do. He then sets out to join them with the rest of the army, but their smoke-signals have alerted the enemy and two days of skirmishes follow until the army is reunited. Then they climb up the ridge to the hilltop across a ravine from the summit of Aornus, but it is too difficult to bring up earth or stones to fill in the ravine so Alexander has trees felled and piled up in a platform that he can cross. This takes four days. A first attack across the ravine and up the rock is repulsed, but after a two-day halt Alexander leads a picked force up ropes to the top of the rock at night to find only a few guards around who are killed – the majority of the Indians are preparing to withdraw down the far side of the rock and are taken by surprise. The rock is taken and an altar is built to celebrate with a sacrifice to Athene as goddess of victory.
Alexander marches to Taxila just beyond the upper Indus, capital of main local Indian kingdom, and allies with its King ‘Taxiles’/Ambhi, who draws his army up on the bank of the Indus to greet him and escorts him into his capital. He has a Greek’s first encounter with Hindu holy men, the ‘gymnosophists’ (‘nude wisdom-seekers’) at Taxila, and the ascetic ‘Calanus’ leaves them to join his entourage. Alexander gives Taxiles 1000 talents worth of loot, and agrees to help him against his enemy to the east, the king ‘Porus’ of the Pauruvas, who rules on the far side of the River Jhelum, and marches to the Jhelum. Philip son of Machatas becomes governor of the new province west of the upper Indus, ruling in alliance with Taxiles.
May – Porus refuses to accept Alexander as his lord and bring tribute as ordered, and encamps on the far side of the Jhelum (probably near Haranpur) with a huge army including possibly 30,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry plus a large force of elephants ready to trample on anyone who attempts a crossing; spikes are driven into the ground at the landing-places. The river is fast-flowing, and rafts cannot cross easily or unnoticed. Alexander unnerves and exhausts the Indians by sending cavalry patrols upstream constantly as if they are about to cross so the latter have to follow with elephants, has constant noise in his camp at night to keep the Indians alert lest he is about to cross the river, and builds up supplies in his camp in view of the enemy as if he is intending to wait and will thus be caught out by the monsoon swelling the river.
One night Alexander leaves a third of his army under Craterus in camp opposite Porus with instructions to cross the river next morning if Porus withdraws his elephants as then Porus will be fighting his army. Meanwhile, he goes off on a cavalry mission to ‘forage’ and once he is out of sight of the enemy heads for the best located upriver-crossing; he takes the rest of the army upriver to join a force of mercenaries sent up to a ford seventeen miles upstream, taking boats and rafts with them. Some 6000 infantry and 5000 cavalry led by the King’s own cavalry regiment of the Royal Squadron (i.e. a force that Porus will outnumber by around five to one in infantry) cross, fording the river in a storm, which hides the noise of crossing, first to an island and then on to the east bank; the necessity to hurry and the swiftness of the current in the unexpectedly deep second part of the river causes Alexander to lead the cavalry in swimming across to secure the bank, himself on Bucephalus. Hephaistion, Perdiccas, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and possibly Ptolemy participate. Porus’ scouts arrive too late, and alert their king; he sends a force of 120 chariots and several thousand cavalry to attack Alexander but it is repulsed and its commander killed. Alexander marches on down the bank to Porus’ camp; the enemy now has only around 2000 cavalry left to his 5000.
Battle of the River Hydaspes (Jhelum) – Alexander commands his right wing with the main Companion cavalry in two squadrons, and sends out his light Thracian cavalry archers to harass before he attacks the Indian left wing. He avoids their elephants in the centre where the infantry are; his left wing under veteran ‘Hipparch’ Coenus is ordered to wheel round behind the Indian right wing, which it does taking them by surprise as they have just moved their main cavalry to repulse Alexander. Then the Greek infantry moves forward onto the Indian infantry, and the archers and Agrianoi javelineers aim at the elephants’ mahouts while the 3000-strong ‘Shield-Bearers’ regiment attacks the elephants’ legs and trunks with axes. Fifty elephants are put out of action and the others panic, and the Macedonian cavalry charges the exposed Indian infantry; Craterus can now cross the river, and the mercenaries left behind at the upriver ford arrive to join in. The enemy are pushed back, and Porus is wounded in the shoulder and withdraws on his wounded elephant; Alexander sends Taxiles to ask him to surrender, but Porus tries to attack his old enemy; he surrenders to a more acceptable envoy, and tells the arriving Alexander that he would like to be ‘treated as a king’. Alexander obliges. He is pardoned and enrolled as Alexander’s ally to rule the east bank of the Indus, aided by a Maedonian governor and garrison.
Alexander’s aged horse Bucephalus, wounded in the battle, dies soon afterwards; Alexander founds the city of ‘Bucephala’ at the upriver crossing, the site of his final exploit. He founds ‘Nicaea’ (‘victory city’) at the site of the battle.
Alexander marches on across the Punjab towards the upper Ganges, apparently intending to attack a rumoured kingdom there (the kingdom of Magadha at Pataliputra) whose alleged army of 200,000 plus thousands of elephants unnerve his army. He will then reach the ‘World’s End’ (according to vague Greek cartography of India) at the mouth of the Ganges to erect an altar commemorating his journey. Hephaistion is sent on a more northerly route, towards Kashmir. The lands to the Chenab, with thirty-seven cities, are conquered to be added to Porus’ province; at the river Ravi the local tribes surrender and inform on their neighbours’ war-readiness and potential.
Alexander’s army encounters the monsoon at the River Chenab, and overruns the ‘Cathaioi’ near Lahore – their principal town is Sangala, which holds out so he undermines the walls with tunnels. Porus is sent back to collect elephants and the siege-train, but before his arrival the tunnels are complete and the wall collapses; the breaches are stormed and the inhabitants massacred. Weeks of heavy rain bogs down the troops, rots their clothes, and undermines morale as does the size of the expected next enemy (probably Magadha, and ruled by king ‘Ksandrames’ who Porus knows about) and the distance to the mouth of the Ganges. Alexander takes no notice.
At the River Beas, the army mutinies and the officers refuse to march any further as Alexander addresses them on his plans; Coenus, as a senior ‘Hipparch’ of the cavalry, is their spokesman. Alexander is furious and after a night to reflect he calls another meeting but meets the same response. He tells them to go home and tell their families that they deserted him; he will go on with volunteers. They do not respond. He withdraws to his tent in a rage and stays there for two days refusing to see anyone, hoping to win the troops round, but they refuse to change their minds. He has to give in, and consults the omens at sacrifice to be told by the priests that they are unfavourable so he can say that the gods want him to turn back; he agrees to return to Mesopotamia to great jubilations. He erects twelve altars at his camp to the Olympian gods to mark his furthest penetration of India and founds the city of ‘Alexandria-the-Furthest’ there.
November – Alexander returns to the new town site of ‘Nicaea’ on the Jhelum, where 35,000 new troops have arrived from the west, and constructs a fleet to sail down it into the Indus and so on to the sea whence his fleet will sail west to the mouth of the Euphrates. He is probably intending to open up a trade-route from Babylon to India and link the Persian heartland to the upper Indus; he is told that there are seven kingdoms to cross to the Indus-mouth. Hephaistion, as ‘Chiliarch’/Grand Vizier, and Craterus lead the land-forces, the main army, along the banks (the left and right banks respectively) while Alexander sails on the fleet as far as the junction of the Chenab and Jhelum where he will land to campaign against the locals if they resist; Porus tells him that the ‘Malloi’, who have fought him, will resist. Ptolemy brings up the rearguard with the baggage. Alexander insists on all the small local Indian kingdoms and independent towns he passes through accepting him as their lord.
Coenus dies at Nicaea and is given an honourable funeral to show he is forgiven.
325
January? – Near the junction with the lower Indus, the ‘Malloi’ refuse to accept Alexander as their ruler so he besieges and storms their towns one by one and massacres inhabitants. The town of Aturi is stormed with Alexander leading the way onto the ramparts, and a large enemy force waiting at the nearby ford over the Ravi withdraws outnumbered into Multan. At Multan, the main town in the region, Alexander attacks one side of the town while Perdiccas is sent round to the far side. The town walls are breached, but the defenders flee into the citadel. The grumbling soldiers hang back from climbing up siege-ladders to the top of the wall so Alexander leads the way in person, fights on the ramparts amid risk of being hit by missiles, and drops down the far side into the citadel to avoid being hit by missiles, without adequate support. Then a ladder breaks so more men cannot get up the wall and through to him. He is cut off with three officers and is severely wounded by an arrow in the lung; Peucestas, the future governor of Persia, holds the ‘Shield of Achilles’ from Troy over him to protect him while Leonnatus and Abreas (the latter being killed) hold off the Indians until the other soldiers can put up more ladders and rescue him. He is carried back unconscious to the camp, and the army slaughters the entire town. After he has not been seen for a week the main army downstream panics believing he is dead, and refuses to accept his letter to Hephaistion reassuring them as it could be forged; he has to put in a personal appearance and is taken down-river in a barge to the main camp to show himself to the soldiers who roar with relief as he waves to them. He then lands and mounts a horse to show that he is alright, before a prolonged recuperation.
Alexander sails on down the Indus, and the other local towns surrender after what happened at the Mallian citadel. Local governor Musicanus surrenders, Oxycanus resists and is killed, and Sambus of Sind submits but his people revolt led by their Brahmins and are massacred. Musicanus then rebels too; his people are dealt with similarly. The veterans and infirm, with the baggage-train, leave for an easier march across northern Baluchistan to Persia with Craterus commanding, but Alexander will take the main army west across coastal Baluchistan and then the Makran desert near the sea, within reach of the fleet, which will sail parallel along the coast to the Persian Gulf and map the route for a trade-link from Mesopotamia to the lower Indus. A major new ‘Alexandria’ is founded on the lower Indus near Sirkot as a port, with a garrison of 10,000 and a dockyard, and a second is founded near Pattala at the river-mouth.
There is a revolt by some of the despairing Greek/Macedonian settlers ‘dumped’ in towns in remote Bactria, who want to go home; they elect an Athenian as their leader, but their army breaks up amidst quarrels over what to do and they are put down later.
A local rising in the province of the Hindu Kush/Paropamisadae is put down by Alexander’s father-in-law Oxyartes; he is appointed the new governor, to combine it with his existing province. Another local rising is in the Helmand valley north-west of Baluchistan, so Alexander instructs his veterans/invalids sent back that way under Craterus to deal with it; this is duly done and the prisoners delivered to him later in Carmania. In the meantime there has been a native revolt under Baraxis, a pretender to the Persian throne in Media, who is suppressed and arrested.
July? – Alexander sails out into the Indian Ocean to sacrifice to Ammon and Poseidon, and then commences his march west. The fleet under Nearchus will sail parallel to him and deliver supplies if needed, but it is held up on the lower Indus for three months (until the second week of October) by the monsoon winds and then at the river-mouth for a further five weeks. Unaware of this, Alexander marches on – he has some idea of the hazards, as according to the account of Nearchus he has been told that Cyrus ‘the Great’ crossed the Makran desert but only seven of his army survived. The new local governor of the lower Indus has been told to bring supplies to the first nominated coastal supply-base for the fleet and then go off to subdue the local Oxeians, but on his homewards march after their submission they revolt and defeat and kill him.
August? – Alexander crosses coastal Baluchistan and founds a new Alexandria there; September?–November – Alexander runs short of food and water in the desert, and has to kill the baggage-animals; there is no sign of the fleet whenever they approach the coast. In the intense heat the army can only march at night; he insists on avoiding riding and on marching with his men, and famously on one occasion is brought a helmet filled with water but pours it away rather than drink while his men go thirsty. It rains inland of his route, but this causes a flash-flood to sweep down a dried-up river-bed and inundate his camp and many people are drowned.
Early December – Sailing along the coast and encountering whales and the savage ‘Fish-Eaters’ tribe, Nearchus arrives safely but short of supplies at the Bandar Abbas region and lands men to explore; they find fruit to eat. Nearchus leads scouts out to find the scouts expected from Alexander’s army, and they do so but the latter think these few bedraggled men are the only survivors of some disaster. They reassure Alexander’s men that the fleet is safe, and are taken to Alexander. The news that the fleet is safe is brought to Alexander and the others, and there is much rejoicing; what is left of the army replenishes its supplies and arrives safely in fertile Carmania/Kerman. Games are held to celebrate, and Alexander reportedly travels in a carriage in emulation of the legendary arrival there of Dionysus (but this may be due to exhaustion). Peucestas joins the seven Royal Bodyguards, headed by Hephaistion, in honour of his saving Alexander’s life.
The fleet goes on to the mouth of the Persian Gulf; Alexander arrives in Persia to find that in his absence many of his governors have been looting and ill-treating the locals, and he summons and executes four of them as an example. His generals in charge in Media (including Coenus’ brother) and their mercenaries are accused of looting temples and ill-treating the locals and summoned too, and 600 of them and two of the generals are executed. Alexander also sentences and executes the prisoners who have arrived from risings in Bactria and Media, including Baraxis the pretender, and divides up the province of the upper Indus (where governor Philip as been murdered in a mutiny) between a Thracian officer and the local king ‘Taxiles’.
The Indian guru ‘Calanus’ falls seriously ill, and insists on commuting suicide by means of a funeral pyre when the army arrives at Persepolis; he allegedly says he will see Alexander in Babylon.
Sicily/Italy
?The future tyrant Agathocles of Syacuse, illegitimate son of an expatriate potter from Croton in southern Italy and a Carthaginian woman, launches a successful career as a soldier by serving as a mercenary in the army of his father’s home-city against local tribes; a year or two later he returns to Syracuse to start his political career with fellow-soldiers’ backing but is soon exiled by the democratic faction led by Sosistratus.
324
Alexander’s Empire
January – Alexander reaches Pasargadae, and finds that the tomb of Cyrus ‘the Great’ has been despoiled; the architect Aristoboulus is ordered to restore it as a gesture by Alexander to the Persians (influenced by his own reading of the largely fictional ‘Life of Cyrus’ by Xenophon so he regards Cyrus as a model for himself?). Later the venal self-appointed satrap of Persia province, Orxines, is arrested for peculation and misrule and executed, and replaced by Alexander’s trusted aide Peucestas.
Alexander’s embezzling and extravagant treasurer Harpalus, who has reportedly made his deceased concubine Pythonice the subject of a cult as a goddess, is currently in command of the treasury in Cilicia; he fears prosecution, loots the treasury of 6000 talents, and flees by ship to Greece (spring?).
March – Alexander marches to Susa to link up with Nearchus and the fleet; he receives and imprisons the local, Persian governor who he accuses of failing to send supplies to his army, and executes his son. He holds mass-marriages of Macedonians and Persians, both officially recognizing the many liaisons his soldiers have with local women and a series of political marriages by his elite. He marries Darius III’s elder daughter Barsine/Stateira, and Hephaistion marries her sister Dryeptis; ninety leading Macedonians marry too, including Ptolemy to Artakama the daughter of aged satrap Artabazus of Bactria, Eumenes to her sister Artonis, Seleucus to Apame the daughter of late satrap Spitamenes, and Craterus to Amastrine daughter of Oxathres. The new consort and her family are installed at Susa, but Roxane as senior wife continues to travel with the court.
Alexander reviews the army of 30,000 young Persians trained in Macedonian military style, the ‘Successors’; he cancels all debts owed by his troops, and issues a decree requiring the Greek city-states to accept back all their exiles, which is to be read out at the Olympic Games by his envoy Nicanor (late August?).
May/June – The refugee Harpalus leaves his mercenaries encamped at Cape Sunion in Attica, and goes to Athens to seek support; he fails to win military backing despite lavish promises of aid from him and is asked to leave, but is persuaded to leave some of his looted treasure on the Acropolis under the city’s guard. He goes off to seek support elsewhere, and his mercenaries are stationed at Cape Taenarum in Laconia. The homes of people who spoke in his favour are searched for signs of bribes, and Demosthenes comes under suspicion for stopping his initial anti-Harpalus attitude and is supposed to have been given a valuable cup by him.
Alarm at Athens over the ‘Exiles Decree’ as Alexander has announced in Mesopotamia in response to an appeal from refugee Samians expelled by Athens that the restoration will include giving Samos back to its original inhabitants and removing the Athenian colony – which supplies many oarsmen and ships to the Athenian navy. There is a debate in the Athenian Assembly over whether to try to avert the decree by an embassy to Alexander and flattering him, e.g. by granting him divine honours as other Greek cities are planning, or to revolt with little hope of prevailing over Antipater or in 323 the returned Craterus. Even Demosthenes agrees that granting Alexander divine honours is necessary to help save their Samos project, and an embassy duly sets out to him; but Leosthenes, one of the new generals for the year 324–3 and a ‘hard-liner’, is not stopped from a private plan to tour Ionia collecting dismissed mercenary troops from the private armies, which Alexander has ordered his governors to dismiss. These troops are shipped to Cape Taenarum in case a war against Macedon is necessary.
Alexander leaves his new wife and the rest of the Persian royal family at Susa, and marches into Mesopotamia; at Opis his Macedonian troops mutiny as he announces at a rally that he is sending the aged and infirm home, including some of the veteran regiments such as the ‘Silver Shields’. He is heckled and told that if he wishes to discharge part of his army he should discharge it all and go campaigning with just the Persians, and pointed references may be made to his supposed father the god Ammon. He jumps down from the rostrum to arrest thirteen ringleaders for execution and is not resisted, then shuts himself in his quarters and refuses to see any but a few advisers (including the Bodyguards) and Persian officers. He announces that he plans to remould his army with Persians staffing the traditional regiments, and the mutinous soldiers panic and rush to his residence to clamour to see him and promise to arrest the agitators. As he emerges a veteran cavalry officer complains that only Persians have been given the rank of ‘Royal Kin’ and so allowed the honour of kissing him, and Alexander says he will make them all his kin to loud cheers. A feast of reconciliation is held, with a guest-list of 9000 for an outdoor celebration centred on religious ceremonies by both Greek and Persian priests performing religious rites; all drink libations and Alexander leads the way with a prayer that Greeks and Persians will share the rule of the empire.
Around 10,000 troops, led by the ‘Silver Shields’, duly leave for Macedon, commanded by Craterus, who may be sent to replace Antipater as regent there and is possibly antagonistic to the ‘dual rule’/fusion of ruling class of Greeks and Persians, with veteran Polyperchon (who criticized Greeks having to do the ‘proskynesis’ to Alexander) as his deputy. The homeward-bound veterans are replaced in the royal camp by the traditional Persian royal bodyguard, the 10,000-strong ‘Immortals’.
Late summer? – Quarrel between Hephaistion and the royal secretary, Eumenes of Cardia, on the court’s way to cooler Ecbatana in Media, allegedly over Eumenes’ parsimony and a joke that if the archives tent was on fire he would rescue the money inside ahead of the documents; Eumenes blames a subsequent fire there on Hephaistion. The two men abuse each other in front of their officers and are ordered to apologize.
The court celebrates games and a theatrical festival at Ecbatana, with a play mocking Harpalus’ pretensions and lifestyle; during the celebrations Hephaistion is ill with a fever (typhoid?) and restricted to his room, and after a temporary improvement orders a chicken and wine to celebrate but deteriorates and dies within hours. Poison is a possibility, but food-poisoning more likely. Alexander is devastated, shuts himself up refusing food for three days, and has an apparent nervous breakdown – the loss of ‘Patroclus’ to his ‘Achilles’? Messengers are sent to the oracle of Ammon at Siwah to ask if Hephaistion can be honoured as a god, and giving him the honours of a semi-divine ‘hero’ is approved as a compromise.
Alexander executes the deceased’s doctor Glaucias, and arranges an extravagant funeral, which will be held at Babylon once the Siwah verdict on divine rites for the ceremony is known. A sculpture of a lion is built at the city of Ecbatana, the ‘Lion of Hamadan’, which still survives. Hephaistion’s office of ‘Chiliarch’/Grand Vizier goes to Perdiccas. There is some possibility that Ptolemy arranges for Cleomenes, the allegedly venal governor of Egypt, to have immunity for prosecution for various offences in return for promising to set up a priesthood of Hephaistion (possibly at Siwah), but this may be a later story.
October? – Harpalus is murdered in Crete by one of his officers, Thibron the Spartan.
(Later 324/early 323) The treasure of Harpalus on the Acropolis at Athens is depleted by mysterious thefts from 700 to 350 talents, and Demosthenes is accused of stealing it by his rival, the orator Demades. Demosthenes is fined fifty talents and is exiled.
Alexander sends Hephaistion’s cortege to Babylon with Perdiccas in charge, while he campaigns against the mountain nomad Cossaeans in Luristan (?Kurds) who have not been paid the usual Persian royal tribute as a bribe to keep from attacking travellers on the Royal Road; the six-week campaign is marked by atrocities, possibly seen as sacrifices to the spirit of Hephaistion as Achilles killed Trojans in Patroclus’ memory.
323
Early – Alexander descends to the Mesopotamian plain and receives embassies from the Libyans, Carthaginians (?afraid of being his next target), ‘Ethiopians’ (Nubia?), Celts from the central European tribes, and from the Greek southern Italian cities asking for help against the inland tribes such as the Samnites, and from the latter. This is probably the context of the alleged Roman embassy to Alexander, Rome being at odds with the Samnites over their conquest of Campania and anxious to avoid attack.
A naval survey down the Persan Gulf conducted by Nearchus returns, after going as far as ?Bahrain; Alexander plans a march south-east along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf to Oman and a co-ordinated naval expedition alongside it as far as possible, allegedly as far as Aden, followed by the circumnavigation of Arabia to open up a route to the Red Sea. A new harbour is to be built on the lower Euphrates for the fleet that Nearchus is to command again. The shores of the Persian Gulf are to be settled by colonists to stimulate trade. The possibilities for the ‘future plans of Alexander’ revealed after his death and cancelled by Perdiccas are unclear due to propaganda possibilities, but a Sicilian/southern Italian expedition and attack on Carthage (from Sicily or via a march from Egypt?) are later quoted along with a ‘Suez’ Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and a canal through the peninsula of Mount Athos to avoid navigation round its rocky tip. An expedition by Alexander to the Caspian Sea and a sponsored attempt to circumnavigate Africa (as previously ordered by Xerxes) are also possible.
Pregnancy of Roxane is announced; the baby is to be born in ?late summer.
Alexander is advised against entering Babylon by its western gate as unlucky by the city’s Chaldean astrologers, and decides to use the eastern suburbs instead but cannot march across the marshes round the city so he enters by the Western route; later seen as an omen.
Spring – Alexander ventures down the lower Euphrates by boat, and orders the repair of the neglected canal-system and better drainage. Allegedly, his royal hat blows off on one journey and a sailor sent to retrieve it puts it on his head, which is seen as a bad omen; he is flogged or executed, as later is a madman who wanders into the palace in Babylon and sits on Alexander’s throne. The Greek cites’ envoys are received, agreeing to worship him as a god.
?Cassander arrives as an envoy from Antipater, possibly to check whether Alexander wants his father to leave Macedon in 323 and if so to try to halt this; according to Plutarch, he sneers at the Persian manners of Alexander’s court and is assaulted by him.
Alexander extends the army to make up for the loss of the departed veterans, with new Persian regiments kitted out and fighting as Macedonians in their style.
May? – The embassy from Siwah returns; Hephaistion is given a grandiose funeral with a massive pyre 200 feet high, a ceremony reported to have cost 10,000 talents and probably modelled on the funeral of Patroclus in the ‘Iliad’. Alexander has the sacred Persian ‘Royal Fire’ put out during the ceremonies, as is normally only done for a king or his heir.
The Persian Gulf expedition is due to leave on 4 June.
29 May – A late-night dinner-party given by one of the Companions, the Thessalian Medius of Larissa, sees Alexander (?who has been drinking heavily since Hephaistion’s death) turning up unexpectedly, after leaving an evening banquet already drunk. During the course of a series of toasts between himself and Proteas, nephew of the murdered Cleitus, Alexander apparently experiences some discomfort while drinking from a ‘cup of Heracles’ given him by Proteas and falls, complaining of a sudden pain in his side like an arrow – and some subsequent accounts go into detail about a alleged plot to poison him launched by Antipater and his family, possibly to pre-empt their removal from Macedon and feared disgrace, which Olympias has been urging on her son. According to this version, Cassander brought a vial of poison (in a mule’s hoof) from the River Styx in Arcadia when he arrived in Babylon and handed it over to Alexander’s personal attendant/cupbearer, his younger brother Iollas (Medius’ lover), who mixed it with the wine in his cup at Medius’ feast; among the twenty attending Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Eumenes and three others knew nothing of the plan but fourteen others did, including Nearchus and Alexander’s doctor Philip. The extant accounts of this version are part of a largely fabulous collection of apocryphal Roman-era legends, the ‘Alexander Romance’, but some details may come from a genuine contemporary diary of events from the very exact account. The probably partly genuine ‘Diaries’ of Alexander’s last weeks (allegedly by Eumenes) do not mention poison at all, but do refer to heavy drinking for weeks. If poison was used, it was slow to work as Alexander’s decline was gradual. The ‘Diaries’ account was probably the ‘official’ version of events put out, either by Perdiccas in 323-2 (but their version’s details are not known to contemporary historians c.312 so this is debateable) or by another ‘Successor’, possibly Cassander exonerating himself from accusations of poison. The ‘poison’ story was current by 317, when Olympias smashed up Iollas’ tomb.
Other suspects named by various theories for killing Alexander are Aristotle (over his pro-Persian policy or in revenge for killing Callisthenes?), probably advising Antipater rather than acting alone – he was later accused by Antigonus ‘Monopthalmus’; in modern times suggestions have been made about various senior officers alarmed at Alexander’s impractical and dangerous future plans. But infected rather than poisoned drink acting on a constitution weakened by alcoholic excess is as likely.
29–30 May – Alexander sleeps off his drinking in his bathroom following a bath after the feast – already feverish according to one account, not by below account.
30 May (Diaries version) – Alexander is physically normal at first, with a late ‘lie-in’ followed by a second evening with Medius. This time he falls asleep after the party in his bathroom, already feverish.
31 May (Diaries) – Unable to walk and still feverish, Alexander is carried on a litter to the planned sacrifice to the gods; back at his apartments he discusses the Persian Gulf expedition plans with his senior officers (Plutarch). He lies down in his bathroom and listens to Nearchus’ account of his voyage in the Red Sea. Later on, he is moved over the Euphrates into the royal gardens, where he continues to plan, baths, and sacrifices and plays dice with Medius.
1 June (Diaries) – Alexander is too ill to attend the daily sacrifice, and has a high fever; he is moved to a palace near the royal swimming-pool.
2–3 June – He is still able to transact business about the expedition; when he becomes too ill the departure is postponed.
6 June (Plutarch) – He orders his officers to remain on call in the palace courtyard.
7 June (Diaries) – Alexander is moved back to the main royal palace; he is too ill to speak to his officers.
9 June (All accounts) – The soldiers riot and demand to see their king, and the guards (who have not seen him for several days) support them. They are allowed into the palace in a procession and troop past his bed. Alexander is too ill to speak to them but conscious. At some point after this he is asked who he wants to leave the throne to, and he says ‘to the strongest’ (‘kratistos’) unless this is a mistake for ‘Craterus’. He gives his signet-ring to Perdiccas.
(Diaries) Some of Alexander’s senior officers, led by Peithon and Seleucus, go to a prestigious temple to ask whether he should be moved there, and are told not to do so – this is stated as the ‘Temple of Serapis’ but worship of that god had not yet commenced, so this is either a mistake for another god or incorrect.
10 June – Death of Alexander, aged thirty-two and probably ten or eleven months.