In eleven years, a young king of Macedon marched from Greece to India, defeated the Persian Empire in three great battles, and founded cities from Egypt to Afghanistan, then died in Babylon at 32.
Stop 01 · October 336 BCE
Macedon and the Persian Giant
Philip II of Macedon had made his kingdom the master of Greece. In 338 BCE he crushed Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea, where his teenage son Alexander, once a pupil of Aristotle, led the left wing. Philip then headed a league of Greek states, formed at Corinth, for a war on Persia, and in 336 sent an advance army of 10,000 men into Anatolia. That October, at his daughter's wedding at Aigai, he was assassinated by Pausanias, the captain of his own bodyguard. Alexander, aged 20, was proclaimed king on the spot and took up his father's plan: to invade the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest of its time, stretching from Egypt and Anatolia to India.
Philip II of Macedon had made his kingdom the master of Greece. In 338 BCE he crushed Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea, where his teenage son Alexander, once a pupil of Aristotle, led the left wing. Philip then headed a league of Greek states, formed at Corinth, for a war on Persia, and in 336 sent an advance army of 10,000 men into Anatolia. That October, at his daughter's wedding at Aigai, he was assassinated by Pausanias, the captain of his own bodyguard. Alexander, aged 20, was proclaimed king on the spot and took up his father's plan: to invade the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest of its time, stretching from Egypt and Anatolia to India.
News of Philip's death set off revolts in Thebes, Athens, Thessaly and among the Thracian tribes. Alexander moved fast: he outflanked the Thessalian army by riding over Mount Ossa, and at Corinth the Greek league named him its commander against Persia. In spring 335 BCE he marched north from Amphipolis, beat the Thracians and the Triballi, crossed the Danube by night to scatter the Getae, then defeated two rebel Illyrian rulers in the west. Meanwhile Thebes rose again and besieged his garrison in its citadel. Alexander hurried south and stormed the city. By ancient counts 6,000 Thebans died and 30,000 were captured; Thebes was razed and its survivors sold into slavery. Athens, cowed, submitted.
In spring 334 BCE, leaving Antipater to govern at home, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia. Ancient writers put his army at about 35,000 men, joining an advance force already there, and he is said to have thrown a spear into Asian soil to claim the continent. In May, at the Granicus River, he defeated the army of the local Persian satraps, which included Greek mercenaries under Memnon of Rhodes, nearly losing his life in the cavalry fighting. He went on to free, or take, the Greek cities of the Anatolian coast. Sardis surrendered with its treasury, Miletus and Halicarnassus fell after sieges, and at Gordium, according to legend, he cut through the Gordian Knot.
BattlesGranicus, May 334 BCE · Miletus besieged · Halicarnassus besieged
In 333 BCE Alexander crossed the Taurus mountains into Cilicia, where illness held him up. King Darius III himself led a huge army to meet him, and slipped in behind the Macedonians, forcing them to turn back. The armies met that November at Issus, where Anatolia meets Syria, beside the small Pinarus River. Alexander had about 37,000 men; the Persian army was far larger, though its size is disputed. Alexander's cavalry charge broke the Persian line; Darius fled, leaving behind his mother, wife and daughters and a great treasure, and Alexander treated the royal women with respect. Darius offered the lands he had lost and 10,000 talents to ransom his family; Alexander replied that he was now king of Asia.
Rather than chase Darius, Alexander took the Mediterranean coast, so the Persian fleet would have no ports. The island city of Tyre held out for seven months; Alexander built a causeway about a kilometre long to reach it and took it in July 332. Ancient writers record 6,000 to 7,000 defenders killed, 2,000 crucified and at least 13,000 people enslaved. Gaza resisted too, and Alexander was badly wounded in the shoulder before it fell. Egypt welcomed him as a liberator from Persian rule. He was crowned at Memphis, and at the desert oracle of Ammon at Siwa he was hailed as the god's son. There he founded Alexandria, which became one of the great cities of the ancient world.
In 331 BCE Alexander marched into Mesopotamia. At Gaugamela, on the plains east of today's Mosul, Darius had gathered his last great army: perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 or more, though ancient writers claimed far larger numbers. On 1 October Alexander charged straight at the king, and Darius fled again, first to Arbela and then over the mountains to Ecbatana. Babylon opened its gates, and Susa surrendered its treasury. Alexander forced the Persian Gates, a mountain pass held by Ariobarzanes, and stayed five months at Persepolis; in 330 he burned the palace there, whether by drunken accident or as revenge for Xerxes' burning of Athens. Darius was murdered by one of his own nobles, his kinsman Bessus, satrap of Bactria.
BattlesGaugamela, 1 October 331 BCE · Persian Gates
The east of the empire, today's Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, resisted for three hard years of guerrilla war. In 329 BCE the Sogdian leader Spitamenes handed Bessus over to Alexander's officer Ptolemy, and Bessus was executed. Spitamenes then raised Sogdiana in revolt, while nomad horsemen gathered beyond the Jaxartes River; Alexander beat both, and Spitamenes was killed by his own men. Alexander founded cities, among them Alexandria Eschate, 'the furthest', on the Jaxartes, whose walls were built in about 20 days. He took up Persian court ceremony, which angered many Macedonians, and in 327 married Roxana, the daughter of a Bactrian noble, Oxyartes, who had held out against him in the mountain fortresses.
In the winter of 327–326 BCE Alexander fought his way through the hill country of the Swat and Kunar valleys, with massacres reported at Massaga and Ora. Omphis, the ruler of Taxila, joined him, and the army bridged the Indus. In May 326 he crossed into the Punjab and, at the Hydaspes River, defeated King Porus, whose army included war elephants; impressed by his courage, Alexander let him keep his kingdom and added more land to it. But at the Hyphasis River (the Beas), his exhausted soldiers, eight years from home, refused to go further. Ahead lay the Nanda Empire of the Ganges valley. His officer Coenus spoke for the men, and Alexander had to turn back.
Alexander turned south, sailing down the Hydaspes with a newly built fleet while the army marched along the banks. The Malli and Oxydracae of the Punjab had been enemies, but now they joined forces to bar his way. From November 326 BCE Alexander struck before they could unite, storming their towns and killing many who fled; in one citadel some 5,000 died when it was burned. Attacking another, he scaled the wall with a handful of companions, the ladder broke behind them, and an arrow pierced his lung. He barely survived. The fleet and army then went on down the Indus to the sea, while Craterus led a large part of the army west towards Carmania.
Alexander sailed down the Indus, then led part of his army back through the Gedrosian desert in southern Iran, a 60-day march in which thousands died. His admiral Nearchus brought the fleet along the coast. At Susa in 324 Alexander married his officers to Persian noblewomen, and at Opis he faced down a mutiny of Macedonians angry at Persians joining the army. His closest friend, Hephaestion, died at Ecbatana. On 10 or 11 June 323 BCE, in Babylon, Alexander fell ill and died, aged 32; fever, typhoid and poison have all been proposed. His generals fought over his empire for decades and carved it into kingdoms, among them the Seleucids in Asia and the Ptolemies in Egypt.