Mytilene and the great plan collapsed. A Persian fleet still held the sea, but it effected little, and presently fresh Graeco-Macedonian squadrons began to hold it in check. It was, however, the need to ensure command of the sea and free all lines of communication behind him that determined Alexander’s plan for the next campaign. If he mastered the whole coast-line of the Levant, the enemy’s fleet would find itself left in the air. The Syrian coast was accordingly his immediate objective when he broke up from Gordium for the campaign of 333. He was through the Cilician Gates before the Persian king, Darius III., had sent up a force adequate to hold them. His passage through Cilicia was marked by a violent fever that arrested him for a while in Tarsus, and meantime a great Persian army was waiting for him in northern Syria under the command of Darius himself. In the knot of mountains which close in about the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta, Alexander, following hard by the coast, marched past the Persian army encamped on the plains to the east. To cut Alexander’s communications with the rear, Darius now committed the error of entangling his large force in the mountain Battle of Issus. defiles. Alexander turned, and near the town of Issus fought his second pitched battle, sending Darius and the relic of his army in wild flight back to the east.[1] It was an incident which did not modify Alexander’s plan. He did not press the pursuit far, although the great king’s camp with his harem fell into his hands. The chivalrous courtesy which he showed to the captive princesses was a favourite theme for later rhetoricians. He went on his way to occupy Syria and Phoenicia. It is now that we get definite evidence as to the reach of Alexander’s designs; for Darius opened negotiations in which he ultimately went so far as to offer a partition of the empire, all west of the Euphrates, to be Alexander’s. Alexander refused the bargain and definitely claimed the whole.[2] The conquest of the Phoenician coast was not to be altogether easy, for Tyre shut its gates and for seven months Alexander had to sit before it—one of those obstinate sieges which mark the history of the Semitic races. When it fell, Alexander had the old Tyrian people scattered to the winds, 30,000 sold as slaves. Gaza offered a resistance equally heroic, lasting two months, and here too the old population was dispersed. The occupation of the rest of Syria and Palestine proceeded smoothly, and after the fall of Gaza Alexander’s way lay open into Egypt.[3] Egypt was the last of the Mediterranean provinces to be won, and here no defence was made. To the native Egyptians Alexander appeared as a deliverer from the Persian tyranny, and he sacrificed piously to the gods of Memphis. The winter (332–331) which Alexander spent in Egypt saw two memorable actions on his part. One was the expedition (problematic in its motive and details) to the oracle of Zeus Ammon (Oasis of Siwa), where Alexander was hailed by the priest as son of god, a belief which the circle of Alexander, and perhaps Alexander himself, seem hereafter to have liked to play with in that sort of semi-serious vein which still allowed him in the moments of every-day commonplace to be the son of Philip. The other action was the foundation of Alexandria at the Canopic mouth of the Nile, the place destined to be a new commercial centre for the eastern Mediterranean world which Alexander had now taken in possession, to rise to an importance which the founder, although obviously acting with intention, can hardly have foreseen (E. Keller, Alex d. Grosse nach der Schlacht bei Issus, 1904).
In the spring of 331 Alexander could at last leave the Mediterranean to strike into the heart of the Persian empire, for by his occupation of the coasts the Persian command of the sea had inevitably collapsed. Returning through Syria, and stopping at Tyre to make final arrangements Invasion
of Persia.for the conquered provinces, he traversed Mesopotamia and struck the Tigris some four marches above the site of Nineveh. It was Nineveh that Darius was waiting with the immense host which a supreme effort could muster from all parts of the empire. The happy coincidence of a lunar eclipse gives us the 20th of September 331 as the exact day upon which the Macedonian army crossed the Tigris. Alexander came within sight of the Persian host without having met with any opposition since he quitted Tyre. He had now to settle the most serious problem which had yet faced him, for in the plains the Persian army was Battle of Arbela. formidable by sheer bulk. But the day showed the Macedonian army equal to the task. The last army gathered by an Achaemenian king was shattered in the battle called popularly after the city of Arbela some 60 m. distant, or more precisely after the village of Gaugamela hard by. Darius fled eastwards into Media and again Alexander waited till he had secured the provinces to the south. He followed the Tigris into Babylonia, the central seat of the empire and its richest region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous riches which the Persian kings had amassed in their spring residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended upon the Iranian plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers, Huzha), accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king’s train, learnt by a bitter lesson that a stronger hand had come to wield the empire. Alexander entered Persis, the cradle of the Achaemenian house, and came upon fresh masses of treasure in the royal city, Persepolis. He destroyed the royal palace by fire, an act which has been variously estimated by historians. Ostensibly a solemn revenge for the burning of Greek temples by Xerxes, it has been justified as a symbolical act calculated to impress usefully the imagination of the East, and condemned as a senseless and vainglorious work of destruction.
With the spring of 330 Alexander was prepared for further pursuit. Darius fled northwards from Ecbatana upon his approach. At Ecbatana new masses of treasure were seized, but when once the necessary measures which its disposal and the occupation of the Median capital entailed were taken, Alexander continued the pursuit. It was an exciting chase of king by king, in which each covered the ground by incredible exertions, shedding their slower-going followers as they went, past Rhagae (Rai) and the Caspian gates, till early one morning Alexander came in sight of the broken train which still clung to the fallen king. He had become a puppet in the hands of his cousin Bessus and the Persian magnates with him (see Darius III.), and at this extremity they stabbed him and allowed Alexander to become master only of his corpse (summer 330).
The pursuit had brought Alexander into that region of mountains to the south of the Caspian which connects western Iran with the provinces to the east of the great central desert. To conquer this remaining portion of the empire, Alexander now went on through the mountain belt, teaching the power of his arms to the hillsmen, Tapyri and Mardi, till he came, passing through Zadracarta (Asterabad), to Parthia and thence to Arīa. In these further provinces of Iran the Macedonian invader had for the first time to encounter a serious national opposition, for in the west the Iranian rule had been merely the supremacy of an alien power over native populations indifferent or hostile. Here the ruling race was at home. In Asia Alexander learnt that Bessus had taken the diadem as Darius’ successor in Bactria, but so soon as he marched against him Arīa rose in his rear, and Alexander had to return in all haste to bring the revolt under. Nor did he, when this was accomplished, again strike directly at Bactria, but made a wide turning movement through Seistan over Kandahar into the Kabul valley. It was on the way, in Seistan at Prophthasia (mod. Farrah?), that the alienation between Alexander and his Macedonian followers, which becomes sensible in the latter part of his career, first showed itself in an ugly form. Alexander had come to merge the characters of Macedonian king and Hellenic captain-general, with which he had set out, in that of Oriental despot (Spieker. Hof u. Hofordnung Al. d. Gr., 1904). He wore on occasions of state the Persian dress. (According to pseudo-Plutarch, de fort. Al. i. 8, it was the simpler Persian dress, not the Median.) A discontent began to work among the
- ↑ See Bauer, “Die Schlacht bei Issus” in Jahreshefte d. österr. archäol. Instit. ii. pp. 105 f.; A. Janke, Auf Alex. d. grossen Pfaden; Gruhn, Das Schlachtfeld von Issus; Lammert in Berl. Philol. Wochenschr. (1905), col. 1596 f.
- ↑ Pridik, De Alex. Mag. epist. commercio (Dorpat, 1893); Schwartz, art. “Curtius” in Pauly-Wissowa, col. 1884.
- ↑ The story of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem rests on no better authority than a later Jewish romance.
