passion for Homer, however he may have been disposed to greyer philosophic theory. But his education was not all from books. The coming and going of envoys from many states, Greek and Oriental, taught him something of the actual conditions of the world. He was early schooled in war. At the age of sixteen he commanded in Macedonia during Philip’s absence and quelled a rising of the hill-tribes on the northern border; in the following year (338) he headed the charge which broke the Sacred Band at Chaeronea. Then came family dissensions such as usually vex the polygamous courts of the East. In 337 Philip repudiated Olympias for another wife, Cleopatra, Alexander went with his mother to her home in Epirus, and, though he soon returned and an outward reconciliation between father and son was contrived, their hearts were estranged. The king’s new wife was with child; her kinsmen were in the ascendant; the succession of Alexander was imperilled. Some negotiations which Pixodarus, the satrap of Caria, opened with the Macedonian court with a view to effecting a marriage alliance between his house and Philip’s, brought Alexander into fresh broils. In 336 Philip was suddenly assassinated whilst celebrating at Aegae the marriage of his daughter to Alexander I. of Epirus in the presence of a great concourse from all the Greek world. It is certain that the hand of the assassin was prompted by some one in the background; suspicion could not fail to fall upon Alexander among others. But guilt of that sort would hardly be consistent with his character as it appears in those early days.
Alexander was not the only claimant to the vacant throne but, recognized by the army, he soon swept all rivals from his path. The newly born son of Philip by Cleopatra, and Alexander’s cousin Amyntas, were put to death, and Alexander took up the interrupted work of his father. That Accession.work was on the point of opening its most brilliant chapter by an invasion of the great king’s dominions; the army was concentrated and certain forces had already been sent on to occupy the opposite shore of the Hellespont. The assassination of Philip delayed the blow, for it immediately made the base, Macedonia, insecure, and in such an enterprise, plunging into the vast territories of the Persian empire, a secure base was everything. Philip’s removal had made all the hill-peoples of the north and west raise their heads and set the Greek states free from their fears. A demonstration in Greece, led by the new king of Macedonia, momentarily checked the agitation, and at the diet at Corinth Alexander was recognized as captain-general (ἡγεμὼν αὐτοκράτωρ) of the Hellenes against the barbarians, Leader of
the Hellenes. in the place of his father Philip. In the spring of 335 he went out from Macedonia northwards, struck across the Balkans, probably by the Shipka Pass, frustrating the mountain warfare of its tribes by a precision of discipline which, probably, no other army of the time could have approached, and traversed the land of the Triballians (Rumelia) to the Danube. To gratify his own imagination or strike the imagination of the world he took his army over the Danube and burnt a settlement of the Getae upon the other side. Meanwhile the Illyrians had seized Pelion (Pliassa), which commanded the passes on the west of Macedonia, and from the Danube Alexander marched straight thither over the hills. He had hardly restored Macedonian prestige in this quarter when he heard that Greece was aflame. Thebes had taken up arms. By a forced march he took the Thebans completely by surprise, and in a few days the city, which a generation before had won the headship of Greece, was taken. There were to be no half-measures now; the city was wiped out of existence with the exception of its temples and the house which had been Pindar’s. Greece might now be trusted to lie quiet for some time to come. The Panhellenic alliance (from which Sparta still stood aloof) against the barbarians was renewed. Athens, although known to be hostile at heart to the cities of Macedonian power, Alexander treated all through with eager courtesy.
In the spring of 334, Alexander crossed with an army of between 30,000 and 40,000 men, Macedonians, Illyrians, Thracians and the contingents of the Greek states, into Asia. The place of concentration was Arisbe on the Hellespont. Alexander himself first visited the site of Troy and there went through those dramatic acts of sacrifice to the Ilian Athena, Invasion of Asia Minor. assumption of the shield believed to be that of Achilles and offerings to the great Homeric dead, which are significant of the poetic glamour shed, in the young king’s mind, over the whole enterprise, and which men will estimate differently according to the part they assign to imagination in human affairs. To meet the invader the great king had in Asia Minor an army slightly larger, it would seem, than Alexander’s, gathered under the satraps of the western provinces at Zeleia. He had also, what was more serious, command of the Aegean. Alexander could communicate with his base only by the narrow line of the Hellespont, and ran the risk, if he went far from it, of being cut off altogether. To draw him after them, while avoiding a conflict, was sound strategy for the Persian generals. It was urged upon them by their colleague the Rhodian Memnon. But strategic considerations were cancelled by the Persian barons’ code of chivalry, and Alexander found them waiting for him on the banks of the Battle of Granicus. Granicus. It was a cavalry mêlée, in which the common code of honour caused Macedonian and Persian chieftains to engage hand to hand, and at the end of the day the relics of the Persian army were in flight, leaving the high-roads of Asia Minor clear for the invader. Alexander could now accomplish the first part of the task belonging to him as captain-general to the Hellenes, that liberation of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, for which Panhellenic enthusiasts had cried out so long. He first went to take possession of the old Lydian capital Sardis, the headquarters of the Persian government on this side of the Taurus, and the strong city surrendered without a blow. And now in all the Greek cities of Aeolis and Ionia the oligarchies or tyrants friendly to Persia fell, and democracies were established under the eye of Alexander’s officers. Only where the cities were held by garrisons in the Persian service, garrisons composed mainly of Greek mercenaries, was the liberator likely to meet with any resistance. From Ephesus indeed the garrison fled upon the news of Granicus, but Miletus required a siege. The Persian fleet in vain endeavoured to relieve it, and Miletus did not long hold out against Alexander’s attack. It was at Halicarnassus that Alexander first encountered stubborn resistance, at Halicarnassus where Memnon and the satraps of Caria had rallied what land-forces yet belonged to Persia in the west. When winter fell, Alexander had captured indeed the city itself, but the two citadels still held out against his blockade.
Meanwhile Alexander was making it plain that he had come not merely as captain-general for a war of reprisals, but to take the Persian’s place as king of the land. The conquered provinces were organized under Macedonian governors and in Caria a dethroned princess of the native dynasty, Ada, was restored to power. In the winter, whilst Parmenio advanced upon the central plateau to make the occupation of Phrygia effective, Alexander himself passed along the coast to receive the submission of the Lycians and the adherence of the Greek cities of the Pamphylian sea-board. The hills inland were the domain of fighting tribes which the Persian government had never been able to subdue. To conquer them, indeed, Alexander had no time, but he stormed some of their fortresses to hold them in check, and marched through their territory when he turned north from Pamphylia into the interior. The point of concentration for next year’s campaign had been fixed at Gordium, a meeting-place of roads in Northern Phrygia. The story of Alexander’s cutting the fatal “Gordian knot” on the chariot of the ancient Phrygian king Gordius is connected with his stay in this place.
Whilst Alexander had been grounding his power in Asia Minor, he had run a narrow risk of losing his base in Europe. He had after the siege of Miletus disbanded the Graeco-Macedonian fleet, surrendering for the time all attempts to challenge the command of the Aegean. Memnon Extension of Alexander’s power.the Rhodian, now in supreme command of the Persian fleet, saw the European coasts exposed and set out to raise Greece, where discontent always smouldered in Alexander’s rear. But Memnon died at the critical moment whilst laying siege to
