Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (26 page)

Asia. By 327, though, the resistance was over, Spitamenes was dead, and

Alexander added cavalry contingents from the two areas to his army.

During the Bactrian campaigns, two potentially major conspiracies

against Alexander were revealed. The first, the so-called Philotas affair,

was in 330 at Phrada, capital of Drangiana. Although Philotas, com-

mander of the companion cavalry and son of Parmenion, had nothing

to do with the affair, his criticisms of Alexander’s orientalism and pan-

dering to Persian nobility led to his undoing. He was accused of com-

plicity in the conspiracy and put to death. Alexander then gave orders

for the killing of the equally critical Parmenion, who was at Ecbatana

Alexander the Great and Empire 121

at the time and had no knowledge of any conspiracy. Then in 327 at

Bactria a conspiracy involving some of the royal pages was discovered.

Callisthenes, the court historian, who had defied Alexander’s attempt

to introduce
proskynesis
(the Asian custom of prostration before the

Great King), was implicated and put to death, yet no evidence existed

against him. If Alexander’s likely manipulation of these conspiracies to

rid himself of critics were not bad enough, Alexander also murdered

his general Cleitus at Maracanda (Samarkand) in 328 after the two men

got into a furious drunken row. There is no question that the Bactrian

campaign was a turning point in Alexander’s deterioration as a king

and as a man.

After pacifying Bactria (or so he thought), Alexander pushed east-

ward into India. Here he fought only one major battle, against the

Indian prince Porus at the Hydaspes River in 326. It was another Mace-

donian victory, but it was the high point militarily of Alexander’s cam-

paign in India. The men had expected to be returning home as early

as 330 following the burning of Persepolis, but Alexander was showing

no signs of that, and the campaign in India was the final straw. After

seventy days of marching through drenching monsoon rains toward

the Ganges, the army mutinied at the Hyphasis (Beas) River, forcing

Alexander to turn back. One of Alexander’s ambitions in India was to

sail down the Indus River and out into the Southern (Indian) Ocean.

He would achieve this (along the way almost losing his life at the siege

of Malli), and his voyage was one of the highlights of his time in India.

Leaving India, Alexander led a contingent of his troops westward

through the Gedrosian Desert. His reason was personal: Dionysus,

with whom Alexander was by then identifying himself, had traveled

through the desert, while Cyrus the Great of Persia had tried but failed.

Alexander’s ill-fated march saw about a third of the men with him die

because of the hostile natural conditions. This mattered less to the king

than the personal glory of marching through the desert.8

In the meantime, Bactria and Sogdiana revolted, and India followed

suit. Alexander had mistakenly believed that defeated in battle meant

conquered, but the Afghans were (and are) not conquered by anyone.

The Pashtun tribes of the present northwest frontier of Afghanistan

are constantly fighting each other, and there is a saying today that they

122 Worthington

are only united when they face a common enemy. That is exactly what

Alexander was in the 320s, just as the British in the nineteenth century

and the Russians in the twentieth were, and the same holds true today.

This time there was little that Alexander could do.

Two years later, in 324, at Opis, a second mutiny occurred over Al-

exander’s policy to discharge his veterans, although his plans to invade

Arabia did not help—nor did his adoption of a combination of Persian

and Macedonian clothing9 or his belief in his own divinity, as the men’s

mocking “you and your father Zeus can go to Arabia if you want” in-

dicates His powers of persuasion were unable to end this mutiny, and

after three days he was successful only when he shamed the men into

giving in by transferring Macedonian commands to Persians. In other

words, he played on the men’s racial hatred of the Persians to end the

mutiny. A year later, in Babylon, in June 323, on the eve of his Ara-

bian expedition, Alexander the Great died, a few months shy of his

thirty-third birthday. He left behind no heir (his wife Roxane, a Bactrian

princess, was pregnant when he died), and when asked to whom he

left his empire, he enigmatically replied, “to the best.” Thus began a

thirty-year round of bloody wars between his generals that saw the

carving up of the Macedonian Empire and the emergence of the great

kingdoms of the Hellenistic period.

u

It is important to remember that Alexander’s empire was never static

but continually shifting its frontiers and absorbing new peoples. There

was never an instance when Alexander fought that one final battle;

there was never a time when he ruled his empire peacefully, and he

was faced with opposition all the time he was in Asia, from the Per-

sian Great King to the chieftains of Central Asia and the princes of

India to the aristocratic families, all of whom naturally saw Alexander

as a threat to their power and prestige. After the Granicus River battle

in 334, a goodly number of the survivors fled to Miletus to defy Alex-

ander. When Miletus fell after a short siege, many from there fled to

Halicarnassus, forcing Alexander to wage yet another siege. And so the

years and resistance wore on. Against the background of the unabating

Alexander the Great and Empire 123

opposition, the undoing of the Gordian knot makes even more sense,

as Alexander strove to show everyone he was the new ruler of Asia, not

merely by conquest but according to prophecy.

We might expect the political exploitation of this religious sym-

bolism to be effective, and Alexander probably thought it would be,

given the religious nature of the people. However, he was a conqueror,

and despite attempts to endear himself to the aristocracy by involving

them in his administration (see below), no one likes to be conquered.

Even after the turning-point defeat of Darius at Issus, the Great King

was able to regroup and bring Alexander to battle at Gaugamela. Alex-

ander’s victories were hard-won, the enemy always outnumbered him,

and Darius, in addition to his enormous resources (far greater than

those of Alexander), was a skilled strategist and commander.10 And he

never said die: after Issus, he gathered together another army, and after

Gaugamela he was determined to fight Alexander again, this time with

an army principally made up of his easternmost subjects. His failures

in battle proved too much, though, and he was deposed and murdered.

Even then the resistance to Alexander did not fall apart but contin-

ued in the leadership of Bessus, forcing Alexander into Bactria and Sog-

diana. Bessus was quickly joined by Satibarzanes, whom Alexander had

appointed the satrap of Areia but who now sided with Bessus against

the invader. This type of disloyalty was something Alexander would

encounter time and again.

At first Alexander gained the upper hand in Bactria, as seen in the be-

trayal of Bessus to him, but Spitamenes, who succeeded Bessus, was far

more dangerous and tactically cunning. Using the barren, desolate, and

rocky topography that he and his people knew so well but the invading

army did not, he forced Alexander into more than two years of intense

guerrilla fighting and bloody siege warfare. Alexander was forced to

deal with all this and with growing opposition from his senior staff as

well as from the rank and file of his army, opposition that exploded

in 326 at the Hyphasis, forcing him to turn back. If the army had not

revolted, he would have reached the Ganges, and if he had not died in

Babylon, he would have invaded Arabia.

Thus at no time did Alexander rule a fixed geographic area, at no

time did he appear to want to rule an empire with fixed borders, as

124 Worthington

his continual campaigning shows, and at no time were all his subjects

passive and supportive of his presence among them. All these factors

made administering his empire in some longer-term uniform and ef-

ficient fashion and persuading his men to continue marching and fight-

ing doubly difficult.11

u

The Persian kings had realized the impossibility of one man trying to

rule the large and diverse kingdom they had created. That was why

Darius I (522–486) divided his empire into twenty satrapies (adminis-

trative regions), personally appointing a satrap (governor) over each

one. Apart from paying annual taxes to the Great King and furnishing

troops for the Persian army, the satraps wielded all the power in their

satrapies, although the Great King was at the top of the administrative

hierarchy, and he ruled absolutely.

The satrapal system remained in existence because of the rela-

tive autonomy of the satraps and their acceptance of the Great King.

While Alexander might call himself Lord of Asia, that was very differ-

ent from being the Great King, and many of the satraps had fought in

battle against him. Alexander as invader would have cause to question

their loyalty, but he recognized the value of the satrapal system, so he

kept it, with some changes.12 In the earliest stages of his Asian cam-

paign he placed his own men in charge of the western satrapies—for

example, Calas was made satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, Antigonus

of Phrygia, Asander of Lycia, and Balacrus was made satrap of Cili-

cia. However, as Alexander’s territories increased eastward, especially

after Gaugamela, Alexander began to involve the aristocratic Persian

families in his administration and appoint some as satraps. The first

of these was really Mazaeus, who was appointed satrap of Babylonia

in 331. Others included Abulites, satrap of Susa, Phrasaortes, satrap of

Persis, and Artabazus, satrap of Bactria and Sogdiana. Alexander’s ac-

tion would help smooth the path of a new, “transition” regime (so he

hoped) by nullifying opposition from these influential families whose

power he was eroding. Besides, he needed these people for their knowl-

edge of the language and customs of their people. The last point is

Alexander the Great and Empire 125

important, because by being part of the administrative hierarchy, they

would help to reconcile the mass of the people to his rule, the plan be-

ing to help him maintain a peaceful occupation.

The danger, of course, was that a conquered people could not be

left to its own devices. Alexander could not afford an insurrection, so

he made some important modifications to the satrapal system. Native

satraps continued to have some civil authority and to levy taxes in their

satrapies. However, they were little more than titular figureheads, for

Alexander appointed Macedonians to be in charge of the treasury and

the military forces of each satrapy. Thus, real power in the satrapies

now lay with his men. The change extended the precedent he had set,

for example, in Caria, where Ada continued as its satrap but Ptolemy

was in charge of military affairs,13 or in Egypt, where a Persian Doloas-

pis was governor of sorts but was dominated by Cleomenes, a Greek

from Naucratis, who used his position as collector of taxes and over-

seer of the construction of Alexandria to seize the reins of power. The

new system continued throughout the reign, although in 325, when

Alexander returned from India, he punished many disloyal satraps

(and generals of mercenary armies) with death and appointed as their

successors both Persians and Macedonians; for example, Peucestas

was made satrap of Persis (he was the only Macedonian who learned

Persian and immersed himself in Persian customs, which pleased the

people greatly, according to Arrian).14

While Alexander allowed the satraps to continue collecting taxes, he

created the post of imperial treasurer at some point before (or in) 331.

His boyhood friend Harpalus oversaw all imperial finances (first from

Ecbatana and eventually from his headquarters in Babylon). Alexander

seems to have put the Greek cities of his empire in a special category,

for taxes from those in Asia Minor were to be collected by Philoxenus

and those in Phoenicia by Coeranus.15

Alexander’s men did not expect the enemy to retain any positions of

influence, and needless to say, the satraps would have resented losing

control of their armies and treasuries. The military might of the Mace-

donians held them in check, but it is no surprise that native satraps

were disloyal when Alexander was in India, and that in Central Asia the

satrapies of Bactria and Sogdiana revolted twice. Bactria proved to be

126 Worthington

such a problem area that when Artabazus resigned his post in 328, Al-

exander appointed Cleitus, co-commander of the Companion Cavalry,