the first part of the task belonging to him as captain-general
to the Hellenes, that liberation of the Greek cities of Asia
Minor, for which Panhellenic enthusiasts had cried out so
long. He first went to take possession of the old Lydian capital
Sardis, the headquarters of the Persian government on this
side of the Taurus, and the strong city surrendered without a
blow. And now in all the Greek cities of Aeolis and Ionia
the oligarchies or tyrants friendly to Persia fell, and
democracies were established under the eye of Alexander's
officers. Only where the cities were held by garasons in
the Persian service, garrisons composed mainly of Greek
mercenaries, was the liberator likely to meet with any
resistance. From Ephesus indeed the garrison fled upon
the news of Granicus, but Miletus required a siege. The
Persian fleet in vain endeavoured to relieve it, and Miletus
did not long hold out against Alexander's attack. It was
at Halicarnassus that Alexander first encountered stubborn
resistance, at Halicarnassus where Memnon and the satraps of
Caria had rallied what land-forces yet belonged to Persia in the
west. When winter fell, Alexander had captured indeed the city
itself, but the two citadels still held out against his blockade.
Meanwhile Alexander was making it plain that he had come not
merely as captain-general for a war of reprisals, but to take
the Persian's place as king of the land. The conquered provinces
were organized under Macedonian governors and in Caria a
dethroned princess of the native dynasty, Ada, was restored to
power. In the winter, whilst Parmenio advanced upon the central
plateau to make the occupation of Phrygia effective, Alexander
himself passed along the coast to receive the submission of the
Lycians and the adherence of the Greek cities of the Pamphylian
sea-board. The hills inland were the domain of fighting
tribes which the Persian government had never been able to
subdue. To conquer them, indeed, Alexander had no time, but
he stormed some of their fortresses to hold them in check,
and marched through their territory when he turned north from
Pamphylia into the interior. The point of concentration for
next year's campaign had been fixed at Gordium, a meeting-place
of roads in Northern Phrygia. The story of Alexander's cutting
the fatal ``Gordian knot'' on the chariot of the ancient
Phrygian king Gordius is connected with his stay in this place.
Extension of Alexander's power.
Whilst Alexander had been grounding his power in Asia Minor,
he had run a narrow risk of losing his base in Europe. He had
after the siege of Miletus disbanded the Graeco- Macedonian
fleet, surrendering for the time all attempts to challenge
the command of the Aegean. Memnon the Rhodian, now in supreme
command of the Persian fleet, saw the European coasts exposed
and set out to raise Greece, where discontent always smouldered
in Alexander's rear. But Memnon died at the critical moment
whilst laying siege to Mytilene and the great plan collapsed.
A Persian fleet still held the sea, but it effected little, and
presently fresh Graeco-Macedonian squadrons began to hold it in
check. It was, however, the need to ensure command of the sea
and free all lines of communication behind him that determined
Alexander's plan for the next campaign. If he mastered the
whole coast-line of the Levant, the enemy's fleet would find
itself left in the air. The Syrian coast was accordingly
his immediate objective when he broke up from Gordium for the
campaign of 333. He was through the Cicilian Gates before the
Persian king, Darius III., had sent up a force adequate to hold
them. His passage through Cilicia was marked by a violent
fever that arrested him for a while in Tarsus, and meantime
a great Persian army was waiting for him in northern Syria
under the command of Darius himself. In the knot of mountains
which close in about the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta,
Alexander, following hard by the coast, marched past the
Persian army encamped on the plains to the east. To cut
Alexander's communications with the rear, Darius now committed
the error of entangling his large force in the mountain defiles.
Battle of Issus.
Alexander turned, and near the town of Issus fought his second
pitched battle, sending Darius and the relic of his army in
wild flight back to the east.2 It was an incident which did
not modify Alexander's plan. He did not press the pursuit
far, although the great king's camp with his harem fell into his
hands. The chivalrous courtesy which he showed to the captive
princesses was a favourite theme for later rhetoricians.
He went on his way to occupy Syria and Phoenicia. It is now
that we get definite evidence as to the reach of Alexander's
designs; for Darius opened negotiations in which he ultimately
went so far as to offer a partition of the empire, all west
of the Euphrates, to be Alexander's. Alexander refused the
bargain and definitely claimed the whole.3 The conquest
of the Phoenician coast was not to be altogether easy, for
Tyre shut its gates and for seven months Alexander had to
sit before it--one of those obstinate sieges which mark the
history of the Semitic races. When it fell, Alexander had
the old Tyrian people scattered to the winds, 30,000 sold as
slaves. Gaza offered a resistance equally heroic, lasting
two months, and here too the old population was dispersed.
The occupation of the rest of Syria and Palestine proceeded
smoothly, and after the fall of Gaza Alexander's way lay
open into Egypt.4 Egypt was the last of the Mediterranean
provinces to be won, and here no defence was made. To the
native Egyptians Alexander appeared as a deliverer from the
Persian tyranny, and he sacrificed piously to the gods of
Memphis. The winter (332-331) which Alexander spent in Egypt
saw two memorable actions on his part. One was the expedition
(problematic in its motive and details) to the oracle of Zeus
Ammon (Oasis of Siwa), where Alexander was hailed by the priest
as son of the god, a belief which the circle of Alexander,
and perhaps Alexander himself, seem hereafter to have liked to
play with in that sort of semi-serious vein which still allowed
him in the moments of every-day commonplace to be the son of
Philip. The other action was the foundation of Alexandria
at the Canopic mouth of the Nile, the place destined to
be a new commercial centre for the eastern Mediterranean
world which Alexander had now taken in possession, to rise
to an importance which the founder, although obviously
acting with intention, can hardly have foreseen (E. Keller,
Alex. d. Grosse nach der Schlacht bei Issus, 1904).
Invasion of Persia.
In the spring of 331 Alexander could at last leave the
Mediterranean to strike into the heart of the Persian empire,
for by his occupation of the Coasts the Persian command of the
sea had inevitably collapsed. Returning through Syria, and
stopping at Tyre to make final arrangements for the conquered
provinces, he traversed Mesopotamia and struck the Tigris some
four marches above the site of Nineveh. It was near Nineveh
that Darius was waiting with the immense host which a supreme
effort could muster from all parts of the empire. The happy
coincidence of a lunar eclipse gives us the 20th of September
331 as the exact day upon which the Macedonian army crossed the
Tigris. Alexander came within sight of the Persian host without
having met with any opposition since he quitted Tyre. He had
now to settle the most serious problem which had yet faced
him, for in the plains the Persian army was formidable by sheer
bulk. But the day showed the Macedonian army equal to the task.
Battle of Arbela.
The last army gathered by an Achaemenian king was shattered in
the battle called popularly after the city of Arbela some 60 m.
distant, or more precisely after the village of Gaugamela hard
by. Darius fled eastwards into Media and again Alexander waited
till he had secured the provinces to the south. He followed the
Tigris into Babylonia, the central seat of the empire and its
richest region, and from Babylon went on to seize the fabulous
riches which the Persian kings had amassed in their spring
residence, Susa. Thence he at last ascended upon the Iranian
plateau. The mountain tribes on the road (the Oxii, Pers,
Huzha), accustomed to exact blackmail even from the king's
train, learnt by a bitter lesson that a stronger hand had
come to wield the empire. Alexander entered Persis, the
cradle of the Achaemenian house, and came upon fresh masses of
treasure in the royal city, Persepolis. He destroyed the royal
palace by fire, an act which has been variously estimated by
historians. Ostensibly a solemn revenge for the burning of Greek
temples by Xerxes, it has been justified as a symbolical act
calculated to impress usefully the imagination of the East, and
condemned as a senseless and vainglorious work of destruction.
With the spring of 330 Alexander was prepared for further
pursuit. Darius fled northwards from Ecbatana upon his
approach. At Ecbatana new masses of treasure were seized,
but when once the necessary measures which its disposal and
the occupation of the Median capital entailed were taken,
Alexander continued the pursuit. It was an exciting chase of
king by king, in which each covered the ground by incredible
exertions, shedding their slower-going followers as they went,
past Rhagae (Rai) and the Caspian gates, till early one morning
Alexander came in sight of the broken train which still clung
to the fallen king. He had become a puppet in the hands of his
cousin Bessus and the Persian magnates with him (see DARIUS
III.), and at this extremity they stabbed him and allowed
Alexander to become master only of his corpse (summer 330).
The pursuit had brought Alexander into that region of
mountains to the south of the Caspian which connects western
Iran with the provinces to the east of the great central
desert. To conquer this remaining portion of the empire,
Alexander now went on through the mountain belt, teaching the
power of his arms to the hillsmen, Tapyri and Mardi, till he
came, passing through Zadracarta (Asterabad), to Parthia
and thence to Aria. In these further provinces of Iran
the Macedonian invader had for the first time to encounter a
serious national opposition, for in the west the Iranian rule
had been merely the supremacy of an alien power over native
populations indifferent or hostile. Here the ruling race was at
home. In Asia Alexander learnt that Bessus, had taken the
diadem as Darius' successor in Bactria, but so soon as he
marched against him Aria rose in his rear, and Alexander had
to return in all haste to bring the revolt under. Nor did
he, when this was accomplished, again strike directly at
Bactria, but made a wide turning movement through Seistan
over Kandahar into the Kabul valley. It was on the way, in
Seistan at Prophthasia (mod. Farrah?), that the alienation
between Alexander and his Macedonian followers, which becomes
sensible in the latter part of his career, first showed itself
in an ugly form. Alexander had come to merge the characters
of Macedonian king and Hellenic Captain-general, with which
he had set out, in that of Oriental despot (Spieker. Hof
u. Hofordnung Al. d. Gr., 1904). He wore on occasions of
state the Persian dress. (According to pseudo-Plutarch, de
fort. Al. i. 8, it was the simpler Persian dress, not the
Median.) A discontent began to work among the Macedonians,
and at Prophthasia the commander of the Macedonian cavalry
