The Conquests of Alexander were fought by King Alexander the Great of Macedon against the Persian Empire and then against local chieftains and warlords as far east as Punjab, India. Alexander was generally undefeated in battle, and he was regarded as one of the most successful military commanders as all time, conquering almost all of the world known to the Greeks. His conquests did not create a lasting empire, but they led to the spread of Hellenic culture from the original Greek world in the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush mountains and Central Asia.
Background[]
When Philip II of Macedon became king in 359 BC, Macedon was a relatively backward state. As a young man he had lived in Thebes, where he had witnessed a change in Greek warfare; professional soldiers were replacing the part-time ciziten hoplites, and cavalry and skirmishers were playing an increasingly important role. Combining Macedonia's horse-riding aristocracy with an infantry phalanx armed with the two-handed sarissa spear, Philip formed a standing army that defeated Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. He assumed leadership of the Greek cities grouped in the League of Corinth and began preparations for an invasion of the Persian Empire. In 336 BC Philip was assassinated and succeeded by his son.
Wars[]
By the time Alexander inherited the Macedonian throne from his father Philip in 336 BC, he was already an experienced fighting commander. Aged 18 he had led the Macedonian cavalry charge at the Battle of Chaeronea. His initial moves as king were decisive and ruthless, killing his main rival for power in Macedonia and crushing a rebellion by the city of Thebes. In 334 BC he was ready to carry out his father's project for an invasion of the Persian Empire.
The army that Alexander led across the Hellespont into Persian-ruled Asia Minor was a hybrid force. The cavalry (the Companions) whom Alexander led in person into battle were Macedonians; the armored infantry was Macedonian and Greek. Thessaly provided light cavalry, Thrace javelin-throwers, and Crete archers. There was also a train of siege engines. The first victory of his campaign was won at Granicus in western Anatolia, against a Persian satrap whose army contained a large contingent of Greek mercenaries. Alexander then proceeded to liberate the Greek cities of the region from Persian rule - even if they did not want liberation, which some did not.
An underestimated threat[]
In Persepolis the Persian king, Darius III of Persia, at first only perceived an irritating local disturbance on the western edge of his vast empire. He launched a naval counter-offensive in the Aegean and plotted to raise Athens and other Greek cities in revolt against Alexander. When this plan failed and Alexander headed eastward across Anatolia in 333 BC, Darius advanced to meet him with a large army. Alexander's instinct was to seek out, engage, and destroy his enemy's army, whatever the odds. The two forces met late in the year at Issus near the Syrian-Turkish border. The battle ended in a shock defeat for the Persian king, leaving the eastern Mediterranean open to Macedonian conquest.
Through the following year, Alexander practiced siege warfare, overcoming the resistance of the coastal cities of Tyre and Gaza and punishing their inhabitants with enslavement or massacre for the trouble they had caused. In Egypt he was diplomatically welcomed as a liberator from Persian oppression, and one oracle at the Siwa Oasis addressed him as a "son of Zeus". He founded the city of Alexandria as a future capital for his Egyptian realm.
Instead of waiting to be attacked, Alexander preferred to take the offensive and in the spring of 331 BC he marched out of Egypt toward Persia. Darius awaited him on the far side of the Tigris in Gaugamela. Recruited mostly from Persia's central and eastern domains, this was a predominantly Asiatic army, with Indian war elephants, Scythian horsemen, and chariots. Alexander devised a battle plan that would allow the shock effect of his Companion cavalry to negate the numerical advantage of the Persian host. Most of his troops were committed to a desperate holding action while he led the cavalry and elite infantry units in a thrust through the Persian center where Darius himself was positioned. The emperor fled and Alexander turned his cavalry back to overwhelm the army abandoned by its leader.
Consolidating the empire[]
The victory at Gaugamela and Darius' subsequent murder by his own satraps opened the way for Alexander to claim the succession to the Persian imperial throne. Three years of campaigning were required to establish his control over the satrapies of Bactria and Sogdiana further to the east. Just as he had adopted local symbols of power in Egypt, Alexander now took on some of the customs and dress of the Persian court. In 327 BC, he married a 16-year-old Bactrian princess, Roxanne, as a way of reconciling that restive region of the empire to his rule.
The expedition that Alexander led into India in 326 BC probably appeared the best means at his disposal to restore fraying bonds between the Macedonian band of brothers. He won a grueling battle against the rampaging chariots and war elephants of King Porus at the Hydaspes, but his soldiers were becoming exhausted and set a limit to his conquests at the Beas River in the Punjab. Alexander's army marauded down the Indus to the sea. Then he marched across the Gedrosian desert, in present-day Iran, back to Persia, a mistake that cost thousands their lives to dehydration and exhaustion.
Alexander was still full of plans for further expeditions and campaigns, but his health had suffered due to his battle wounds and from the strains of years of campaigning. In 323 BC, a month short of his 33rd birthday, he died in Babylon - rumor said of poisoning, but it was probably of a fever.
Aftermath[]
When Alexander died, plans for expanding his empire were halted. Nonetheless, his conquests left a long-term legacy of political and cultural changes. Later commentators viewed Alexander's conquests as a means of extending Greek civilization throughout the world. He envisaged integrating his empire ethnically - for example, by marrying his Macedonian officers to Persian wives and training young Persians to fight as hoplites - while at the same time imposing Greek culture and values.
After Alexander's death his generals fought over his inheritance. Ptolemy took Egypt, Seleucus gained Syria and Iran, and Antigonus controlled Anatolia, but they all lacked his vision. They abandoned his projects for integrating Persians and other ethnic groups into the upper ranks of the empire, ruling as Macedonians over conquered peoples. However, the influence of Hellenic culture and the Greek language was extended deep into Asia; for example, Indian sculptures of Buddha reflected Greek representations of Apollo. Alexandria, the city Alexander had founded in Egypt, grew to be one of the greatest cities in the ancient world, a major center of Greek art and learning, as well as trade and government.