Alexander the Great (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας / Aléxandros ho Mégas or Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος / Megas Aléxandros) or Alexander III (Ἀλέξανδρος Γ’ / Alexandros III), born on July 21, 356 BC in Pella and died on June 11, 323 BC in Babylon, is a king of Macedonia and one of the most famous characters of antiquity. Son of Philip II, pupil of Aristotle and king of Macedon from 336, he became one of the greatest conquerors in history by taking possession of the immense Persian Empire and advancing to the banks of the Indus.
| Title | |
|---|---|
| King of Macedonia | |
| 336–June 11 323 BC | |
| Predecessor | Philip II |
| Successor | Philip III and Alexander IV |
| Pharaoh of Egypt | |
| 331–June 11, 323 BC | |
| Predecessor | Darius III |
| Successor | Alexander IV |
| Great King of Persia | |
| 330–June 11, 323 BC | |
| Predecessor | Darius III |
| Biography | |
| Dynasty | Argeads |
| Date of birth | July 21, 356 BC |
| Place of birth | Pella Kingdom of Macedonia |
| Date of death | June 11, 323 BC (at age 32) |
| Place of death | Babylon |
| Father | Philip II |
| Mother | Olympias |
| Siblings | Cléopâtre de Macédoine |
| Spouse | Roxane Stateira Parysatis |
| Children | Heracles of Macedon Alexander IV |
After Philip’s assassination, Alexander inherited a powerful kingdom and an experienced army. Taking up his father’s Panhellenic project, he united Macedonia and Greek cities in a coalition to invade the Persian Empire. In 334, he landed in Asia, starting a campaign that lasted ten years. He won a first victory against the Persian satraps at Granica, which offered him Anatolia.
Then in 333, he defeated King Darius III at Issos. He undertook the conquest of Phoenicia and marched to Egypt where he was proclaimed pharaoh. The victory at Gaugameles in 331 gave him the entire Persian Empire. He then led a campaign against the rebellious Persian generals and advanced to the land of the Scythians. Finally, he led a final campaign in Punjab and the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan) during which he won the Battle of the Hydaspes; But in 326 his soldiers refused to advance further. He died in 323 in Babylon, probably of illness, at the age of thirty-two, before he could carry out his plans to conquer Arabia.
King-builder, Alexander founded about twenty cities, the most important being Alexandria of Egypt, and established colonies to the borders of Asia, significantly extending the influence of Hellenism. He placed himself in the continuity of the Achaemenid sovereigns and sought to assimilate the Asian elites with the aim of ensuring the sustainability of the empire he had created, as evidenced in particular by his marriage to a princess of Bactria, Roxane. His empire was divided at his death between his main generals, the Diadochi, who formed at the end of the fourth century BC the different kingdoms of the Hellenistic period.
Alexander’s immense posterity throughout history, cultures and religions can be explained by the magnitude of his military victories, by his desire to conquer the whole known world and by his personality imbued with philosophy but also excess. Since Antiquity, his epic has given rise to numerous literary publications. Nevertheless, the writings of contemporary historians of events have all disappeared; Only their abbreviators remain today, some of which are at the origin of legends about it. Among his legendary stories, the Roman d’Alexandre occupies a special place; Derived from the writings of Pseudo-Callisthenes, it mixes history and fantasy to become one of the most widely read non-religious works in the Middle Ages, in the West as well as in the East.
During the reign of Alexander, a myth was built that presented him as a deified hero. This fame, despite criticism of its excesses or cruelty, then went beyond the borders of the Greek world to take its place among the writings of monotheistic religions. In ancient Rome, he was considered a model for many generals and emperors. In the Byzantine Empire, it enjoyed great popularity in all social circles and represented the ideal of the sovereign, while experiencing a form of Christianization. In medieval Europe, it is seen as an example of chivalrous virtues through the Roman d’Alexandre.
In modern times, he was once a model for Louis XIV. In the Age of Enlightenment, he appears as the one who extended European civilization and opened trade between Europe and Asia. In contemporary times, it inspired the Greeks’ desire for independence and became the model of the “conqueror-civilizer” for the promoters of European colonization. In Asia, it enjoys great posterity under the name of Iskandar (or Iskander). Finally, it is represented in many works of art from antiquity to the present day.
Sources
Direct sources
There is no written testimony from the reign of Alexander today. The account of Callisthenes, nephew of Aristotle and official historiographer until about 328 BC, is reduced to fragments. It seems to have been widely used in antiquity although its impartiality is doubtful. The writings of the Companions of Alexander who participated in the conquest, mainly Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Nearchus, Onesicritus and Chares, have all disappeared.
In his Memoirs, Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s greatest generals and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was first interested in the military fact; Aristobulus explained the geographical and scientific aspects of the journey; Nearque, the explorer of the coasts of the Indian Ocean, kept a logbook; Onesicritus, cynical philosopher and second to Nearchus, composed an Education of Alexander which describes the manners and geography of the conquered regions; Chares, chamberlain of Alexander, was interested in the private life of the king.
As for the History of Alexander of Clitarch, written shortly after the death of the conqueror, it is reduced to the state of fragments. Clitarch did not participate directly in the conquest but relies on official archives and direct testimonies. These contemporary authors of the events were widely used by Diodorus of Sicily, Arrian, Plutarch and Quinte-Curtius. Some ancient authors, including Arrian and Strabo, reproach contemporary historians for their fictitious or divergent accounts as well as flattery towards Alexander.
Contemporary royal archives have also disappeared. This is particularly the case of the Ephemeris, chronicles written by the chancellor Eumenes of Cardia, from 330 at the time when Alexander took over from Darius III. As Callisthenes’s account ends around 328, Alexander is said to have chosen a new type of official biography at the time when Persian customs were introduced to the court. This tradition of chronicles, which are similar to a daily account of the king’s deeds and gestures and a compilation of his correspondence, goes back among the Achaemenids to Xerxes I.
The Ephemeris seem to have been quickly inaccessible after Alexander’s death. Ptolemy and Aristobulus would nevertheless have used them. Later ancient authors allude to it when they state precisely the circumstances of Alexander’s death. It is also conceivable that part of the Ephemeris disappeared during Alexander’s lifetime in a fire as Plutarch affirms. According to Diodorus, Perdiccas published in 323 Hypomnemata, that is to say a compilation of the battle plans and plans of Alexander. Several ancient authors, including Plutarch and Pseudo-Callisthenes, used a collection of Alexander’s correspondence. Philologists are divided on the status of these letters, whether they are authentic or apocryphal, although they correspond to historical events. The forgery of letter-writers from historical figures is a common practice throughout antiquity.
Among the official documents, only rare epigraphic inscriptions issued in Greek cities remain, such as that dating from the reign of Philip II relating to the conditions of entry into the League of Corinth (338) which remain valid in the time of Alexander, or that of Chios in Asia Minor which transcribes a letter from Alexander written after the Persian counter-attack in 332 defining the conditions for the return of the island under Macedonian hegemony. Another contemporary inscription of Alexander transcribes a decision made about the city of Philippi in Macedonia.
Numismatic sources provide important political and economic data, a considerable mass of coins having been minted during Alexander’s lifetime, although coins bearing the effigy of Alexander were issued by the Diadochi, including Ptolemy. The first tetradrachms of Alexander types (head of Heracles wearing the lion’s skin / Zeus enthroned an eagle in the right hand) would have been struck after the battle of Issos (333), the first gold staters (head of Athena helmeted / Nike standing) after the capture of Tyre in 332. The dating of “elephant coins”, which could date from the Seleucid period, remains questionable.
Indirect sources
Only the abbreviators of Alexander’s contemporary authors, all alive at the time of the High Roman Empire, remain today. The oldest complete account that has come down to us is that of Diodorus of Sicily in the Historical Library, book XVII, written in the first century BC. We can nevertheless add the Histories of Polybius, written in the second century BC, which evoke some facts relating to the conquests of Alexander.
Among late compilers, two historical traditions should be distinguished. The first tradition considered the most reliable by modern historians, is that represented by Arrian (the Anabasis and to a lesser extent India) and Plutarch (Parallel Lives of Illustrious Men). To tell the epic of Alexander, these two authors draw on the Memoirs of Ptolemy and Aristobulus. In the Life of Alexander composed at the beginning of the second century, Plutarch, a biographer and moralist of the Greek language, is interested through many anecdotes in the character of Alexander, put in parallel with Julius Caesar, because for Plutarch words say more than actions. His portrait is rather favorable and admiring, like Arrien.
His sources are mainly the Ephemeris, a collection of Alexander’s correspondence and about twenty ancient authors. He also wrote, among his Moral Works, On the Fortune of Alexander, an exposition in which he demonstrates all his fascination for the conqueror. Highlighting the great deeds of Alexander, and the Greeks in general, is for him a way to revive a world now dominated by the Romans, although he also rejoices in the benefits of the Pax Romana. In the Anabasis, written in Greek in the second century, Arrian, a high-ranking imperial officer, insists on military facts with sobriety and precision, while showing great admiration for Alexander. According to him, no one among the Greeks and barbarians achieved such feats. He announces in the preface to use as a source the accounts of Ptolemy and Aristobulus while trying to criticize them at times.
The second tradition, considered less reliable in places, is that represented by Diodorus, Quinte-Curce and Justin, the authors of the Vulgate of Alexander, who base their stories largely on the History of Alexander of Clitarch, written a few years after the death of the sovereign. These authors present an apologetic vision of Alexander’s reign and pepper their accounts with a few fabrications. Diodorus offers in the Historical Library, written in Greek in the first century BC, a detailed testimony that sheds light on sources that have now disappeared, even if his main source is probably Clitarch, whom he distorts for his moralistic needs. Book XVII is considered the most accomplished and longest in the Historical Library.
Alexander appears as a hero, mixing grandeur and fortune, praising the good, sensitive and strategic sovereign; but his excesses are not hidden, although Diodorus explains them by political reasons or by the intervention of the gods. Quinte-Curtius, who lived in the first century BC, composed a History of Alexander the Great in Latin, of which only eight of the original ten books remain, the first two and some scattered passages being missing. The work is largely drawn from The Story of Alexander of Clitarch and the story of Callisthenes. It is also inspired by the memoirs of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, which explains the few concordances with Arrian’s Anabasis.
Although he exposes some fables in the continuity of Clitarch, Quinte-Curce proposes a rigorous thought. His text is the only historical account of Alexander available in the West in the Middle Ages. Justin, who may have lived in the middle of the second century, is the abbreviator of the Philippic Histories, now disappeared, of the Gallo-Roman Trog Pompey composed during the reign of Augustus among a Universal History. Trog Pompey uses little-known Greek sources. It is quite likely that he used Clitarch for the life of Alexander, including possibly Hieronymos of Cardia, a contemporary of the Diadochi.
These sources, which offer an anti-Roman interpretation, have the interest of highlighting non-Latin peoples (Macedonians, Parthians, Carthaginians, etc). His account is nonetheless punctuated by historical errors and chronological approximations. Chronological problems, like Diodorus, come from the discrepancies between the Macedonian and Athenian years as well as from Alexander’s companions whose calendar is based on the reigning years.
Trog Pompey had a rather negative opinion of Alexander but recognized a great sovereign. Justin, who summarized the work of Trog Pompey (books XI and XII specifically concern Alexander but inserted in a universal history, it is not a biography like Diodorus), also influenced by the popular novels of Alexander of his time, insists on the moralizing and dramatic aspects (especially the moments of cruelty and the relationship with Philip II), while proposing an animated narrative, too scholarly digressions are not transcribed.
The accounts (stathmoi or “stages”) of the bematists, the surveyors whose mission was to calculate the distances and describe the regions crossed by Alexander, were taken up by ancient authors, including Eratosthenes, Strabo, Athenaeus of Naucratis, Pliny the Elder, Elian and Eusebius of Caesarea.
Finally, the ancient authors did not deliver an impartial historical account but rather an exposition of Alexander’s high deeds punctuated by moralizing assessments. They also have in common to have neglected too much the opponents of Alexander or what does not directly concern his conquests.
Archaeological sources about Alexander the Great
Archaeological evidence dating back to Alexander’s reign remains very rare. His reign was relatively brief, it is difficult to date an archaeological layer from this period. Most of the Alexandria he founded have disappeared, apart from Alexandria of Egypt, although its construction was completed under Ptolemy II. The current site of Aï Khanoum may correspond to Alexandria of the Oxos but the documentation discovered is later. The tomb of Philip II, unearthed in the royal necropolis of ancient Aigéai, shows a hunting scene on a fresco; it could be the young Alexander at his father’s side.
Most of the contemporary works of art of the reign of Alexander, including that of the sculptors Lysippus and Léocharès or the painter Apelles, have disappeared, although many copies were made in Roman times. There are some original works from the Hellenistic period. The mosaics of the lion hunt and the deer hunt that presumably depict Alexander date from the last quarter of the fourth century BC; they were put in houses in Pella.
The sarcophagus of Alexander found in Sidon dates from the end of the fourth century BC; he glorifies the conqueror while showing his ability to ally with the Persian elites on the hunting panel. The famous mosaic of Alexander from Pompeii is said to date from the late second century BC, although the original painting that served as a model dates from the second half of the third century BC according to the prevailing hypothesis. It shows Alexander fighting Darius III at the Battle of Issos according to the traditional theory, either according to another theory at the Battle of Gaugamela, or he is an archetype of Alexander’s victories.
Recent discoveries
More recent discoveries, or publications proposing new interpretations, bring a fresh look at Alexander’s conquests by highlighting the territories of the Persian Empire. Thus Babylonian astronomical tablets dating from the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods were published in 1988. One of them, bearing the inscription “the king is dead”, made it possible to precisely date the death of Alexander on the night of June 10 to 11, 323 BC. Another, dated October 1, 331, mentions the battle of Gaugamela, the flight of Darius III into Media, and Alexander’s entry into Babylon probably on October 21, 331.
Papyri written in Aramaic, discovered in 1962 near Jericho, testify to the flight of Samaritans in the face of Alexander’s advance in 331. Documents written in Aramaic on wood and parchment, not yet published (as of 2018), have been discovered in Bactria (present-day Afghanistan); one of his letters, which concerns food distribution, testifies to an administrative continuity between the empire of Alexander and that of the Achaemenids.
A monetary treasure trove was unearthed in Afghanistan in 1992. It consists of a gold coin corresponding to a double daric, with on the right the head of Alexander covered with an elephant’s scalp and bearing the horns of Ammon and on the reverse an elephant with above the letters “BA”, perhaps meaning Basiléôs Alexandrou (“From King Alexander”). This coin, minted after the victory against Poros at the Battle of the Hydaspes, can be compared to the later “elephant coins”. It would be for some researchers, despite the uncertainties, the only contemporary portrait of Alexander.
The oasis of Al-Bahariya, located in Egypt on the road taken by Alexander in 332 between Memphis and the oasis of Siwa, houses the remains of a sanctuary called Alexander, excavated in 1938, which has a pedestal on which is engraved an inscription in hieroglyphic script. This confirms that Alexander would have received the complete Pharaonic protocol. A second inscription in Greek, recently published, bears the dedication “King Alexander to his father Amon”.
Archaeologists at the British Museum believe they have discovered the remains of a fortified city, Qalatga Darband, which Alexander founded after the Battle of Gaugameles in 331. They refer to photographs taken in Iraqi Kurdistan by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, declassified in 1996. In excavating the site, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a perimeter wall and the foundations of various buildings. Excavations are ongoing (2018).
Evolution of historiography
In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the biographical genre remained consistent with the ancient model erected in particular by Plutarch, while the Roman d’Alexandre, very widely distributed since the twelfth century, brought Alexander into the legend. During these times, he is seen as the model of the virtuous prince and the king-conqueror. The first modern biography of Alexander was written by Samuel Clarke in 1665 in an England marked by the First Revolution. He appears as the embodiment of excess and despotism. In France, during the Age of Enlightenment, Plutarch, Arrien and Quinte-Curce experienced a new critical examination thanks to the work of Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, Jean-François Marmontel and Guillaume de Sainte-Croix.
In L’Esprit des lois (1748), Montesquieu evokes Alexandre as the one who allowed a “revolution of commerce”. It follows the work of the scholar Pierre-Daniel Huet who published a History of Commerce (1716) which highlights the founding work of Alexander. This vision is found in Historical Research on India (1790) by the Scotsman William Robertson who makes Alexander a model because he would have associated military conquest, trade and the spread of European civilization. However, in the eighteenth century, there are very few texts entirely devoted to Alexander. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in a Prussia traumatized by the defeat of Jena, the historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr condemned the work of Alexander, unable according to him to consolidate the kingdom he had inherited and exalted instead the unification of Greece led by Philip II.
The History of Alexander the Great by Johann Gustav Droysen, published in 1833, marks the beginning of a true scientific examination of Alexander’s work. The historian, pupil of Hegel and creator of the term “Hellenistic”, makes him a hero of universal history. Droysen envisions the cultural aspects of Alexander’s policy, which consists, according to him, of merging “the ardent vitality of Greece” and “the inert masses of Asia”. He praises the economic policy and the city foundations that would have showcased the “immense treasures once barren” of Asia.
He asserts that Alexander prepared the emergence of a “world religion” and that he was the founder of a new era at the origin of a civilization that lasted until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. Finally, in Droysen’s eyes, ancient Macedonia resembles contemporary Prussia whose mission is to unify the German people as Philip and Alexander did for Greece. In the English-speaking world, the first representative of this idealized vision is William W.Tarn, whose biography of Alexander published in 1948, described him as a civilizing hero.
For the British historian, Alexander “was the pioneer of one of the greatest revolutions in the history of the world” by initiating the matrimonial union between Macedonians and Persians in a desire for universal brotherhood. Peter Green, in Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 BC: A Historical Biography (1970, republished in 1991) seeks in particular to study the psychology of Alexander; he insists on his “military genius” while noting his lack of real project at the beginning of the expedition. He finally took up the ideology of the “hero” conveyed by ancient historiography. The works of Robin Lane Fox, which inspired Oliver Stone for his film Alexander (2004), present an apologetic vision of Alexander’s reign while insisting on the supposed decadence of the Persian Empire.
This glowing evaluation contrasts with the decidedly more negative one that takes up criticisms dating from antiquity, including those issued by the Stoic philosophers, namely that Alexander would be a “predator” with above all military qualities because politically he would have failed because of his impulsiveness and irrationality, ending up isolating himself because of “purges” among his officers. The first representative of this critical school is Karl Julius Beloch in Griechische Geschichte (reprint 1912-1917) who considers Alexander a tyrant. In Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichkeit und seines Wirkens (1949, reprinted in 1973), Fritz Schachermeyr, a historian close to Nazism, was also critical of Alexander.
This analysis is found in Albert B. Bosworth in Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (1988), an authoritative work today, and Peter Green in Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 BC: A Historical Biography, University of California Press (1992, reprinted 2013). Alexander’s military genius, previously unanimously recognized, is also relativized by modern criticism. Ernst Badian in Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike (1996) describes the return from India as a “military catastrophe”; Waldemar Heckel, in The Conquests of Alexander the Great (2008) emphasizes Alexander’s strategic abilities but opposes an overly romantic conception of his reign. Faced with these criticisms, historian Frank Holt warns against a “new orthodoxy” that would swing the pendulum of the heroic cult of Alexander from one extreme to the other.
Recent research refrains from seeking to fully understand Alexander’s personality or from making a moral judgment. Rather, they seek to examine the expression of royalty, its transformation, and the political consequences of conquest. Paul Goukowsky’s thesis, Essai sur les origines du mythe d’Alexandre (1978-1981), renewed the study by raising the question of power, ethics and the wonderful. The work of the Greek historian Miltiades Hatzopoulos, including Macedonian Institutions Under the Kings: A Historical and epigraphic study (1996), extended Alexander’s view of history through a study of the Macedonian state from the Argeades to the Antigonids.
Among contemporary historians, Edward M. Anson stands out who proposes in Alexander the Great: Themes and Issues (2013) a study of the political and cultural issues of Alexander’s reign, as well as Ian Worthington in By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the rise and fall of the Macedonian Empire (2014) which compares the reigns of Philip II and his son. Finally, thanks in particular to the work of Pierre Briant and Paul Bernard, the Achaemenid heritage is now considered in its full measure: conquered peoples, long “without history”, are more taken into account in the study of the empire founded by Alexander.
Early life and education of Alexander the Great
Birth and parentage
Alexander was born in Pella, the capital of the Kingdom of Macedonia, on 20 or July 21, 356 BC. He was the eldest son of King Philip II of Macedonia, of the Argeades dynasty, and Olympias, his third wife, Princess Eacid of Epirus of the Molossian tribe. His sister was Cleopatra born in 355. Through his father, he claims descent from Temenos of Argos, himself supposedly descended from Heracles, son of Zeus. Through his mother, he claims descent from Neoptolemus, son of Achilles.
A legend, known since antiquity, says that Olympias would not have conceived Alexander with Philip, who is afraid of her and her habit of sleeping in the company of snakes, but with Zeus. Alexander uses these folktales for political purposes, sometimes referring to the god rather than Philip when referring to his father. Another legend dating from the third century AD, of Alexandrian origin and attributed to Pseudo-Callisthenes, wants Alexander to be the son of the last pharaoh of Egypt of the XXXth dynasty, Nectanébo II, driven from power by Artaxerxes III and taking refuge at the court of Philip.
According to an assertion reported among others by Plutarch, Alexander was born the same night that Erostratus burned the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Alexander would later use this coincidence to strengthen his political aura by offering to finance the restoration of the temple, which was however refused by the Ephesians. Plutarch also indicates that Philip and Olympias dreamed of the future birth of their son. After consulting Aristandre of Telmessos, he determines that Olympias is pregnant and that the child will have the character of a lion.
At the age of 10, if we believe Aeschines, Alexander would have played the lyre and recited tragic tirades in front of Athenian ambassadors led by Demosthenes, who would have mocked him.
Alexander’s cultural influences
The question of the cultural belonging of the Macedonians, and therefore of Alexander in particular, remains the subject of a historiographical debate. In the eyes of the Greeks of the classical period, including Aristotle and Demosthenes, the Macedonians were, for political reasons, considered barbarians. Plato considers them as “half-barbarians” (mixobarbaroi). Be that as it may, most modern historians, who rely on recent archaeological discoveries, dispute an overly “athenocentric” view of Hellenic civilization that would consider as “barbaric” all the peoples living north and west of Delphi. Today, it is attested that Macedonians speak a Greek dialect, the ancient Macedonian, whose written form is close to that of the dialects of Thessaly and Epirus. They also worship Olympian deities.
Alexander thus appears deeply influenced by Hellenic culture. From the time of Archelaus I (late fifth century BC), the official language of the Macedonian court and chancellery became Attic. Philip II, who had stayed as a hostage in Thebes between 368 and 365, was fluent in Attic. According to Plutarch, Alexander spoke ancient Macedonian only under the influence of strong emotion. He knows by heart quotations from Homer’s Iliad, of which he takes a copy to Asia annotated by the hand of Aristotle, his tutor. Having as heroic model Achilles, he considers this work as the “best provision for military art”.
He drew from it the “Homeric doctrine of war”: the leader must exalt the courage of the combatants, seek the means to win while preserving the lives of his men and take advantage of the weak points of the enemy. He also read the Histories of Herodotus as well as Xenophon’s Anabasis and Cyropadia, authors that he was able to exploit during his conquests. These authors taught him that the principle of pitched battle prevails over the “multitude of barbarians” and that victory is offered, not by numbers, but by bravery and obedience to the leader. He was also familiar with the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides whose works he had brought to him while conquering Asia. He also has notions of medicine, theoretical and practical. Finally, hunting seems to be a preponderant element of his education in accordance with the ideas of Xenophon and Isocrates.
Aristotle’s influence
From the age of 7, Alexander received an education (la paideia) “the hard way” provided by Leonidas, a relative of Olympias of austere morals, and by Lysimachus of Acarnania, who accompanied him to Asia. His teachers taught him, in addition to physical exercises, literature, music and more generally piety and frugality. But Philip II had other ambitions for his son and he decided to give him as a tutor the philosophers Menechmus, also a mathematician, and especially Aristotle from 342 to 340 BC. The latter was the son of Nicomacheus, physician to Amyntas III, himself a grandfather of Alexander. Philip commissioned the philosopher as part of a political agreement with Hermias, tyrant of Atarnaeus, with whom Aristotle stayed after his exile from Athens.
Philip assigned the philosopher a place of teaching, a sanctuary dedicated to the nymphs next to Pella, probably the Nympheion of Miéza. Alexander received lessons there in the company of his future comrades-in-arms: Hephaistion, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Eumenes, Seleucus, Philotas and Callisthenes. At the same time, he underwent intensive military and sports training. This very strong cohesion between Alexander and his friends (philoi) has its sources in the Macedonian tradition that the sons of kings and the sons of nobles are raised together to form a real clan, that of the Companions (hetaries).
It is difficult to fully assess Aristotle’s role with Alexander, as some moderns have tended to overvalue him, even though Alexander proclaimed that he owes his father to live, but that he owes his tutor to live well. In this regard, Droysen asserts that Alexander is as a statesman what Aristotle is as a thinker. It seems obvious, however, that the philosopher is not content with the role of a private tutor.
He wrote for his pupil an annotated edition of the Iliad, a warlike account of estrangement par excellence, which Alexander took with him to Asia and from which he drew his line of conduct. Aristotle intends to overcome the narrow limits of polis. He forged in his pupil the conviction that Greece could be unified under the aegis of an absolute Macedonian monarch but having nothing of a tyrant, in order to make Hellenism triumph throughout the world, if the remarkable personality of a superior individual manages to embody it.
It is this type of king that Aristotle seeks in Alexander, and the decisive influence of the philosopher is measured by Alexander’s feeling, on many occasions, of being invested with a historical mission that consists in unifying the West and the East. Moreover, Aristotle showed virulent anti-Persian sentiments since his stay at the court of Hermias of Atarnaeus, executed on the order of Artaxerxes III in 341. He later called on Alexander to treat the Persian barbarians as plants or animals, but without being heard. Finally, the philosopher teaches the future king the virtues of friendship (philia) which according to him is “the most necessary thing for existence; It ensures cohesion in political thought and in battle.
The reign of Alexander the Great
King of Macedonia
Association in power (340-336)
During the reign of Philip II, the Kingdom of Macedonia tripled its area and extended its hegemony over Greece. After subduing the neighboring peoples (Illyrians, Peonians and Thracians), Philip defeated the Phocidians in 352 BC during the Third Sacred War and then subdued the Chalkidian League. Above all, he triumphed over a coalition reuniting Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338.
Alexander proved himself by commanding the cavalry of the left wing and by cutting to pieces the sacred battalion of the Thebans against which he threw himself first according to a historical tradition. He was charged, in the company of Antipater, to bring back to Athens the ashes of the soldiers killed in battle. After this resounding victory, Philip founded the League of Corinth, which brought together under his command all the Greek cities, with the exception of Sparta. The league had a double objective: to ensure the hegemony of Macedonia in Greece and to carry the war against the Persian Empire.
In 340, Alexander, a sixteen-year-old pupil of Aristotle, was called by Philip to the court of Pella to learn the workings of the state. It was at this time that he would have tamed Bucephalus. Then, his father having gone to besiege Perinthus and Byzantium, he was entrusted with the regency of Macedonia, although he was surrounded by experienced advisors such as Antipater. In 339, he received his first military command during a campaign against Thracian tribes in the region of Strymon, with the aim of ensuring control of the borders of Macedonia. This successful campaign, which was more akin to a raid, resulted in the establishment of a garrison in a town called Alexandropolis in the Rila Mountains, in present-day Bulgaria. He took advantage of this expedition to come into contact with a Peonian tribe that provided him with elite peltastes, the Agrianes.
In 339, an intrigue intervenes concerning Pixodaros, satrap of Caria. He tried to marry his daughter to Arrhidea, Philip’s second son; but his plan was thwarted by Alexander and some of his close friends, Ptolemy, Nearchus, Harpalus, Laomedon, and Erigyios. In retaliation, the latter were condemned to exile and did not return until after Philip’s death.
In 336, a violent dispute opposes the father and the son when the latter takes the side of his mother Olympias, while Philip wishes to impose as his second legitimate wife Cleopatra, niece of the powerful general Attalus, and with whom he soon has a child. Alexander had to take refuge with his mother’s family in Epirus. The quarrel does not last, Alexander saving the life of his father during a confrontation with the Triballs.
Rise to power (summer 336)
During the summer of 336 BC, Philip II was assassinated during the marriage ceremony of his daughter Cleopatra to the king of Epirus, Alexander the Molossus, brother of Olympias. The assassin is a young nobleman and bodyguard (sômatophylac), Pausanias of Orestide, who holds a grudge against the king after being raped. Some ancient authors believed that Philip’s murder was a plot involving Olympias, and possibly Alexander, but other authors lean towards a personal motive.
Few contemporary historians consider that Alexander was involved in the murder of his father while all of Philip’s conduct shows that he intended to make him his successor. Another hypothesis implicates Darius III, king of Persia since 336. Arrian mentions a virulent letter from Alexander addressed to Darius, after the battle of Issos (333), who blames him for the murder of his father. Alexander would also have asked the oracle of Amun in Siwa if he punished all the murderers of his father.
After the assassination of Philip in the summer of 336, the Assembly of Macedonians, with the assistance of Antipater, proclaimed Alexander, then twenty years old, the new king of the Macedonians. The Greek cities, primarily Athens and Thebes, which had pledged allegiance to Philip, did not wish to renew their alliance with the new king. Alexander immediately ordered the execution of all his potential rivals. Thus, he killed his cousin Amyntas IV, king around 360-359 whom Philip II overthrew when he was only a child. Olympias, taking advantage of the absence of her son who had gone to war in the north, had Cleopatra killed by forcing her to hang herself after seeing her daughter, Europa, whose throat had been slit in her arms.
Cleopatra’s uncle, Attalus, then on a campaign in Asia Minor with Parmenion, was assassinated, although it is not known whether the queen’s mother acted with Alexander’s consent. Alexander, under the advice of his mother, also had Caranos, a son of Philip and Phila, and two princes of Lyncestide executed. At that time the new king of Macedonia no longer had a rival capable of challenging him for the throne.
Northern expeditions (winter 336-summer 335)
Alexander was not only king of the Macedonians, but also, like his father Philip II, archon for life of the Thessalians, hegemon (“commander”) and strategist of the League of Corinth. As a result, he undertook a quick diplomatic tour of Greece so that the network patiently built up by his father would not unravel. Thessalian allegiance was renewed while the Athenians swore an oath to the new Hegemony.
However, before taking the war against the Persians to Asia, Alexander had to ensure the security of the kingdom by two expeditions against the barbarians of the north, one as far as the Danube, the other in rebellious Illyria. Indeed, expecting to take advantage of Philip’s death, Thracian and Getae tribes threatened Macedonia. In the spring of 335 BC, while Antipater exercised the regency, Alexander defeated the Getae, then crossed the land of the Odryses. He defeated the Tribals of King Syrmos on the banks of the river Hemos, near the Danube delta. Syrmos lost nearly 3,000 warriors, pushing the other tribes to peace. Alexander appointed Zopyrion governor of Thrace. Celtic emissaries, probably Scordic, met Alexander on the Danube on this occasion. The northern border of the kingdom was then fixed along the Danube.
But at the same time, Illyrian tribes make an incursion into Macedonia, led by Clitos, king of the Dardanians, who manages to rally the Taulantians of King Glaucias and the Autariates of King Pleuras. In July 335, Alexander marched with his troops to the territory of the Agrianes in Peonia, which King Langaros came to his aid. Victorious at the siege of Pelion in December 335, Alexander forced the Illyrians to retreat. Clitos nevertheless regained her throne, becoming a vassal of the kingdom of Macedonia.
Revolt of the Greek cities (autumn-winter 335)
While Alexander was occupied in the north against the Tribals, Greek cities decided to revolt against the Macedonians. This is the result of the policy of Darius III who, thanks to Memnon of Rhodes, reconquered the territories taken by Parmenion at the end of the reign of Philip II, and tried to stir up a revolt in Greece by sending funds to the cities. The rumor of Alexander’s death on the Danube sparked the rebellion of Thebes, which had housed a Macedonian garrison since its defeat at Chaeronea in 338 BC, while Athens and Sparta promise to help him.
Alexander’s response is lightning. He is said to have said, according to Plutarch, “Demosthenes called me a child when I was in Illyria and among the Tribals, then a teenager when I entered Thessaly; I want him to see before the walls of Athens, that I am a man.” Alexander crossed Greece on a forced march with his entire army and crossed Thermopylae surprising the Thebans then busy besieging the Macedonian garrison installed in the Acropolis of the Cadmea. At the end of the battle of Thebes and despite strong resistance, the city fell into the hands of the Macedonians in December 335, especially since the Athenians and Spartans did not come to its aid.
In accordance with the directives of the League of Corinth where the Thebans had many enemies, the city was completely razed; only the citadel of the Cadmea, the birthplace of Pindar for the sake of his relations with the Argeades, as well as the temples, were spared. Its population, 30,000 people, was enslaved and the land divided between the victors. Showing repentance after the destruction of Thebes, Alexander will seek throughout his reign to guard against the wrath of Dionysus, whose mother Semele is the daughter of Cadmos, the founder of the city, honoring her with many sacrifices.
Alexander nevertheless spared Athens. This generosity can be explained by the fact that the king cannot afford to destroy the main intellectual center of Greece on the eve of a Panhellenic expedition, while this city is made according to him “to give the law to the rest of Greece” when he will be in Asia; his former tutor Aristotle moved to Athens that same year to found the Lyceum. It is also conceivable that the negotiating skills of Phocion and especially of Demade convinced the king not to destroy the city. Alexander demanded in vain that Demosthenes, Lycurgus and Hyperides be delivered to him.
Alexander then decides to visit Greece as a victor. It was in Corinth that he met, in the winter of 335, Diogenes of Sinope the Cynical philosopher, who proclaimed: ” Remove yourself from my sun”, Alexander then replying to his officers: ” If I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes”. At the same time, Alexander also went to Delphi. As the Pythia cannot issue a prophecy, Apollo passing for being absent during the winter months, Alexander, according to legend, would have taken her by the arm to lead her in spite of herself to the sacrificial tripod. She then cried out, “O my son, you are irresistible!”, Alexander considering this exclamation as an oracle.
Alexander the Conqueror
Objectives of the Expedition to Asia
Alexander took up the Panhellenic project of his father Philip II, faithful to the thought of Isocrates who called for the union of the Greeks around the kingdom of Macedonia against the hereditary enemy represented by the Persians. The war against the Achaemenid Empire seems inevitable since Artaxerxes III came to the aid of Byzantium and Perinthus in 340 BC with the aim of reducing this Macedonian expansion which calls into question the “King’s Peace”. Philip did not envisage the conquest of the entire Persian Empire, but rather to detach from it the Aegean provinces where Greek influence is strong, unlike the strongly Iranized Anatolian plateau. He also sought to federate the Greeks against the Persians, before the latter allied themselves against him; moreover, some Greeks hoped that this expedition would weaken Macedonia and corresponded secretly with the Persians.
In the autumn of 335, the assembly of the League of Corinth fixed the terms of the expedition to Asia, where a strictly Macedonian bridgehead, commanded by Parmenion and Attalus, had already been installed since 336 in Troad. Alexandre accelerates the expedition because this bridgehead remains fragile. He also intended to free himself from the tutelage of Antipater, whom he had appointed regent of Macedonia, and acquire a military prestige that would allow him to supplant Parmenion and his cumbersome family.
The two generals also believed that Alexander should marry before launching this expedition in order to avoid a dynastic crisis if he died without an heir. By then, despite his youth, Alexander had already shown his decisiveness, political acumen and military talent. The campaign against the northern peoples exceeded what his father accomplished, while the destruction of Thebes calmed the Greeks’ attempts at revolt. However, he took over his father’s policy and the military instrument he had forged, while relying on officers faithful to his memory.
Alexander’s Army
Following Philip II, who forged the tool of conquest, Alexander enjoyed many military assets, which went beyond his personal charisma or courage in battle. He first had, at the beginning of the expedition, an army hardened by the wars of Philippe. This army is formed of a phalanx, both powerful and mobile, a heavy cavalry, a real assault force, a light cavalry, fast to maneuver, skirmishers, useful for harassment, and siege engines, effective for the capture of strongholds. He also relied on the loyalty of his Companions (hetaries), whose guard (or agema) was formed by a squadron of 300 horsemen, and could count on the Persian epigones (“heirs”) recruited from 330 BC. Finally, he took advantage of a good knowledge of the terrain thanks to the systematic employment of scouts before major battles.
Alexander’s army had great tactical and technical superiority over its opponents. The 15 kg cuirass and the shield of 1 meter in diameter, which weigh down the Greek hoplites, were abandoned at the initiative of Philip II. Macedonian phalangites (Foot Companions or Pezetaries) carry lighter defensive equipment and are mainly armed with a 5.5-meter-long pike, the sarisse.
During the defensive phases, the phalangites form a wall of shields from which spring a forest of pikes to support the power of the enemy charges. In the offensive phases, the masses and kinetic energies of the phalangites accumulate, making the shock such that it can topple several opposing infantry ranks. This lighting also makes it possible to equip a greater number of men. The heavy cavalry of the Companions compensated for the lack of maneuverability of the phalanges by protecting their vulnerable flanks and attacking in a “corner” formation those of the opponent. Alexander, therefore, used the tactics known as “hammer” (cavalry) and “anvil” (infantry) to win pitched battles.
The troops at the start of the Asiatic expedition were about 40,000 infantry and 1,800 Macedonian cavalry, plus an equivalent number of Thessalian horsemen and 600 others recruited from the Greek states of the League of Corinth. These numbers, relatively small, are to be compared to the 50,000 Greek mercenaries fighting in the Persian army. The barbarians of the North (Thracians, Peonians, Triballs, Agrianes), motivated by greed, provided many troops. The infantrymen of the phalanx, numbering 32,000, were recruited from the landowning class. To these troops, it is probably necessary to add the survivors of the expeditionary force sent by Philip to Asia Minor under the command of Parmenion and Attalus, initially about 10,000 men.
Alexander did not leave Macedonia totally bald. He left to Antipater, appointed regent in the absence of the king, half of the cavalry, about 1,500 men and 12,000 infantry. Over the course of the conquests, reinforcements arrived from Europe, while native troops were integrated like the 30,000 Persians integrated into the phalanx. More anecdotally, Plutarch writes that Alexander commanded his generals to shave their beards and those of the soldiers so that they could not serve as a hold in the hands of enemies.
Ancient sources are incomplete, even contradictory, concerning the great battles. The amounts of the Persian army, often improbably overestimated, are generally to be taken with caution.
Landing in Asia (spring 334)
In May 334 BC, at the head of the coalition forces of the Corinthian and Greek League, Alexander set out from Pella and, in twenty days, reached Sestos in the Chersonesus of Thrace. When he landed in Asia, he planted his spear in the ground, meaning that he intended to make the domains of the Great Persian King the “land conquered by the spear” (gè doriktétos).
While Parmenion was tasked with transporting the Macedonian army to Abydos beyond the Hellespont, Alexander headed at the head of 37,000 men to Elean, in the Chersonese, where he honored with a sacrifice the hero Protesilas, the first Achaean to fall in the Trojan War. This gesture is the first of a long list that illustrates the king’s desire to strike the imaginations by pretending to be the new Achilles, without it being possible to know if he is sincerely imbued with the pride of belonging to the hero’s race or if it is a simple theatrical gesture for his soldiers and peoples of Asia Minor and Greece.
Alexander then landed in Asia near the supposed location of Troy (or Ilion). He erects altars in the temple of Athena, then places a crown on the tomb of Achilles, proclaiming him blessed for having had his exploits narrated by Homer while Hephaistion, his favorite, does the same on that of Patroclus. This “pilgrimage” to Troy may seem as romantic as it is publicity. Alexander then joined his army at Arisbe in four days, bypassing the Pityos massif to the north.
The main Greek mercenary leader of Darius III, Memnon of Rhodes, was a supporter of the scorched earth policy against the Macedonians, whose value he esteemed. He, therefore, proposed to lead Alexander’s troops to the interior of the country, without fighting, while the Persian fleet would carry the war to Macedonia. Memnon could legitimately hope for a revolt of the Greek cities, relying on Darius’ gold and resentment against Alexander following the sacking of Thebes. But the Persian satraps are suspicious of the advice of a foreigner and take no account of his opinion. Arsites, the satrap of Phrygia, declares that he will not let a single house of his satrapy burn.
Noting that the cities of Asia did not welcome him as a liberator, Alexander decided to advance toward the adversary installed along the Granic River. Against Parmenion’s advice of prudence, he charged and defeated the opposing cavalry while the Greek mercenaries in the service of the Persians were not yet at work; The latter are ruthlessly massacred. The victory at the Battle of Granique beheaded the Persian General Staff for a time: Spithridates and Arsites are among the victims. It leaves to Alexander Hellespontic Phrygia and Lydia as well as the benefit of immense treasures.
The capture of the coastal cities (spring-autumn 334)
Alexander’s victory at Granique had an important consequence: until the battle of Issos, there were only simple garrisons left in the cities to oppose his advance. Sardis, the capital of Phrygia, surrendered without a shot, while Parmenion seized Dascylion. Ephesus, plagued by factional struggles, where Memnon had taken refuge after the battle, saw the pro-Alexander Democratic Party win. He cleverly attracted the sympathy of the inhabitants of the city by entrusting to the temple of Artemis the tribute that the city had hitherto paid to Darius and by recalling the banished.
Alexander’s opponents have taken refuge in Miletus, where Memnon, who has just left Ephesus, takes matters into his own hands after the betrayal of Hegesistrates, the leader of the Greek mercenaries in the service of Darius III. However, Miletus was quickly captured in July 334, after a siege, after Alexander had prevented the Persian fleet from anchoring on the coast by taking Cape Mycale. However, Memnon managed to take refuge in Halicarnassus, whose king Pixodaros, brother of Mausolus, had sided with the Persians. The city then became the center of Persian resistance.
Memnon was assisted by the satrap Orontabes and the Theban Ephialtes, who had sworn Alexander’s death since the destruction of his hometown. He plays on the internal rivalries of the city and makes an ally in the person of Ada, the sister of Pixodaros, whom he has previously overthrown. In the autumn of 334, Alexander interrupted the reign of Pixodaros and restored Ada to the government of the satrapy of Caria. She adopted Alexander as her son, making him her heir. However, it remains to seize the city, which has two citadels, one of which is perched on an island. At the end of the siege of Halicarnassus, Alexander could only seize the lower city, while the two acropolises remained in the hands of Darius’ Greek mercenaries; he then continued his journey, leaving under the command of Ptolemy a force of 3,000 infantry and 200 cavalry to continue the siege.
After the capture of Miletus in July 334, Alexander dismissed his war fleet, consisting mainly of Greek mercenaries. For a long time, historians considered this decision as a strategic error, even as a sign of mistrust towards the Greek allies, but the motive seems essentially financial. It would indeed be a cost-saving measure in order to avoid the maintenance costs of a fleet that is not, for the moment, essential to its conquest. It was not until the taking of Sardis’ treasure that Alexander experienced material affluence that would become one of the factors of his success.
Conquest of Pamphylia and Pisidia (winter 334-spring 333)
During the winter of 334 BC, Alexander went to Lycia, which he seized without much resistance. Then, at the end of the year, he entered Pamphylia and Pisidia. These regions belong only nominally to the Achaemenid Empire. Most often the cities of these regions are autonomous and rival to each other. From these rivalries, Alexander played and received the submission of Aspendos and Side. Then he went back to Phrygia and reached his capital Kelainai. Wishing to win Gordion as soon as possible, he did not take the time to besiege the citadel, entrusting this task to Antigonus the One-Eyed, the chief strategist of the Greek allies. The control of Phrygia is strategic because this central region, the great stage of caravans, is the point of completion of the routes arriving from the East and the point of departure towards the Aegean Sea.
Alexander then advanced towards Pisidia. He attacked Termessos without succeeding in taking the city and treated their enemies of Selge with benevolence. Then he seized Sagalassos and reached in the spring of 333 Gordion, located on the “royal road” linking Ephesus to Upper Asia. There he found reinforcements from both Macedonia and Greece as well as Parmenion who wintered in Sardis. The government of Pamphilia and Pisidia was entrusted to Nearchus, that of Phrygia to Antigonus.
Persian counteroffensive (winter 334–333)
Although Alexander has achieved great success, the situation remains undecided. For some members of his entourage, of which Parmenion is the representative, the objective of Philip II, theorized by Isocrates, namely the conquest of Asia to the banks of the Halys, is achieved. A vast territory had been conquered, but Isocrates considered a second solution: the annihilation of the Persian Empire. It is this objective that Alexander now wishes to achieve. There is therefore little time left for Gordion, where the episode of the Gordian knot, if it is authentic, promises him Asia: Alexander is thus presented with the Gordian knot. It is said that the person who manages to untie this knot will acquire the empire of Asia. Alexander cuts the famous knot with a blow of his sword.
The situation is not without risk on his back. Indeed, in the winter of 334 BC, Darius III entrusted the command of his fleet to Memnon of Rhodes. He planned to bring the war to Macedonia by landing in Euboea and organizing a general revolt. Anti-Macedonian sentiment remains strong in many cities. The idea of a war of revenge against the Persians did not make Macedonian hegemony acceptable to their opponents, while the Greeks fought on both sides.
Memnon retakes Chios, which is delivered to him by the oligarchic party; then he restored the tyrant Aristonicos at Methymna and laid siege to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. But in the late summer of 333, Memnon died of illness and was replaced by Pharnabazus, Darius’ nephew. Confident in his abilities as a strategist, Darius decided to take the lead of his army himself against Alexander. Pharnabazus recaptured Miletus and Halicarnassus but had to separate himself from his Greek mercenaries who were going to join by sea the army that Darius gathered.
Alexander considered it necessary to reconstitute his fleet in order to control the straits of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus and to protect the Cyclades from the Persians but also from pirates. He then asked the Greeks of the League of Corinth to arm a fleet, entrusted to two Navarchs, Hegelochos and Amphoteros, the brother of Crater. The latter manages to free Tenedos, Chios, Cos and Lesbos. It was not long before a conflict broke out with Athens, whose ships from the Euxine Bridge were intercepted by Hegelochos. He faced a threat of intervention by the Athenian fleet and released the ships. This episode illustrates the need for Alexander to have a victory in Asia to prevent any attempt at revolt in Greece. Thus, when he learned in the early summer of 333 that Darius was marching on Cilicia, Alexander left Gordion to meet him.
From Issos to Gaugameles
Towards the Battle of Issos (summer-autumn 333)
After leaving Gordion, Alexander first went to Ancyra; then he receives submission, of pure form because he did not have time to conquer them, from Paphlagonia and Cappadocia to Halys. It then grows southwards, entering Cilicia through the passage of the Cilician Gates, guarded by the satrap Arsamès. Leaving Soles, he stopped in Tarsus and fell ill there for several weeks, probably as a result of hydrocution after swimming in the river Cydnos. However, Parmenion, second to the king at the beginning of the expedition, occupied the passes that allowed the passage from Cilicia to the plain of Issos (Karanluk-Kapu pass) and those that beyond controlled the passage to Syria (Merkes and Bailan passes). In 333 BC, Alexander subjugated the mountain populations of Cilicia and seized Soles, where he restored democracy after installing a garrison and condemning the city to an indemnity of 200 talents.
He learned at this time the pacification of his rear with the victories of Ptolemy in Caria over the satrap Orontobates and the fall of Halicarnassus, Myndos and the submission of Cos. But soon after, in the autumn of 333, the satrap Pharnabazus, at the head of the Persian fleet, subdued Tenedos and Sigea and came to an agreement with the king of Sparta, Agis III, who tried to raise Greece by providing him with money and some ships.
The situation, therefore, remains delicate, especially as the imminent arrival of Darius III becomes clearer. The Achaemenid ruler settled in a narrow coastal plain near Issos with the aim of cutting Alexander off from his rear and forcing him into battle. Alexander is in Syria but turns back, because he needs a victory. He resumed the path of the Syrian passes already taken, ventured into the plain of Issos and organized his line of battle against the Persian army. The Battle of Issos (1 November 333) saw the defeat of the Persians despite the combativeness of their Greek mercenaries. Darius fled while the royal family was captured.
Conquest of Phoenicia (winter 333)
The rout of the Persian army after its defeat at Issos was total. Darius III, with only a few thousand men, fled to Thapsachus, in Syria on the Euphrates, while the other fugitives were scattered; some of them took refuge in Phoenicia and from there to Egypt or Cyprus. Alexander got his hands on Darius’ family, including his mother Sisygambis and his wife Stateira, which explains why Darius sought to deal with the victor by offering, in vain, to cede all the lands west of the Halys.
One of the consequences of the victory at Issos was that the Greek cities, including Athens and Sparta, led by Agis III, decided to move closer to Darius by sending delegations. Alexander’s situation, therefore, remains perilous. One of the best Persian officers, Nabarzanes withdrew with large cavalry forces to Cappadocia and Paphlagonia and recruited new troops (late 333-early 332). There is a real risk on Alexander’s rear and supply lines in Asia Minor. Moreover, in Thrace, Memnon of Thrace, a Macedonian strategist sent to contain a revolt, sided with the insurgent populations.
In addition, it appears that Darius raises a new army. Finally, the Persian fleet represents a great danger in the Aegean Sea. The mastery of the Phoenician coast, which could serve as a rear base, was therefore indispensable to Alexander. This is why, abandoning the pursuit of Darius, he took the southern route to Arados (north of Phoenicia) while Parmenion was sent to Damascus, where he seized Darius’ war chest. At the same time, Alexander appointed one of his most energetic officers, Antigonus the One-Eyed, to command all the forces present in Asia Minor.
The Achaemenid period for the Phoenicians was a prosperous period because, by leaving them true autonomy, the Achaemenid rulers allowed the Phoenician cities to regain some control of many trade routes against their traditional adversaries: the Greeks. The Phoenicians, for example, constituted a large part of the sailors of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis. But, divided among themselves, these cities do not adopt a common attitude towards the arrival of Alexander.
The king of Arastos, Gerostrates, believes that he does not have the means to resist and especially that his city, richer from its land trade (with Persia and Media especially) than from its maritime trade, has no interest in a destructive siege. Arastos surrendered as well as the cities of Marathos, Sigôn and Byblos. As for Sidon, it submits all the more easily as its inhabitants have not forgotten the reprisals of Artaxerxes II when the city participated in the revolt of the satraps under the reign of this prince.
Siege of Tyre (January–August 332)
At the end of 333 BC, Alexander took possession of Judea and Samaria. While in Sidon, negotiations began with the king of Tyre, Azemilcos, who wished to remain neutral in the conflict. But Alexander refuses to negotiate while he wishes to offer a sacrifice in the temple of Heracles-Melkart, the tutelary god of Tyre. The Tyrians detect the trap: to make Alexander enter the temple as a victor is to give him power over the city. As for Alexander, it is of no use to him to hold the Phoenician coast if Tyre, with its two ports, remains outside his control.
This is why the long siege of Tyre began in January 332. The new city is built on the island of Ancharadus that Alexander intends to reach by building, with the debris of the old mainland city, about 60 m long. But the difficulties increase when the dike reaches deeper waters, especially as the Tyrians carry out deadly raids with their ships, including fireboats, and divers. However, Alexander retains an asset. By holding the other Phoenician cities, he dispersed the Persian fleet (early 332) whose Phoenician crews gradually returned to their home ports.
The kings of Sidon, Byblos, Arados and Soles in Cyprus offered these ships, perhaps a hundred, to Alexander who could thus constitute a fleet sufficient to besiege Tyre. At the same time, according to Josephus, Alexander asked in vain the High Priest of Jerusalem, Jaddus, to provide him with military aid as well as the tribute previously due to the Achaemenids.
After a raid of about ten days to subdue the populations of the mountains of present-day Lebanon, Alexander finds that his new fleet is ready and learns of the arrival of Cleander at the head of a corps of 4,000 mercenaries, mostly from the Peloponnese. Isolated by sea since the defeat of its fleet, the city resisted until August. The capture of the city gave rise to acts of great violence as the Tyrians defended themselves fiercely. In particular, they use tridents, resembling a kind of hook, to tear off the shields of the besiegers and pour on them burning sand.
Faced with this resistance, and after having thought for a time of lifting the siege, Alexander ordered a joint attack by sea and land. Once the siege towers and battering rams were approached the walls, Alexander personally led the victorious assault. Between 6,000 and 8,000 defenders were killed. 2,000 young men were crucified immediately after the capture of the city, the rest of the population, 30,000 people, was enslaved, part of the population including many women and children having previously fled to Carthage.
This success allowed Alexander to ensure his control over the whole of Phoenicia. The governor of Samaria, Sanballates, presents his submission. According to Josephus, the latter obtained permission to build a temple on Mount Gerizim in favor of his son-in-law Manasses, brother of the Jewish High Priest of Jerusalem, Jaddus. In return, 8,000 Samaritans enlisted in the Macedonian army.
Pharaoh of Egypt (Autumn 332-spring 331)
After the siege of Tyre completed in August 332 BC, Alexander took the road to Egypt, then under the domination of the Achaemenids. At this time, he rejected, despite the favorable opinion of Parmenion, an advantageous peace proposal issued by Darius III. He proposed that Alexander marry his daughter Stateira and receive the entire region between Europe and the Halys River in Anatolia. Moreover, after Alexander crossed the Euphrates in the summer of 331, Darius offered him the territories up to the Euphrates. However, it could be that these peace proposals are an invention of Macedonian propaganda, because Darius, although he seeks to recover his family captured after Issos, seems determined to fight to the end.
It is undeniable that Alexander sought with the capture of Egypt to take away from the Persians their last maritime facade and the possibility of rallying the Greek mercenaries. He would also have chosen to give Darius time to mobilize a new army in the eastern provinces in order to annihilate the Persian forces in a single battle. On the road to Egypt, Alexander met for two months with strong resistance in Gaza under the leadership of the eunuch Batis. At the end of 332, after being wounded twice, he took the city whose garrison was massacred and the population sold into slavery. He then seized a huge booty, especially in aromatics.
In seven days from Gaza, he reached Pelusium. When Alexander entered Egypt in December 332, he seemed to be welcomed as a liberator, knowing that the Egyptians had revolted many times against Achaemenid rule. The Persian satrap Mazaces handed over to Alexander the sovereignty of Egypt without a fight by leaving him a treasure of 800 talents. Alexander was proclaimed pharaoh in Memphis in 331. He sacrifices to the bull Apis, a pledge of respect for Egyptian traditions, and honors the other gods. He then headed for the Mediterranean coast where he chose in January 331 the site of the future Alexandria, whose construction was not completely completed until Ptolemy II, including the construction of the lighthouse, the museum and the library.
Alexander then went on pilgrimage to the oasis of Siwa where he met the oracle of Zeus Ammon who confirmed him as a direct descendant of the god Amun. This greeting, in accordance with Egyptian etiquette, is very widely exploited by the propaganda of the conqueror. This anecdote is related as follows by Plutarch:
“Some affirm that the prophet, wishing to greet him in Greek with a term of affection, had called him “my son” (παιδίον / pagion), but that, in his barbarous pronunciation, he stumbled on the last letter and said, substituting for the nude (ν) a sigma (ς): “son of Zeus” (παῖς Διός / païs dios); they add that Alexander tasted this slip of the tongue loudly and that word spread that he had been called “son of Zeus” by the god. »
Back in Memphis, Alexander was officially crowned in the temple of Ptah. This ceremony is reported only by Pseudo-Callisthenes but seems likely. He reorganized the country before setting out again to conquer the East. He preferred not to designate a new satrap, suspicious of personal ambitions given the wealth of Egypt. The finances were entrusted to the Greek Cleomenes of Naucratis, who already knew the country well.
It was during his stay in Egypt that Alexander learned of the final rout of what remained of the Persian fleet and the capture of his last opponents in the Aegean Sea, including the satrap Pharnabazus III. Taken prisoner, he managed to escape, but one of Alexander’s admirals, Hegelochos, brought to his master many prisoners who were exiled to the Egyptian city of Elephantine. This left plenty of room for Antipater, the regent of Macedonia, to deal with the ever-restless king of Sparta, Agis III.
The situation in Europe worried Alexander throughout the year 331, even after the crushing of the Persians at Gaugamela. He also multiplied the favors to the Greek cities to encourage them to remain loyal. It is not impossible that the burning of Persepolis, one of the capitals of the Achaemenids, was intended to prove to Greece that the objective of the League of Corinth had been achieved and, thus, to avoid unrest in Europe
Towards the decisive battle (spring 331-October 331)
Alexander left Egypt in the spring of 331 BC in order to begin the Asiatic campaign, reassured by the defeat of Pharnabazus and confident in Antipater’s ability to defeat the Spartans of Agis III. During a new visit to Tyre, Alexander received an Athenian delegation which obtained from the king the release of the mercenaries who had fought at the Battle of Granica in the ranks of the Persian army. He took the opportunity to reorganize the finances of the conquered territories that they entrusted to Harpale under the name of “military fund”.
In late spring, the Macedonian army marched towards the Euphrates, which was crossed at the end of July at Thapsacus on a bridge of boats. The satrap Mazaios retreated when his opponent arrived. The Macedonian prodromoi (scouts) spotted Darius III’s army further north. Also, the king of Macedonia, instead of marching on Babylon according to his initial plan, went north, towards Nisibis, and crossed the Tigris around September 20, 331 (around Jesireh in present-day Iraq) bypassing his opponent. Alexander then resumed the direction of the south with the Tigris on his right.
After four days of marching, he learned that the Persian army, much superior in number, was waiting for him in a huge plain near Arbeles in Adiabene (Iraqi Kurdistan). Alexander won the Battle of Gaugameles (October 1, 331) after a cavalry charge on the Persian center; But the losses in the Macedonian infantry are significant. Darius fled to Ecbatana in Media.
At the beginning of October 331, at the end of a sumptuous ceremony in Arbeles, Alexander was proclaimed king of Asia (Kyrios tes Asias), responding to the quote attributed to Alexander by Plutarch: “The Earth cannot tolerate two suns, nor Asia two kings”.
In pursuit of Darius
Entry into Babylon and Susa (October-December 331)
Alexander’s victory at Gaugameles opened the way to Babylon, which surrendered without a fight thanks to Mazaios, former satrap of Cilicia and commander of the Persian cavalry at Gaugamela. The Babylonian priests of Marduk were also traditionally hostile to the Persians. Alexander thus avoided a long siege that would have left the opportunity for his opponent to pull himself together. The three weeks between the Battle of Gaugameles and Alexander’s entry into the city (late October 331 BC) are now better-known thanks to the discovery of a Babylonian cuneiform tablet which, although deteriorated, makes a clear allusion to the chronology of the battle of Gaugameles and its aftermath.
This tablet evokes the flight of Darius III “to the land of Guti” (Media) and indicates that the authorities of Babylon negotiated with the victor, who guarantees the maintenance of religious traditions. Alexander gave the order to rebuild the sanctuary of Marduk, which fell into ruin. Mazaios was then appointed satrap of Babylonia. Alexander thus inaugurated his policy of rallying the Persian aristocracy. He nevertheless maintained a strong garrison in Babylon, showing more caution than towards the Egyptians.
While Darius, fleeing, tries to gather a new royal army in the High Satrapie, Alexander takes the direction of the Susiana, which in turn rallies. He had previously sent to Susa Philoxenus, previously administrator of finances in Asia Minor, in order to ensure control of the immense treasure there, nearly 50,000 talents of silver. He left the satrap Aboulites in his post as a reward for his rallying, especially in a region difficult for a Greek to administer because of the language barrier. Part of this treasure, 3,000 talents, is sent to Antipater to use in his fight against Sparta.
Antipater’s difficulties in Greece (331)
The year 331 BC proved to be a difficult year for Antipater, to whom Alexander entrusted the government of Macedonia and Greece in his absence. Apparently, the dispersion of the Persian fleet, following the capture of Tyre, no longer aroused the Greeks’ desire for revolt, except in Sparta where King Agis III secured the assistance of Cretan pirates and then all the peoples of the Peloponnese (Eleans, Arcadians and almost all of Achaia with the exception of Pellènè). Megalopolis and Messene are the only important cities to refuse to enter the anti-Macedonian coalition.
At first, Agis defeated a Macedonian expeditionary force led by Corragos and besieged Megalopolis. The rest of Greece, however, is not moving; even Demosthenes in Athens advises to do nothing. It is true that Alexander’s clever gestures, such as sending the statue of the Tyrannoctonia back from Susa to Athens or the release of the Athenian prisoners of the Battle of Granica, temporarily reconciled some of the inhabitants of the Attic city. At the same time, in the spring of 331, Memnon, governor of Thrace, revolted against Macedonian tutelage, probably with the support of Agis III.
Antipater reacted, following Alexander’s orders, by directing almost all of his forces, between 35,000 and 40,000 men, toward the Peloponnese. Agis had only about 20,000 men and 2,000 cavalry. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Megalopolis in the autumn of 331. Under the impetus of the League of Corinth, Sparta negotiated peace directly with Alexander. The news of Gaugamela’s victory, which reached Europe after Antipater’s victory over Sparta, more forcefully ensured Macedonian sovereignty in Greece.
In addition, relations are difficult between Antipater and Olympias, Alexander’s mother. This caused difficulties when, after the death of her brother Alexander I, King of Epirus, killed during an expedition to Italy, she showed her claim to the throne of that country. She finally assumed the regency for one of her grandchildren, son of the previous king and his daughter Cleopatra, Alexander’s sister.
Campaign in Perside and the Burning of Persepolis (January-May 330)
The campaign against Darius III continued in the direction of Persia proper. Alexander took the “royal road” and reached Susa. In order to march on Persepolis, he divided his army into two corps: the majority of the troops, led by Parmenion, took the royal road, and the other, commanded by Alexander himself, took the direction of Perside. He subdued by a lightning campaign the country of the Ouxiens (south-west of present-day Iran). The mountaineers of these regions undertake to pay tribute in horses and beasts of burden. In the Zagros Mountains, he was arrested for more than a month by the fierce resistance of the satrap Ariobarzanes at the Persian Gates, Baroud of honor of the Persians. Then he arrived, at the end of January 330 BC, in the most symbolic city of Achaemenid power, Persepolis.
The capital was plundered, then, a few months later, the palaces were engulfed in flames (May 330). This fire is often interpreted as deliberate, although it goes against the policy of integration into the local customs of the conqueror. Alexander is said to have made a well-considered symbolic gesture, both towards the Persians and the Greeks of the League of Corinth.
The fire, revenge for the burning of Athens by Xerxes I in 480, could be a propaganda operation against the Greeks at a time when the situation is tense in Greece and when the announcement of Antipater’s victory over Sparta may not have yet reached Alexander. It is possible that Alexander wanted to assert his power in the face of a population reluctant to rally to him. Another interpretation is that Alexander caused the fire in a state of drunkenness, pushed into it by a young Athenian courtesan, Thais. Be that as it may, Alexander later regrets this act very badly perceived by the Persians but accomplished with joy by the Macedonian troops who think, quite wrongly, that Alexander betrays his regret of the native country and manifests by this fire his desire not to settle in Asia.
Death of Darius (summer 330)
In the summer of 330 BC, Darius III took refuge in Media; then, faced with the advance of Alexander, he decided to take the road to Hyrcania southeast of the Caspian Sea. He was joined at Ecbatana by Bessos with horsemen from Bactria and a corps of about 2,000 Greek mercenaries. Darius sends his harem, what remains of his treasure, to the Caspian Gates (east of Tehran), keys to Hyrcania and easy to defend. Alexander penetrated into Paraitacene (present-day Isfahan region), subdued the population and rushed to Ecbatana to learn that Darius had just fled three days earlier with about 9,000 men including 3,000 horsemen.
At Ecbatana, Alexander dismissed his Thessalian horsemen, launched Parmenion towards Hyrcania and Cleitos towards Parthia (east of Hyrcania). He himself launches with swift troops in pursuit of the fleeing monarch. In eleven days, he traveled the road from Ecbatana to Rhagae (south of Tehran), where he was obliged to let his men and horses blow for five days. He learns from defectors that Darius is a prisoner of Bessos and Barsaentès and that he is heading towards Hecatompyles (near present-day Shahroud). On hearing this news, Alexander entrusted his troops to Crater, while with his fastest elements, he walked for a day and a half relentlessly.
A day later, after a night walk, he reached Darius’ camp, which Darius had just abandoned. The same evening, Alexander imposed on his men a new night march to end up in a camp abandoned again. Finally, Alexander, with some mounted horsemen and infantrymen, joined Darius’ convoy. But he was murdered by Bessos, Barsaentès and Satibarzane, who had just fled with a few hundred horsemen. Bessos, tried to take the reins of Persian power, under the name of Artaxerxes V, but Alexander held firmly the Persian Empire.
Always further east
The aftermath of Darius’ death (summer 330)
Alexander returned the royal honors to Darius III and presented himself as his legitimate successor by spreading the rumor that Darius, dying, had called him to avenge his assassins, including the satrap Bessos. Alexander could now be generous with his family and had him buried in the royal tombs of Persepolis. Satraps who remained loyal to Darius were rewarded, such as Artabazus, who received Bactria. The death of Darius also led the Persian nobility to rally massively to Alexander. This collaboration of the defeated elites was necessary because the first manifestations of weariness among certain contingents forced the king to dismiss some of his troops, including the Thessalians. However, the need for men increased as the army entered Asia. Thus, just to guard the royal treasures, Alexander left 6,000 men in Ecbatana.
The death of Darius led to a profound reorganization of the empire and the abandonment of Macedonian royal customs: Alexander, who had become “King Alexander”, and no longer the “King of the Macedonians”, possessed personal power according to Persian etiquette, arousing resistance among the proponents of the tradition. He entrusted the key positions to his close companions: Hephaistion became chiliarch, the second in the hierarchy; Harpale was appointed treasurer of the empire.
Submission of the Arie (Autumn 330)
Before pursuing Bessos, the assassin of Darius III, and his accomplices, Alexander had to subdue Hyrcania and the mountain populations of the region (present-day Khurāsān mountains on the border between Iran and Turkmenistan), the Tapurians and the Mardes, who had rebelled. The Macedonian army, whose numbers were reduced by the return of the Greek allies, advanced into hostile regions. He, therefore, had to incorporate mercenaries into his army who had previously served the Achaemenids and began to call on Persians.
He gathered his troops at Zadracarta, some of which were sent back to Ecbatana to protect the treasure, under the command of Parmenion, in whom it is plausible that he had only limited confidence, while he prepared to pursue the fleeing satraps. He learns that they have separated and that Bessos, who proclaimed himself king under the name of Artaxerxes V, has taken refuge in Bactria while Satibarzanes has returned to Arie (western Afghanistan) and Barsaentès in Drangiane (southern Afghanistan). With only nearly 20,000 men, Alexander seized the Aria with difficulty, going up the Atrek valley, and kept Satibarzanes at his post by adding an Anaxippos Macedonian strategist.
But, as he prepared to go up to Bactria, Satibarzanes revolted (autumn 330), assassinated Anaxippos and massacred the Macedonian troops left in Arie before fleeing. In order to maintain order in this province, Alexander founded a city, Alexandria of Arie (present-day Herat), then headed for the Drangiane where the rebel Barsaentès was delivered to him and put to death. In October or November 330, Satibarzanes revolted again in Ariah. He was killed in a clash with the expeditionary force led by Artabazus, Erigyios and Caranos.
Executions of Parmenion and Philotas (Autumn 330)
In the autumn of 330 BC, while the army was staying in the capital of Drangiane, Phrada-Prophtasia (south of Herat), Philotas, son of Parmenion and Hipparchus of the cavalry, was imprisoned and tried for conspiracy, or more precisely for having heard of a plot against the king without doing anything to denounce him. Already in the spring of 331, Parmenion’s brother Asandros was dismissed as satrap of Lydia, while the official account of the battle of Gaugameles downplays the role played by Parmenion.
It is likely that Philotas’ criticism of the Persian ceremonial adopted by the king greatly upset the latter, while Parmenion does not seem to curb the desire to return to Europe of the troops stationed at Ecbatana. Philotas was tried by the Assembly of Macedonians on the charge of Crater, who probably saw it as a means of eliminating a rival; He was stoned to death according to custom after a confession was extracted from him.
The Macedonians also obtained that Alexander the Lynceste, in captivity since 333 after Darius III wanted to bribe him, suffered the same fate. As for Parmenion, Alexander did not know if he was involved in the conspiracy, but he sent officers to put him to death. Media’s troops barely rose up because of this murder.
This dramatic episode is indicative of the increasingly strong reluctance of the king’s entourage, with the notable exception of Hephaistion and Cratère, on this epic that sees them sink deeper and deeper into Asia, far from their bases, their country, in pursuit of a goal and a dream that escapes them. Philotas’ blunders, readily claiming that Alexander would not have won his victories without the help of his father and his own, and mocking the king’s claims to be considered the son of Zeus Ammon, probably also explains why Alexander makes no attempt to save his life.
Macedonian royalty experienced frequent conflictual relations between aristocracy and monarchy. The execution of Philotas, appreciated by the troops, was a way for the king to get rid of an officer deemed too powerful. In this context, Alexander carried out reforms within the command of the army: Hephaistion and Cleitos became hipparchs, the faithful Perdiccas, Crater and Ptolemy were also promoted.
In pursuit of Bessos (winter 330-winter 329)
Launched in pursuit of Bessos, the proclaimed successor of Darius III, Alexander passed from Drangiane to Arachosia (southwestern Afghanistan) towards the end of 330 BC Alexander founded an Alexandria that corresponded to present-day Kandahar, leaving Memnon as satrap. Then he went back to Bactria in pursuit of Bessos. The crossing of the Paraponisades Mountains (Hindu Kush), which the Macedonians and Greeks apparently confused with the Caucasus, took place in the spring of 329. In his flight, Bessos ravaged the valleys between the Paraponisades and the Oxos (Amu Darya) in order to limit the possibilities of supply for his pursuers. Alexander seized Bactres and then crossed the Oxos on a pontoon bridge made of tents of skins filled with various dried materials to reach Sogdiana.
The nobles Spitamenes and Oxyartes, fearing that Alexander would occupy the heart of their province, finally decided to surrender Bessos. Ptolemy was put in charge of this capture, which took place at the beginning of 329. Bessos was taken to Bactres where, in the manner of the Persians, his nose and ears were cut off; then he was sent to Ecbatana to be executed.
Conquest of the High Satrapies (winter 329-spring 327)
The High Satrapies (Arie, Bactria, Sogdiana, Drangiane, Margiane) are the crossroads between the nomadic Scythian peoples, jealous of their independence, and the sedentary Iranians. The Achaemenid rulers exercised only relative sovereignty and Alexander found it difficult to impose his authority. For nearly two years, Alexander struggled, ingloriously, in Sogdiana and Bactria against the rebellious satraps. Spitamenes, who had delivered Bessos, revolted and massacred several Macedonian garrisons in Sogdiana.
He inflicted a crushing defeat at the Battle of Polytimetus on the officers sent against him. Alexander’s reaction is indicative of his deep distress since he forbids the survivors, on pain of death, to disclose the reality of this disaster. The repression against the Sogdians is relentless: Cyropolis is destroyed, the population is massacred or enslaved. Alexander founded, near the Iaxarte, the eastern limit of the Persian Empire, an Alexandria Eschatè (present-day Khodjent), or “Alexandria the most distant”. This foundation, which he intends to populate with Greek mercenaries and rallied Sogdians, marks the northernmost point of his journey.
Alexander intends to make a show of power against the Sakas, a Scythian people, and crosses the river Iaxarte, forcing the Sakas to flee into the steppe. Subsequently, an embassy made it possible to conclude a non-aggression pact. Alexander, accompanied by Crater, then marched against Spitamemes, who besieged the garrison of Samarkand and immediately lifted the siege. Alexander then sought to conciliate the Sogdian aristocracy by granting them honors. He crossed the Oxos and followed the caravan route to the oasis of Merv, where he founded an Alexandria of Margiane. After wintering (329-328) in Bactres, Alexander, who had received 20,000 reinforcements from Europe, mainly Greek and Thracian mercenaries, launched the campaign against Spitamenes.
In early spring 328, he concluded an agreement with Phoramanies, the king of the Chorasmians, who recognized his suzerainty, depriving Spitamenes of potential allies. He then reached Sogdiana, where he founded an Alexandria of Oxos. In the region, he got his hands on the family of Oxyartès, whose support he obtained and married the daughter, Roxane. At the same time, Crater pacifies Bactria. Spitamenes finally succumbed in December 328, after the betrayal of the Massagetae, who sent his head to Alexander. To replace Artabazus, satrap of Bactria who asked to be relieved of his command because of his old age, Alexander appointed his friend Cleitos.
The spring of 327 was occupied with reducing the last islands of resistance, a task carried out by the crater at present-day Badakhshan. Alexander undertook to pacify the Paraitacene, a region located northeast of Susiana. Thanks to Oxyartes, Roxane’s father, he rallied to his cause the local sovereign, Sisimithrès, who accepted that young soldiers join the royal army. He then returned to Bactres, where he was joined by Crater in the summer of 327, and then returned to the Hindu Kush in order to winter before the Indian campaign.
Rise of protests (winter 328-summer 327)
Early 328 BC, in Sogdiana, at a heavily alcoholic banquet, Alexander kills his childhood friend and faithful companion Cleitos, who had the mistake of carrying the exploits of Philip II above those of his son. Alexander can’t stand it, and, in a fit of rage, kills Cleitos with his own hands. Sobered, he mourns his friend for a long time and honors him with a grandiose funeral. But this crime created a deep uneasiness among the king’s entourage. Cleitos was replaced by Amyntas as head of the satrapy of Bactria.
The stay in the eastern provinces of the former Achaemenid Empire weighed heavily on the king’s entourage. When Alexander tried to impose Persian etiquette on the Macedonians, in particular prostrating himself before him according to the ritual of proskynesis, the protest brought by Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew and official historiographer, seemed to be approved by many of the king’s companions. Alexander yielded by maintaining this label only for his Asiatic subjects, but the share he gave to the latter in the army and the administration aroused discontent. Indeed, Alexander enlisted 30,000 young Asians (the epigones) to be armed in Macedonian style to take over from the troops in the process of demobilization. Moreover, his marriage to Roxana shows that he no longer intended to consider the Persians as vanquished, while he appointed several Persians to command functions, including Atropates and Phrataphernes.
In the summer of 327, the conspiracy of the pages, which would have had as its purpose the assassination of Alexander, arose from the desire for personal revenge of one of these young men, Hermolaos, who feels unjustly punished after a hunting party during which he killed the prey intended for the king. It reveals that among the Macedonian army some find his new demands unbearable and begin to consider him a tyrant. Seven pages were tortured and executed.
Callisthenes, very influential among the pages and who had mocked Alexander’s claims to divinity, was thrown into prison at Bactres; He died there a few months later. Callisthenes is also said to have received a letter from Aristotle, perhaps apocryphal, condemning Alexander’s absolutist excesses inspired by the philosopher Anaxarchus. The command and the troop show in this affair an attachment to the royal figure. Alexander had the regent Antipater write that he intended to chastise those who had inspired Callisthenes in Greece.
End of the journey in India
Alexander’s objectives in India
India is for the Greeks a mysterious country known by the texts of Hecataeus of Miletus and Herodotus as well as those of Ctesias, physician at the court of Artaxerxes II. These authors probably used the account of the voyage of Scylax of Caryanda, carried out on the orders of Darius I. The Indus Valley has been theoretically under the control of the Achaemenid Empire since that time, but, in reality, the frontier of Persian power is limited to the Paraponisades (present-day Hindu Kush). As for the Ganges valley and the Deccan plateau, they are still unknown to the Greeks. However, relations exist since we find in the Persian army under Darius III some elephants and Indian contingents.
There is little doubt that Alexander’s primary aim was to restore to his advantage the limits of the empire of Darius I and to derive the inherent commercial profits from it. He seems to have been easily convinced, while fighting in Sogdiana, by Taxiles, one of the kinglets of the northern valley of the Indus, to intervene against his enemy Poros who reigns over the kingdom of Paurava east of the Hydaspes and who threatens the Punjab. Alexander was also advised by an Indian prince, Sisicottos, who after following the fortune of Bessos rallied to the conqueror. Alexander’s project is perhaps older, since in the spring of 329 BC he founded an Alexandria of the Caucasus (north of present-day Kabul), illustrating his desire to have a rear base for his expedition.
Some contemporary historians have argued that Alexander wished to continue his journey beyond the Indus and that he had a “global” ambition. Others believe that his expedition to the Ganges, interrupted only by the sedition of his soldiers on the Hyphase, was aimed at seizing Indian trading bases, in the same way that in 323 he prepared an expedition to the Arab ports of the Persian Gulf. The planned route would pass through the Indus Valley, and then reach the ocean and the Persian Gulf. Everything, therefore, leads to admit that, in line with his rejection of the peace proposals made by Darius III in 332 and 331, Alexander seems to already have a relatively precise idea of his overall objectives, that is to say, to become the master of all the territories that were once Achaemenid and to control all the great trade routes.
Conquest of Punjab (Summer 327-summer 326)
In the spring of 327 BC, Alexander left Bactres at the head of 120,000 people, including combatants and non-combatants. Greek-Macedonians make up barely half of the military. Many Asians (the epigones or heirs ) were indeed recruited to be armed on the Macedonian model. The army also included horsemen from the High Satrapies, Egyptian, Phoenician and Cypriot sailors for the descent of the Indus already envisaged. Alexander, therefore, crossed the Paraponisades Mountains and went to Alexandria of the Caucasus (present-day Begrâm near Kabul). There he received the reinforcement of Taxiles, raja of Taxila, who called to fight against his powerful neighbor Pôros, who sought to subdue all of Punjab.
Then he commissioned Hephaistion and Perdiccas to subdue the peoples of the south bank of the Cophen, a river that descends from the valley of present-day Kabul to the Indus, while he deals with the northern bank (summer 327). If the conquest of the south bank goes smoothly, his two generals reaching the river before him, Alexander is confronted in Gandhara with the resistance of the Assacenes, a tribe related to the Sakas and the Massagetae, who have raised a large army. Their capital, Massaga, was taken after a siege during which Alexander was wounded. The stronghold of Aornos, reputed to be impregnable, was taken with difficulty in April 326. The country was then erected as a satrapy under the responsibility of Nicanor, but he was quickly killed during an insurrection.
In the spring of 326, Alexander crossed the Indus River thanks to the bridge built by Hephaistion and Perdiccas. The army then stayed in Taxila, the capital of King Taxiles, who called for a fight against his threatening neighbor, Poros. Soon after, the army scrambled to fight Pôros, who was guarding the Hydaspes, one of the tributaries of the Indus. Poros, who was waiting for reinforcements from Kashmir, had an army already so large that Alexander decided to attack it immediately.
He maneuvered skillfully, for, leaving Crater with the bulk of the troops, he crossed with his cavalry and hypaspists the river, although swollen by the melting snow, in a wooded region about 150 stadia upstream (about 30 km), in order to take Pôros from behind. The victory was assured, but the battle of the Hydaspes was of great violence. The Asian horsemen showed their effectiveness, comforting Alexander to continue his policy of integration of defeated peoples. Bucephalus died during the battle, Alexander founded in his honor the city of Bucephaly. Shortly after, Alexander loses his dog Peritas, he also dedicates a city to him.
Continuing his policy of integrating local chiefs, Alexander left Pôros in place, who abandoned his claims beyond the Hydaspes, with a territory larger than that of origin. A revolt of the Assacenes on his rear forced him to send troops led by Philip and Tyriaspes. As compensation for the rallying of Poros, which apparently aimed to conquer the Ganges plain at the expense of the Nanda dynasty of Patna, Alexander decided to subdue tribes east of Punjab. But this campaign requires bitter battles against small “republics”, such as that of the Arattas. Alexander then thought of crossing the Hyphase (now Beas) for a simple show of force, understanding that the Nanda would be powerful opponents.
In the autumn of 326, on the banks of the Hyphase, Alexander had to face an outcry from the Greeks and Macedonians, of which Coenos became the spokesman. After locking himself up in his tent for three days, he was forced to bow to the will of his soldiers and gave the order to return. He erected twelve monumental altars for each of the twelve main gods of Olympus, as well as a camp artificially enlarged to three times its normal dimensions in order to intimidate possible invaders, marking the extreme point of his advance to the east.
This sedition is indicative of the disconnect that has been created between the king and his troops. Some of his officers, as the episodes of the deaths of Philotas and Cleitos recall, were hostile to an increasingly autocratic mode of government on the Asian model. The soldiers were also physically exhausted by eight years of campaigning. According to Plutarch, the memory of the Battle of the Hydaspes makes the phalanx fear even more difficult battles. The soldiers also expressed the desire to see their homeland again and to enjoy the accumulated booty.
Conquest of the Indus Valley (Autumn 326-spring 325)
Alexander decided to subdue the entire Indus Valley in order to ensure the return route to Babylon. He built a fleet of about 1,000 ships on which he embarked in early November 326 BC with part of his army to descend the Hydaspes and then the Acesine to join the Indus. This fleet was built with the financial contribution of nobles of the court and the king’s staff. It is led by Nearchus with crews mainly Phoenician and Greek thanks to reinforcements received in India. Before departure, an assembly of local princes recognized Porôs as sovereign, under the tutelage of the king of Macedonia.
Alexander embarked with him the archers, the hypaspists and the horsemen of his guard while Crater skirted the right bank and Hephaistion, with the bulk of the army, descended along the left bank. At the mouth of the Hydaspes and Acesine, rapids damaged the fleet which had to be repaired. Some people quickly submited, but the Cathians, Mallians and Oxydraques rose up.
Around mid-November 326, Alexander made the mistake of attacking a city populated by Mallian Brahmins, provoking a rebellion that quickly spread. During this engagement, during which he stormed the city walls, the sômatophylacs Leonnatos and Peucestas saved his life, the latter protecting the sovereign with the (supposed) shield of Achilles dismantled from the temple of Athena in Troy. Alexander was quite seriously wounded, to the point that the army believed in his death and that this rumor spread throughout the empire causing sporadic unrest, including the defection of Greek mercenaries to Bactria.
His convalescence forced him to stop the expedition, probably until the spring of 325. Peithon was then entrusted with a violent campaign of repression against the Mallians. The fear of the Macedonians was now such that the people of Patalene in the Indus Delta preferred to flee before Alexander’s arrival. The satrapy of Sindh, where a new Alexandria was founded, was then entrusted to Peithon. Alexander finally reached the mouth of the Indus in the spring of 325; he established at Patala a port, arsenals and cisterns, showing that he wished to establish commercial links between this distant region and the rest of his empire. Arriving on the shores of the Indian Ocean, the Greek-Macedonians are surprised by the phenomenon of tides, almost unknown in the Mediterranean Sea.
A difficult return (July 325-December 325)
Alexander, on his return to Babylon, divided his army into three corps in July 325 BC. Crater leaves the Indus Valley with half of the phalanx (four taxeis), elephants and argyraspids, who intend to return to Macedonia. He went up through Arachosia and Drangiane (south of present-day Afghanistan) and had to find Alexander in Carmania, a region that corresponds to the south of present-day Iran towards the Strait of Hormuz. Nearchus, with a fleet of a hundred ships, 2,000 sailors and 12,000 soldiers, was responsible for reopening the sea route between the Indus and the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates.
But this exploration required land support, in the form of food depots, a mission that Alexander took on at the head of his best troops. He chose the most difficult route along the coast of Gedrosia (present-day Pakistani Balochistan). From Patala on the Indus, he reached with 25,000 men the current region of Karachi, where the people of the Arabites capitulated without a fight. Then he reached the valley of Purali, of which he subjugated the inhabitants, the Orites. The coast, populated by “Fish Eaters”, being too miserable to supply the troops, he had to ask for help from the Gedrosians of the interior of the country, who cultivated in irrigated valleys.
He then chose to divide his army into two corps; the one commanded by Leonnatos must follow the traditional route of caravans, further north, and make its junction with Alexander at Pura, the capital of Gedrosia. Alexander with 12,000 men, including his elite troops and a convoy of women and children, crossed Gedrosia through the Makran desert, which ran along the coast. Now, just as Alexander entered the wilderness, the Gedrosians and the Orites revolted; As a result, he did not obtain the expected food.
The Makran Desert is a particularly inhospitable region, covered with salt swamps and with few oases. A large part of the convoy with women, children and carriages was swept away by the sudden rise of a torrent. The troop took two months to complete 700 km between the Purali Valley and Pura.
Alexander reached the city of Pura in December 325, where he was joined by the contingent of Leonnatos who had meanwhile founded Alexandria of the Orites. Despite the rainy season, more than 6,000 people died of thirst and exhaustion during this march in the Makran desert, especially since part of the grain reserves are deposited in forts by the sea to supply the fleet. This journey was the most trying of Alexander’s entire expedition and resulted in a large number of deaths from exhaustion, thirst and undernourishment; All horses and beasts of burden die during this journey. In addition, this suffering was useless: Alexander never managed to establish contact with the Nearchus fleet. Arriving in Carmania, Alexander is then joined by Crater.
Piloted by Nearchus the Cretan, with Onesicritus as his second, the fleet had the mission to skirt the coast of the Eritrean Sea (present-day Arabian Sea) and then to the Euphrates to explore a route for maritime trade between India and Babylonia. This fleet, composed of 120 ships carrying 10,000 men, left a month late on the initial plans because of the monsoon winds at the end of October 325. It faced several storms, which sank at least three ships. Néarque was obliged to keep the fleet overboard day and night because he feared desertions.
It is impossible for him to refuel on land on the coast of Gedrosia the land of the miserable Ichthyophagi (“fish eaters”). In addition, the deposits left by Alexander were attacked by the Orites. The only food, therefore, comes from the sea, which catches the fleet off guard, which suffers from hunger. After 1,300 km and 80 days of navigation, Nearchus reached Harmozia (Hormuz) in front of the promontory of Maceta (current United Arab Emirates). He then went to meet Alexander, who received him with transports of joy, because he believed his fleet had disappeared. Nearchus then went back to the mouths of the Euphrates (December 325) and rallied Susa.
Final years of the reign of Alexander the Great
The time of rebellions (late 325-early 324)
Since the prosecution of Bessos in 330 BC, Alexander lost direct control of the provinces of his empire. The false news of his death in India prompted the defection of Greek mercenaries from Bactria, where Athanodôros was proclaimed king, some of these mercenaries returning to Greece from Asia Minor probably thanks to Athenian ships. Rebellions also broke out in Arachosia and Media; the Asian satraps of Carmania and Susa also showed signs of independence. In Egypt, Cleomenes ruled as he pleased, establishing mints in Alexandria. The most notable defection is that of Harpalus, Alexander’s youthful companion and royal treasurer, who fled in the autumn of 325 to Tarsus in Cilicia, before reaching Athens. It was therefore to weaken Harpale’s position that Alexander dismissed all the mercenaries, whose recruitment then depended on the treasurer.
Arriving in Carmania in December 325 after the difficult return from India, Alexander had to restore his authority. He also faces recriminations of all kinds against the officers who have governed in his absence. Two strategists of Media, Sitalces and Cleanander, are executed for having committed exactions and sacrilege; it is also possible that Cleander maintained diplomatic relations with Harpalus. As for the satraps of Carmania and Gedrosia, who had failed in their obligation to supply supplies on the way back from India, they were executed.
He also got rid of Baryaxes who proclaimed himself “Great King of the Persians and Medes”, and satraps of doubtful fidelity, such as Orxines in Perside. Finally, this crisis led to a reshuffle at the head of the satrapies. Alexander appointed second-rate personalities out of prudence, with the exception of Antigonus the One-Eyed, who retained Phrygia, and Peucestas, promoted to Perside.
Wedding of Susa (February–March 324)
From Carmania, Alexander went at the beginning of the year 324 BC at Pasargadae at the head of light troops while Hephaistion continued the journey with the bulk of the army along the coast of Perside. On the way, Alexander asked Aristobulus to restore the tomb of Cyrus which had been desecrated, showing a gesture of goodwill towards the Persians.
Alexander then reached Susa, where lavish weddings were celebrated between 10,000 Greco-Macedonians and Persian and Mede women. Alexander married Stateira, eldest daughter of Darius III, as well as, according to Arrian who quotes Aristobulus here, Parysatis, a daughter of Artaxerxes III. The chiliarch Hephaistion, second in the hierarchy, married Drypetis, another daughter of Darius, while the principal generals, including Perdiccas, Craterus, Ptolemy, Seleucus and Eumenes were also married to Persian nobles.
The wedding lasts five days around a sumptuous banquet. The ceremony is done according to Persian customs, which does not fail to provoke the disapproval of the Macedonians who have already seen their king unite with Roxane and who conclude that Alexander is moving away from Greek mores to adopt a “barbaric” mentality. He offered the dowries and proposed that the children born of these unions be raised in Macedonian style to one day join the army. To calm the anger that rumbled, Alexander paid the debts of those who had contracted them and offered in a symbolic gesture golden crowns to his generals.
For some contemporary historians, such as William W. Tarn who takes up the theses of Droysen based on the account of Arrian, the wedding of Susa testifies to the desire to unite the peoples in a spirit of universal brotherhood, the Persians being no longer considered as subjects and seeing themselves associated with the government of the empire. But this idealistic vision does not stand up to critical scrutiny. Thus for Ernst Badian, these weddings are first and foremost the pretext for reconciliation between Alexander and the Macedonians, whereas this hypothetical “fusion” between the people’s concerns in the first place the elites. However, Alexander shows that he was able to overcome the traditional opposition between Greeks and barbarians, with the aim of ensuring the sustainability of the empire.
Mutiny of Opis (spring 324)
In the spring of 324 BC, immediately after the wedding of Susa, a revolt broke out within the army at Opis, on the Tigris north of Babylon. The soldiers first condemned the new place given to Asian troops. The creation of a fifth hipparchia composed of Asians in the Corps of the Companions is thus badly felt, while 20 000 Persians equipped with Macedonian style have already been raised in 327. But the main factor in this mutiny was the fact that Alexander decided to rule his empire from Asia and not to return to Pella, whereas he had promised to return to Macedonia at the time of the sedition in India.
Also on the same day that Alexander released 10,000 veterans, wounded or too old, the mutiny broke out. He is asked to give leave to all; the mutineers, referring to Zeus Ammon, declare “that the god from whom he descends fights for him”! Filled with rage, he rushes against the mutineers with his hypaspists. He had thirteen of the ringleaders executed and regained, by a skillful speech in which he flattered the pride of his men, control of the situation. He then retired to his tent and addressed only the Persians, ostensibly refusing to speak to the Macedonians.
They then beg the king to give them back their place with him and promise to follow him wherever he wants to lead them. He granted the volunteers the opportunity to remain in Alexandria of Charax. This theatrical reconciliation proves the skill of Alexander, who retains his ascendancy over his troops while achieving his objectives, since the Asians retain their place in the army.
This mutiny sheds light on the distance between the king’s plans and the desire to return among his tired troops. In Opis, the soldiers realize that Alexander intends “to establish forever in Asia the center of his kingdom”. His new ventures appear to his soldiers as increasingly personal, and they feel less and less supportive of them. Several thousand veterans were released and took the road to Macedonia under the command of Crater and his second-in-command, Polyperchon.
Return to the European scene (Spring-Summer 324)
Alexander’s policy towards the Greek cities of the League of Corinth evolved from 324 BC. Needing the Greeks as mercenaries and settlers in Asia, he sought to get along with all the cities. He, therefore, ordered from Susa to the cities to recall the banished in order to inaugurate an era of concord. But this measure of appeasement, which was to be announced by Nicanor de Stagire during the Olympic Games, was perceived as interference in the internal affairs of the cities, which was moreover under the threat of Antipater for the most recalcitrant of them.
Moreover, it seems that Nicanor is also responsible for announcing to the cities that Alexander wishes to receive public worship as “Unconquered God”. Finally, these clumsy measures show that Alexander, at this date, is no longer the “king of the Macedonians” or the hegemon of the Corinthian League, but rather the “King Alexander”, something that the Greeks of the cities have difficulty admitting.
In the spring of 324, Alexander received information about the situation in Greece. The old regent Antipater, in permanent conflict with Olympias and attached to the monarchical traditions of the Argeades, deplored Alexander’s “Asiatic” policy and the fact that he received divine honors. The faithful Crater is therefore secretly responsible for replacing Antipater, while the latter is supposed to bring new recruits to Asia for the king’s future projects. The arrival of Crater in Cilicia forced Harpalus, the fleeing treasurer, to reach Athens, where he was welcomed in the summer of 324. Some Athenians saw it as an opportunity to thwart the policy of Alexander, whose decree of 324 forced the return of Samos to its inhabitants. But the threats of Antipater and Olympias forced the city to be cautious.
Final Designs (Summer 324-Spring 323)
From Opis in Babylonia, Alexander went through the valley of the Zagros to Ecbatana. It is there, during the winter of 324 BC, that dies his favorite Hephaistion of natural death. The king’s pain is likened by some ancient authors to that of Achilles weeping over the body of Patroclus. Alexander renders his chiliarch quasi-royal honors; after consulting the oracle of Ammon, he dedicated to him a heroic cult. But the royal tasks take over and a last campaign is organized against the Cosseans, mountaineers of Media that the Persians have never totally subdued. According to Plutarch, Alexander would have led this campaign, which turned to the massacre of the populations, as a sacrifice for the funeral of Hephaistion.
Alexander then went to Babylon in the spring of 323. On the way, he received embassies from Greece. The Athenians in particular protested against the decrees ordering the recall of the banished and divine honors for the king. But the other Greek cities send him theories as to a god. Alexander multiplies the meetings with embassies from the countries bordering his empire (Cyreneans, Carthaginians, Etruscans, Celts of the Balkans), demonstrating the immense prestige of the conqueror.
Nearchus’ voyage demonstrated how maritime communications with the eastern part of the empire were easier than land communications, and Alexander ordered the exploration of the bordering seas. Thus Heraclides was sent to explore the Caspian Sea and three successive expeditions were sent to reconnoiter the coasts of Arabia. The first two, that of Archias de Pella, and that of Androsthenes do not go beyond the island of Tylos (present-day Bahrain). That of Hièron de Soles probably reached the Gulf of Suez. This total recognition of the Red Sea coasts at the mouth of the Indus River gave Alexandria a pivotal role in the development of trade relations between the Aegean Sea and Asia. The army is also undergoing a new reorganization. Peucestas, satrap of Perside, brought 20,000 young Persians, the epigones (“heirs”), to be integrated into the phalanx, passing the ratio to 12 Persians to 4 Macedonians.
Contemporary historians do not agree on Alexander’s last designs. Several ancient authors claim that he toyed with the project of conquering the western basin of the Mediterranean Sea. It is indeed plausible that he considered turning to the western Mediterranean, especially Carthage. Perdiccas affirmed this to the troops shortly after the king’s death. What is certain is that an expedition is planned for the 20th of the month of Dæsios (June 5, 323), which ancient sources point to the south of Libya in order to reach the West.
Contemporary historians have considered that Alexander had the ambition to venture into Arabia in order to ensure the link between Babylonia, Egypt and India. The question that arises is therefore to understand whether there are two separate projects, the conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean on the one hand and the control of the coasts of Arabia and the Red Sea on the other, or if it is only one and the same project. namely to connect Alexandria of the Tigris to Alexandria and then continue to Carthage and Sicily.
Last days (May-June 323)
Alexander consecrated the spring of 323 BC to travel through the canals of the Euphrates by carrying out works to regulate floods. It was on the eve of departure for the expedition to Arabia, on June 11, 323, that he died in Babylon, seized with high fevers. A Babylonian astronomical tablet dating from the Hellenistic period bears the inscription “the king is dead” and makes it possible to precisely date the death of Alexander on the night of June 10 to 11. Another date has long been proposed according to ancient sources, namely June 13, i.e. the 28th day of the month of Scirophorion or Daisios among the Macedonians.
Plutarch and Arrian wrote, according to the Royal Ephemeris written by the chancellor Eumenes of Cardia, the details of the last days of the king between May 27 and June 10 (from the 15th to the 28th of the month of Daisios). According to Plutarch, Alexander was troubled by the multiplication of fatal signs. Thus, during a navigation on the Euphrates, a gust of wind carries away the royal diadem while in Babylon, a stranger dares to sit on the throne of Alexander, a gesture that he pays with his life.
Then, the Dionysian festivals (komos) and the evenings of drinking, of which the king is customary, resume. Thus, on May 28 and 29, Alexander went from banquet to banquet, first at Néarque and then at a Thessalian hetaire, Medios of Larissa who received on May 30 twenty-two guests among the closest Companions of the king. During the banquet, seized with a bout of fever and very thirsty according to the testimony of Aristobulus taken up by Plutarch, he drank in one go the cup of Heracles filled with pure wine. He immediately felt a sharp pain forcing him to leave the table and began to delirious.
The next day, Alexander is the victim of a high fever that will last until his death. The first days, until June 4th, he continued to give orders and supervise the preparations for his expedition to Arabia; But, from June 5, the worsening of his condition now renders him unable to do so. The June 7, he loses the ability to speak but manages to recognize his officers. A terrible fever seized him on the night of the 7th to the June 8. The June 8, the Macedonians, believing him dead, demanded to see him and paraded before the king, unarmed, who silently greeted each man. Alexander died on June 10 in the evening at the age of 32.
Alexander’s only legitimate heir was his mentally deficient half-brother, Arrhidea, the future Philip III, while Roxane was six months pregnant with the future Alexander IV. According to Diodorus, when Alexander, dying, receives the question from Perdiccas: “To whom do you intend to bequeath the Empire?”, he would have made this answer: “To the strongest (tôi kratistôi)”. The scene, real or not, augurs in any case the tears that will oppose his main generals, the Diadochi, about the succession of Alexander. Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Lysimachus Seleucus and Cassander in particular fought many wars for the division of the empire. According to the authors of the Vulgate, Perdiccas, the second person of the state since the death of Hephaistion and future chiliarch of the empire, would have received from the hands of Alexander the ring bearing the royal seal.
Possible causes of Alexander’s death
Most modern historians, following the account of the Ephemeris on the last days of the king, estimate that Alexander died of an acute attack of malaria (or malaria tropica) and that this fever, contracted while exploring the swamps bordering the Euphrates, would have undermined him for several weeks as evidenced by a persistent thirst and a form of torpor. Thus, like many Mediterraneans of his time, he would have suffered from Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the symptoms of which were abundantly described by Hippocrates. This diagnosis is admitted by Émile Littré in 1865 in The truth about the Death of Alexander the Great and by many contemporary researchers. Another hypothesis involves typhoid fever, which is as common as malaria in ancient Babylonia.
A study, conducted in 2003 by two medical doctors, hypothesizes that Alexander died of West Nile fever. Historians consider this hypothesis to be admissible. Others allege that Alexander suffered a severe internal injury caused by perforated gastric ulcers or acute pancreatitis. Finally, a final hypothesis evokes the possibility of overconsumption of hellebore, a medicinal plant. According to the doctor Philippe Charlier, the contemporary anatomical pathologist would indicate: “Young man, 32 years old, geographically displaced, underlying unhealthy lifestyle, chronic alcoholism, poly parasitosis”.
In 2018, New Zealand Professor of Medicine Katherine Hall of the University of Otago proposed an autoimmune neurological disease, Guillain-Barré syndrome, as the direct cause of death. The symptoms would be consistent with a variant of the disease (AMAN), perhaps related to a bacterial attack of the digestive system: fever, pain, paralysis, followed by an apparent death (and thus a misdiagnosis), which would explain the preservation of his body for several days.
A rumor spread by Olympias from 317 BC accuses of poisoning the sons of Antipater, Cassander and Iolas, the cupbearer of the king who seems to be the ideal suspect. This rumor, probably relayed by Clitarch, is evoked by the authors of the Vulgate, even if they do not endorse it; it is strongly contested by Arrian and Plutarch. Another rumor accuses Aristotle, desperate by the execution of his nephew Callisthenes, of having procured Antipater the poison, drawn from the source of the Styx. According to the Queen Mother, Antipater would have wished the death of Alexander because he intends to keep the regency of Macedonia which must fall to the faithful Crater.
Antipater would have entrusted the poison to Cassandra, who himself would have given it to his younger brother, Iolas, to mix it with Alexander’s cup of wine, with the complicity of Medios who organized the last banquet of the king. It can already be objected that Medios is in the first circle of the king’s flatterers at the end of his reign. Finally, this rumor was spread at a time when Olympias was trying to discredit the Antipatrids in the context of the rivalries between Diadochi; it also desecrated the tomb of Iolas, who had recently died. According to Pseudo-Plutarch, the Athenian orator Hyperides proposed the vote of a reward to Iolas as the murderer of Alexander. But this mention, which is in direct contradiction with Plutarch’s account in the Life of Alexander, is undoubtedly a later invention. Finally, this poisoning hypothesis met with little echo among contemporary historians.
Personality and private life of Alexander the Great
Physical appearance
The body of Alexander, magnified during his lifetime by official artists with great reputations, including the sculptor Lysippus and the painter Apelles, is a crucial element of royal propaganda. Ancient sources, including Plutarch, say that Alexander is tall, that he has white skin and light brown leonine hair with coppery reflections. According to the Latin version of the Roman d’Alexandre, Alexander would have had minnow eyes (blue and brown). But its supposed beauty responds to an ideal of the time: coins minted in Rhodes shortly before his reign show the effigy of Helios with features later characterizing the face of Alexander.
Moreover, Alexander has his head always tilted to the right side. Plutarch mentions the phenomenon, and several ancient statues, following Lysippus, show a more or less accentuated inclination. No coquetry, sign of elegance or exaggeration on the part of Lysippe; the cause would be a pathology according to modern doctors who have studied the bust kept at the Louvre Museum as well as the ivory statuettes found in 1977 in Vergina. Alexander has his head tilted to the right and his neck forward, with a shortening of the sternocleidomastoid muscle; What’s more, his right eye is lower than his left. The source of the problem could be a muscular torticollis, caused either by a violent shock or by an eye disorder (vertical strabismus or paralysis of the eye muscles) of hereditary origin since this pathology is apparently found on the statuettes of characters related to Alexander.
Statues multiplied during his reign in order to magnify his power and superhuman nature. Posthumous works, dating from the time of the Diadochi, such as the sarcophagus of Sidon, glorify the deified king in the brilliance of his youth.
Character
Alexander’s personality seems twofold, both Apollo and Dionysus. The founding principle of his personality is according to Arrien the pothos, a notion that can be translated as a quest towards the unknown and the surpassing of oneself. This insatiable desire leads him to go beyond the limits of what is possible by subjugating peoples who have never been conquered and by overcoming natural obstacles, whether rivers, mountains or desert expanses. Alexander possesses an impulsive nature; the rage visible in his eyes would have haunted Cassander until his death, while as reported by Athenaeus of Naucratis all those who approach him are seized with fear.
This temperament seems to be a legacy of his parents, the intrepid Philip II, quick to rage, and the shady Olympias, follower of the Dionysian cult. He cannot bear to be said badly of him because he values “his reputation more than life and royalty”.
He can let himself be carried away by a fury (menos) that leads to hubris, excess, and show great cruelty as revealed by many episodes: the destruction of Thebes, the massacre of Greek mercenaries defeated at Granica, the executions of Parmenion and Philotas, the murder of his friend Cleitos (even if he was drunk with wine), the crucifixion of the doctor who failed to save Hephaistion, the massacre of the Cossians as a sacrifice after the death of his favorite. In pain, he resembles his heroic model, Achilles. He of course shows an immense appetite for immortal glory (kleos) that makes him seek the beautiful death.
But Alexander also has a personality made of temperance and rationality, which tends to excellence in everything, the arete. He is driven by a great desire to know, a love of philosophy. This aspect of his personality was maintained by the tutelage of Aristotle, who introduced him to metaphysics and rhetoric. Also influenced by the cynics, he is said to have made this comment: “If I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes”, meaning that simplicity is a moral virtue, but also that if he cannot practice philosophy by his actions (erga), he will profess it by his words (logoi). Onesicritus, Companion of Alexander and pupil of Diogenes, proclaims that he is a “philosopher in arms”, one who became master of the world by the union of thought and action.
According to Plutarch, who testifies to his admiration, Alexander is the “greatest of philosophers” because he brought together ethics and politics, and that he has “the design of uniting all men by the bonds of concord, peace and mutual commerce”.
He read Homer’s Iliad, which taught him the art of speaking well. Public speaking contributes to glory as much as a victory; like Achilles, he performs great deeds and speaks great words. He also shows a lot of restraint in carnal pleasures, which contrasts with his lack of self-control in the face of alcohol. Arrian, who relies here on Aristobulus, nevertheless believes that if Alexander indulges in drunkenness it is “less by taste than to please his friends”. He also showed a certain frugality and also knew how to be master of himself, as during the pursuit of Bessos when he refused to drink water until his soldiers had also drunk it. Finally, he possesses the warrior virtues dear to Homer, but also shows generosity (philantrôpia) and liberality.
In terms of religiosity, Alexander shows a form of skepticism under the influence of Anaxarchus. Unlike his mother Olympias, he did not let himself be deeply influenced by Orphism and Dionysism. His penchant for komos (the Dionysian banquet) seems to be due more to wine than to religious exaltation. The rites performed in the context of the royal function turn out to be purely formal, while the benevolent relations maintained with Egyptian, Babylonian or Persian shrines are political opportunism. However, he shows superstitious anxiety by questioning diviners, such as the oracle of Siwa, by organizing sacrifices the night before the battle of Gaugameles, or by consulting Chaldean priests in the last weeks of his reign.
Women’s relations
Alexander did not have a reputation for being particularly attracted to women. Thus Athenaeus of Naucratis writes: “Theophrastus also says that Alexander was not very fit for amorous antics. His mother Olympias (with Philip’s consent) made him sleep with a Thessalian courtesan, named Callixine, a woman of rare beauty, for they feared that Alexander was powerless, but she was obliged to make him the most urgent solicitations to induce him to pass into her arms”.
Pliny the Elder also tells that Alexander would have offered his favorite mistress Campaspe (or Pancaste) to the painter Apelles, the latter having fallen in love with her; But this anecdote is probably a legend. His mistress was Barsine, daughter of the satrap Artabazus, nine years older than him. He has known her since he was a teenager, because Barsine’s father took refuge in the Macedonian court. He found it again after the battle of Issos (333 BC). They had a son, Heracles, born around 328–327 BC.
It was not until 327 that Alexander consented to marry Roxane, the daughter of the defeated satrap Oxyartes who eventually rallied to him; she is reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in Asia. Together they had two sons, the first, born during the Indian campaign, died at a very young age. The second, Alexander Aigos, born about three months after Alexander’s death, became heir to the empire but never exercised power. Cassandra had him murdered, along with his mother, in 310.
According to Quinte-Curce, it is possible that Alexander had an affair with the queen of the Assacenes, reputed to be of great beauty, Cleophis, who would have had a son named Alexander without knowing if he is the father. This hypothetical sentimental story partly inspired Jean Racine for the play, Alexandre le Grand. In 324, Alexander married Stateira, the eldest daughter of Darius III, and Parysatis, the daughter of Artaxerxes III. This is a political act as 10,000 Iranian-Macedonian marriages are celebrated on the same day in Susa. In the end, he had fewer wives than his father Philip II who totaled seven.
Male relations
The question of the intimate relations between Alexander and his favorite Hephaistion remains today subject to controversy, a historical tradition making Hephaistion the lover of the king. Ancient chroniclers a few centuries later, using sources that have now disappeared, do mention anecdotes about their romantic relationship, such as that between Achilles and Patroclus. Nevertheless, the most reliable ancient sources, such as Diodorus of Sicily, Arrian, Plutarch, and Quinte-Curtius, cite only Hephaistion as Alexander’s friend (philos), although it is true that they wrote at a time when homosexual relations were less tolerated than in classical Greek times.
According to ancient sources, Hephaistion was Alexander’s dearest friend and confidant from childhood. After a donation to the sanctuary of Asclepius in Epidaurus, Alexander is said to have said: “Yet I have to complain about this god, who did not save the one I loved more than myself”. At the time of the capture of the Persian royal family, following the battle of Issos, Sisygambis, the mother of Darius III, would have confused, according to the authors of the Vulgate, Hephaistion, who “prevailed in size and beauty”, with the king, who would have retorted: “He too is Alexander”.
Arrian meanwhile reports this event while declaring that he does not pronounce on the veracity or not of it. This fable, which makes Hephaistion the true alter-ego of Alexander, would come from the historian Clitarch, knowing that the theme of the sartorial resemblance between the two men is common in Alexandria at the end of the fourth century BC. Moreover, Aristotle, who was their teacher, declares that friendship is like “one soul dwelling in two bodies”. For the philosopher friendship (philia) is a form of love (eros) and “the thing most necessary to existence”. In Nicomachean Ethics, he defines friendship between those who are alike as a virtue, adding that those we love are loved because they are others ourselves.
On the occasion of a pilgrimage to Troy in the spring of 334 BC, attested in particular by Arrian, Alexander and Hephaistion laid wreaths on the tombs of Achilles and Patroclus and then performed, together and naked, a race to honor the two heroes. According to Elian this episode would suggest that Hephaistion is indeed the eromena of Alexander, as Patroclus was that of Achilles. This interpretation remains questionable in the eyes of some moderns, because Elian’s work is a collection of anecdotes, written more than five centuries after the fact. In his time, it seems to be established that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers while Homer does not mention it explicitly.
Among later authors believing that Achilles and Patroclus are lovers we still find Plato in The Banquet. As for Alexander’s immense sorrow after the death of his favorite, it ultimately brings him closer to Achilles weeping for Patroclus. According to historian Robin Lane Fox, this tribute to Achilles and Patroclus does show that they had an intimate relationship, because at the time it was agreed that the two heroes were in love and that this comparison was destined to remain for the rest of their lives. According to M. Beard, Arrian’s description of Alexander’s lamentations after Hephaiston’s death and the latter’s heroization would rather have as a model what the emperor Hadrian, whose historian is the servant, did at the death of his lover Antinous.
Alexander and Hephaistion grew up at a time when, according to some historians, homosexual relations between men were considered abnormal by the majority of Greeks. But according to other researchers, such as Eva Cantarella, male bisexuality was widely allowed at that time as long as it remained within predefined limits. For Greeks, homosexuality is not an exclusive choice or an extraordinary option; It is a part of life experience that can be associated with a woman’s love.
However, the model of romantic relationships between people of the same sex is not the same in all Greek cities. Some Roman authors take the Athenian model as an example, assuming that Alexander and Hephaistion had a sexual relationship during their adolescence, after which they abandoned it. However, what is true in Athens is not necessarily true in Macedonia. The Argead kings claim to be descended from the Dorians, who are supposed to advocate male homosexuality, this type of relationship being more akin to the mores of the Sacred Battalion of Thebes than to those in force in the Attic city. Philip II, as well as many of his father’s officers, were reputed to be bisexual.
According to some ancient authors, Alexander would have had for eromena the Persian eunuch Bagoas. Quinte-Curce writes that Bagoas, “a eunuch of rare beauty and still in the first flower of adolescence”, was offered to Alexander by Nabarzanes, a general of Darius III, after the battle of Gaugamela. Plutarch mentions an evening where Alexander kisses Bagoas after the latter has danced for the king.
It is nevertheless possible that this kiss was also a political gesture, Alexander showing by this his attraction for Eastern mores because in Persia eunuchs are common to the court of the sovereign. According to Quinte-Curce, Bagoas prostituted himself to Alexander. He is also said to have pushed Alexander to execute Orxines, a Persian nobleman guilty of despising him, by having him accused of having plundered the tomb of Cyrus. But this relationship with Bagoas may have been nothing but a rumor emanating from Macedonians annoyed by Alexander’s Eastern policy and amplified by late Greek and Latin moralists. Finally, according to Plutarch, Alexander rejected the proposals of a pimp offering him the prettiest boys for money.
Relationships with animals
Alexander owns two animals passed to posterity, a horse and a dog. His horse, which accompanied him throughout his conquests, was Bucephalus; He managed to tame it when he was only 10 years old. He dedicated it after his death in 326 BC a city, Bucephaly, in Pakistani Punjab. His dog is called Peritas; it is probably a molosser, of an “extraordinary size”, which was offered to him by Alexander the Molossus, brother of Olympias, the Molosses originally designating one of the main tribes of Epirus. On his death in India, Alexander dedicated to him the construction of a city on the banks of the Hydaspes River (present-day Jhelum).
Artwork of Alexander
Military work
Alexander is often considered the greatest military genius of antiquity, both an outstanding strategist and a reckless fighter. However, we should not forget the merit of the soldiers, officers and technicians who accompanied him to Asia, nor the legacy of Philip II. His great victories against the Persians (Granica, Issos, Gaugamela) are based on strategic concepts established by his father, who is himself partly inspired by the oblique order of Epaminondas, and applied by his second, the experienced Parmenion. Alexander implemented the so-called “hammer and anvil” tactic while benefiting from favorable factors and the strategic weakness of the Persians. His military genius lies in his ability to launch the cavalry charge at the right time. It is in Iran, after 330 BC.
In India, he must take into account a new adversary, the war elephants. The Battle of the Hydaspes took place according to a new tactic, Alexander probably did not participate directly in the fighting, leaving his generals, including Crater and Perdiccas, to carry out his orders. In the end, Alexander fought only four major pitched battles, to which could be added the Battle of the Persian Gates as well as numerous sieges, including those of Thebes, Miletus, Halicarnassus, Tyre and Aornos.
Alexandre shows all his inventiveness in maneuver with fast walks, mountain travel, winter campaigns, river crossings. He also applied stratagems issued by Greek strategists, such as Xenophon and Iphicrates, who were versed in the art of cunning warfare. He seemed thrifty with the lives of his men, preferring rapid maneuver to frontal combat. He is also a great handler of men. His harangues, even if the authentic texts are unknown, are full of eloquence and strength of conviction. He failed to convince his troops only in India on the banks of the Hyphase in 326.
Political work
An analysis of Alexander’s work is complex to carry out because it remains unfinished. He was first and foremost the founder of a multi-ethnic and multicultural empire established on the basis of the Achaemenid Empire. He retained the administrative frameworks of the Persian Empire, including the satrapies, while seeking to conciliate the Persian aristocracy, as shown by the renovation of the tomb of Cyrus or the wedding of Susa.
Each people retains its cultural or religious particularities. The populations continued to speak their language, including Aramaic and Babylonian, although Greek became the official language of the royal administration, as it would be during the time of the Hellenistic monarchies. He also established, in the Iranian plateau and in Central Asia, centers of Greek settlement, with the settlement of veterans and settlers who developed especially in the Seleucid period. In principle, Alexander managed to unify his empire because all the conquered territories depend on his authority, but behind this total sovereignty hides a great diversity of statuses and situations, as in the satrapic administration or cities. This is the direct consequence of the extraordinary speed of the conquest.
Alexander does not seem to want to build a Macedonian empire spilling over into Asia, contrary to the idea defended by Isocrates in his speech of 346 BC entitled Philippe. The Athenian rhetorician posed as an apostle of Panhellenism and made Philip II the unifier of Greece and the leader of the war against the Persians. Alexander seems to want the whole of Asia, at least according to the knowledge of the Greeks at the time. He only applied the Greek law of war, as defined by Xenophon: “It is a universal and eternal law that, in a city taken from enemies in a state of war, everything, and persons and property, belongs to the victor”.
It seems, therefore, that Alexander’s primary objective was to replace Achaemenid sovereignty with Macedonian sovereignty and that he considered all his conquests to be definitive. The appointment of satraps as soon as the victory of Granica goes in this direction. After the capture of Tyre, he strongly affirmed that he would not be satisfied with the conquest of Lydia and Cilicia, which corresponds to the objective expressed by Isocrates.
The historians of antiquity are all convinced that its objective is indeed the conquest of the entire Achaemenid territory. Certainly, one must be cautious with the various sources; we do not know whether it is a question of Arrien and Quinte-Curce’s faithful relationship of Alexander’s territorial ambitions or of a historiographical discourse constructed in order to give the impression in the conqueror of a long-term vision, and not of an improvised conquest according to victories and events. In any case, it seems difficult to believe that as a result of a possible agreement between Darius and Alexander, the latter agreed to make the Euphrates his eastern border. The fact that throughout the conquest Alexander systematically claimed the territories that at one time or another had been Achaemenid illustrates a coherent political project.
For Alexander, urbanization remained the best way to ensure his domination over the conquered regions, either in the form of military colonies (katoikiai) or in the form of cities (poleis). Tradition from Plutarch and Arrian is that Alexander, a true “conqueror-civilizer” in the eyes of the ancients, founded seventy cities. But this figure seems exaggerated because it takes into account the foundations of his successors, the Diadochi, as well as the simple garrisons (phrouria). It seems more likely that Alexander founded about twenty of Alexandria. The function of these cities is primarily military with the objective of controlling communication routes and populations. Some cities, because of their strategic location, are called to play, after his death, a role of the commercial center, such as Alexandria of Egypt and Alexandria of the Tigris. The sedentarization of Asian peoples does not seem to have been an objective in itself.
Alexander modified the traditional framework of Argead royalty by personalizing, even more than his father, power. The Macedonian people, i.e. the Assembly of Macedonians in Arms, are very rarely consulted. Admittedly, at the beginning of his reign, in the shadow of Antipater and General Parmenion, guarantors of the maintenance of traditions, Alexander seems to have been subject to a relative tutelage, especially since his youth and the circumstances of his accession limit his authority.
Among the usual practices, the Royal Council (sunedrion), where nobles could exercise free speech (isègoria), was to be regularly consulted. This tutelage was not broken until after the execution of Parmenion in 330, although Antipater, the prudent regent of Macedonia, seems to be the true ruler in the eyes of the Macedonians who remained in the country. At the end of his reign, Alexander intended to replace it with Crater. If Alexander was an absolute ruler it was first in Asia, comforted by his relatives, Hephaistion, Perdiccas and Crater in the first place.
Among some Asian peoples, Alexander attained the status of deified king. Thus in Egypt, he is the pharaoh, living Horus, recognized as the son of Zeus Ammon. In Babylon, he is king by the will of the tutelary god of the city, Marduk. Alexander also scrupulously followed the Babylonian religious rites and restored some temples, being recognized as the legitimate sovereign of the country and “of the four parts of the world”. He thus received the decisive support of the Babylonian priestly caste. Relying on local traditions, he sought to be honored as a god by all his subjects. But it seems unlikely that he really believed himself to be a god; he even makes it a subject of jokes with Hephaistion. However, he seems convinced of the divine essence of his mission.
Finally, this imperial policy makes some historians say that Alexander is the “last of the Achaemenids”. Indeed, he gathered all the lands conquered by the Achaemenids within the same construction, he took over the central and satrapic administration by sometimes designating Asians, finally he kept the tributary system within the royal land (chôra basilikè).
Economic work
The question for modern historians is whether Alexander really decided on a systematic economic policy on the scale of the empire by seeking to improve the Achaemenid structures, knowing that the ancient authors neglected the economic aspect in their accounts. In the tradition of Johann Gustav Droysen, many historians consider that Alexander led an effective economic policy by the development of territories, the introduction of currency, the opening of trade routes. But this “colonial” vision can be nuanced, including a better consideration of the fate of Asian peasants and the legacy left by the Persians.
Alexander gives the impression of a sovereign anxious to exploit the conquered space and to list its riches. He ordered expeditions to report on the populations and productions of conquered or neighboring countries, such as Nearchus in the Persian Gulf, Callisthenes in the Upper Nile, Archias of Pella, Androsthenes and Hiero on the coasts of Arabia. For a long time historians, following ancient authors, attributed to him the opening of maritime trade between India and the Mediterranean, but it already existed in the Achaemenid and Neo-Babylonian periods. As for Alexandria of Egypt, it was during his lifetime only in the state of construction; it is under the Lagids in the third century BC that it will become a major center of trade between Asia and Europe.
Alexander did not have food stocks or a quartermaster service, as the army lived on the country. Alexander’s expedition was, therefore, above all, a predatory operation. The treasures taken from the Achaemenids represent astronomical sums, but the expenses of the expedition are themselves gigantic, while the financial contribution of Macedonia and the Greek cities remains low. As a result, at the death of the king, despite the commercial expansion, there were only 50,000 talents left in the state coffers. Income comes primarily from the product of the land.
In the “royal land”, peasants, called laoi basilikoi in the Hellenistic period, pay part of their production each year and perform chores. In the “tributary land”, the peasants are subject to numerous levies. The satraps were given the mission to collect six different kinds of taxes, sometimes brutally, the peasants paying the same taxes as under the Achaemenids. Finally, the newly founded cities in Asia, populated in part by European settlers, participated in the domination of the rural masses.
At the time of the conquest circulate very diverse currencies. The question that is still debated among historians and numismatists is therefore whether Alexander had the will to establish an “imperial” currency in his name, as some ancient authors, including Plutarch, suggest. In the Persian empire circulate darics and shekels produced in the workshops of Asia Minor, including those of Sardis and Tarsus, and of the East, including those of Phoenicia and Babylonia. At the beginning of the expedition, the Greek-Macedonians mainly used Greek coins of the types of Philip II, mainly gold, and Alexander probably minted at Amphipolis.
It was after the victory at Issos (333) that the first silver tetradrachms and the first gold staters of Alexander typed appeared. Considering himself de facto as the king of Asia, he would have inaugurated a coinage worthy of this function. However, he maintained the Achaemenid traditions by leaving the ancient coinages in circulation, to the point of making the gold daric the main currency of his expedition to the High Satrapies. Moreover, the so-called “imperial” coinage applied only to a limited part of the conquered territories and was specially minted at the end of the reign. As for the regions east of the Euphrates, they would have remained without a monetary workshop. Alexander did not finally seek to establish a single numerary in his empire, showing at the same time, once again, his pragmatism.
Cultural work
Alexander’s grand design was to involve the Persian elites and local aristocracies in the administration of his empire, ensuring that they retained the offices already held under the Achaemenids. He introduced Persian etiquette to the court, including the ceremonial of proskynesis, which provoked strong resistance from some Greco-Macedonians in his entourage, such as Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew, who died in captivity. He forced 10,000 of his soldiers and officers to marry Iranian women at the Susa wedding in the spring of 324 BC.
Marriages are in the Persian fashion, which does not fail to arouse the disapproval of the Greco-Macedonians, who have already seen their king unite with the “barbarian” Roxane, even if this marriage was done according to Macedonian rites. The question that arises among modern historians is whether these unions testify to a spirit of universal brotherhood or to a form of political pragmatism. Alexander also integrated Persians into the army, including the epigones (or heirs) in the phalanx, arming them with the Macedonians; this is one of the reasons why the soldiers mutinied at Opis near Babylon.
Alexander extended the influence of Hellenism to the borders of Asia through the establishment of new towns and garrisons populated by Greco-Macedonian settlers (veterans or mercenaries) and natives. The settlement of local populations seems to have been partly forced, as in Alexandria of Egypt or Alexandria of the Tigris, just as not all European settlers were necessarily voluntary and that many uprisings, including that in Bactria, broke out at the end of the reign or shortly after the death of Alexander.
This colonization led to mixed unions that gave birth to children that Alexander intended to raise and arm to the Macedonian after 10,000 veterans were allowed to return to Macedonia in 323. Finally, this policy is more akin to an “assimilation” of the natives than to a “fusion” of peoples. The Hellenistic period, which saw ethnic and linguistic intermingling, as well as religious syncretisms, partly fulfilled Alexander’s wish to overcome the traditional opposition between Greeks and barbarians and to unify the Iranian-Macedonian elites.
Posterity
Alexander the Great throughout history
Divinization
Through his father, the king of Macedon Philip II, of the dynasty of the Argeades, Alexander claims descent from Temenos of Argos, supposedly descended from Heracles, son of Zeus. Through his mother, Olympias, of the dynasty of the Aeacids, Alexander claims descent from Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. A legend, known from the reign of Alexander, says that Olympias did not have conceived it with Philip but with Zeus.
Alexander was proclaimed Pharaoh of Egypt at Memphis in 331 BC. He then goes to the oasis of Siwa where he meets the oracle of Zeus Ammon who confirms him as a direct descendant of the god Amun. The question for modern historians is whether Alexander really thought of promoting an “imperial cult”. An examination of ancient sources, whether sculptures or coins, shows that he intends to be honored as a hero in the image of Heracles. Moreover, after the death of Hephaistion in 324, he sent an embassy to the oracle of Ammon-Zeus to find out whether he should honor his favorite with divine worship. The oracle replied that he must honor him as a hero; thus he asked Cleomenes of Naucratis, the governor of Egypt, to erect temples in Alexandria in his honor.
The cult of Hephaistion spread rapidly, including in the Greek cities. From 324, according to some ancient authors, Alexander wanted to be honored in Greece as “God Unconquered”, together with the edict on the return of the banished to the cities. But this decision is based on late interpretations. Certainly, cities of Anatolia, such as Eresós on Lesbos, have paid him divine honors; but this is already the case with Philippe. Arrian evokes theories (religious ambassadors) sent to Babylon to Alexander, but there is no evidence in the current state that Alexander wanted to establish an imperial cult, knowing moreover that the idea of a god-king is sacrilegious in the eyes of the Persians.
When Ptolemy took possession of Egypt in 323, he incorporated Alexander’s heroic legacy into his own propaganda, even more so after proclaiming himself king of Egypt in 305 in order to support the claims of his own dynasty. In this context, Alexander was elevated from the status of protector god of Alexandria to that of state god for the Greek and Egyptian populations of the Ptolemaic kingdom. The cult of Alexander remained alive in Egypt until the end of the Ptolemaic period.
Tomb
The body of Alexander, mummified in the manner of the Pharaohs, and not cremated as according to the Macedonian funerary rite, quickly became an issue between the Diadochi. One of them, Perdiccas, loyal to the Argead dynasty, first decided to repatriate him to Aigai, the ancient capital of Macedonia where the conqueror’s ancestors rest. The body is thus placed in a first anthropoid sarcophagus made of gold, enclosed in turn in a second golden coffin, a purple sheet covering the whole. The whole is arranged on a ceremonial chariot surmounted by a roof supported by an Ionic peristyle.
Ptolemy did not hesitate to attack the funeral procession to appropriate the sarcophagus and expose it to devotion in Memphis. According to Pseudo-Callisthenes, the corpse was then transported to Alexandria around 280 BC in a lead chest by Ptolemy II. The latter places it inside a temple, in a new sarcophagus covered with gold. Finally, Ptolemy IV built a sumptuous mausoleum (the Soma) in which he exhibited the remains of Alexander. According to Lucan, the monument stands on a tumulus and has the shape of a marble tower surmounted by a pyramidal dome. All around are arranged small chapels intended to receive the bodies of the lagid sovereigns, the whole being protected by a walled enclosure delimiting the temenos.
According to Strabo, whose testimony would be the most reliable since he made a long stay in Alexandria, the funerary monument is in the first century BC in the basilica near the lagid burials. Ptolemy IX is said to have had it replaced in 88 BC the golden coffin by a translucent glass or alabaster coffin, because he needed funds to pay his troops.
The embalmed corpse remained in the Basilica of Alexandria for several hundred years and became an object of visit, especially for a large number of Roman rulers. Thus, according to Suetonius, Augustus visited the tomb and removed the body of the sarcophagus for a moment to respectfully put a golden crown on his head and cover him with flowers. The manipulation would unfortunately have damaged the nose of the corpse. Suetonius and Cassius Dio report that Caligula would have worn Alexander’s breastplate. The last notable visit was that of Emperor Caracalla in 215. The latter does not hesitate to appropriate the tunic, the ring and the belt of the Macedonian.
In the fourth century, the tomb suffered acts of vandalism, some of which were carried out by Christians. Alexandria was also hit by several earthquakes and a tsunami in 365. It is possible that these events degraded the monument. The location of the Sôma is no longer known precisely. Historians and archaeologists, despite much research and hypothesis, still do not know its exact location today.
Through contemporary historians
Alexander made sure to perpetuate the memory of his great deeds by surrounding himself with official historiographers. Thus Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew, wrote an account of the conquests until about 328 BC, before dying in prison as a result of the conspiracy of the pages. He was responsible for sending reports to Macedonia at the end of each campaign, thereby becoming Alexander’s chief propagandist. His work seems to have been widely used in antiquity although its impartiality is doubtful, to the point that a Pseudo-Callisthenes wrote in the third century a Life of Alexander from which the Roman of Alexander will be inspired. The writings of Alexander’s other Companions who participated in the conquest, including Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Nearchus, Onesicritus and Chares, have all disappeared, which may have led to the appearance of fables and legends that later authors have taken up on their own.
The History of Alexander written by Clitarch shortly after the death of Alexander, now deceased, contains fabrications and supernatural elements but would not be devalued. It is at the origin of the Vulgate of Alexander, an apologetic tradition found in particular in Diodorus of Sicily (Historical Library, Book XVII) and Quinte-Curce (History of Alexander the Great).
Worship in the Hellenistic period
In Ptolemaic Egypt, Alexander enjoyed great posterity. To legitimize their dynasty, the Ptolemies invented an Egyptian Alexander of divine character by assimilation to gods or heroes like Heracles. The citizens of Alexandria venerate the tomb of the glorious founder as a sanctuary. The king and his favorite, Hephaistion, are thus the object of a heroic cult specific to Alexandria. Then Ptolemy I sets up a state cult, associating Greeks and Egyptian natives, which honors Alexander throughout Egypt and which forms the basis of the royal Ptolemaic cult from Ptolemy II: Alexander is venerated as an “integral god” like that of the Olympian deities. Within the other Hellenistic, Seleucid and Attalid monarchies, Alexander received official worship as a tutelary hero. Many newly founded cities in Asia have erected temples to him, while at Clazomen and Cyzicus games in his honor are celebrated.
Alexandria remains at the source of the legend of Alexander throughout antiquity. A Life of Alexander the Great is written by Pseudo-Callisthenes in the third century, making the legendary account of the conquest. The author tells in particular that Alexander is not the son of Philip but that of the last pharaoh of Egypt of the XXXth dynasty, Nectanébo II, who took refuge in Pella to flee the repression of the Achaemenids. From this version of Pseudo-Callisthenes derive most of the Legends, Lives, Novels, Stories or Exploits of Alexander which multiply from the fifth century. This story is notably repeated, and embellished, in later versions; one of the last versions of the Roman is composed in France in the twelfth century by Alexandre de Bernay. It is from this work that comes to the alexandrine, term coined in the fifteenth century.
In ancient Rome
Among the Romans, Alexander was a model for generals and emperors eager for glory or certain people of letters. At the end of the third century BC, when the Romans came into contact with the Hellenistic world, Plautus, the oldest Roman author to mention Alexander, made him in the comedy Mostellaria a heroic figure. In 146 BC, Metellus brought back from Macedonia a group of the sculptor Lysippus who represented Alexander in Granica. At the beginning of the first century BC in the province of Macedonia coins are minted with his effigy.
In the last days of the Roman Republic, the figure of Alexander became even more prestigious, because at that time the Hellenic culture knew a real craze. Thus in 63 BC, Pompey adopted the epithet “The Great” (Magnus) and even the anastole-type haircut; during his triumph after his victory against Mithridates VI, he carried Alexander’s chlamys found in the luggage of the king of Pontus. Crassus sought to imitate Alexander by marching in the East against the Parthians. Julius Caesar seeks to establish a universal monarchy in imitation of the Macedonian hero.
Before being assassinated, he planned a campaign in the East against the Parthians, fascinated by the epic of Alexander. Suetonius reports that Caesar, seeing a portrait of Alexander in a temple, despaired because, at the age when Alexander subdued the world, he had not yet done anything memorable. Mark Antony, installed in Alexandria, had the ambition to establish a universal monarchy in the East and imitated Alexander: he named Alexander Helios, the son he had with Cleopatra and dressed in Macedonian style. In order to identify himself with the one who was seen as the new Dionysus, he celebrated in Athens a triumph where he appeared in Bacchus. The geographer Strabo sees in Alexander a discoverer, a tireless man with a superhuman will, a favorable portrait that minimizes or willfully ignores murky events such as the death of Callisthenes or the crossing of the desert of Gedrosia.
In imperial times, Augustus also admired the conqueror but did not try to imitate him. He placed a golden crown on the tomb of Alexander and for a long time used a seal with the effigy of Alexander. He introduced into the forum of Rome portraits made by Apelles. Nero fanatically admired Alexander to the point of gilding a statue of Lysippus.
He organized an expedition to the Caspian Gates and raised a legion with the name of “Alexander’s phalanx”. Under the Antonines, the figure of Alexander knows a strong craze; it was at this time that two Greek-language writers, Plutarch and Arrian, revived the epic of Alexander. For Trajan, Alexander is a model of head of state, because he knew how to establish harmony between peoples and because he has a sense of the universal. He sought to imitate him by campaigning in Asia against the Parthians. Reaching Babylon, he offered a sacrifice in his honor. Commodus had coins minted in his likeness and that of Alexander.
Caracalla hopes to be a reincarnation of Alexander; he formed an armed phalanx in Macedonian style and especially established in 212 the Antonine Constitution which gave Roman citizenship to all free men of the Empire, because he intended to imitate Alexander who had been able to bring together Westerners and Easterners. The emperor Severus Alexander, who was born in Phoenicia in a temple dedicated to Alexander on the anniversary of his death, abandons his name of Alexianus to pay homage to the one from whom he intends to draw inspiration. It is in this context of devotion to the conqueror that begins to spread in the fourth century The Life and the high deeds of Alexander of Macedon, commonly called the Roman of Alexander.
But in some Roman authors, often under the influence of neo-Stoicism, Alexander symbolizes tyranny, anger and excess. Cicero, although he recognizes his greatness, makes him the embodiment of a form of madness. Seneca reproaches him for the execution of Callisthenes and considers him the incarnation of the bloodthirsty autocrat, a real scourge for the peoples.
Similarly, the poet Lucan, Seneca’s nephew, although he admired Alexander as a warlord, criticized him for his excesses. Moreover, his conquests are diminished by Livy because he would have fought “effeminate” opponents; the historian questions the military genius of Alexander who, according to him, would not have been able to defeat the Roman legions, as shown a posteriori by the defeat of Pyrrhus at the head of an army equipped with the Macedonian.
This uchronic digression must be taken with caution because it is an underlying criticism of Pompey who claimed to be Alexander. Other Latin authors and moralists, such as Trog Pompey or Varron, condemned the murders of Philotas, Cleitos and Callisthenes. The death of Alexander would be, according to them, unworthy of an army leader, taking up a quote lent to Julius Caesar: “an imperator must die standing”. Finally, Augustine, in The City of God, uses the figure of Alexander to show that without justice the kingdoms are only a great troop of brigands.
In the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine folk tradition takes up the real or mythical exploits of Alexander told by the Pseudo-Callisthenes in the third century, in what will become in the Middle Ages the Roman of Alexander. The Byzantines transmitted a large number of versions of the Romanesque, and almost all manuscripts in the Greek tradition come from the Byzantine period. The Roman was widely disseminated in all Byzantine social circles. The theme of the “ascension of Alexander to heaven”, from the Romanesque, is a very common iconographic subject in the Christian Middle Ages in the East, as in the West; it serves to illustrate the sin of Pride, for Alexander failed to reach heaven.
The chroniclers of the Byzantine period sought to Christianize Alexander to make him the ancestor of the Byzantine emperors. However, the approach of these chroniclers differs. Some seek to demystify legendary episodes, such as Jean Malalas in his Chronographie au VIth siècle or Michel Glycas in the twelfth century; others, such as George the Monk in the ninth century or John Zonaras in the twelfth century, which are based in particular on Plutarch, have a more historical approach.
This appropriation is even clearer at the time of the Macedonian dynasty, even if it is actually of Armenian origin. Alexander is sometimes dressed as a Byzantine emperor, as in a version of the fourteenth-century Romanesque probably of Cretan origin. Alexander is indeed represented with the costume and emblems of his contemporary Palaiologos. The apogee of this appropriation was at the time of the Palaiologos dynasty (1261-1453), originally from Macedonia, when a “national awakening” was taking place in Greece. Thus the future Manuel II declared during the siege of Thessalonica led by the Turks (1383-1387): “the homeland of Philip and Alexander belongs to us”.
Finally, Alexander is the embodiment of Byzantine imperial ideology. For the Fathers of the Church, Alexander is the hero of the Faith; for the people, poets and editors of the many versions of the novel, he is a holy martyr because of an untimely and unjust death.
In Asia
In the fifth century the Life of Alexander of Pseudo-Callisthenes begins to be translated into various languages of the Near East, Coptic, ancient Ethiopian, Aramaic and Syriac and probably into Hejaz Arabic. The myth of Alexander was transported by religion and trade to the Byzantine Empire. The work of Pseudo-Callisthenes is known in the Jewish communities living in Mecca and Medina at the time of Muhammad’s birth around 570.
Alexander, known as Iskandar or Iskander, remains a mythical figure in the regions he conquered in Central Asia. In the nineteenth century, British officers exploring Badakhshan and Darvaz reported that local lords claimed descent from Alexander; this recourse to Alexander recalls that the Greco-Macedonians founded colonies in Central Asia that would later form the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms. Marco Polo already writes, in the thirteenth century, that “the kings [of Badakhshan] are of the same lineage, descended from King Alexander. In the fifteenth century, the Timurid dynasty, the heiress of Tamerlane, used Alexander for legitimation among the female lines. This memory of Alexander’s passage through Central Asia nourishes among Westerners of the nineteenth century a form of romanticism: the figure of Iskandar is the central theme of Rudyard Kipling’s short story, The Man Who Would Be King (1888).
The memory of Iskandar’s urban foundations is still vivid today. The inhabitants of Alexandretta in Turkey, Khorramshahr and Hormuz in Iran, Merv in Turkmenistan, Margilan in Uzbekistan, Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, Ucch and Karachi in Pakistan maintain the legend of the founding king.
Its passage is still reported today in the regions bordering the Amu Darya through forts, walls or so-called Iskandar paths. In Mankialma, near Taxila in Pakistan, locals continue to call their horses Bucephalus because they believe he was buried under a burial mound (or stūpa). In the Thatta region of Pakistan, where the conquest stopped, his name remains famous. Even in the Ganges valley, which he did not travel, local folklore still evokes him. With the spread of Islam, which makes Alexander a defender of the Faith, his legend penetrated to present-day Indonesia, in the fifteenth century, with stories in Javanese, Malay and Bugi inspired by the Roman of Alexander. The character even served to legitimize the origins of the Malay ruler dynasty. In the Palembang region of Sumatra, there is even a tomb called Iskandar.
In Hindi and Urdu, Sikandar, derived from Persian, refers to a young talent in the making.
In the medieval West
In the West in the Middle Ages, in the continuity of the Roman of Alexander from Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander represents a model of masculine and princely virtues as well as the ideal of the brave knight who mixes knowledge and power. He is both the warrior and the wise, full of “largesse” but also of excess. At the court of Henry II Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and King of England, Alexander represented the chivalrous ideal and the symbol of a royalty that asserted itself in the face of the feudal anarchy of the kingdom of France. From the twelfth century, at the time of the first crusades, develops in France, in addition to the fascination for the East, the mythical figure of Alexander.
He is one of the Nine Preux, pagan heroes, Jews and Christians who embody the chivalric ideal in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, it is very popular at the court of the Dukes of Burgundy, as evidenced by the dedication to Philip the Good of the Book of Conquests and Facts of Alexander by Jean Wauquelin. With the translation of Quinte-Curce into French by Vasque de Lucène for Charles the Bold, the romantic dimension of the character begins to give way to the conqueror.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the rediscovery of Plutarch, Diodorus and Arrian, with the arrival in the West of Byzantine scholars, reveals a more “political” image of Alexander, a pagan prince and pupil of philosophers, admired by Renaissance men. It then became the “mirror of the prince” and the symbol of a monarchical power that imposed itself in the face of declining feudalism. From the end of the fifteenth century, he is among the “kings” in card games with David, Julius Caesar and Charlemagne.
However, other medieval authors, especially prose writers, present a negative view of Alexander. In the Große Seelentrost, written in Low German in the fourteenth century, Alexander is seen as a greedy and cruel character whose thirst for conquest leads him to his downfall, because he has crossed the limits set for man. German theologians, such as Rupert of Deutz in the fourteenth century, and preachers, such as Bertold of Regensburg in the thirteenth century, make him an incarnation of Mephistopheles, pride in person. In the Divine Comedy written in the early fourteenth century, Dante evokes Alexander as a tyrant, like Dionysius of Syracuse, while he is notably absent from the list of virtuous pagans.
In modern times
Until the end of the seventeenth century, Alexander remained throughout Europe the model of the king-knight 363. It also benefits from a form of sanctification. Thus in the middle of the sixteenth century, Pope Paul III, whose baptismal name is Alexander Farnese, had coins minted with the effigy of Alexander prostrating himself before the High Priest of Jerusalem and decorated the Pauline Room of Castel Sant’Angelo with works of art, signed by Marco Pino, inspired by the life of the Conqueror.
Louis XIV showed at the beginning of his reign a great admiration for Alexander, to whom the Grand Condé also refers since his brilliant victory at Rocroi. The Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, which ensured peace between France between Spain, was seen by contemporaries as an act of benevolence of a monarch generous to the vanquished, like that of Alexander towards the Persians or the Indians. Jean Racine is part of this official celebration with the tragedy Alexander the Great performed by Molière’s troupe in 1665 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.
Louis XIV, inspired by his personal reading of Quinte-Curce, also commissioned Charles Le Brun to paint a whole series of paintings to the glory of the Macedonian sovereign. But from the 1670s, Louis XIV began to detach himself from the figure of Alexander, judged to be quick to anger, debauchery and superstition. He leaves Condé the comparison with Alexander. Thus La Fontaine wrote in 1684 a Comparison of Alexander, Caesar and Monsieur le Prince, while Bossuet wrote in 1687 the Funeral Oration of the Grand Condé which puts him in parallel with Alexandre.
In his Histoire du Commerce, given to Colbert in 1667 and published in 1716, the scholar and philosopher Pierre-Daniel Huet makes Alexandre a benefactor for humanity because he would have allowed a “great revolution in the affairs of Commerce”, at the time the term “Commerce” designating both economic and intellectual exchanges as well as relations between States or people. The work, translated into the main European languages, was a great success during the Age of Enlightenment. This idea of a “great revolution” initiated by Alexandre was then taken up by Montesquieu and Voltaire.
Under the Ottoman occupation, in what was the Byzantine Empire, Alexander served as a reference for scholars and theologians. Thus in the sixteenth century, two patriarchs of Alexandria predicted the arrival of a liberator, who, like Alexander, conquered several kingdoms before ascending the throne of Byzantium. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, texts published by the Greeks of the diaspora, merchants, scholars or ecclesiastics, present Alexander as the one who once delivered the Greeks from Persian tyranny, and he is compared to Peter the Great for having led to the unification of a powerful state at the end of the seventeenth century.
At the time of the Enlightenment
In the Age of Enlightenment, Alexander is considered the one who put an end to “Asiatic despotism” and extended European civilization. Montesquieu in L’Esprit des Lois, abandoning all moral perspective because it is no longer a question of judging one’s vices and virtues, considers that the epic of the conqueror changed the face of the world by opening trade between Europe and Asia, taking up Pierre-Daniel Huet’s theories on the “revolution of commerce”.
For the philosopher, Alexander’s conquests, although reprehensible by their violence, opened a period of prosperity. In the Pensées, he considers the foundation of Alexandria to be the “greatest project that has been conceived”. Alexander is no longer only a fighting hero, he is also the creator of a world pacified by trade, because the opening of trade routes leads to the opening of knowledge. Populations, hitherto living on the margins, are integrated into the human race thanks to civilizing work.
Voltaire, though often critical of Montesquieu, was even more complimentary of the “only great man ever seen among the conquerors of Asia”; for the philosopher, the “century of Alexander” is one of the four summits of world history. He insists on the destruction of the threat represented by the Persians, the expansion of Hellenism by the foundation of cities and colonies, the opening of a trade by the one who has “as much genius as value”.
This apologetic vision is found, at the time of the expansion of the British East India Company, among the English and Scottish philosophers reading L’Esprit des lois. In Recherches Historiques sur l’Inde (1790), William Robertson, royal historiographer of Scotland and head of the Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh, believes that the English should be inspired by Alexander, because he combines military conquest, trade and the spread of European civilization.
He defends here what he presents as the happiest civilization of antiquity and believes that Alexander did not destroy the conquered peoples, but respected their mores and customs. In his wake, John Gillies, his successor as royal historiographer, made Alexander the inspiration for the “greatest trading system ever seen in the world”. At the end of the eighteenth century, the positive reading of Alexander’s conquests was reinforced by the decline of the Turkish Empire, assimilated to the Persian Empire. As for the Greeks, in the midst of the Cultural Renaissance, they willingly claim to be the King of Macedonia.
But at the same time, Alexandre was denounced by authors hostile to European imperialism, such as Charles Rollin in Histoire ancienne, the abbé de Mably in Observations sur les Grecs, Guillaume de Sainte-Croix in Examen critique des historiens d’Alexandre le Grand and especially Denis Diderot in Histoire des deux Indes.
In the eighteenth century, the figure of Alexander thus served as a model, or foil, in a Europe that was accelerating its imperialist policy. Thus the story of Alexander, seen as the embodiment of the values of the “dynamic” West as opposed to those of the “immobile” East, is part of a global colonial reflection. Finally, Alexander is considered at this time as the one who allowed the first globalization.
In contemporary times
Napoleon I testified, during the second Italian campaign in 1800, of his admiration for Alexander who, according to him, would be superior to Julius Caesar in the art of war. He emphasizes the strategic importance of the siege of Tyre and the fact that Alexander sought to attract the bulk of the Persian army to Gaugameles to defeat it completely.
During the Egyptian campaign, he exhorted his soldiers by recalling the memory of Alexander. However, the figure of Alexander remains little present in official speeches, Napoleon not seeking to be a “new Alexander” but to be honored for himself. In his memoirs written in 1816 during his exile on St. Helena, he showed his admiration for Alexander, whose conquests were for him the fruit of a political calculation. He wrote that Alexander “is a great warrior, a great politician, a great legislator”; but that once he reached the height of his power the head turned to him; which makes him say that he “began with the soul of Trajan; it ends with the heart of Nero and the manners of Heliogabalus”.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Alexander symbolizes triumphant Eurocentrism while joining the orientalist current. Thus the German historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr believes that Alexander conquered an “immobile” Asia that was destined to be reduced to servitude under the authority of Europeans. In the Pan-Germanist German Empire of the late nineteenth century, Alexander is considered the unifier of the Hellenic cause and the champion of the Aryan race that managed to unify Macedonians and Persians, peoples of Indo-European origin. In France, it was not until the reign of Napoleon III that the figure of Alexander regained a certain notoriety. It becomes at the time of the European colonial conquests of the nineteenth century the model of the conqueror-civilizer.
For the promoters of the French Protectorate in Morocco established in 1912, it is a model because it would have associated colonizers and indigenous peoples. The ethnologist Marcel Griaule claims that Alexander is the “Columbus of ancient Asia”. For historian Élias Bikerman, Alexander’s conquests made it possible to Hellenize the indigenous elites who became the first defenders of Greek values, making a comparison with the rallying of Félix Éboué to General de Gaulle on June 18, 1940.
Finally, as the process of decolonization began, historian René Grousset wrote in 1949 in Figures de Proue. From Alexander to Muhammad, that “… The colonized country, after having largely benefited from the effort of the colonizers, finds itself with its soul unchanged. Today, for many modern historians, Alexander is no longer the “civilizing European hero” par excellence. After the Second World War, in the eyes of some historians, Alexander became the prototype of the dictator, demonstrating the weight of ideologies in studies concerning him.
Today, Alexander figures prominently among the most influential personalities in history. He was ranked 33rd in The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History (Michael H. Hart, 1982) and 9th among 30 historical figures in the ranking issued by The Guardian (2014).
Alexander as seen by the Nazis
During the interwar period, Alexander was represented in Germany as a hero of the Aryan race who managed to unify Macedonians and Persians, two peoples of Indo-European origin. This is the position of the historian Helmut Berve who published in 1926 Das Alexanderreich auf prosopographischer Grundlage. Other historians close to Nazism, including Fritz Schachermeyr, conceive Alexander and the Hellenistic period as a moment of denordification, a concept created to explain the fall of civilizations deemed the most brilliant.
Thus, the character of Alexander is ambiguous in the eyes of National Socialism: on the one hand, the celebration of the Nordic conqueror, on the other aspiring to universal monarchy, having encouraged racial mixing. Perceived as an Indo-German, he would have subordinated all his policy to the construction of a universal empire, making Aryan, Greek and Macedonian “blood” a material of equal value as Persian “blood”, while his father Philip II would have preserved the Aryan race within the kingdom of Macedonia.
Alfred Rosenberg proposes a more nuanced approach. In his eyes, Alexander would have wished, not the fusion of peoples, but that of the Persian and Greek elites, relatives from a racial point of view. The main criticism he made of Alexander was the lack of durability of his work, as the Hellenistic monarchs were unable to preserve Perso-Macedonian domination, as well as the racial hegemony allowed by this alliance.
For other Nazis, the period inaugurated by Alexander would be a period of “racial bastardization”: the Diadochians and their heirs, the Epigones, actually rule not over a Nordic world, but over a world on which a thin northern layer has been deposited, this thin northern layer masking the “infiltration”, in the Macedonian ranks. Semitic elements from the Mediterranean world. If the Greeks were able to accomplish great things, especially in the field of the arts, it is mainly because the process of racial subversion by the Semitic and Armenian populations has not yet come to an end, according to them.
In contemporary Greece
During the Ottoman occupation, Greeks still read and studied the Roman d’Alexandre, and even more so at the time of the War of Independence (1821-1829). The epic of Alexander would be the example to follow to free oneself from Turkish hegemony, the Turks being associated with the Persians. The novel has a popular adaptation written in simple language. From the simple soldier to the warlord, the Greeks show their admiration for the exploits, real or mythical, of the conqueror. Thus Constantine Kanaris, one of the leaders of the Greek Revolution, regularly reads the Roman.
After independence and until the middle of the twentieth century, scholars made the Roman a symbol of Greek culture. In 1961, Constantin Dimaras, professor at the Sorbonne, wrote that every young Greek must have read the novel before studying the great works of Greek and foreign literature. The links between Alexander and Aristotle, through transmission from master to disciple and then through the epistolary exchange, serve as a reference for education, even if the story shows that the disciple can surpass the master. The novel remained popular reading in Greece until the twenty-first century and still inspires popular literature and iconography today.
Alexander remains a subject of study favored by contemporary Greek historians. Archaeological excavations undertaken at Aigai, Pella and Amphipolis have renewed interest in the history of ancient Macedonia. In addition, literary sources, including the Historical Library of Diodorus of Sicily, Arrian’s Anabasis and Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, have benefited from reprints in modern Greek.
Since the 1990s, the figure of Alexander has been an issue in the conflict between Greece and North Macedonia (or the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). For the Greeks, the term “Macedonia” belongs to them, since the ancient Macedonians are Greeks and the Slavs did not arrive in the region until the seventh century. In 2008, the conflict was revived by the erection in Skopje of an equestrian statue of Alexander reproducing a sculpture of Lysippus. In the context of the negotiations that prevailed over Macedonia’s name change in 2018, the head of the government of the Republic of Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, announced the renaming of places bearing the name of Alexander, such as Alexander the Great Airport in Skopje.
Through religions
In Judeo-Christianity
Alexander enjoys a favorable reputation in Judaism, a legend from the Roman of Alexander in the twelfth century says that he even converted to Judaism. Indeed in the first century BC, among the Hellenized Jews, an apologetic vision of Alexander was built to honor the High Priest of Jerusalem. However, according to ancient sources, including Arrian, Alexander crossed after the capture of Tyre in 332 BC “Palestinian Syria” to reach Gaza, without having stayed in Jerusalem; just as on his return from Egypt in 331, he took the road from Pelusium to Tyre without mentioning Jerusalem.
In the Book of Daniel, the most recent work of the Old Testament composed in the second century BC who announces prophecies, Alexander is evoked as the Greek king who will subdue the Persians and the Medes and die at the height of his power. It is pejoratively associated with a goat and an iron-toothed beast. In the First Book of the Maccabees, written around 130 BC, Alexander is mentioned in the book’s introduction as the one who extended Greek influence in the Land of Israel.
Alexander is seen in a hostile way because of his conquests and his pride. The book condemns even more violently the Seleucid king Antiochus IV guilty of having desecrated the Temple. The Jewish vision of the Greek rulers changed during the reign of Alexander Balas, who secured Jonathan’s support by appointing him High Priest of Jerusalem in 152 BC then governor of Judea. The Jews were also grateful to Alexander for allowing them to settle in Alexandria, where the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek around 270-250 BC.
Flavius Josephus writes at the beginning of the first century BC that the Book of Daniel was shown to Alexander when he entered Jerusalem. Above all, he writes that Alexander prostrated himself before the High Priest of Jerusalem, that he performed a sacrifice in the Temple and confirmed to the Jews their privileges, although he did not adhere to the religion of the one God. A variant of the Roman of Alexander, written in Alexandria probably by a Hellenized Jew influenced by gnosis and Christianity, repeats the episode of the meeting with the High Priest at the end of the second book by adding that Alexander recognized Yahweh as the one God under the name of Sabaoth and that he abandoned pagan cults. He would have an “army out of human nature” at the service of the Good.
These legendary episodes are then taken up by all versions of the Roman of Alexander whether Hebrew, Latin or Byzantine. A fifth-century account of Talmudic origin, The Journey to Paradise, takes up this tradition that makes Alexander a defender of Judaism. Indeed, according to the Talmud, Alexander sees in dreams every day before battle the face of the High Priest and therefore knows how to win it. Alexander is also present in the Haggadah which refers to the non-juridical part of classical rabbinical texts. The Syriac version of the Roman d’Alexandre, composed by Jacques de Saroug in the early sixth century, describes Alexander as the ideal of the Christian conqueror who prays to “the one true God”.
This favorable tradition among the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria is taken up by medieval clerics from the tenth century, including Leo of Naples who translated into Latin the Roman of Alexander under the title of Historia de proeliis Alexandri Magni (or History of the battles of Alexander). This version, several times expanded, serves as the basis for the Roman d‘Alexandre proper, composed by Alexandre de Bernay between 1180 and 1190, which makes Alexander, although pagan, a hero in medieval times.
In Zoroastrianism
A tradition among Zoroastrians evokes a “religious persecution” led by Alexander who would have killed magi and ordered the destruction of the sacred book of Zoroastrianism, the Avesta. But this claim seems to be part of a “black legend”, knowing that it does not appear in direct sources. Alexander is thus mentioned in the Zoroastrian work, The True Book of the Law (or Arda Viraf Namak), written in Pehlevi (or Middle Persian) from the Sassanid period (sixth century). He is described as “the genius of evil, the damned, the cursed Iskander” because of his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire and the burning of the palaces of Persepolis which then house the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. In 1470, the Persian historian Mirkhond in the Garden of Purity (or Rauzât-us-safâ) reproached him for having burned the book of Zoroaster and put to death the Magi.
With the introduction of Islam in Iran in 652, Alexander’s perception changed because the first Muslims, in continuity with Judeo-Christianity, felt sympathy for him.In Islam
A historical tradition compares Alexander to Dhu-l-Qarnayn (“He who has two horns” or “He of two epochs”), quoted in the Qur’an in Sura 18, the cave, composed of sixteen verses. It says that Dhu-l-Qarnayn built a wall of brass to guard against the attacks of the Gog and Magog, that is to say here the Scythians and the Amazons. Historians and exegetes who maintain that Dhu-l-Qarnayn is Alexander base their argument on the Syriac version, composed in the sixth century, of the Life of Alexander of Pseudo-Callisthenes in which it is written that Alexander had a wall built in order to contain the barbarian peoples. This episode would be based on a historical fact: Alexander had a wall erected in present-day Turkmenistan (the ancient country of Gurgan) called nowadays the “Alexander’s” (or Sadd-e-Iskander).
The “Bicornu” would be an allusion to the goat horns of Zeus Ammon worn by Alexander on coins of the fourth century BC. These coins circulated throughout the East and served as a model for Arab coins. The Persian historian Tabari gave in the tenth century another explanation as to the origin of the relationship to horns. According to him Alexander is called Dhu-l-Qarnayn because he went from one end of the world to the other; the word Qarn means “horn” and the ends of the world are called “horns”. However, this argument is not unduly substantiated.
Finally, according to this tradition, Alexander is not represented in the Qur’an as a historical figure, a great conqueror or a prophet, but rather as a divine messenger, an archangel like Gabriel or Michael, and a justician king defender of the Faith.
However, several Muslim theologians and historians, including As-Suhayliy (thirteenth century), Ibn Taymiyya (fourteenth century) and Al-Maqrîziy (fifteenth century), refute the idea that Dhu-l-Qarnayn is Alexander, and trace the Qur’anic figure back to the time of Ibrahim (Abraham). Contemporary Islamic scholars, including the theologian Mohammad Ali Tabatabaei in Tafsir Al-Mizan, lean towards identifying him with the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great.
Al-Iskandar Dhu-l-Qarnayn is mentioned in passages from the Arabian Nights as well as in the Iskandar Nâmeh of the Persian poet Nizami. The name of Idris, mentioned in the Koran, would be a deformation of Andreas, Alexander’s cook in the Roman of Alexander.
In art
Alexander has been the subject of many works of art from antiquity to the present day. Most of the contemporary or original works have disappeared, although many copies were made in Roman times, particularly in the field of sculpture. In the Middle Ages, in the tradition of the Roman d’Alexandre, the epic of Alexander is embodied in many literary publications to become one of the most widespread myths in time and space. In modern times, Alexander is a privileged theme in painting. Nowadays, it is part of popular culture as the subject of historical novels, songs or video games.
References (sources)
|