Alexander the Great And The Siege of Gaza

The cities on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea put up some of the staunchest defenses that Alexander the Great would face during his conquests. After Alexander defeated the Persian forces in the 334 BCE battle at the Granicus River and the 333 BCE battle at Issus, the king set his sight on subduing the Middle Eastern coastline and Egypt before marching deeper into the Persian Empire. Amazingly, only two major cities offered resistance to Alexander during his march to Egypt. First, was the island city of Tyre, which Alexander besieged from January to August in 332 BCE. After a grueling standoff, Tyre fell to an assault by land (via an earthen causeway) and by sea. With the Tyrians slaughtered or enslaved by the thousands, Alexander continued his march in peace, not experiencing any resistance, until he reached the fortified city of Gaza. There, a bold eunuch named Batis was inspirited by his personal supply of provisions and mercenaries to resist the invaders.

Alexander arrived at Gaza around September 332 BCE, and laid siege to the fortress. For this battle, Alexander and his engineers did not pull any punches. The besiegers encircled the city with a tall earthwork platform that extended as high as Gaza’s walls. With the platform complete, Alexander deployed his siege engines (likely towers and catapults), facing Gaza’s southern walls, where the defenses looked the weakest.

Batis and his mercenaries rightly saw the looming threat of the siege weapons and decided to launch a sudden attack against the earthwork. Their goal was to burn Alexander’s siege engines and they nearly achieved their mission—Batis had his own artillery and he deployed them to the south, utilizing them alongside archers and slingers to drive the besiegers off the earthwork. The Greek forces were about to falter from the onslaught of projectiles when Alexander arrived in the nick of time to rally his troops. Although the besiegers were victorious against the sortie from Gaza, it came at a cost. Alexander was struck in the shoulder by a projectile fired from the city’s artillery. Unfortunately for the people of Gaza, Alexander’s shield and armor absorbed most of the blow’s impact, and he recovered with remarkable speed. Instead of being crippled or dead, Alexander was still on the frontlines and more inspired than ever to capture the city.

Not long after Alexander was wounded, his navy arrived with a cargo of even more siege weapons, which were left over from the capture of Tyre. With such a stockpile of artillery at his disposal, Alexander expanded his earthwork around Gaza to accommodate the new machines. With his earthwork upgraded, the new siege engines were set up to encircle the town. As if this were not enough, Alexander also deployed sappers to tunnel under the fortifications of Gaza and undermine its walls.

By October of 332 BCE, the defenses of Gaza were in a very poor state due to Alexander’s artillery and sapping. Large swaths of the wall had crumbled or completely collapsed. With breaches appearing all over the fortress, Alexander launched three assaults on Gaza, with debatable commitment to the attack—theses assaults were mainly mounted by archers and the heavy infantry was held in reserve. Yet, on the fourth assault, Alexander threw the full might of his infantry into the fray and overwhelmed the defenders. A predicted 10,000 men of fighting age were slaughtered by Alexander’s forces in the capture of Gaza. The lives of the women and children were spared, but they were ultimately sold into slavery.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Alexander Instructing his soliders, from The Deeds of Alexander the Great (Antonio Tempesta 1555–1630 Rome), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011.  
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  

Alexander The Great’s Animal Guides To The Siwa Oasis

Alexander the Great was an incredibly religious man. How could he not be? After all, his father’s family claimed to have been descended from Heracles, son of Zeus, and his mother’s family similarly was said to trace their lineage back to the demigod Achilles, son of the goddess Thetis. Additionally, the mother of the famous king convinced herself and her son that Alexander was not fathered by a mortal, but by a god disguised as her husband. As Alexander believed (or wanted his subjects to believe) that the deities were not only gods, but also his family, it is unsurprising that Alexander the Great held countless sacrificial offerings during his campaigns and generally sought out temples of worship wherever he traveled.

One of the most powerful religious pilgrimages that Alexander the Great undertook was his trip to the Siwa Oasis around 332 or 331 BCE. This occurred around the time he founded the Egyptian city of Alexandria, although ancient sources did not agree on whether the pilgrimage took place before or after the founding of the city. In Siwa, there was a famous oracle of the Egyptian god, Amun, whom the Greeks believed to be another interpretation of Zeus. As a supposed descendant of Zeus, Alexander the Great was naturally drawn to the oracle.

Siwa truly was (and is) a fertile oasis surrounded by difficult and treacherous terrain. The Roman general and historian, Arrian (c. 90-173+), used the accounts of Ptolemy (Alexander’s companion who became king of Egypt) and Aristobulus (a civilian friend of Alexander who was concerned with engineering and science) to piece together his own report on the Siwa expedition in his text, The Campaigns of Alexander. As Alexander’s contemporaries told it, the king and his companions marched into the desert, only to find themselves quickly lost. The shifting sands had erased any signs of a path to Siwa, leaving the pilgrims stranded in a deadly landscape with dwindling supplies. Yet, just as Alexander and his companions began to doubt their likelihood of survival, a miracle happened. According to both Ptolemy and Aristobulus, a pair of animals arrived to guide Alexander to Siwa. The two sources, however, disagreed on what type of animal came to the rescue of the famous king. In Ptolemy’s version of the story, two snakes slithered in front of Alexander’s party to show them the way to the oracle. Aristobulus, instead, reported that it was two crows that arrived to guide the stranded conqueror to his destination.

With the help of the animals, Alexander successfully reached Siwa and obtained his audience with the oracle. What the king was told there remains unknown, but perhaps the oracle confirmed the story of divine birth told by Alexander’s mother—after all, coins were later minted that showed Alexander wielding lighting. In any case, Alexander was reportedly a changed man after leaving the temple of Siwa. With his task complete, the king marched back into the desert and was apparently led once more to safety by his animal guides.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (The Flying Raven, by Édouard Manet  (1832–1883), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Alexander The Great And His Army Almost Drowned While They Were Dying Of Thirst In The Gedrosian Desert

During 325 BCE, Alexander the Great completed his campaigns in India, having conquered any Indian kingdom that opposed his progress along the Indus River. Nevertheless, there were still more lands and kingdoms to conquer. Even though Alexander wanted to prolong his string of conquests, his fatigued troops refused to go further into India, so Alexander instead marched to the Arabian Sea and began his return trip westward, heading for Persia. He had an admiral named Nearchus lead the navy along the coastline, while Alexander, himself, set off across the land with the rest of the army.

Alexander was particularly interested in a region called Gedrosia, which corresponds to the modern borderlands between Iran and Pakistan. Alexander the Great had read tales about disastrous attempts to cross the Gedrosian desert—the semi-mythical queen Semiramis had supposedly lost all but twenty of her warriors in a crossing of the desert, and Cyrus the Great was said to have lost all but seven of his followers in a similar attempt. These stories made Gedrosia an enticing obstacle for Alexander the Great, for he was a man who loved to surpass old legends. Already, he proudly boasted that he had traveled farther into India than the god, Dionysus, and had conquered fortresses that supposedly thwarted Heracles. So, naturally, Alexander was eager to try his luck against the formidable desert.

No one really knows how many soldiers Alexander the Great had with him at this point. Most scholars estimate that he must have had a force numbering between 10,000 and 70,000 when he entered the Gedrosian Desert, not to mention the large number of civilians who decided to follow along behind the army.  Alexander led these masses into an inhospitable land with little food and scarce water. In addition, there was such unbearable heat that the troops began marching at night to spare themselves from the unforgiving sun. 

At first, navigating the region was fairly easy while the army could march along the coast, yet, Alexander eventually had to leave the sea and travel into the Gedrosian interior. When the army ventured deeper into the desert, sandstorms became a problem—the winds and sands obscured trails and landmarks used by the army’s guides. Whenever the guides lost their way, Alexander led the troops back to the sea so the guides could reorient themselves before heading back into the desert.

During the grueling march, Alexander’s army, and the civilians still following him, all began to die of thirst, starvation and exposure to the harsh environment. Almost all of the horses and beasts of burden died of hunger and thirst, or were eaten by the starving troops. The marching army left behind a trail of collapsed warriors who could not find the strength to keep moving. During the night marches, some people would fall asleep and wake up abandoned in the desert—others would never wake up at all. Even if Alexander’s parched troops found a source of water, there were people who were so thirsty that they drank themselves sick, or even to death.

At some point during the desert crossing, Alexander camped his forces by a small trickle of water running through the land. To keep his men from overindulging on the water, he set up a camp for the troops a short distance away from the stream. The civilians, animals, and much of the army’s supplies, however, were located closer to the water source.

This minuscule stream, Alexander and his followers would soon find out, was no ordinary trickle of water. Actually, the whole region where the army and the civilians chose to camp was a dried up riverbed, and the small rivulet of water was a drastically depleted river. The water running through the riverbed was supposedly fed by rain runoff from some far away mountains and foothills that could not be seen from the camp. As it happened, Alexander had the misfortune of staying in the riverbed around the same time that a severe storm was pouring an endless torrent of rain on those unseen mountains. Naturally, much of the water from that downpour rolled down the mountainside and hills into various streams feeding into the dusty riverbed in Gedrosia. As a result, during the middle of the night, the unassuming trickle in the riverbed rapidly increased to become a brook, then a creek, and finally a powerful river fed by a flash flood.

The sudden appearance of the river caught everyone by surprise. Alexander and his soldiers, who had camped furthest away from the stream, were able to escape the swiftly rising river. Almost everyone and everything else was reportedly lost in the flood—most of the civilians, animals, and supplies, except the weapons and armor that Alexander’s men already had on them, were taken by the river. Even after the Macedonian king saved his troops from the rising water, he had to carefully guard his men from over-gorging themselves on the newfound freshwater river.

The worst of the desert crossing was over when Alexander and his struggling army reached the city of Pura, the greatest settlement in Gedrosia. According to the historian Arrian (c. 90-173+), Alexander’s march through the toughest stretch of the desert was reported to have lasted around sixty days. No one knows how many lives were lost during the desert crossing, but percentages have been suggested as high as half of Alexander’s army or even seventy-five percent, not including the civilians, most of whom allegedly drowned in the river flood.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Modified version of Alexander charging across the Granicus River, c. 1909 by August Petrtyl, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  

The Obliteration Of The Uxian Hill Tribes By Alexander The Great

On October 1, 331 BCE, Alexander the Great dealt a psychological death blow to the reign of the Persian King of Kings, Darius III, at Gaugamela. The Persian ruler had a vast numerical superiority during the battle, and the battlefield, itself, at Gaugamela had been flattened and leveled by workers to further the advantage of the Persian chariots and cavalry. Nevertheless, Alexander marched his seasoned warriors to Darius’ location and beat the Persian King of Kings in a fair fight at dawn. As Darius fled from the battlefield, many Persians knew that their leader had no valid excuses for his defeat—Alexander was simply the superior general.

Instead of chasing after the fleeing Darius, Alexander instead moved to seize nearby vital cities while the Persian ruler was too weak to respond. First, he reached Babylon and from there marched to Susa. Both cities accepted the victorious king into their walls without a struggle. Departing from Susa, Alexander and his army entered the territory of the Uxians, a people who controlled a swath of land between Susa and the city of Persepolis, the Persian capital. The Uxians that lived in the plains region willingly submitted to Alexander. Other Uxians living in the hillsides, however, had no intention of bowing to Alexander. They had not even paid tribute to Darius III, despite living in the heart of the Persian Empire, and as such, the Uxians in the hills stanchly wanted to maintain their independence and even demanded that Alexander pay a toll if he should wish to cross through their land. The hill people, however, failed to realize that the Persian Empire was crumbling and a new empire-builder was in town. Unfortunately for the Uxian hill tribes, Alexander had little patience for rogue, obstinate communities in his growing domain.

According to the Roman historian, Arrian (c. 90-173+), who based his book mainly on the eyewitness accounts of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, the Uxians were informed that Alexander’s army would be heading toward a pass in their territory and that the Macedonian king would hand them their just toll. Of course, Alexander and the hill tribes had vastly different ideas of what was justly deserved.

As the message was traveling to the Uxian hill communities, Alexander sent most of his army, under the command of Craterus, to quickly march for the pass in order to seize the high ground. The Macedonian king, however, did not go with the rest of the army. Instead, he stayed behind with a reported force of around 8,000 men and recruited some guides from Susa who knew the Uxian countryside. After waiting long enough for the hill warriors to abandon their homes for the pass, Alexander had the guides from Susa lead his band of troops to known villages on the hillside. Under the cover of dark, Alexander’s raiding party surprised several defenseless villages, pillaging and killing as they combed through the hills.

After his attack on the hill villages, Alexander rushed with such speed for the pass that he arrived there before the Uxians were present. Alexander, himself, took up a position on the high ground of the pass and sent Craterus’ earlier-mentioned portion of the army to a hidden location at the back of the passage.

When the Uxians finally arrived, Alexander did not wait for diplomacy, but instantly sounded a charge from his favorable position on the high ground. The hill warriors, startled both by Alexander’s aggression and his advantageous position, lost the will to fight and fled back for the safety of the opposite hills. The path they choose to flee, however, brought the Uxian hill warriors directly into the clutches of Craterus’ hidden troops. With the hill warriors caught between the forces of Alexander and Craterus, the battle at the pass quickly turned into a massacre.

After the battle was over, Alexander’s bloodlust apparently cooled, for he supposedly let the survivors of the hill tribes keep their land. Of course, this came with stipulations, such as free passage for Alexander’s army and a regular tribute payment of horses, mules and sheep.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Alexander and Porus, painted by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  

Two Drunk Soldiers Supposedly Led The Army Of Alexander The Great In An Unplanned Attack On Halicarnassus

In the year 334 BCE, Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Anatolia and began his conquest of the Persian Empire. In that year, Alexander won his first significant battle against the Persians at the Granicus River and then marched southward along the coast, bringing Greek-populated settlements over to his side through diplomacy or force. In one of the last major events of 334 BCE, Alexander the Great reached the region of Caria (southwest Anatolia) and laid siege to the large city of Halicarnassus. Alexander’s opponent in Halicarnassus was Memnon, a brilliant military strategist from Rhodes who had married into the Persian nobility. Memnon had supplied the city to survive a siege and garrisoned Halicarnassus with a sizable force of native and mercenary soldiers. 

Upon arriving at Halicarnassus, Alexander settled his men in for a siege—a very long siege. The defenders were so stubborn at Halicarnassus that Alexander decided to occupy his time by attacking another nearby fortified settlement called Myndus. He expected Myndus to surrender, or for traitors to open the gates, but when this did not happen, he decided that Myndus was not worth the effort, especially after an attempt to breach its walls was unsuccessful. With this distraction over, Alexander set his focus back on Halicarnassus, where he redoubled his efforts to build battering rams, towers and artillery with which to topple the opposing walls.

Alexander and Memnon continued their stalemate as summer transitioned to autumn, with both sides launching sorties against the other every so often. One of the more peculiar of these heated skirmishes near the gates of Halicarnassus reportedly occurred because two Macedonian infantrymen had been in an argument of drunken boasts.

This story was recorded by the Greek-Roman military leader and historian Arrian (c. 90-173+), who is often considered the most trustworthy of the ancient biographers of Alexander the Great. Nevertheless, he was writing centuries after the death of Alexander, so the more far-fetched stories (like the one about to be recounted) should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Even so, the story of the two drunken infantrymen has value, if only for the sake of enjoyment and the preservation of an ancient tale.

As the story goes, two infantrymen in Alexander’s army were having a conversation in a tent. This conversation took place well into the siege, after the brief excursion to Myndus had been abandoned. At that particular time, the two infantrymen had nothing better to do than sit in their tent and talk over an ample amount of alcoholic beverages. During the course of their conversation, the two men began a battle of boasts. They started listing out their accomplishments and abilities, as well as the feats that they believed they could achieve. As the drinks kept coming, the boasts grew wilder and more outrageous. When their bellies were full of alcohol, and their egos were bursting with intoxicated ambition, the two men strapped on their armor and grabbed their weapons, believing themselves capable of capturing the city of Halicarnassus alone.

Even though the drink was undoubtedly affecting the soldiers’ judgment, the alcohol apparently had not impaired their mobility or fighting ability. Eager to prove their boasts, the inebriated pair charged toward Halicarnassus. In the city, a small group of defenders watched with amusement as the two lone Macedonians scrambled for the walls. Some of the observing defenders decided to go outside of the walls to intercept the approaching soldiers, planning either to capture or kill the pair. The defenders probably thought that they could make short work of the drunk infantrymen, yet when the two sides met, a fierce brawl ensued. The loud skirmish between the two Macedonian infantrymen and the small party of defenders alarmed both sides of the conflict at Halicarnassus. Soldiers from the same battalion as the drunk infantrymen came rushing to the rescue of their comrades, while more defenders also came pouring out of the city as the sound of battle filled the air.

Neither side was prepared for this skirmish—it had not been planned by either Alexander or Memnon, so neither of the generals could respond in time to profit from any benefits the brawl could have provided. The brief clash ended with the defenders from Halicarnassus withdrawing back behind their walls, both sides having sustained some casualties.

The clash caused by the two inebriated infantrymen did not bring about the fall of Halicarnassus. In fact, there were more significant sorties that occurred both before and after the bizarre drink-fueled charge against the walls. Nonetheless, the two boastful infantrymen definitely led one of the more unique skirmishes during the efforts to take the city. In the end, when winter was approaching, Memnon decided to pack his troops onto the ships of the Persian navy and withdrew to the island of Cos, abandoning a preemptively burned Halicarnassus to Alexander.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Roman fresco, presumably of dice-players, from the Osteria della Via di Mercurio (VI 10,1.19, room b) in Pompeii, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011.  
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  

The Last Feat Of The Warrior-Harpist, Aristonicus

By the end of 329 BCE, or the beginning of 328 BCE, Alexander the Great had conquered a large territory, spanning from Greece and Egypt in the west of his empire all the way through Persia, Parthia and Bactria in the east. Alexander’s troops were also in Sogdiana, but the region was not yet pacified. Two Persian King of Kings had already fallen, including Darius III (330 BCE) and Besus (229 BCE), but a former vassal of Persia, Spitamenes of Sogdiana, was still at large, keeping his homeland in open revolt against Alexander the Great.

Hellenistic forces rampaged through Sogdiana trying to subdue the population and capture its leader. Feeling the pressure, Spitamenes fled to the north, where he found shelter with the Massagetae tribe of Scythia. While Alexander’s forces terrorized Sogdiana, Spitamenes led his reinvigorated forces, along with Scythian reinforcements, down into Bactria, where he caught the unsuspecting garrisons off guard. In particular, Spitamenes targeted the town of Zariaspa, the place where Alexander had set up camp before renewing his campaign in Sogdiana. The city was fairly well fortified, but the garrison mostly consisted of injured or sick troops. Among the people in the town were some notable figures, most importantly Aristonicus, a talented harp player, and Peitho, the son of Sosicles. Since the town was guarded, albeit by sickly or recovering soldiers, Spitamenes decided not to attack, but he did manage to pull off an impressive theft of Zariaspa’s supply of livestock.

This was an insult that the rag-tag band in Zariaspa could not tolerate. Aristonicus and Peitho rallied the healing troops and managed to gather around eighty men fit enough to fight. With this small force, Aristonicus and Peitho marched out of the town, intending to pursue the enemy. Miraculously, the war band from Zariaspa caught up with a small detachment from Spitamenes’ army. Aristonicus and Peitho ambushed the isolated camp and actually recovered a large portion of the stolen livestock. After the victory, the Hellenistic fighters began driving the animals back toward town.

Unfortunately, Spitamenes had heard of the attack and had set up an ambush of his own somewhere along the route to Zariaspa. As Aristonicus and Peitho herded the animals home, their small force lost any semblance of order or discipline. Therefore, they were totally unprepared when they stumbled into Spitamenes’ trap. In the ensuing massacre, the majority of the Hellenistic troops were killed. According to the historian Arrian (c. 90-145+), sixty-seven of the original eighty Hellenic warriors died in the ambush. Peitho was one of the few who survived to be captured by Spitamenes, although what happened to him after his capture is uncertain. The harpist, Aristonicus, had a less fortunate fate, and was killed in battle after reportedly mounting a heroic last stand.

When word reached Alexander the Great about the battle, he was impressed by Aristonicus’ courage and resolve. In honor of the fallen warrior-harpist, Alexander the Great funded a monument in the musician’s memory. At Delphi, a bronze statue was erected, displaying Aristonicus holding a harp in one hand and clutching a spear with the other.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Parnassus or Apollo and the Muses, by Simon Vouet (1590–1649) [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011.
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.  

The Frightened Beginning And Valiant End Of Bucephalas, The Beloved Horse Of Alexander The Great

According to the historical tradition of the ancients, it was around 344 BCE when a twelve-year-old Alexander the Great met Bucephalas, the horse that would carry him on conquests stretching from Greece to India. Before the powerful, but stubbornly independent, black horse came into the possession of Alexander, it was owned by a Thessalian horse breeder named Philoneicus. The merchant intercepted the royal family of Macedonia while they were passing through the town of Dion, nestled underneath Mount Olympus. While there, Philoneicus convinced King Philip II of Macedonia and his son, Alexander, to inspect his wares, especially his prized possession, Bucephalas.

King Philip sent out his groomsmen to assess the beast, but he did not like what he saw. Bucephalas refused to work with the handlers and was deemed to be untamable. When the king showed no interest in the horse, Alexander stepped in and criticized Philip about running away from a challenge. According to the story, Alexander then claimed that he could tame the horse, and if he failed, he would pay the horse breeder’s price with his own personal funds. Simultaneously angered and impressed, King Philip agreed to his son’s bargain.

Apparently, much of Bucephalas’ uncooperativeness originated from an unsuspected source—the horse was afraid of its own shadow. Alexander was said to have noticed this fear, so he repositioned the horse to where no shadows could be seen, and gave the stallion several minutes to calm down. Then, to the surprise of the onlookers, the twelve-year-old Alexander hopped onto the back of the tall horse and directed him about with ease. After Alexander became king in 336 BCE, he and Bucephalas campaigned from Greece through many distant lands, including Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Bactria and Sogdiana. Finally, around 327 BCE, they invaded India.

The ancient sources agreed that Bucephalas died in 326 BCE, around the time of Alexander’s battle against King Porus at the Hydaspes River. A few writers claimed that the old horse (allegedly thirty years of age) simply died of natural causes. The rest, however, wrote that Bucephalas died during the battle that occurred after Alexander smuggled a force across the river to confront King Porus and envelop his army. During the ensuing fight, Alexander's favorite horse allegedly received a fatal stab wound from an enemy spear, and the one who struck the killing blow may have even been King Porus' own son. After King Porus surrendered, Alexander honored his fallen horse by founding a new city near the site of the battle—he named the settlement Bucephala.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Alexander taming Bucephalas, by François Schommer (1850–1935), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971.
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Alexander The Great Allegedly Hunted Down Two Separate Unrelated Tribes By The Name Of Mardi In A Single Year

By 330 BCE, Alexander the Great had clearly gained the upper hand against the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. He had personally won several successive battles against the Persian king, Darius III, including the battles of Granicus (334 BCE), Issus (333 BCE) and Gaugamela (331). Now, Darius III was on the run, hoping to catch his breath and mobilize another force, in order to defend his shrinking empire. In the meantime (returning to 330 BCE), Alexander the Great was able to march unimpeded into the Persian capital of Persepolis. In one of his more infamous episodes, Alexander let his army have its way with the city, even though Persepolis had surrendered peacefully.

While his army was camped at Persepolis, Alexander was said to have launched a short expedition into the nearby mountains. The official reason for the mission was to make the mountain tribes submit to Alexander’s rule, but other historians theorize that the king may have felt guilty about sacking Persepolis and wanted a distraction. Others simply attribute the expedition to boredom. Whatever the case, Alexander supposedly headed off for the snow-covered mountains with a small division of light infantry and around 1,000 cavalry.

As Alexander entered the highlands, he eventually passed into the territory of a small tribe called the Mardi. This peculiar tribe supposedly lived in natural caves and generally kept to an archaic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Another prominent characteristic of the tribe was that the Mardi women were said to have been more than willing to fight alongside their men. The weapon of choice for these warrior women was the common sling, which, when not in use, had the secondary purpose of acting as a hair band. Unfortunately, Alexander the Great apparently found entertainment in tracking and killing these people.  He was said to have spent around thirty days hunting members of the tribe in the mountains near Persepolis before returning to the city and notoriously burning the palace of Xerxes.

Later that year (still in 330 BCE), Alexander marched his army to the region of Hyrcania, located near the Caspian Sea. While there, he met with numerous dignitaries, including some Persian officials who wished to surrender, as well as some Greek mercenaries who wanted employment. Alexander the Great was even rumored to have received a tantalizing visit from the Amazonian queen, Thalestris, while camped at Hyrcania. Yet, just like before, Alexander decided to take a small detachment from his main force and go investigate some nearby tribes.

While exploring around the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, Alexander apparently wandered up to the border of a region called Mardia. Unbelievably, the Macedonian king found himself facing yet another Mardi tribe (no relation with the group near Persepolis). Unlike the previous Mardi, the tribe that ruled Mardia was more populous, had a tradition of horsemanship and fielded a sizeable army. This bigger and better Mardi tribe supposedly mobilized a force of 8,000 men and set up a defensive position at a mountain pass that blocked Alexander’s access into their territory. Yet the unexpected arrival of the Hellenic forces had still caught the Mardi off guard and unprepared. Plus, the man at their gates was Alexander the Great, of all people. Unsurprisingly, Alexander shattered their defenses and forced the Mardi warriors to scatter back into their mountainous territory.

Although the Mardi had lost the battle at the mountain pass, they had no intention of surrendering. In a likely fictional tale about the reign of Alexander, a band of sneaky Mardi warriors managed to steal the Macedonian king’s beloved horse, Bucephalas, an animal that he had personally trained during his youth. It was a big mistake—they underestimated just how much affection the king had for his royal steed. After hearing of the theft, Alexander the Great sent out his forces on a systematic rampage throughout Mardi lands, supposedly harming both the tribe and the very landscape. Eventually, the Mardi decided they could not sustain their war. They returned Bucephalus with additional gifts and petitioned for peace. Alexander, in a better mood after being reunited with his horse, granted peace to the Mardi in exchange for unconditional surrender and hostages.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Mosaic of Alexander the Great and Darius III, c. 1st century BCE, found in Pompeii, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 1971. 
• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life by Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 
• (Diodorus Siculus) http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/17D*.html#note76  

Alexander The Great Allegedly Spent Almost Two Weeks Of Pleasure With An Amazonian Queen

Soon after the Persian King of Kings, Darius III, was betrayed and executed by Bessus (one of his satraps or governors) in 330 BCE, Alexander the Great marched his forces to a region known a Hyrcania, located just to the east of the Caspian sea. While he was there, he secured fertile farmlands for his empire, hired mercenaries and pacified a local tribe that allegedly had the audacity to steal Alexander’s horse. There was, however, another incident that occurred in Hyrcania that was controversial enough to cause even the ancient authorities on Alexander’s life to fiercely squabble over the truth.

The interesting episode that the ancient sources on Alexander’s life disagreed upon was a peculiar story in which Alexander the Great spent nearly two weeks of pleasure with a queen of the mythical Amazon warrior-women, a group likely inspired by the historical Scythian or Sarmatian civilizations, which featured prominent roles for women.

According to myth, the Amazons (which translates approximately to “no breast”) were a society of warrior women who were so devoted to their militancy that the members of the tribe would remove one of their breasts to make themselves better at launching deadly projectiles. According to the tales, they ruled a domain to the north of Hyrcania and the Caspian Sea. As they were an exclusively female tribe, the warrior women would periodically breed with foreign men to ensure the survival of their civilization. Yet, the fathers were not allowed to stay in Amazon territory, and male children were killed or exiled.

Bringing us back to Alexander the Great, legend has it that one particular queen of the Amazons, named Thalestris, heard of the impressive victories of Alexander against the Persians. The tales of his achievements were so extraordinary that she immediately left her homeland with a band of 300 Amazons to find the conqueror. What she had on her mind was an experiment of ancient eugenics—she believed that Alexander, as the greatest man of the age, and herself, as the greatest woman, could produce truly great children.

Thalestris and her honor guard of armed women supposedly intercepted Alexander near Hyrcania, or possibly in Parthia, where she blatantly declared that she wanted to have a child with the king. Alexander the Great, at the time an unmarried bachelor, was said to have eagerly agreed to the proposal. According to the tale, Alexander spent thirteen nights heroically seeing to the queen’s desire. After nearly two weeks of passion, Queen Thalestris returned to her realm in the north, confident that she was pregnant with a mighty child.

If the tale seems too far-fetched, you are not alone. Even the most ancient biographers of Alexander were split on the validity of this particular encounter. Plutarch (c. 46-119 CE) later wrote down a list of the two factions of Alexander biographers in his own text about Alexander the Great. On the side of doubters was Aristobulus, Chares, Ptolemy, Anticleides, Philo the Theban, Philip of Theangela, Hecataeus of Eretria, Philip the Chalcidian, and Duris of Samos. On the other hand, the advocates of the controversial episode were Cleitarchus, Polycleitus, Onesicritus, Antigenes, and Ister. Even though Plutarch sided with the skeptics, his own generation of historians still disagreed about the tale. A century before Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus happily included the enticing episode in his own text, The Library of History. In the end, it is best to regard the story of Alexander and Thalestris as unrealistic folklore, but, nevertheless, it makes for an interesting read.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture attribution: (Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, visits Alexander, printed c. 1696, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Source:

• Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011. 
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0243%3Achapter%3D46 
• http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/17D*.html#note76 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bessus 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sarmatian