Alexander the Great
Alexander, then aged 23, succeeded Philip and was immediately faced with revolt on
all fronts. He moved swiftly into Greece and had himself elected at Corinth as his
father’s successor as general of the Greeks. He had to quell rebellions first in IIlyria
and Thrace. When Thebes rebelled, he swiftly bore down upon the city and soon
occupied it. It was razed to the ground (the only house left standing was that of the
poet Pindar), and its inhabitants were sold into slavery. Having settled Greece, he
immediately undertook the proposed expedition to Persia, with a huge army of nearly
50,000 men. At its core was the formidable Macedonian phalanx, that proved
unbeatable in an open plain, but he also had cavalry, archers and light-armed troops.
Crossing over the Hellespont in 334, one of his first actions was to make a
diversion to the site of Troy. At the supposed tomb of Achilles at Sigeum he
pronounced the Greek hero fortunate in having the poet Homer to be the herald of
his fame, a copy of whose Iliadprepared for him by his tutor Aristotle he carried with
him on his campaign. At the temple of Athena in Troy he dedicated his armour, and
replaced it with the finest set of bronze armour supposedly dedicated at that temple
by the heroes of the Trojan war. Doubtless at the time, and certainly for subsequent
ages, these actions cast his expedition into Asia in a heroic light.
His first great battle was at the river Granicus, where he was vastly outnumbered
by the Persians. Although Alexander’s army had to cross this wide river, scale its steep
banks and face an enemy with the advantage of height above them, his army
managed to cross the river and reform. The cavalry armed with the formidable
Macedonian sarrisawas the decisive factor in his first great victory over the Persians.
According to Arrian, Alexander sent three hundred sets of Persian arms to be dedi-
cated to the temple of the goddess Athena on the acropolis (1. 16. 7). Captive Greek
mercenaries who had fought for the Persians were either killed (the majority) or
enslaved and sent to Macedonia.
Passing through Ionia, he liberated the cities that the Persians had controlled
through oligarchic aristocracies, establishing democracies in their stead. He also
funded new buildings such as temples. By the end of 334 he had liberated most of
Asia Minor from Persian control. En route to the heart of the Persian empire, he came
to the Phrygian town of Gordium, the site of what is one of the most famous
anecdotes about his progress, recorded here by Plutarch in his ‘Life of Alexander’, 18:
When he captured Gordium, which is reputed to have been the home of the
ancient king Midas, he saw the celebrated chariot which was fastened to its yoke
by the bark of a cornel-tree, and heard the legend which was believed by all the
barbarians, that the fates had decreed that the man who untied the knot was
destined to become the ruler of the whole world. According to most writers the80 THE GREEKS