THE HELLENISTIC AGE
The gradual infiltration of Greek commercial and cultural influences into Syria was suddenly accelerated and intensified by its military conquest under the energetic and illustrious Macedonian known to us as Alexander the Great, and to his oriental subjects as Iskandar dhu-al-Qarnayn (the two-horned). After liberating the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Persian rule, his skilled and disciplined forces defeated the numerically superior Persian army at Issus in 333 b.c. To commemorate this decisive victory, the city of Alexandretta (Iskenderun, in the part of Syria now in Turkish hands) was founded near the site.
The Syrian satrapy lay defenceless before Alexander, who sent a cavalry detachment up the Orontes valley to occupy Damascus while he himself followed the coastal route and received the submission of Aradus, Byblus, Sidon and other ports. Only Tyre held out, but the Greeks built a wide mole out to the island stronghold and, after a seven-months 5 siege, captured it, hanging its leaders and selling about 30,000 of its inhabitants into slavery. After thus extinguishing the last spark of Phoenician spirit, Alexander repeated the lesson with the last of the Philistine cities, Gaza, overpowering its garrison after a heroic but futile resistance lasting two months. Its population, too, was sold into slavery, and enormous stores of the spices for which it was a celebrated depot were captured.
With Alexander's further conquests—in Egypt, where he founded Alexandria and accepted divine honours; in Mesopotamia, after crossing the Euphrates and founding al-Raqqah; in Persia, where the Achamaenid capitals of Susa and Persepolis were sacked; in Media, Parthia, Bactria
