Alexander Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Preface

  List of Maps

  Introduction

  The Main Characters

  Rulers of Persia and Macedon

  Chronology

  PART ONE

  “Alexander, Son of Philip, and the Greeks”

  CHAPTER 1 The Blood of Heroes

  CHAPTER 2 Ahuramazda’s Plan

  CHAPTER 3 The Emergence of a Superpower

  CHAPTER 4 The Assassination of Philip II

  CHAPTER 5 The Spear-Won Prize of Asia

  CHAPTER 6 The Greek Cities of Asia Minor

  CHAPTER 7 The Battle of Issos

  CHAPTER 8 Master of Sieges

  CHAPTER 9 The Gift of the River

  CHAPTER 10 The Battle of Gaugamela

  CHAPTER 11 The Sack of Persepolis

  PART TWO

  King of All Asia

  CHAPTER 12 The Death of Darius

  CHAPTER 13 Anticipation

  CHAPTER 14 The Massacre of the Branchidae

  CHAPTER 15 The Wrath of Dionysos

  CHAPTER 16 The End of the Revolts

  CHAPTER 17 One Kiss the Poorer

  CHAPTER 18 In the Footsteps of Dionysos

  CHAPTER 19 The Battle of the Hydaspes

  CHAPTER 20 The Mutiny at the Hyphasis River

  PART THREE

  When They Were Happy

  CHAPTER 21 The Meed of Great Deeds

  CHAPTER 22 Fulfillment of an Oracle

  CHAPTER 23 Death in the Desert

  CHAPTER 24 The Reign of Terror?

  CHAPTER 25 Nabarzanes’ Gift

  CHAPTER 26 Marriage: Persian Style

  CHAPTER 27 The Mutiny at Opis

  CHAPTER 28 Future Plans

  CHAPTER 29 Death in Babylon

  CHAPTER 30 Alexander: Mass Murderer or Messiah?

  CHAPTER 31 Alexander and the Ambiguity of Greatness

  Epilogue

  Appendix: Sources: Flacks, Hacks, and Historians

  Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Texts in Notes

  Notes

  Select Modern Bibliography

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Preface

  I have written this book to provide readers with a clear and balanced account of the life and legacies

  of Alexander the Great. The narrative is fundamentally rooted in the ancient sources for Alexander’s

  deeds. For a critical review of those sources readers should consult the appendix at the end of the

  book, Sources: Flacks, Hacks, and Historians.

  Almost all historians have judged Alexander III of Macedon to be a military genius. Somewhat

  curiously, however, few scholars have explained why this is the case, at least in any detail. In this

  work I do. In fact, I hope to show why Alexander should be considered the greatest warrior in history.

  In an ideal, peaceful world, Alexander’s military tactics, logistics, and strategic vision would be

  largely of antiquarian interest. But we do not live in such a world. Alexander never lost a battle and

  conquered the ancient world’s greatest empire in less than a decade. His unparalleled record of

  military success is more, not less, relevant today.

  I also will argue that Alexander was a kind of unacknowledged proto-feminist, limited multi-

  culturalist, and religious visionary who planned to establish a world empire of the “best.” His idea of

  establishing such an empire was based upon his belief that while all men were the sons of Zeus, the

  ruler of Mount Olympus had a particular fondness for the “best” among mankind. While Alexander’s

  attempt to institute a global empire of the best was not successful, I will show how Alexander

  nevertheless laid down the foundations of Western civilization and continues to influence the

  religious beliefs of countless people today in unexpected ways. We may see Alexander primarily as a

  great conqueror. But it arguably was the son of Macedon’s greatest “Prince,” and not the carpenter’s

  son from Nazareth, who made it possible for the “greatest story ever told” to become our world’s

  dominant myth.

  Although this biography of Alexander has been written primarily for a general audience, it certainly

  does address many detailed and controversial scholarly questions about Alexander’s life and

  historical effects. In doing so, this work either implicitly or explicitly refers to the arguments of many

  other scholars. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my deep debt to those scholars who have influenced

  my own understanding and presentation of Alexander, especially: E. Badian, E. Borza, A. Bosworth,

  P. Briant, A. Devine, D. Engels, P. Fraser, P. Green, W. Heckel, F. Holt, A. Kuhrt, R. Lane Fox, and

  W. Tarn. It is particularly important to express my deepest admiration for the inspiring scholarship of

  these great historians in light of the fact that I fear that I have differed so often here from their

  interpretations of Alexander’s actions. I would encourage readers who become captivated by

  Alexander, as I have been since I was six years old, to consult the works of the historians and

  scholars listed in the Select Modern Bibliography.

  In Greece, Dimitros Grammenos, the director of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki,

  kindly granted permission for me to reproduce pictures of the ivory portrait heads of Alexander and

  Philip from the excavation of the royal tombs of Vergina. I thank my gracious Wellesley colleague

  Anastasia Karakasidou for helping to make that possible.

  While I was writing this book, my companions Harry Cladouhos, Constantine “Gus” Kaloidis, and

  Piero Antinori provided me with invaluable feedback, nourishment, and inspiration. I would like to

  thank, at Wellesley College, my personal bodyguard: Thomas Cushman, Barbara Geller, Jonathan

  Imber, Fran Malino, and Rod Morrison. Only they know how often they have saved me from today’s

  Mallians.

  This book grew out of the Internet course on Alexander the Great that I created several years ago

  with Alexander Parker and Jeff Kunken of the Global Education Network in New York. For those

  who would like the opportunity to take a version of the course I have taught at Wellesley College for

  the past twenty years, you can log on to Gen.com.

  This project never would have seen the light of day without the encouragement and help of

  Catharine Sprinkel, Lynn Chu, and Glen Hartley of Writer’s Representatives in New York. From the

  submission of the original book proposal to the completion of the project, Lynn and Glen have

  listened to my ideas and helped me to clarify them. I am sure that I have learned more from them than

  they have from me. When the going has gotten a bit tough they also have been there in my corner,

  providing wisdom and good old-fashioned common sense.

  At Random House, it is a pleasure to record my gratitude to my editor, Will Murphy, for taking this

  book on in the first place and for his willingness to spend many hours attempting to quiet the choppy

  waves of my prose; it is rare (bordering on impossible) today to find such an enthusiastic,

  constructive critic of writing about antiquity, particularly one with such a wonderful sense of humor.

  To Will’s assistant, Evelyn O’Hara, I would like to give thanks for her unfailing courtesy and for help

  with all matters logistical, despite my incomprehensible handwriting and Delph
ic e-mails. Everything

  that is beautiful about the presentation of this book is due to the talents of Dana Blanchette. Finally,

  only Dennis Ambrose knows how much I owe him for actually seeing this book through to its final

  production; by a country mile he is the best production editor I have ever been blessed to know and

  work with on any project.

  As always, my brothers and sister (Mark, Christopher, and Sara) have shown great interest in

  another one of my books, and have pushed me to keep in mind the all-important question of why any

  of this matters to anyone, apart from a few odd classical scholars. Long live the veterans of Bear Hill.

  Perhaps the decisive influence upon the completion of this book, however, has been my partner, Dr.

  Nancy Thompson of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Descendant of a long line of distinguished

  editors from the great state of Iowa, Dr. Thompson improved this book at every stage of its writing

  and production. Everyone knows that she is both the brains and the beauty behind the operation.

  This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Orris Arleigh “Buck” Rogers, who passed

  away from Alzheimer’s disease in March 1996. As now noted in several accounts of life in Litchfield

  County, Connecticut during the 1960s, Buck Rogers was simply too good-looking, too talented, and

  too charming for his own or anyone else’s good. Alzheimer’s robbed Buck of his looks and his

  creative talents—but not of his humor or sense of style.

  Shortly before he died, I visited Buck in the nursing home where he lived during the last few years

  of his life. Since he was no longer able to speak clearly, but obviously still enjoyed listening to

  music, I brought along a CD of Glenn Miller’s greatest hits to listen to together. Among his numerous

  artistic talents, Buck was an excellent drummer and loved big band music of the 1940s in particular.

  As the first notes of “In the Mood” came floating out of my portable CD player, Buck suddenly

  jumped right out of his wheelchair and began to dance to the rhythm.

  “Hey, Buck,” I said, “you’ve got it!”

  To which he replied, “I always did.”

  Guy MacLean Rogers

  Toll Court

  September 28, 2004

  List of Maps

  Alexander’s Campaign Route

  The Battle of the Granicus River

  Alexander’s Conquest of Asia

  The Battle of Issos

  Alexander’s Route from Issos to Egypt

  Alexander’s Campaigns from Gaugamela to Persepolis

  The Battle of Gaugamela

  Alexander in Parthia

  Alexander in Bactria

  Alexander’s Journey Down the Indus

  The Battle of the Hydaspes

  Alexander’s Route Through Gedrosia

  Introduction

  The Real Alexander

  Throughout most of history Alexander III of Macedon has been seen as a hero, or even more than a

  hero. Indeed, during the first half of the twentieth century, one scholar argued that he was a kind of

  Platonic philosopher-king or even a messianic figure like Jesus, sent on a “mission from the deity to

  harmonize men generally and to be the reconciler of the world.”

  More recently, however, a far less flattering portrait of Alexander has been drawn. Some have

  portrayed Alexander as an unstable alcoholic, prone to wine-fueled rages and violence. Others have

  implied that he was a megalomaniac precursor of the political terrorist Stalin or the genocidal mass

  murderer Hitler. Historians also have denied that Alexander had any lasting effects upon the ancient

  world. Or they have compared his effects to the ones that Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors had

  upon the Aztecs of Mexico between 1519 and 1522.

  Although the popular view of Alexander perhaps remains a largely favorable one, a new scholarly

  orthodoxy about Alexander has emerged over the last half century, as the eminent scholar Frank Holt

  has argued. Alexander should be rechristened Alexander “the Terrible,” or Alexander “the

  Insignificant.” Called to account before the prosecuting historians more than 2,300 years after his

  death, Alexander has been retroactively stripped of his reputation and his epithet.

  This new image of Alexander has resulted (in part) from the adoption of a more critical and

  skeptical attitude toward the ancient Greek and Roman sources for his life. As scholars have analyzed

  the methods of the ancient writers and compared various accounts, they have reconstructed a far less

  heroic picture of what Alexander did and therefore who he was.

  Most of the proponents of the new orthodoxy also have written in the long, dark shadows cast by

  various modern tyrants over the last century. Looking out over the wreckage wrought by figures such

  as Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Milosevic, many historians have brought to the subject of Alexander

  an explicitly negative attitude toward nationalism, conquest, and empire.

  Of course, we should read all historical sources critically. Moreover, modern historians should

  neither be cheerleaders for history’s victors nor advocates for the vanquished. Nevertheless, the new

  orthodoxy itself is based upon a somewhat selective use of the ancient sources, and the overall

  historical framework that Alexander operated within has never been properly represented.

  In this book it will be shown that Alexander’s actions must be understood first of all within the

  context of a long, historical struggle between Persia and Greece, which both sides saw in religious

  terms. The “real” Alexander is then inferred from an accurate and balanced chronological account of

  his deeds, based upon analysis of all the main ancient sources. Located historically within such a

  context, Alexander “the Inferred” will emerge here, first, as a creative artist of warfare, perhaps the

  greatest warrior in world history. But Alexander, it will be argued, also was a pious religious

  traditionalist, whose quest to establish a global empire of the best was sanctioned by the gods whom

  he honored throughout his life. Although he failed to do so because of his early death, it has never

  been properly appreciated how Alexander set in place the fundamental political, cultural, and

  religious framework from which Western civilization eventually was born.

  WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

  In less than a decade Alexander conquered the Persian empire, the largest and most successful empire

  in the history of the ancient Near East. At the time of its greatest extension, the Persian empire today

  would subsume all or part of the modern nation-states of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Iraq,

  Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and India. How Alexander managed

  to conquer and then govern a territory of such immense size and ethnic diversity in such a short period

  of time should be of interest not only to professional historians of warfare and imperialism; the tale is

  important to anyone who wishes to understand clearly the deep historical roots of the deadly conflicts

  that currently plague the lands he once ruled, and that threaten to enflame the entire world.

  Within his empire Alexander implanted the fundamental physical, political, and social organization

  of Greek civilization, the polis, or city-state, at strategic points all over the map of the Near East,

  from modern Egypt to Tajikistan. In Alexander’s city foundations, military settlements, and re-

  foundations
of cities, Greek became the dominant public language of administration, commerce, law,

  literature, and religious expression.

  It was in the Greek language that Alexander brought with him from Macedon that some of history’s

  most influential ideas were formulated and spread all the way to India. In turn, within the city-states

  founded by Alexander and his successors, ideas and religious works of peoples from outside of

  Greek civilization were translated into Greek and then disseminated throughout the Mediterranean.

  This cross-fertilization continued even after the Romans conquered the successor kingdoms of

  Alexander’s empire in Greece, Macedon, and the East.

  In the East the Roman conquests of Alexander’s successor kingdoms led to the creation of an

  amalgam Greco-Roman civilization. That amalgam civilization persisted into the seventh century C.E.

  It was either within or on the borders of that civilization that the three great religions of the book,

  Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and early Islam, either evolved or were created. These religious

  traditions developed in relation to, and frequently in opposition to, Greco-Roman civilization.

  Although Alexander himself envisioned a very different kind of world empire, he ended up laying

  down some of the foundations for what was to become Western civilization as it grew out of Greco-

  Roman antiquity. To the political, cultural, and religious heirs of the civilization Alexander helped to

  found, it matters quite a bit who Alexander III of Macedon was.

  Alexander still matters now because he was one of the decisive founders of Western civilization:

  he is who we are, in some sense, or rather who we wish to be—or fear we are. It is perhaps for that

  reason that scholars have been led to create such contradictory historical portraits of Alexander. At

  stake is a part of the self-image of the West. We construct “Alexanders” in the image of the

  civilization to which we aspire or from which we recoil.

  Alexander, however, cannot be resolved into an individual who was either gay or straight (as some

  have claimed), an ultranationalist or someone who went native, a mass murderer or a messiah.

  Rather, Alexander was an ambiguous genius who defeats our polarized and polarizing modern

  categories. Like the Persian king Darius, we fight hard, but, as the Delphic oracle prophesied,