The Road to Persia: Alexander The Great

      As a result of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta, with Persian support, tried to dominate the other Greek city-states as Athens had done. In reaction to this, new alliances were made against Sparta. Corinth, for example, joined with its old rival Athens to prevent Spartan interference. For a brief time (371-361 BCE), Thebes, another city-state, defeated the Spartans and assumed Greek leadership. It was able to achieve this because of changes in military tactics, including the use of a very deep formation of men (called a phalanx) who used longer than normal spears to punch holes through enemy lines. Theban dominance ended with the death of its best general, Epaminondas. The careful balance of power between the leading Greek city-states was soon to be upset by a new force from the north, the kingdom of Macedonia.

Philip of Macedon

      The broad plains and hill country of the North Aegean were home to a people considered backward cousins of the Greeks. The Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, but they were farmers and shepherds, not craftspeople and traders. They were behind their southern cousins in wealth and culture. In the fourth century BCE, several kings rose to unite the Macedonians and bring them success in battle against their enemy neighbours. The key figure in this success was Philip the Great. As a hostage in Thebes fro three years, he had learned the new battle tactics of the Thebans. He create a professional army with a strong cavalry and more flexible units on the battlefield. As a result, Philip was able not only to unite his country, but also to defeat the southern Greeks at the Battle of Chaeronaea in 338 BCE. For the first time, all mainland Greeks were joined together under the rule of a single leader. It is likely that this ruthless, ambitious monarch planned to turn the combined Greek forces against their old enemy, Persia, but before he could launch such an expedition, he was assassinated by one of his own officers at a wedding celebration.
      I one of the most exciting discoveries in Greek archaeology this century, a royal burial chamber was excavated at Vergina in nothern Greece. The outside facade had a painting of a lion hunt with figures identified as Philip the Great and a young Alexander. Inside the vaulted chamber were found silver drinking cups, bronze armour, and a heavy gold box containing a beautiful golden wreath of oak leaves. Wrapped in a purple and gold cloth were the burnt bones of a man whom many believe was Philip the Great himself. Many others now think this tomb actually belonged to Philip's son, Philip III Arrhidaeus, the half brother of Alexander.

Alexander the Great

      After Philip's death, rule fell to his 20-year old son Alexander. He was a student of Aristotle and one of the most successful military leaders the world has known. he took his father's experienced, professional army, his own genius for finding the weaknesses of his enemies, and Philip's ambitious plans for conquest, and in 334 BCE set out against the Persians. He never returned to Europe. Intentionally or not, he conquered the entire Near East as far as India, in a grueling, decade-long campaign.
      How could such a young man with a relatively small army of 35 000 foot soldiers defeat the Persian Empire? The Macedonian army now represented the ultimate in improved Greek warfare. The Macedonians were led by seasoned commanders and all were devoted to Alexander. The Persian army, though much larger, was made up of many different subject peoples. Darius, the Persian king, was a despot the Persian foot soldiers, the rest of the Persian troops lost their eagerness to fight. The battle of Gaugamela on 1 October 331 BCE, was the final blow against the Persians, whose land and wealthy fell into Alexander's hands. Even this, however, did not satisfy Alexander. He forced his weary army eastward against several great kingdoms, reaching all the way to the Indus River valley before turning back, disappointed that he had not reached the eastern ocean.
      Alexander had dreamed of conquering the entire world as far as the Indian Ocean, but finally faced the fact that he now had to govern what he had won. Though as a boy, Alexander had been tutored by Aristotle, as an adult, his ideas about how to make a better empire otu of all these foreign peoples were probably his own. He tried to make Greek culture and language a kind of common, uniting force. At the same time, he respected the customs and laws of the peoples he had conquered and encouraged their leaders to help him rule the various parts of his empire. This was a wise decision on Alexander's part, since each nationality had its own culture and might have rebelled if forced to adopt Greek customs completely.
      Perhaps Alexander's great experiment would have worked, but he died of an illness just short of his thirty-third birthday. The empire that he fought so hard to create soon split apart as each of his best generals grabbed a large piece of its territory for himself.

Writing: ECHOES from the Past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.