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Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe January 332 BC. Thousands of soldiers are heading south. Many march on foot, clad in leather armor and wearing bronze helmets. Six metre long pikes, their main weapon, protrude high above their heads like the many spines of a porcupine. There are also hundreds of cavalrymen, finely dressed with their own spears, swords and splendid capes. Not to mention the countless horse drawn wagons carrying the vital baggage for this army on the move. This army, one of the most formidable the world had yet seen, is hugging the verdant Mediterranean coastline on its journey south. Inland, these soldiers can see a great spine of mountains dividing coastline from desert beyond. A lush forest of large cedar trees sprawls across these hillsides. Forests shrouded in legend, renowned throughout the known world. The Greeks call this land Phoenike Phoenicia, modern day Lebanon. These forests have provided the timber for countless ships over countless centuries. Vessels that had gone on to explore the coastlines of Africa, that ferried settlers to new sites in faraway Spain, that fought nimble Athenian triremes in the Straits of Salamis that had been the backbone of Phoenician fame for centuries. The army continues south, parallel with this great forest, forcing the prestigious maritime cities along the coastline to submit one by one. So far, so good. The soldiers can see their next city in the distance, an island city, the city of Tyre. High walls and countless ships protect it, a formidable defence. But the soldiers have no intention of stopping. This show of strength will not deter their leader. Tyre will submit one way or another. This leader is King Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great. Alexander is carving his way through the western lands of the mighty Persian empire, the superpower of the time. Spirits are high. Barely a couple of months earlier, Alexander and his force had finally confronted and defeated the Persian king of kings, Darius III and his mighty army in what is modern southeast Turkey, seizing many great treasures in its wake, including Darius closest family members, his mother, wife and daughters. Alexander's kingdom now stretches from the swift flowing Danube river in Europe to these fertile fringes of Phoenicia. He is still only 23 years old. Alexander feels victorious. Darius is retreating. He is retreating east towards his western capital, the immaculate city of Babylon, where Darius will ready a new army to fight Alexander once more. This will be a military rematch like the world has never seen. Bigger and bloodier than before. One final great showdown for Darius to block Alexander's road to Babylon and the Persian heartlands beyond. One last chance to crush this Macedonian menace. This rematch would come in time. For now, Alexander's imminent focus is Tyre, the next city in his path. A quick submission and sacrifice to his divine ancestor Heracles in their prestigious temple and he'll be on his way swiftly on to Egypt, this illustrious land of pharaohs and pyramids. At least that is Alexander's hope. Only after all of that can Alexander press on eastwards towards Babylon, where Darius was waiting for him, ready to resist once more. Welcome to episode three of this special series about the life and legend of Alexander the Great, one of history's most formidable commanders. Last week we covered the start of Alexander's invasion, invasion of the Persian Empire, his early victory at the River Granicus, and his close shave with death during the fighting. Then we delved into how Alexander slowly took over all the great cities of Anatolia, cutting the fabled Gordian Knot on the way. And finally, how he defeated King Darius himself at the Battle of Issus. Well, I say finally, but actually we're nowhere near Alexander's final act. Today we continue this epic world changing story. We'll explore the greatest siege of Alexander's career against the island city of Tyre, now found in present day Lebanon. We'll look at Alexander's venture to Egypt and the fascinating legacy he left there before pressing further east for one last great pitched battle against the Persian king of kings at the Battle of Gaugamela. Joining me in this episode once again is Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy, the author of Philip and Alexander, Kings and Conquerors. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host and this is episode three, the Road to Babylon. Adrian, what a pleasure to have you back on the show.
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Thank you very much for having me.
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It is almost as if we've been in the same place and just recorded the previous two episodes. But it makes sense because we are doing this miniseries on Alexander the Great and we've covered quite a lot so far. We've gone from 356 BC, his birth, all the way down to the beginnings of his conquest of Persia and his first big battle against King Darius III at Issus in 333 BC. Late 333 BC. So he's 23. By this time he's achieved quite a lot. But there's still so much more to go, isn't there?
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Yes, that's the thing, there's always more. And Alexander seems acutely aware of this at the time, that yes, he's won great victories, but there's still a lot more to do. He's not about to rest, relax. He's still got that restless energy that will drive him for so long.
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And how much of an empire does he have by this time? What should we be imagining? So we've got Macedonia as the heartlands, the Greek cities further south, ancient Thrace, modern Bulgaria up to the Danube and then a bit into the Balkans like today as well, a bit to the west and then I guess it's largely effective. It's Turkey today, right?
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B
Basically. And not all of it, not all the inland areas because he's again, as we were talking about last time, he's kept very much the coast and the main cities. So it's a lot of territory. But again, winning one battle doesn't mean you've conquered this forever. He knows that he's in a war with the superpower of the day and that yes, he's killed lots of Persians, yes, Darius has lost prestige through this defeat, but the Persian Empire is still vast. It's got lots of money, it's got lots of people, it can be called up to fight again. So that this is not the end, it's just it keeps him in the game. Every victory keeps him in the game. It's like adding to your bet all the time, getting the money to roll over and keep on going.
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A
Yeah, he's nowhere near the heartlands yet. Is he still far to the east and the other great centers and Alexander can't even focus there yet. He needs to still stick to the Mediterranean coast at this time because he
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hasn't even captured all of the Mediterranean coast. There is still a substantial Persian led fleet out there that's able to attack the Greek islands and maybe if it keeps going, mainland Greece itself, it's not far away. The Aegean is relatively small, well within the range and he's got a little bit. But he is still the pygmy fighting against the giant. It is still at that stage, no matter how brave and skilled he is, the odds are against him.
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That mention of the fleet is also interesting because we are focusing on Alexander the Great and his army now in what is modern day Syria and he'll be going into Lebanon very quickly. But to highlight that there is still a Persian fleet at that time being a massive nuisance, a pain in the backside in the Aegean and trying to stir up opposition at home. I think the Spartans are thinking about revolting at this time, aren't they? Well, not revolting or leading like a challenge to Alexander back home. So he's got that kind of multi front nature to it.
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B
And Greek states always have people who are not satisfied with how things are going or who are exiles, many of whom ended up as mercenaries, about fighting for the Persians. One thing that Issus has done is strip away a lot of the manpower from that fleet because many of the troops were called to join Darius army. So you've lost a lot of the troops, all very well having lots of ships. But to land, to take cities or to threaten to take them, to make people think I should join the Persians, I can get their backing, I'll be able to be free of Alexander, that's harder. So some of the impetus has gone out of that Persian offensive, I see. But it's still there, the fleet is still there.
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And I guess because we mentioned this character in our last chat, this Greek general fighting for the Persians, who always seems to be like someone who seems to have good ideas, but the Persians go against that classic kind of showing off as Greek idea. So take that with a barrel full of salt. But this figure, Memnon of Rhodes, who our sources portray as someone who was going to be leading like a very animated, a very successful counterattack almost, he fortunately dies at this time as well, doesn't he?
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B
He does. I mean like any other successful leader, Alexander is lucky. But again, like any other successful leader, he takes full advantage of the opportunities that luck brings along. So Memnon dies of disease as far as we can tell. And although his successor, a Persian, does continue the aggressive campaign, as I say, then a lot of men are withdrawn for the Issus campaign and lost and never got back. So there is a lack of purpose to the naval side of things after Issus. And it's just that it hasn't got the resources, hasn't quite got the focus that it had before.
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It's dying out. So Alexander can focus on the land. And so he now heads south down through what is present day Lebanon and the ancient region of Phoenicia. And this is a land, if someone says the name Phoenicians, you will think very ancient history and exploration and ships. This is a land with great maritime cities that are renowned for their shipbuilding.
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B
Yes, they have been sailing throughout the Mediterranean for many centuries and often beyond coming to Cornwall for tin and this is the thing that exploring the west coast of Africa, the Phoenicians are famous in that respect and their cities have a degree of independence and autonomy under the Persian rule that keeps them loyal. Although again, Sidon will change sides and welcome Alexander, Tyre, the other great city will not. And this will lead to an eight month siege. When Alexander sits in one place for this long time because he feels he has to take Tyre and it's a very difficult position because. Because the city is essentially on an island off the coast, so he has to build a mole to reach it before he can even begin. The siege works. And the defenders, being very good sailors, they're out there in boats, in ships opposing him at every step of the way. So it's really hard and it's a battle of ingenuity, one side against the other, trying to outwit the other.
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And we've covered sieges in the past episodes we mentioned, like the siege of Halicarnassus and how Alexander is bringing with him engineers and siege machinery of the time. But this siege, this next big event, the siege of Tyre, this is like the apex, this is the pinnacle of all of those great engineering military sieges of Alexander's campaign.
- [12:42]
B
It is staggering in its scale and the amount. When you think that now the ancient side is connected to the land on the basis of the mole that Alexander's men built and has silted up and that's created an isthmus. So they physically changed the landscape and said. But the first time they do it, it gets destroyed and they have to build it again. They are, they are helped when some ships start to defect to them and they end up with a navy of their own, able to contest the seas and seal off the city. But it's very hard to besiege someone when they can bring food and supplies in and out by sea. So until you've cut them off completely. But it's also. Alexander isn't waiting for them to run out of food and surrender. He storms the place in the end. And these are very big walls, big fortifications, far more formidable than anything his army has faced or his father's army has ever faced. But the technology and the techniques they've developed and the sheer determination means that they keep going. So it takes two thirds of a year.
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Yeah.
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And yet Alexander gets into Tyre and Alexander wins in the end.
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And the thing, you're in that great majority, don't you, that great variety, you've got the creation of that artificial mole slowly out towards Tyre, finally getting there after Even though the Tyrians, as you say, you know, they fight hard and they send fire ships out and everything and they dismantle it. And then Alexander tries again, builds like mobile towers on the mole to try and attack the ships as they're coming. And then you get like ships with catapults on them, like kind of seaborne artillery. Yeah, Firing on the wall. And then you get the next one, which is like. I think it's putting towers on ships themselves to kind of make almost turn an assault into a land assault.
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It's. It's ironic in one sense, because a great tradition of the. The very ancient empires of Asia, Asia Minor in that area, people like the Assyrians and to some extent the Persians, was their siege craft. You can look at those Assyrian relief showing the siege towers, the rams and all this sort of thing. And for a long time, Europeans like the Greeks have been backward in this. Only under Philip have they not only caught up, but begun to surpass it, because they've combined that technology with a very aggressive approach to then assaulting. And it helps that the army's confident. And also there is no Persian field army. So Alexander doesn't have to wonder. He can sit there for eight months and know that nobody's going to attack him on land, not in any serious way. So he can focus entirely on Tyre and the siege. And Darius isn't going to be able to get another army together in any meaningful time frame that will threaten him. So it's a reflection of the strategic balance changing. And it's during really this siege of Tyre that the Persian naval offensive collapses utterly and the Persian fleet goes. And Alexander's plan of defeating the enemy at sea by taking their bases on land finally comes good, because the other
- [15:26]
A
Phoenician city states have gone over to Alexander. Also at this time, Cyprus, which is divided into the little petty kingdoms, each with their own fleet and their own king, the Cypriot kings also go over to Alexander. So all of a sudden the Tyrian navy's outnumbered.
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Yes. He gets a fleet of his own bigger than the enemy's. It's enough.
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A
And then it's all. Then the balance has shifted. It's always so interesting with. With Tyre, isn't it, that the story goes that they were willing to submit to Alexander, but he wants to go and sacrifice to their version of Heracles at their temple. And they say no.
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It seems to be a case of you're negotiating and you're trying to make the enemy go away and make this stop, and you want to do it with honor, you want to keep your elitist still in charge. You still get it right. And it's a little bit like. I mean, get it in the 18th and early 19th century, all the. When an army surrenders, does it get to march out with its colours flying? If it has a band, is the band allowed to play a march, or do they have to play? Famously, at Yorktown, the British weren't. And this sort of thing, these little points make a lot. They're important to the people involved. And in Tyre's case, it is an assertion that, okay, we'll ally with you, but we still want to remain just Tyre. We'll be autonomous. We'll run our own affairs. You'll have to be nice to us to keep our favour. And Alexander, at this point, perhaps if they'd come with this approach at the start, it might have been all right. There's also a case where they shoot down some of his envoys. So that makes it worse. So it gets more serious. But it's an escalating. But it's this sort of etiquette of warfare. But ultimately, Alexander says, no, you've got to give in altogether. It's unconditional surrender. He makes them, or I'm coming in and killing you.
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Which is what he ultimately does. You know, I'm going to teach you guys a lesson for trying that. So he kills much of the population, the vengeful troops, after several months of hard fighting. And it's.
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It's very nasty. It's very brutal. You probably. Killing that number of people is quite hard. Some no doubt hid in, you know, in the side streets, in their houses. Some just. If you kept out of the way, you might have had a chance, but you're probably going to be enslaved. And you're always focusing in all these cities on the elite as far as you can, a. Because they've got the most to steal. But also they're the ones you want to humiliate, kill, because they're the ones who opposed you.
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So Tyre falls, and I think Alexander, at the end of it, he finally gets to make his offerings at the temple of Heracles.
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Yeah, what's left? Yeah.
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And he offers them. I think it's the siege ram, or whichever piece of engineering of military equipment had first smashed through the walls of Tyre, he dedicates there. Yeah. What I also love is the fact that one of the chief engineers of Alexander is a man called Diades or Diades. And because of all of the siege equipment, the different techniques used to finally conquer Tyre dyades becomes known as the man who Took Tyre, which is fun. So Tyre's out the way. Good one to start off with because it's a. It's a big moment for Alexander in siegecraft. And from there he heads south. And this is the next siege he has, which almost follows very quickly after that. Is often overshadowed by Tyre, but very interesting, especially given it's always in the news today as well. Completely understandably, which is Gaza.
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B
And then it's a different problem because it's not an island and the soil is quite sandy. So this is something that, again, there are modern echoes. Opens itself to tunneling. And this is the first time we hear about Alexander's men mining underneath the walls. Obviously, this siege lasts two months, so it's still quite a formidable thing. And the resistance is led by the Persian commander who is loyal to Darius and fights to the end. You get fighting sallies out from the Persian garrison to attack Alexander's men. They're also countermining. It's a more aggressive defense in a sense, but it's all over far quicker because there aren't the physical obstacles to getting there. But again, Alexander gets injured this time of wounded. So there will always be a pattern. Sieges are a dangerous time. Philip tended to get hurt more in sieges because you're close to the enemy and you can't always stay in cover. So it's a difficult thing. But then Alexander, very brutally, perhaps with echoes of Achilles and the treatment of Hector's body after killing him at Troy, mistreats the Persian commander's corpse. Afterwards, drags him around behind a chariot to be Achilles for the day, or at least, so the story goes, and you feel there's a frustration. They've come from this really arduous siege at Tyre. They didn't want another one straight away, but that's what they get. So most of this year is taken up in sieges.
- [19:48]
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I was literally going to say 332 BC is a year of big sieges for Alexander as he slowly gets his way down the eastern Mediterranean coast, the Levant. And that allows Darius time, you know, because Alexander can't go eastwards yet, he's still got to go to Egypt. But that gives him precious time, doesn't it, to start gathering a big army further east.
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But what could Alexander have done quicker? Those that. That 10 months of Siegecraft is two. Two cities. And they're big and important cities. You can't ignore them. There'll be a thorn in your side if you leave them there. And again, it's all about prestige. Alexander has to convince every new community he comes to that the only sensible choice for them is to join him. Surrender. Because if you don't, I will take you. So I'm coming in one way or another. You might as well just accept me. You can't afford to fail again. It's like the battles. You can't fail even once. So everything. Once he starts to do something, he's got to succeed in it.
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A
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- [21:50]
B
curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story.
- [21:53]
A
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- [22:09]
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A
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- [22:33]
A
lost in, check out Dan Snook's history. So the next step for Alexander is Egypt, the prestigious land down the Nile or up the Nile. And unlike those two previous sieges, there isn't resistance. The Persian governor Mazakes, I think his name, or Mazaeus, one of the two, surrenders Egypt without a fight.
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B
The Egyptians didn't really like the Persians. No. There have been big rebellions ever since Persians conquered Egypt. There have been several of them from the 5th century BC onwards. And they'd been a recent. They've only fairly recently been reconquered. So essentially they are not going to fight and die for some Persian great king that they hate anyway. Alexander makes it clear there are presumably diplomatic contacts, people going ahead, some warning that the elite knows that you're going to be treated with respect. Alexander does display great respect for the traditional Egyptian cults, the Akus bull, the Serapeum at Saqqara.
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Yes.
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So that all of these are showing you that I will treat you well, I will become your king, but I will respect you. You will be allowed to do things in the way that you feel is proper. So it's an opportunity for him which he seizes. There's the story that Philip was prouder of his diplomatic successes than his military ones. You probably wouldn't say that of Alexander, but this is one of the greatest diplomatic successes, where he goes in and just people join him and it's a mixture. They were joining him as well because they're confident that he's strong and that at least for the moment, they are free of the Persians. But it is. It's the quickest and easiest success he's had up until this point.
- [24:27]
A
He's proclaims Pharaoh. I don't think he has a whole pharaonic ceremony. I don't think there's a time for it. But he is certainly recognized as the new pharaoh. And if you go to Egypt today, if you go down to Luxor, Ancient Thebes in Upper Egypt, somewhere that Alexander would not have visited. But if you go to the, like, either the temple of Karnak or the temple complex at Karnak, or more clearly at the heart of the Temple of Luxor, there is an image, right in holiest of Holies of an Egyptian pharaoh. And the cartouche shows it's Alexander the Great. So you have an image of Alexander the Great as like Ramesses or Tutankhamun.
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For many Egyptians, they could feel it was business as usual. This is the proper way of doing things. And it's. He is tactful in a way that the Persians had never been.
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The next big thing, of course, is he goes down to the Nile delta and he lays the foundation of the city that arguably is his greatest legacy of All Alexandria.
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There were so many Alexandrias early on because he founded lots of them. But this is the one this has become, the only one that's important is still a major city in the modern world. It's curious because he gives the orders. I want a city built here, but very little will have happened in his lifetime. It's really a creation of Ptolemies afterwards, although probably from the beginning Alexander made clear this is a Greek city and it's the new Athens. The law code is based on the Athenian one. Later on in autonomy, it becomes the center of Greek learning, Greek culture. The famous library is a Greek text. Even when they've been translated, like the Hebrew scriptures, they're all in Greek. That's what you're celebrating. And even in the Roman period it's referred to as Alexandria, near Egypt. Yes.
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A
By Egypt.
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B
Yes, Exandria in Egypt. So it's thought of as different. But again as you say, in many ways his greatest legacy is clearest one in the modern world, but one that he starts, he gets it going but then doesn't live to see.
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A
Exactly. And because he doesn't ultimately spend too much time in Egypt at all. He goes west though, first of all, doesn't he? He has a Sejorn into the desert of Libya.
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B
It's. It's an interesting reminder that there are shrines that are famous in the Mediterranean world, particularly the eastern Mediterranean the Greeks know about. So you have the shrine of Ammon at Siwa, the oasis, which is a long way out, a difficult journey. This is more recently in the second World War. This is one of the primary bases of the Long Range Desert group and the SAS set up there. And it was a frequent. They would go from Cairo to Siwa and then at various times they'd have a base further west and then they'd be going behind the German and Italian lines. So it's a community that is there because of the water. The temple was very old, but it has this status within the Greek world. So Alexander, for whatever reason decided that this was a place he wanted to visit and it becomes an important part of his image because of what he claims or has claimed on his behalf as happens there, that he is recognized by the God in some special way. And you have different versions of this where he's overtly called the son of the God or he's told, asking questions, have my father's murder has been avenged and or your father is in heaven sort of thing. You don't have to remember that. But Philip's murderers have. It's not quite clear. Others indicate there's more exasperation in the priest there. But he seems to receive something that satisfies him, is important to him. Plutarch talks about a letter he writes back to his mother that oh, I'll tell you what I was really told when I get home. Which of course he never does. So it's shrouded in mystery and the whole thing is given an epic quality. It is a difficult journey, but it isn't as far out in the desert as it could be. But nevertheless, remember these are Macedonians, they've never seen any desert before. Very true, so we take it for granted, but that's quite a shock. So the stories of them getting lost and having these animals leading them forward and all this sort of thing, they were doing something very strange. They really were going into the unknown as far as I am concerned.
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A
I can imagine him leaving most of the army in Egypt beyond the Nile and he takes a small contingent of
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his friends, a few hundred at most. I would think it's a small party which again shows confidence that. But yes, again the bigger army you wouldn't be able to feed and give water to. So it's, it's a remarkable thing. And it leads on later to these claims of divinity, you know, the son of a God and the horns of Ammon showing himself with the.
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And how the Greeks equivalate Amon with their chief God Zeus, don't they? Kind of.
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B
Kind of, that's. Yes, it's that. So it's a shrine that is recognized as important and as being part of sort of our religion as far as the Greeks are concerned. And it isn't an animal headed God. It's not something weird in Egyptian that they know is very ancient but they can't quite deal with. So it fits in the way it's told. Again, how the priests there saw it, how the wider Egyptian population saw it, it's another matter. But it become important. But as you say, Alexander does this little foray out, Siwa comes back and then pretty soon he's gone from Egypt, never to return until as a corpse, his body is shanghaied and taken there by Taliban. So again, he didn't, you know, wasn't even expecting to be buried at Alexandria.
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A
No, no, absolutely. But it's. So it shows the legacy of Alexander the Great. You know, Egypt is one of the most clear places you can see it today, which is really, really fascinating. But yes, he doesn't stay in Egypt long and by the end of 332, beginning of 331 BC. That kind of time, isn't it? He's. He's now having done those conquests down the Levant into Egypt. He can now finally turn this attention to Darius and the road to Babylon, as it were. And I guess it's. You can't go straight across, let's say, Egypt to Baghdad today or anywhere like that. You've got to follow the rumors. So it's once again, I've said a horseshoe shape in the previous episode, but it feels similar again. It's like an upside down horseshoe. Well, actually depends which way you see it. It's going up, curving, round and back down again, that idea.
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B
It is, because that's the route you've got to go if you want to feed an army that's 40 to 50,000 at least by this time. You haven't gained too many more allied troops at this point, but you've managed to recruit some more to keep your numbers up. And you're going up via Assyria and that area because it's practical, it's the only way of doing it. And you're still dealing with extreme temperatures. Difficult routes, you've got to cross the rivers when you get to them. So it's another epic. Again, the scale of the journey, the distance that many of Alexander's soldiers walk on their two feet is quite staggering for people that, generally speaking, the ancient world didn't travel around that much. So it's. And this is all in one direction
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at this point, all going eastwards at this time. And so those two rivers, that's the Euphrates first of all, and then the Tigris, and he crossed them quite far up, so northern Iraq and that kind of area today. I do love this story of the Tigris crossing because I know there's a little bit in one of the sources which mentions how the river is very fast flowing at that time. And so what he does is he put two lines of horsemen in the river, one upriver to slow the current, and then a line downriver to pick up troops who lose their footing. I'm not sure if there are some upriver. There are certainly horses downriver to pick up people who lose their footing.
- [31:50]
B
It's a very practical way of doing it. Other armies and other people have done much the same. Or you had the Zulu thing in the 19th century, whether you'd link arms, you'd basically sort of go as a mob across, because they didn't. Wasn't culturally, they weren't very fond of swimming. So doing this or doing the horses and it's like all the cattle drives and things we've seen in all the western movies. Again, it makes perfect sense. There's a practical element to a lot of this and it's that we can do this together, we can come together. This is not complicated technology, it's not building a complicated bridge, but it's a practical way of making sure that anyone who does lose their footing does get swept away, has a decent chance of being rescued.
- [32:32]
A
It's funny because one of his generals tries to do similar in Egypt just after Alexander's death. But he uses elephants and that doesn't go anywhere near as well. Poor man. But that's a story for another day. So he manages to cross the Euphrates and the Tigris. This is now getting towards September, October 331 BC. And I think people can date it quite accurately because around that time they record an eclipse.
- [32:59]
B
It's in the Babylonian records of the temple cults there that are measuring all of these things very carefully recording it. And again, not all the records survive, not all the tablets survive, but it happens that we have. So you can, yes, actually be just for a change, precise because remember we're talking about a calendar that doesn't exist. We're imposing on many of our sources, use the lunar calendars which tend to spread their years over two of ours or parts of two of ours. So often when you say something happened on a particular date or Alexander was born on this, you can't tie it down. But this one we can what they call the dates another matter. But we can tie it down in this case what it would have been for us.
- [33:39]
A
It's interesting where you can, you know where that is mentioned in like the Greek sources and then also the Babylonian astronomical record. So it's amazing, kind of cross pollination of evidence to kind of beeline to more specifically place the battle that will closely follow the battle of Gaugamela. And this is the big battle, isn't it? Basilivistus is extraordinary, but this is the next level. Darius has gone to the next level to prepare for this.
- [34:03]
B
He has and he hasn't. On the one hand he's got a big army, at least as big, perhaps larger. However, he doesn't have any more the strong infantry forces that he tried to dis. So it's a different army. He's got to win with other troops. He can't match the Greek Macedonians in hand to hand combat on foot. That hasn't worked. And now you no longer have the capacity to do it. So it's got a lot of horsemen, tens of thousands of horsemen, and that may be one of the reasons why the numbers are so inflated in all the sources. Yes, they're always exaggerating. There's always a million Persians, whatever it might be, but you get lots and lots of horses together and it does occupy a lot more space than people on foot. It looks big, it looks impressive. The dust it throws up, the noise it makes, the drumming of the hooves on the ground will all be bigger. So it's again understandable the Macedonians were looking at this and thinking, what the hell's going on? Can we cope with this? He's also got. There's a few elephants, don't seem to play much of a role in it, but he's got these scythe chariots. It's the chariots and he's prepared, basically. It's like preparing the wicket for a test match. He's flattened the ground, he's cleared it. He's going to wait for them here, challenge them. Here I am, come and take me. You want to be great king, you've got to deal with me here. With the idea that they be smooth, these chariots can build up momentum and with scythes on the wheels, they will terrify the Macedonians who will panic and then just be ridden down, cut down. So it all relies on Alexander fighting at a place where Darius has chosen and he's waiting there with all his troops and it's basically, you know, come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. It's that sort of mentality because remember
- [35:41]
A
last time before Issus, we mentioned how Darius had planned to was waiting for Alexander at another kind of prepared location, but he couldn't wait there any longer because they'd eaten all the food or too long for a big army in one place. Sounds like that's not a problem here, that Alexander accepts the challenge very quickly.
- [35:57]
B
It's less of a problem. And you're also, you're closer to the royal road, you're closer to your heartland, it's easier for you to of sort supply. But Alexander, again, he can't march all this way and then wait. He can't afford to look timid, to look intimidated, because again, the world expects him to lose and he so far has kept on winning, but everyone's saying actually his luck's bound to run out in the end, so he has to attack. You have again one of these many stories where Parmenio gives advice and Alexander sort of brushes him aside. And is right always. Should we do a night attack? Because there's so many of them, this will negate their chariots and all this sort of thing. If we go in at night and Alexander says he won't steal, he won't
- [36:40]
A
steal a victory, that's it.
- [36:42]
B
Which there is sense in that, in that he has to. This is making the point. If he can defeat the great king in the heart of his empire, then that's a very clear statement that this man doesn't deserve to be great king. But I do. This is Darius. He's chosen the ground, he's picked his own army, and yet I still beat him. If you attack at night, it's chaotic. Then it's easier to claim that, oh, well, it wasn't really fair. So there's an element where there's a logic to it. But also his army's pretty big. Night attacks are always confusing things. It's interesting. This is another of those cases where Arryon chips in with, based on his own experience that night attacks are inherently confusing. I think Alexander's right, this is a bad idea. You know, things can go wrong. People can get lost very easily, particularly one suspect in a large featureless plane, which is what this is. So he's probably right. But it's also part of the Alexander story, the Alexander myth. You know, the older, wiser heads say this, the brash youngster, you know, you almost imagine the leather jacket type thing snaps his fingers and this is what I'm going to do. And I do it because I'm cool,
- [37:48]
A
because you see that other story and you know, there are so many stories, but so we won't cover them all. But I'll mention this one as well. That happens before Gaugamela. Supposedly, Darius, I think he sends at least two different offers to Alexander before Gaugamela. And I think the last those offers is like Taelis once again with a barrel full of salt. But he offers basically Alexander all of the lands west of the Euphrates, roughly there and thereabouts. So kind of taking that western half of the Persian empire. And Parmenion basically goes to Alexander saying, well, if I would accept this. And Alexander's like, well, I would too, if I were Parmenion. He just feels so harsh on Parmenion all the time.
- [38:25]
B
He's just like the whipping boy he is. He's the straight man who just did the feeder lines and to be shot down. But again, although on the one hand it's very attractive, you thought, wow, that's a staggeringly Great empire in the longer run you have to think, well the Persians aren't going to put up with that now. This is only ever going to be a temporary thing while Darius is around or his successor's around. They know the Persian empire should include, include all of that life. They're not going to let us have it.
- [38:48]
A
So. But good story to include it is a great. So the battle of Galgamela, Adrian, how does it go down? You've got the big chariots and the massive army of Darius on one side and then Alexander on the other wanting to attack.
- [39:02]
B
Darius plan is essentially simple. The Macedonians will come to him and he will then hit them with a load of chariots that will scare them, break up their formation, break up these nice neat box of pikemen, panic them, ride some of them down, and then the rest of his cavalry, his entire front line, his mounted troops will swarm in and mop up the rest. So Alexander, it's very obvious that's what he's going to do. Alexander can see that. So he starts to throw it off in two ways. First of all, he veers the whole army towards the right as they're advancing, so they're not going at the center of the Persian line, at the center of this clear ground. So that means the Persians are just slightly wrong footed. As the chariots come in, Alexander then gives orders for the blocks of pikemen to change formation so that they create lanes through them. And horses, being more sensible than their riders, don't want to ride into what looks like a brick wall, a solid wall, particularly a big brick wall with all these spikes out in front of it for the pikes, they tend to go through the, the open space, they gout through that no matter what the, the chariot crews are doing, they start to get shot down by light infantry and they can be dealt with after all. And they're not manoeuvrable, they're not good at turning. So that fails. Alexander keeps on veering a little bit to the right, the Persian cavalry are waiting to attack. You then get maneuvering where Alexander, his extreme right starts to move even more to the right. The Persians are trying to react to this, thinking well we better meet them because again, comes back to Granicus, things we talked about before. Cavalry strength comes from being mobile, so you don't want to stand and wait in a block and when you're on horseback and get hit by another block of horsemen, so you want to be able to maneuver to the point where you can charge or countercharge them as they're coming in, but it disrupts the plan. This is not the. The sort of. The nice, neat scheme that you were going to be doing. A gap starts to open up. Alexander at this point, this is the. The battle where he unequivocally is at the head of the Royal Squadron of the Combanion cavalry and steams straight towards the gap that seems to be created. There's been some fighting early on as each side feeds in light cavalry, heavier cavalry, light infantry units. There's then this gap and he steams in towards the main force and towards Darius and the centers going back that way. But again, it comes back to what we've spoken about in the earlier episode. You get the description. That is the big picture. The manoeuvres of the army, the tactics, the deployment, the. And then the focus keeps narrowing down, first of all to the units around Alexander and then to Alexander and his squadron of companions. So a lot's going on that he can do. This is based around the trust he's got in everybody else. He's also formed his army for the first time ever in two lines of infantry, almost in a big hollow square. There's not quite troops joining the two lines together, but the idea is, with all these enemy horsemen, they're bound to get round our flank. So let's have somebody. We can turn around and face them more easily. And it's what happens. The Salian cavalry under Parmenio struggle, they manage to hold their own, but they can't hold back all the Persian cavalry.
- [42:02]
A
They're on the left. They're on the left. When Alexander's been moving his army to
- [42:05]
B
the right, they've of course been dragged more towards the center of the Persian army, although it really is part of the Persian frontiers. You're in the most dangerous place on the battlefield. The focus of the enemy attack goes in. The phalanx has also broken up a little bit. There are some gaps between units because you've been advancing over a mile, a couple of miles to get there. And the best troops in the world, even on this nicely sort of flattened ground, you're not going to go in a straight line. So some Persian cavalry come through the gap, some of them come around the flanks, there are problems there. Some of them get to the baggage train in the camp, but in a sense that doesn't matter. But the main Macedonian Greek army holds together, doesn't panic and fly back to save a baggage train. But nevertheless, they're in trouble. They're under pressure, but they don't give way. Alexander breaks through there are. There's probably more than one charge. Succession of fights he's getting towards Darius. Darius does what he's done. Odysseus again, he flees. When he sees Alexander going, Alexander claims to be. Or the way it's presented is he's on the verge of completing the victory, charging after him, killing great king, when the messenger gallops up from Parmenion saying, look, we're in real trouble. Parmenion again. Porchak gets the blame again. Alexander stops, begins to reform some troops around him, tries to get a group together so they can go over to help. The league had left. By the time they actually do this, the left has already won because the rest of the Persian army has given way, partly because the great king has legged it again, that's the narrative we impose. But do remember most of the Persian troops that do the fighting are on horseback. A lot of Alexander's army is as well. There's a hell of a lot of dust being thrown up by all these hooves, all these feet. And cavalry combats in any period of history tend to be a lot of back and forth. You charge, you do well, you beat the enemy, then some of their friends come out, you have to run away for a bit till your friends come up and you chase them back and forth. So this was probably an even more confusing battle than the others. All battles are confusing. So sources like Ptolemy that Arrian uses are trying to impose an order on something that was very chaotic. But Alexander, in a sense wins because up to a point he and his team were able to keep their order and their purpose better and more focused than the more numerous enemy can. The more numerous but disparate again. Darius has had a year or so to form this army, but it still comes from different ends of his empire, mostly from the east. Now, lots of people who don't know each other, they've never fought together before. So it's the veteran team up against the inexperienced, if talented, and it's the veterans, the really well practiced team, that win.
- [44:42]
A
And when Darius goes, it all kind of melts away, which is, you know, that's the end of the bastard of iss, the bastard of Gaugamela. Thank you very much. You can listen to the best of Issus in our previous episode, but of course, you know, Darius lives to see another day and he flees east again. But this time there is no safety in Babylon or Susa because Alexander is much, much closer. So he wins this victory, what many call his greatest victory, because of the scale of it and the significance of it. And the road to Babylon is clear. Babylon, the greatest city in the ancient
- [45:21]
B
world at that time it is because the army's gone, it's scattered. And also Darius credit has largely gone. Remember, he hasn't been king very long before Alexander turns up. He, he's been chosen as a fairly obscure member of the royal family, had a reputation for bravery when he was young, but he's never led a successful war. And suddenly everything has gone wrong over these last few years. And now for the second time on ground of his own choosing with this mighty royal army, he's been hammered and he's given in before his men, he's quit and he hasn't made that rule. So for a great king, although you weren't expected to fight hand to hand, nevertheless there was a degree of involvement, of support, of commitment, belief that you would win. It's looking as if he's discredited, as if he doesn't deserve to be king. And somewhere like Babylon, you have a community here that is far older than the Persian empire that has its traditions. These temple records we were talking about earlier, these cults have been going on long, long predating the Persians. The Persians have treated them with some respect, so they've accepted Persian rule that they have been rebellious rebellions in the past, but they don't want to fight the Darius discredited king. They don't have any reason to object to Alexander. So you have in one of the Babylonian accounts again you get the story where it starts off in the passage where Darius is the great king, then there's Mutiny's army and afterwards it's the rebel and then it's Alexander the great king enters Babylon and you simply king is dead, long live the king. Or he's not dead yet or the famous. The French newspaper reports on Napoleon in the Hundred Days. I think he starts as a monster, a rebel, an ogre, becomes the emperor and then it's his Highness. Napoleon has entered Paris today because you're reacting to the developing story. But why should they fight for somebody? It's like the Egyptians, they don't have any great emotional commitment to them. And when Alexander makes clear again as he did in Egypt, that he will respect their traditions, their cults, then why not?
- [47:17]
A
I can't even imagine what it would have been like for Alexander, let alone all of his troops and his companions entering into Babylon down the processional way, going through the great walls and seeing the ziggurat and everything, maybe the hanging guns of Babylon if they're there, certainly the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and the like. He would have never, ever seen a city like that. Yeah, it must have blown him away.
- [47:40]
B
And, you know, you never quite know. You can always get the reaction of, oh, you know, I prefer my simple farms from some people. But you feel there must be a wow element to the. Of this. And it's a little bit. You have the story of Caratacus, the British chieftain, going to Rome and claiming, why did you try and conquer us when you've got our mud huts, when you've got all of this. In this case, the Babylonians weren't the conqueror. But that strange sense, it must have been so utterly alien and also so many people. No Greek city has that population, all this humanity crowded into that place. And we always have this mistake. We tend to think of the ancient world as very dull and monochrome. This is colorful as well and no doubt rich in smells and all sorts of. But it's staggering. And it must have seemed like a dream, but again, it isn't. That's not where it stops for Alexander. It's not, oh, I've done that, you know, fair enough, I can retire.
- [48:34]
A
No, but still, seeing, like the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, the glamour of it like the Persians were before, you can see straight away that Alexander has ideas of this being a new kind of great capital for him in the future because it's got all that, you know, all that majesty there, but as you say, not at that moment in time. I think he keeps local governors in place and leaves a Macedonian military man also there in charge of a garrison. So once again, that pragmatic Alexander, they haven't fought him, they've welcomed him in. So the locals, locals in charge, former Persian governors, can stay in charge. Also works quite well with the local Babylonian aristocracy as it reveres the Babylonian priesthood and their traditions. I think he offers to help repair the ziggurat or something like that, doesn't he?
- [49:17]
B
The Persians had neglected, apparently, so the local cult hit space. So it's. It's the same sort of thing he does in Egypt. There's this deep showing that I respect your traditions. I will be a good king by your standards. Yeah, I'm not going to change and become one of you, but I will treat you kindly in a nice way and I will respect you and honor you.
- [49:36]
A
And then from there he goes east to the next of those great Persian centers, west of the great mountain range, the Zagros Mountains. And this is Susa, which is another very prestigious city. And I know it's not exactly the same, but it feels kind of similar. Rinse and repeat there. Right as he goes through.
- [49:53]
B
Yes, yes. Again, there's not very little opposition. And it's that wonder as they see these things, because the whole point of Persian architecture for their royal centers was to emphasize, I am the great king. I, I am immense, better than you in every way. You are nothing. Mesuza, Persepolis, all these places, you have that sense of grandeur, and yet you are walking in as conqueror. So the swagger of these Macedonians who've come a vast, vast distance from home, even at this state, they've got a long way still to go. Again, they don't know that looking at this and thinking, how did we win? In a sense. But again, they see wealth, they see money, they see luxuries. And that's been an emphasis from the Campadisas to gauge Mela, that when they capture the Persian camps and it looks they're pampered, they've got these silk cushions, these tents, these concubines, all this sort of stuff, we're tough guys who fight and live under, under the stars or under a simple tent. There is also a sense that when we deserve to beat them because they're soft, they're effeminate, they're just not up to. They're not the tough guys that we are.
- [51:01]
A
Well, I mean, that wealth we just mentioned, like, alongside the cities, there are those great kind of official treasuries that now fall into Macedonian hands. So Alexander now has no shortage of money for hiring more troops and mercenaries going forward. So the balance has certainly shifted there. But this is where it gets really interesting because from then on, going east, you're going into the Persian heartlands. Now Alexander can no longer portray himself as a liberator, but actually an invader. And so he has the. I was imagining it was like this big wall in front of him when he sees the Zagros mountains, this mountain range that he needs to pass through, and this is like the next step. You know, I always portray this as a great kind of chapter end, a new chapter beginning. Because the resistance you face from now on, I always feel is very different. There's no new big pitched battle against a Persian king of kings.
- [51:57]
B
It's partly because Darius has lost credibility to a great extent, but also he's lost a lot of money. The fact that Alexander is starting to seize the royal treasuries means that all this, the great resources of your empire are no longer yours. But it's also a question they Fought him now in three battles, maybe two really big ones, where you've got the whole might of the empire. The pick of the empire's been sent against him and you've lost. So nobody really is rushing to do that again. And you'll get. They'll defend the passes through the mountains and be outmaneuvered, as Alexander is good at doing. But there's no one, there is no one figure who can stand up and say, all right, let's get rid of Darius, but I can be great king and I can do better. You will have Bessos who will try to do this, but even he doesn't rally more than a fraction of the Iranian heartland. So there are divisions. It's the same way as when earlier on we talked about Macedonia. And it isn't just this simple. There's the aristocracy and they all think the same way. There's lots of factions within it. Persia in particular has had a fairly rocky period before Darius comes along. He is there because of successive murders and conspiracies within the royal household. So there isn't that unity. When you get to this, there's clearly a lot of people who feel we shouldn't have these foreigners here. This is humiliating. We need to fight them, but they don't unite. There isn't anything to make it a coherent resistance. And you also know that the big problem is you can't fight these people in the open because they're just too good at the moment. And it isn't an area where you have a tyre or even a Gaza. You don't have big walled cities. The Persian heartland hasn't been as urbanized and never quite will be in the. So you don't have big fortresses to defend either. You've got natural features like the mountains, at least to try and stop him getting in. But once he's got through, it's very hard to know how to fight Alexander. He's there. And it must have been deeply traumatic because this is an empire that's based around the sense that the great king is the divine representative on earth. You are defending the truth against the lie of Ahura Mazdi. Yes, all of this. And yet how come this barbarian filth is here? Basically, it's that, why are we losing? What have we done wrong? Because there's always. With that element, there's a sense that if things go badly, it's because you're not behaving as proper Persians should.
- [54:28]
A
You mentioned there, that resistance that is there through the mountain pass, the Zagros Mountains, and this is sometimes dubbed as the Persian Thermopylae, because you can see parallels with Battle of Thermopylae from the Persian invasion of Greece all those years ago, where you do get a small contingent, actually, I think it's a few thousand Persians led by a man called Ariabizanes, who fortify a pass in the mountains that they know Alexander's coming through with some of his army. The rest, with Parmenion, is circumnavigating the Zagros mountains, the supply wagons and all that, and they hold out for a little bit. When Alexander tries to attack the fortifications, he's repelled. But I think it differs in the sources, but one of them is that there is a prisoner who is local to the area and tells Alexander, I know a way around a small shepherd's path kind of thing. And lo and behold, like Thermopylae, Alexander goes around that way with part of his army during the night, descends on the back of the Persian defenses the next morning, and the rest of the Macedonians attack from the front. They sandwich the Persians, you know, hook, line and sinker. And the Persian resistance fails. And then it's, you know, all clear, I think Ari Bizarnes disappears and all clear straight ahead to Persepolis, the symbolic capital of Persia.
- [55:47]
B
It's, yes, it's this one attempt, but again, however it happened, the Macedonians, they fought in mountains before. Yes, these are really big ones, but they've. And they've got Thracians and Illyrians who are mountain folk as well. So it's a little bit like in the first episode we talked about the Thracians trying to hold a pass and rolling carts down. You often assume if you're the locals and you think you know the ground and nobody else does, this is more formidable as an obstacle than it really is. In the end, an organised army will probably find a way around. They'll probe first. They'll try and just barge through, but if they can't, the odds that the thought that they're just going to keep banging their heads against you or they're going to go away isn't going to happen. After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's republic, the monarchy returned.
- [56:42]
A
But Britain would never be the same.
- [56:46]
B
I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty from Charles II to Queen, Queen Anne
- [56:55]
A
and the birth of the empire.
- [56:58]
B
Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History.
- [57:00]
A
Hit wherever you get your podcasts. So Alexander gets to Persepolis and previously with. Well, we've had Babylon and Susa been welcomed in and those cities had fared pretty well. That's not the same with Persepolis, or at least with the royal palace, I guess, is it? Yes, completely destroys it. He burns it to the ground. And I'm always at a bit of. I wonder whether it's deliberate or. Because some of them say it was accidental and others say it was deliberate. It feels like it was deliberate. It was like a symbolic marker of revenge against the Persian invasion of Greece.
- [57:56]
B
I mean, you can compromise and say maybe they didn't plan to do it that night and it happened sort of. But you feel. I think it's because this is perhaps more than anything else, the most royal of all the palaces and the most formally the most spectacular, but actually not the most useful from an Alexander point of view. It's set up for a completely different political regime than the sort of one he's got at the moment as being a Macedonian king. Court doesn't work that way. If you look at Philip's palaces, they're not like this and it's too big and it's too spectacular. The idea that you have the Athenian courtesan leading them in a sort of drunken. They're all a bit plastered and they go out for a procession afterwards and just decide to start lighting this. That Athens is taking revenge for the. Given that you've had all this propaganda talking about, this is avenging the evils that Xerxes inflicted on us, the destruction most of all. Yes, there were temples at Plataea that got it as well, but basically it's the ones on the Acropolis at Athens,
- [58:57]
A
they burn it to the ground. They burn the Acropolis to the ground, don't they?
- [59:00]
B
And that's considered to be. And that's quite rare. The Persians normally treat temples with great respect, but if you oppose them, then it's you and your gods are going down because you have betrayed those gods. And if that's. And the Athenians for a while after the Persian war do not rebuild up there. It's supposed to be the reminder of what has happened. And you have, you know, the statues of the assassins of the tyrant in Athens that be looted from Athens there, that it's sent back now. So I think it's so symbolic, in a sense of this is something associated so closely with the great king. And to destroy it, to smash it after they've tried to loot all the valuable stuff. I mean, they haven't got it all out, but they've got quite a lot out. I think it probably is, it's probably deliberate. I mean it probably makes it, it is such a clear message. And again, it's humiliating to Darius. Look, he can't even defend his home, his palace. We can just wipe it off and I don't need it. I'm now the king, I am now the ruler, but I don't want this.
- [60:04]
A
So the palace at Persepolis is destroyed. It's a very symbolic act. And then Alexander and his army, they press on there still in Persia, Persia proper. I think they go to the royal tombs, don't they, in Pasargadae nearby so sees like the tomb of Cyrus and so on and then the last of those great kind of administrative centers of the Persian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, which is going a bit north and a bit west to Ecbatana in ancient Media. And I think it's there. This is important that Alexander, he still wants to go further east because Darius is still alive and Darius is fleeing further east, deeper into the Middle east at this time. But this is where Alexander and Parmenion part ways, isn't it? Around that time finally Alexander decides to leave Parmenion there to do some administration work, to, to stay there with part of the army but to no longer be with him and the rest of this army. And the reason I want to highlight that is it will become very important slightly later on, isn't it? But I think, I don't think I've missed anything else there by Akbatana. Those are kind of the main things between Persepolis and Akbatana.
- [61:11]
B
In one sense you could say, well surely the great crusade or whatever you call it against the Persians has succeeded, vengeance has been achieved. But Alexander, no, we've got to keep going, got to get the rice. As long as he's still alive, he's a thief threat. So let's keep going. That is that sense that while you will start to drop off people like Parmenio and give them other responsibilities on the whole not a lot of Alexander's field army has remained behind. He's kept most of it with him. It's kept on doing this long march. He's not garrisoning, he's relying on most of the areas staying reasonably peaceful, being content under his rule. And yet you're being drawn, you know, he's now in control of a huge, huge empire already. So one of the questions from now on is what are you going to do with it? What is this going to turn into? How Are you going to manage it? And balancing that with, well I've still got to keep going. The war's not quite over, we've got to win. We haven't got full victory yet.
- [62:06]
A
I must get Darius, I must get
- [62:08]
B
Darius and then it'll be after Darius. Well I must get Bessos, it must be. Well there's always another reason to go off.
- [62:14]
A
Well you said Bessus there. So what is this transition that happens that it goes from Alexander focusing on Darius to this new figure of Bessus?
- [62:24]
B
Bessus is one of the satraps when he's a senior commander at Gaugamela, has been before. Darius is discredited and at some point his the great and the good of the Persians still with him decide that he is simply a liability now he's no longer served, so he can't be rehabilitated as great king. He's not going to recover, so he's arrested. And then eventually as they're being chased by Alexander, he is murdered. And depending on the tradition, some of Alexander's men might get there in time to read his last breath or two and say a word to them or it's more likely they just find the corpse. So Alexander then turns himself into pursuing the killers of his enemy, the avenger king. Exactly. It's because it's almost like the sense that well you don't do this to kings, I'm a king, but and this is not how we should be treated. But also Bessus declares himself, adopts the royal tiara, becomes the new great king. So it's a clear challenge to Alexander. So it becomes no longer am I chasing Darius. And he's worn out a lot of horses and worn his men to a fragment and only a small vanguard actually catches up with what's left of Darius and his train and then they go on after Bessus and Bessus will be eventually tracked down and he's punished. It's almost if Alexander's pretending to be acting on behalf of Darius family and his surviving, you are treating someone who is a traitor to the great king because you are now his equivalent, whatever you call yourself. And therefore this is how this shouldn't be done. This is not up to you. You shouldn't make decisions like this. It's a very interesting transition but you can tell at this point that in Alexander's army people are just no longer quite so sure what they're doing and what it's all for. And this is when you start to get friction and trouble that will then dominate the years to follow.
- [64:14]
A
You see almost that cutoff point once the big administrative centers are taken, once Darius is dead and Alexander sends Darius body to be treated honorably back at Pisargada. Yet then those troubles start to emerge. So let's situate ourselves at the moment, I would say roughly we're in the area just south of the Caspian Sea by now. So northern Iran today, probably east of Tehran, aren't we? And so he's gone very far. He's now going to pursue Bessus into the far eastern satrapies, the provinces of the Persian Empire. I also love that around this time there's this legendary story of the Amazonian queen coming to Alexander because she's heard of all of his great exploits and says, I'm the greatest woman in the world. You are evidently the greatest man. We should have sex and have a kid together. They have sex for 13 days straight, apparently. And then she's satisfied that she's conceived well, she's going to give birth to the greatest child on earth and goes away and we never hear about that again. But a funny little story. And then he just continues east, doesn't he?
- [65:17]
B
So this is, this is him pushing
- [65:19]
A
through what's known as the Caspian gates.
- [65:22]
B
Yeah.
- [65:22]
A
And now fighting against Bessus and the people around Bessus who are still going to try and hold on.
- [65:28]
B
It's very much coming towards the sort of the northern northeastern fringes really of the Achaemenid empire, where you're getting onto the boundary not so far from the steppes. You've got these nomadic groups that are coming in that are there as allies for Bessus. And so it's a different type of enemy. It's gone from being cavalry dominated, which the versions of been at Galgamela, to becoming almost exclusively cavalry in a different type. But you just keep chasing them, you keep fighting them and eventually you win. And you have lots of difficult manoeuvre, you're going through very difficult terrain, you've got this straggling march through desert area, you cross another big river, you're using artillery to right away you're fighting, you're adapting to fight different types of enemy in a very different environment. But the whole message is that we just don't stop Alexander. And Alexander is always at the front. When you've had this long march through people coming through very short of water, Alexander waits outside to greet them and bring them in as they're coming through. And yet at the same time he will almost on a whim, suddenly Dismiss all the Greek troops and say, well, you can go home now, you're a very long way away.
- [66:39]
A
Where the hell are we? How am I going to get home?
- [66:42]
B
You don't even him a bus ticket. It's that sort of sense of. So he has this odd mixture of great empathy, great leadership and complete lack of any sense of how anyone else is thinking that you're not. You don't have the ambition of Alexander. So it's. But one key thing is that while we don't have big battles, we have lots of fighting for the rest of Alexander's career and a lot of it's difficult. So it's a very different pattern. But it doesn't make such an easy story.
- [67:14]
A
As earlier on, we're nearly ending this particular chapter because we're getting towards Afghanistan where we will end this episode. But you did hint at earlier that by this time where the kind of, the cause of what Alexander the Great is doing is not as clear to the troops anymore. And you now start to see problems in the army of Alexander, well, itself and with Alexander, with their king. And this is when we get to a place called Frada, which is modern day Farah, today in Afghanistan. And this is the downfall. It's the infamous Philotas affair. So Philotas, he is a key general of Alexander the Great, one of his leading generals in command of the Companion Cavalry, so the Macedonian cavalry. He's also the son of Parmenion, which brings back to why you mentioned Parmenion being left behind. Yes. How does he get caught up in this conspiracy?
- [68:11]
B
It becomes, I mean, it's. How do you keep the relationship of a king and his companions, his sort of half troops, his lords, his, you know, that sense of all living together, all drinking together, all joking together. There's this tradition of fairly raucous humor. But they mock each other and then you have the worry of, well, what is Alexander now? Yes, he's still king of Macedonia, but we own this empire. Or he does. That's far vaster. He's got far more money, far more luxuries. He's starting to make use of these, enjoy these. And so you end up with suspicion and rumor. And bear in mind again, yes, you've had this unprecedented success, but the most dangerous people for a king of Macedonia are other Macedonians, the royal family and those around them and the court. So Alexander becomes suspicious of a plot against him that, as I say, it's a real fear. We can see Alexander as perhaps a bit neurotic, paranoid even at times, but Being killed by people around you is a very real possibility for a Macedonian king. There is a rumor, Philotas is told of an alleged plot, but doesn't take it any further, doesn't tell Alexander. So when it comes out, not only does the plot come out, but the fact that Philotas hasn't said anything comes out. He then comes under suspicion, he's asked to defend himself. They do things fairly. Traditionally, you have this sort of assembly of. Not the entire Macedonian army because presumably that's too big, but representatives in a sense, the leaders, the officers, the file leaders, perhaps. And then you even get mockery of speaking Greek rather than the Macedonian dialect. Sort of thing where Philotas tries. And the fact that he's had gold hobnails on his boots since Egypt and all this, and he's gone. So they're actually saying, well, he's gone all weak and Asian and this sort of thing he's depicted, he is condemned and executed, which means that Alexander obviously knows that his father, Goeste's father, is there with a large contingent of troops and that again, civil war is a common enough thing in Macedonian history. So Alexander sends men with instructions to kill Parmenion without basically relying on the fact that they will get there faster, that they will arrive, and they do so. So Parmenion is presented with a letter and he's condemned. And there might have been a moment where they would have been worried, would the troops actually obey? But on the other hand, do you really want to commit to Parmenion when you've got Alexander and you don't know how much of the rest of the army is going to oppose? So he's probably finished. He's quite an elderly man by this time, so you end up with that weakening. But it's a throwback in a sense to how Macedonia has been in the past, just on a bigger scale.
- [71:02]
A
So that's the end of Parmenion and Philotas, who had been, you know, served Alexander for so long, and then gets thrown out the picture. Family line destroyed. And then we get to the final chapter in this episode, which is. I mean, that happens in Afghanistan as a monde Farah. But now Alexander continues, he does a bit of reforming of the army. You know, you don't have many older figures from Philip's reign, but you still have Clitus the Black we mentioned in the previous episode and a couple of others. But it is now a lot of Alexander's chief companions who are taking the biggest parts of his army, taking important commands and so on. And Then they keep going east, north and they enter into an extraordinary province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire which is the ancient region of Bactria. So that's like the Oxus river, which is the AMU Darya today. And this is real kind of Afghanistan territory. Now they enter there and Bactria is known as the land of a thousand cities at a thriving, lots of cities along the banks of the Oxus river and its tributaries, the most famous being Bactra, modern day Balkh. And this was where Bessus had hoped to gather lots more troops. Bactri is famous for its cavalrymen in particular. But Alexander enters into this province and almost because his reputation is so big by then, the army that Bassus had hoped to create, it just evaporates and Alexander is kind of welcomed in. There's not much resistance at all when he enters Bactria. So much so that Bassus intended, you know, new fight against Alexander here in an area that he knew very, very well. It all falls apart so quickly, so much so that he's then handed over to Alexander and Alexander has him brutally executed. So it's quite an anticlimactic end almost for Bessus I'd say it is.
- [72:54]
B
But it's the, how do you convince people that, oh, I'm strong and we're going to win when this army has kept on beating you and has come so far and is there on your doorstep? You know, if he'd had a few years, maybe he could have got away with it, maybe he could have rallied people. But why die for what looks like a lost cause? It's exactly the same attitude he'd taken with Darius just before. So it's the same thing. People look around and think, I don't, you know, I've got no skin in this game. Why should I fight and die for somebody that is probably going to lose anyway and that I'm not obliged to? So areas like this have tended to respect strength, but they've also, they are quite fiercely independent as well. So you have to treat them with great care. It may also be that Bessus have misread things. You know, you can know the area and still get things terribly wrong. But it is, it's this, this failure and then he's treated as a regicide effectively and a pretender, so gets this savage punishment as a warning to others. But there isn't then a big Persian rebellion in the rest of Alexander's life. So it works in that sense.
- [74:02]
A
It works indeed. And this will be where we end this particular episode, Adrian, we've covered so much. We've gone from the great siege of Tyre to Alexander defeating Darius, Darius death, and then the death of Bessus as well, the pretender. So by this time, Alexander and his army, they're in the northeastern fringes of the Persian Empire, they're deep in the Middle east, in what is Afghanistan. He's covered a lot of ground in those few years, and little does he know that he is about to face arguably the hardest slog of his entire career. You know, so far away from his homeland in, like, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan today, and ultimately in India. There is still so much more to come.
- [74:46]
B
Exactly. It's again, this epic is so big and the distances involved are still staggering. And that's even before you remember, they've walked this way, they've ridden that way.
- [74:57]
A
Yes.
- [74:57]
B
There's so much. Alexander spends most of his life fighting. You know, the big battles have happened. You've got one more to come in India, but otherwise, that's it. But he keeps on fighting, and he's wounded more dangerously and more times in this later period than he has been before.
- [75:12]
A
Gosh, so much more still to uncover. Adrian, as always, such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
- [75:18]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [75:23]
A
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy and I for our latest episode of our special Alexander the Great Series, Episode 3. There is one more to go, the finale, where we will cover the difficult campaigning of Alexander the Great in Afghanistan in the Middle east, followed by his brutal venture into the Indian subcontinent and down the Indus river valley, battling kings with huge contingents of war elephants and lots and lots of fierce resistance. Brutal, brutal fighting in India is to come. And of course, we will finish it off by exploring his return to Babylon and Alexander's early demise there, aged 32. That is all to come in episode four, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. I really do hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please make sure to follow the Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up@historyhit.com subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
- [76:47]
B
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