Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great
By
Krzysztof Nawotka
Alexander the Great, by Krzysztof Nawotka
This book first published 2010
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2010 by Krzysztof Nawotka
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-1743-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1743-1
CONTENTS
Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Chapter I: Childhood, Family, Macedonia .................................................. 1
1. Birth of Alexander
2. Macedonia
3. The Argead dynasty
4. Philip II and the rebuilding of the Macedonian state
5. Philip II and Alexander’s Macedonian army
6. Alexander’s childhood and school years
Chapter II: The Heir to the Throne ............................................................ 43
1. At his father’s side
2. Chaeronea
3. The congress at Corinth and the beginning of the Persian war
4. The Pixodarus affair
5. Cleopatra’s wedding
6. Death of Philip
Chapter III: The New King........................................................................ 83
1. The takeover. Philip’s funeral
2. War in the north
3. The destruction of Thebes
Chapter IV: From Abydus to Alexandria ................................................ 109
1. Granicus – the first victory
2. Freedom for Greeks of Asia
3. From Halicarnassus to Cilicia: the campaign in Asia Minor
4. The battle of Issus
5. Phoenicia. Syria and Palestine
6. The son of Ammon
vi
Contents
Chapter V: King of Asia.......................................................................... 213
1. From Memphis to Mesopotamia
2. The revolt of Agis III
3. The battle of Gaugamela
4. Babylon, Susa and Persepolis
5. The death of Darius III
6. Philotas affair and the fall of Parmenion
7. The conquest of eastern Iran
8. Time of intrigues and anxiety
Chapter VI: Expedition to India .............................................................. 295
1. From Sogdiana to the Indus
2. Taxila and Porus
3. Hyphasis – the end of the expedition
4. Towards the Ocean
Chapter VII: The Last Years ................................................................... 331
1. In the footsteps of Cyrus and Semiramis
2. Empire in crisis
3. The weddings at Susa
4. The mutiny at Opis
5. Greece in 324: the exiles and a new god
6. The death of Hephaestion
7. Return to Babylon
Chapter VIII: Death, Last Plans, Tomb ................................................... 371
1. The king died
2. Alexander’s legacy
3. Alexander’s tomb
Bibliography ............................................................................................ 387
Index........................................................................................................ 419
PREFACE
Alexander III, King of Macedonia, son of Philip II and heir to Achaemenid
kings of Persia, is one of the most fascinating and frequently discussed
figures of world history. By contemporaries he was more commonly hated
rather than admired or loved, but soon after his death his legend began and
it is still alive today. A belletristic account of his life and deeds – the so-
called Alexander Romance – was in ancient, the medieval and early
modern times one of the most universally known books in Europe, Asia,
and Africa having some 80 versions written in 24 different languages. The
book’s protagonist was the first in Western Civilization to be hailed Great,
in all probability a title already bestowed upon him when the generation
remembering his deeds was still alive, at the court of his onetime brother
in arms – Ptolemy I of Egypt. Alexander’s brief reign marks a borderline
between two great epochs of ancient times: the Classical and the
Hellenistic. And this is by no means merely a convention in historiography.
Without any exaggeration one can say that after his death the world was
no longer the same as when he had ascended the Macedonian throne,
regardless of whether one believes that this was a direct consequence of
Alexander’s actions or simply the effect of general historic processes that
were underway in the second half of the 4th century BC. Someone who so
much personifies this great turning point in the history of the Western
civilization naturally attracts scholarly interest. On the other hand, the
specific aura and charisma of this young ruler, the scale of his conquests
and the exotic landscapes and peoples encountered during a tireless trek of
over 35,000 km spanning three continents is what the broader public have
always found particularly appealing.
That is why for a long time now not even a year has passed without a
new book on Alexander. Apart from detailed studies, a number of
complete monographs now exist whose authors frequently stress that they
are not biographies. Strictly speaking if we were to apply the same
rigorous definition of what a biography is to antiquity as we do to later
epochs, virtually no biography related to this period could be written. But
since so many non-biographies of Alexander already exist, I believe that
there is space for a new biography, if only somewhat relaxed genre
defining criteria are applied. This necessitates presenting Alexander as a
component of the historical processes in his epoch and considering his
viii
Preface
influence on the developments in Greece, Macedonia, the Persian Empire
and neighbouring countries. Another reason for focusing more on
Alexander as a person is the growing awareness that ancient societies were
far less institutionalised than was assumed in modern times and in fact
they operated on a much more personal level. Today we know that
concepts as obvious in modern states as automatic procedures or Weberian
impersonal rational bureaucracies were quite unheard of not only in the
feudal Persia of the Achemenids but also in 4th-century Greece and
Macedonia. In a world where borders as we understand them today did not
exist and relationships between people from various countries were
frequently stronger than loya
lty to a particular state, the significance of
such a powerful personality on the shaping of events cannot be overrated.
Finally, although Alexander is considered to be the greatest military
commander of ancient times and, indeed, much of this book deals with the
wars fought during his reign, it was not this author’s intention to make a
meaningful contribution to military history. Instead it is hoped that this
book will interest the reader in Alexander as a man and politician of
judgment and more than once displayed grave character faults.
Three reasons may be found to justify the writing of yet another book
entitled Alexander the Great. First, of the many books on this subject the
last comprehensive, serious and, indeed, in this author’s opinion, the most
important monograph was published over twenty years ago (Bosworth
1988) and since then our perception of various aspects of antiquity has
changed. Of particular value has been the rapid progress in study of the
Achaemenid Persia, which has been experiencing an extraordinary boom
in its last three decades. Ancient Persia has in many ways now been
rediscovered. This has come about thanks to: the Persepolis tablets (some
of which have only recently been published), other oriental and
archaeological sources, detailed analyses of references made by the
classical authors and a general movement away from the purely western
perspective that had prevailed for years. Especially since P. Briant’s
monumental synthesis (1996), our understanding of how the Achaemenid
state was run and therefore also the Macedonian conquests from the
Persian perspective have had to change. Moreover, our general knowledge
of eastern societies and their response the Macedonian invader has been
broadened by a systematic uncovering of sources from these regions,
particularly ones originating from Babylon. Finally, in recent years many
important monographs have come out on: history and topography of
territories covered by Alexander’s expedition (in general Wood, 1997);
Macedonia (Hammond, 1989; Borza, 1990; Errington, 1990) Iran, India,
Alexander the Great
ix
and other regions of the ancient world (e.g. Holt, 1988; Eggermont, 1993;
Karttunen, 1997; Habicht, 1999; Debord, 1999; Sartre, 2001, 2003; Speck,
2002); specific aspects of 4th-century history such as the attitude of
mainland Greece towards Macedonia (Jehne, 1994; Blackwell, 1999); the
way the elites functioned in Greece (Herman, 1987; Mitchell, 2002) and
Macedonia (Heckel, 1992); the position of women in Macedonia (Carney,
2000) and Persia (Brosius, 1996); Macedonian colonization (Fraser, 1996);
finances and numismatics (Le Rider, 2003; Holt, 2003); history of art and
ideology (Stewart, 1993; Cohen, 1997) as well as the first monographs on
Darius III (Briant, 2003), Olympias (Carney, 2006), and new biographies
of Philip II (Hammond, 2002; Corvisier, 2002; Worthington, 2008). To
that there is a plethora of new books on military history, although without
much real progress except for the critical assessment of study of
Macedonian army logistics pioneered by Engels in 1978 (Roth, 1999). All
this new knowledge and all these new interpretations clearly require the
actions and personality of Alexander to be once again reviewed.
Second, for a long time it has been a common knowledge that the
most serious obstacle faced in Alexander research is the number and
quality of historical sources available. A few authors were already writing
about Alexander in his lifetime and over a dozen more wrote about him
not long after his death when they still had access to eyewitness accounts.
Unfortunately all these works have disappeared almost without a trace.
The earliest extant historical work to mention Alexander at least in passing
is that of Polybius, who wrote in the mid 2nd century BC, whereas the most
important ancient accounts date from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The
quality of these accounts depends not only on the considerable time that
had elapsed between the time of writing and the epoch of Alexander, but
also on the methods the authors used, frequently relying on a single
source. Ancient Alexander historians are customarily classified into two
groups depending on the sources they use. One is the works of Flavius
Arrianus (Arrian) and the anonymous Itinerarium Alexandri, which are
based on the writings of Alexander’s companions – the King of Egypt
Ptolemy I and Aristobulos. Their accounts are of greater value for events
prior to 327 BC, for they made use of the now missing books of the
famous historian Callisthenes of Olynthus, who also accompanied
Alexander. The second category, commonly called the Vulgate, includes
Diodorus, Curtius Rufus and Justin, who above all based their writings on
cannot be included in either of these groups, for this outstandingly erudite
scholar made use of the works of as many as 24 different authors, mainly
Alexander’s contemporaries, in an extraordinarily modern way. To the
x
Preface
modern reader Arrian’s rhetoric is more palpable than that of the Vulgate
authors and for this reason he was for many years considered to be the
most trustworthy source. However, his methodology in fact simply relied
on rejecting information that might in any way cast Alexander in a
negative light and thus his stance primarily reflects the Macedonian
propaganda version of events. W.W. Tarn and N.G.L. Hammond both
largely rely on Arrian and to give him greater credibility they maintain the
theory regarding the existence of the Royal Journal ( ephemerides), which
was allegedly kept at Alexander’s court throughout his reign and later
taken to Alexandria in Egypt, where it served as a source for Ptolemy and
thus also indirectly as a source for Arrian.
Source research in recent decades has uncovered so much new
information regarding Alexander’s history that writing a new biography
has become both possible and necessary. Commentary on Arrian and
other studies by A.B. Bosworth (1980, 1988a and 1995) have shed new
light on Arrian’s methods, his reliance on earlier sources and generally
allowed us to wonder whether the significance of this ancient author
regarding the life and times of Alexander may have been somewhat
overrated. At the same time the value of the so-called Vulgate authors
have undergone a positive reappraisal, particularly thanks to new
commentaries (Atkinson, 1980, 1994 and 2009) and other studies
(Baynham, 1998a) on Curtius Rufus, who for all his extravagant rhetoric
and moralising is a very valuable author especially in that he was well
informed about events within the Persian camp. Although today hardly
anyone believes in the existence of the so-called mercenary source, i.e. an
account written by a Greek mercenary in the Persian camp that Curtius
Rufus and Diodorus had seen, evidence corroborating what these authors
write about the Persian camp has been fou
nd. Therefore we can assume
that the Vulgate authors had indirect access to this information from
earlier historians who had actually heard the oral accounts of Greek
mercenaries on Persian pay. Interest in Plutarch is currently undergoing a
genuine revival, whereas the commentary to his Alexander (Hamilton,
1999; 1st edition in 1969) is rightly considered to be classics of the genre.
Historical and philological commentaries have also appeared to his other
work: On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great (D’Angelo,
1998; Cammarota, 1998; Nawotka, 2003). Finally scholars have now more
boldly made use of smaller anonymous works such as the Metz Epitome
(which is associated with the Vulgate group though it makes no references
to the others and is based on the works of historians a generation after
Alexander) or extant fragments of the writings of Alexander’s
contemporaries Ephippus and Chares. The author of this book agrees with
Alexander the Great
xi
those (Plezia, Bielawski, 1970) who argue that the document found in an
Arab manuscript is the translation of a genuine letter from Aristotle to
Alexander regarding the treatment of Greeks and barbarians. With newly
discovered 4th-century Greek inscriptions as well as already well known
but newly researched ones we have an increasingly better understanding of
Alexander’s policies towards the Greeks and how they were received –
differently on the east coast of the Aegean and differently on the west
coast. Of particular value is the steadily increasing amount of eastern
sources, which not only allow us to more accurately establish the dates of
key events but also move away from the Eurocentric view held in some
earlier studies. That is also the value of later, even mediaeval Zoroastrian
sources maintaining the Persian tradition, which unlike the western