Alexander The Great: Selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius

222 Pages·2005·1.266 MB·English

by  James Romm

alexa nder
t h e g r e a t
SELECTIONS FROM ARRIAN,
DIODORUS, PLUTARCH,
AND QUINTUS CURTIuS
Edited,with Introduction and Notes,by
J R
AMES OMM
Translated by
P M J R
AMELA ENSCH and AMES OMM
ALEXANDER
THE GREAT
Selections from Arrian,
Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius
Edited, with Introduction, by
James Romm
Translated by Pamela Mensch and James Romm
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2005 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Cover design by Abigail Coyle, Deborah Wilkes, and Lance Brisbois
Text design by Meera Dash
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Printed at Versa Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alexander the Great : selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and
Quintus Curtius / edited, with introduction, by James Romm ; translated
by Pamela Mensch and James Romm.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87220-728-5 (cloth) — ISBN 0-87220-727-7 (pbk.)
1. Alexander, the Great, 356–323 B.C. 2. Greece—History—
Macedonian Expansion, 359–323 B.C. 3. Generals—Greece—
Biography. 4. Greece—Kings and rulers—Biography. 5. Greece—
History—Macedonian Expansion, 359–323 B.C. I. Arrian. II. Romm,
James S. III. Mensch, Pamela, 1956–
DF234.A4895 2005
938'.07'092—dc22 2004019818
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-728-8 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-727-1 (pbk.)

Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-062-0
Contents
Introduction vii
Chronology xxii
Maps xxvii
I. Alexander, Prince of Macedonia
(356–336 B.C.E.) 1
a. The youth and upbringing of Alexander 1
b. The battle of Chaeronea 7
c. The rift between Philip and Alexander 10
d. The assassination of Philip 13
II. Alexander in Europe
(Autumn 336–Winter 335 B.C.E.) 17
a. The northern campaigns 17
b. The Theban revolt 24
III. The War with Darius—Phase I
(Spring 334–Autumn 332 B.C.E.) 33
a. The battle of the Granicus 33
b. The war at sea 42
c. The battle of Issus 48
d. The siege of Tyre 58
IV. The Egyptian Interlude
(Autumn 332–Spring 331 B.C.E.) 70
V. The War with Darius—Phase II
(Summer 331–Summer 330 B.C.E.) 75
a. The battle of Gaugamela 75
b. The capture of the spoils 84
c. The pursuit of the King 88
v
vi Contents
VI. The Central Asian Campaigns
(Summer 330–Spring 327 B.C.E.) 94
a. The Philotas affair and the killing of Parmenio 94
b. The capture of Bessus 97
c. The war with Spitamenes 99
d. The death of Cleitus 100
e. The proskynesiscrisis 103
f. The conspiracy of the pages 108
g. The Sogdian and Chorienian rocks 110
VII. The Invasion of India
(Spring 327–Summer 325 B.C.E.) 114
a. The capture of Aornos Rock 114
b. The Nysa revels 117
c. The war with Porus 120
d. The Hyphasis mutiny 132
e. The Indus voyage and the attack on the Malli 139
f. The Gedrosia march 144
VIII. The Final Phase
(Autumn 325–Spring 323 B.C.E.) 149
a. The death of Calanus 151
b. The Susa weddings 154
c. The mutiny at Opis 157
d. The death of Hephaestion 164
e. Alexander’s illness and death 166
Glossary of Names, Places, Peoples,
and Military Terms 174
Bibliographical Note 185
Index of Proper Names 187
Introduction
Few historical figures have been the subject of as much disagreement
and dispute as Alexander the Great. Within the past sixty years alone,
he has been portrayed as an enlightened humanitarian promoting
universal brotherhood and as a bloodthirsty tyrant of Hitlerian pro-
portions, and many things in between the two extremes. His phenom-
enal military talents and physical fortitude are beyond dispute, as is
the immensity of the changes he wrought over large stretches of the
inhabited world. But questions of what kind of person he was, what
motivated him to undertake his campaign of conquest, and what plans
he had for the lands he had mastered are still open, even after cen-
turies of inquiry, and probably always will remain so.
Because Alexander became the founder and leader of a vast em-
pire, these questions are of great importance to today’s readers, espe-
cially those concerned with issues of leadership and empire in the
modern world. We would make very different assessments of the
Macedonian conquest of Asia depending on whether we regard
Alexander, on the one hand, as a self-aggrandizing, obsessed, or de-
luded individual or, on the other, as an intelligent, well-intentioned
man who believed himself capable of improving the world. There is
evidence to support both points of view, and our decision as to where
the weight of evidence falls is of necessity a subjective one. Readers
of the Alexander story must therefore become not only historians but
psychologists as well, since the story revolves, more than most ac-
counts of the past, around the enigmas of the human character.
This edition of excerpts from the ancient Alexander sources,
principally from Arrian, has been designed to help readers in both
these tasks: it assembles passages illustrating not only the major ac-
tions undertaken by Alexander in the course of his reign but also those
in which questions of Alexander’s character are most at issue and in
which Arrian tries to make judgments about that character. Indeed,
Arrian’s confused and conflicted attempts to arrive at an understand-
ing of Alexander can be a useful guide to modern readers as they nav-
igate their own confusions and conflicts. Though in the end Arrian
decides that he is “not ashamed to admire Alexander,” and though he
has been accused by his detractors of taking an unreservedly positive
view, I believe that his portrait of Alexander, if examined critically and
compared at key points with other versions, reveals a balanced enough
vii
viii Introduction
mixture of dark and light tones as to allow modern readers to frame
their own moral judgments.
The goal of this edition, therefore, is to introduce readers to a
complex individual, as well as to allow them to follow a series of com-
pelling and consequential historical events. However, to properly
understand those events, readers will first need to be familiar with the
historical landscape as it looked when Alexander came to power, and
this requires turning back the clock somewhat to the time of his fa-
ther, Philip, and before. For Alexander’s unique role in history derived
only in part from his own innate talents, formidable though these
were. He also inherited an army that was the strongest in the world
and a nation that had already become the superpower and hegemon
(leader) of a large portion of Europe, thanks to the revolution
wrought by Philip over the preceding twenty-two years. Indeed,
were it not for Alexander’s even larger achievements, Philip instead
might well have become known as “the Great,” the ruler who united
all Greece under a single political structure for the first time in its
fifteen-hundred-year history.
Greeks and Macedonians
Macedonia, sometimes also called Macedon, was an ethnically mixed
region in antiquity bounded by Greek states to the south and by a se-
ries of tribal kingdoms in other directions. It comprised the rugged
terrain of the lower Balkans in its northern and western reaches as
well as a fertile alluvial plain in the south, and these two very differ-
ently settled areas were often in conflict with each other before Philip
firmly united them into a nation. Today the territory once known as
Macedonia overlaps the borders of two modern nations that both
claim its name: Greece, which calls its northernmost province Mace-
donia, and the country that, following a bitter dispute with Greece
over nomenclature, is officially known as the Former Yugoslav Re-
public of Macedonia.
This dispute between modern Greece and its northeastern
neighbor over the legacy of ancient Macedonia reflects a very old con-
fusion over whether or not the Macedonians were Greek, and it is im-
portant that we clarify this issue from the start, especially since the
terms “Greek” and “Macedonian” are often blurred by popular usage.
In the fourth century B.C.E.,however, there was no doubt as to who
was who. In Philip’s and Alexander’s army, Greeks and Macedonians
Introduction ix
fought with different weapons, spoke the Greek language differently
(or perhaps spoke a different language entirely; the linguistic evidence
is slight enough to allow for either interpretation), and regarded one
another as sufficiently alien as to engage in what Arrian (II.10; see
page 53) describes as “ethnic rivalry.” Alexander himself had been ed-
ucated by a Greek intellectual, Aristotle, and cultivated Hellenic
tastes in art, literature, and religion, but when he addressed his coun-
trymen he could speak openly about the dangers they faced from a
Greek rebellion or about the unreliability of the Greeks serving in
their navy. The two peoples were separate and distinct, despite the
fact that, for a time anyway, they fought under the same banner.
Whether the Macedonians were themselves “Greek” in some an-
thropological sense is debated by experts today; the evidence, in par-
ticular that pertaining to the native tongue of the region, is slight but
inclines toward an affirmative answer. But Greeks or not, they had de-
veloped along very different social and political lines than their neigh-
bors to the south. For most of their history they lacked the defining
unit of Hellenic civilization, the city-state, living instead in scattered
villages and rural settlements across a vast (by Greek standards) ter-
ritory. Also, they retained a political institution that the Greeks had
almost entirely discarded long before: hereditary monarchy. The
Macedonian kingship perhaps looked familiar to the Greeks by com-
parison with Homer’s Iliad, in which great rulers like Agamemnon
wielded power over coalitions of lesser barons, making war only by
their consent and with their participation. But they themselves had
long ago rejected this system in favor of less centralized oligarchies
and democracies, and by Philip’s time they had come to regard one-
man rule as a barbarian institution. Finally, cultural heritage and so-
phistication helped delineate the two peoples. Most Macedonians,
beyond an aristocratic elite, knew little of the refinements of Greek
philosophy, art, and literature. The Macedonian rulership had tried
to import these as part of a Hellenization program in the fifth and
fourth centuries, but the process was still inchoate at the time Philip
came to power, as famously described in a speech Arrian imagines
Alexander giving to his men:
Philip, my father ... took you up when you were helpless wanderers,
most of you dressed in hides, pasturing a few flocks in the mountains and
in their defense fighting ineptly with your neighbors, the Illyrians, Trib-
allians, and Thracians. He gave you cloaks to wear instead of skins, led
x Introduction
you down from the mountains to the plains. . . . He made you city-
dwellers, and by means of laws and good customs gave you an orderly
way of life. (Arrian VII.9)
Because they had adopted certain Hellenic ways by the time they in-
vaded Asia, and because the language and structure of their new im-
perial administration was borrowed from their southerly neighbors,
Alexander and his Macedonian army are sometimes referred to, in-
formally, as Greeks. But this mischaracterization is avoided in this
volume. We may sometimes speak of a “Greco-Macedonian army”
when it is important to emphasize that both peoples went into Asia
together, supposedly in pursuit of common goals. But the Greeks
played a relatively small role in Alexander’s campaign and indeed in
some battles were barely used at all, perhaps because Alexander was
not sure how well they would fight in an army not truly their own.
In terms of its ability to project power, Macedonia, up until
Philip’s time, had always been much weaker than the leading Greek
states and seems at one point to have paid tribute to Athens. Its inter-
nal disunity and frequent dynastic struggles made it seem easy prey to
its aggressive Balkan neighbors, the tribes mentioned by Alexander in
the passage quoted above, and it was frequently invaded by them or
defeated in battle. Its one important military asset, a large population
of horses and men who were expert at riding them, led to a reliance
on cavalry as its primary offensive weapon, but cavalry attacks were
useless against tightly closed ranks of Greek armored infantry. A fur-
ther resource, great stands of wood for shipbuilding, went unused due
to the Macedonians’ lack of access to, or interest in, the sea; in fact,
their best timber was often sold to wood-poor Athens, where it helped
furnish the great trireme fleets of the imperial Athenian navy.
The Age of Philip
In 359 B.C.E. when Philip II came to the Macedonian throne, the
Greeks could never have imagined that he would one day threaten and
finally end their political freedom. The Macedonians had suffered a
humiliating defeat at the hands of the Illyrians the previous year, and
their strategic position looked shakier than ever. It was the Greek city
of Thebes, using new tactics combining cavalry maneuvers with a
more flexible infantry phalanx, that then dominated affairs in the re-
gion. After Thebes lost its brilliant general, Epaminondas, in battle
Introduction xi
in 362, most observers would have bet that Athens, which had partly
rebuilt its old naval alliance, would emerge as the ultimate hegemonof
the Aegean world.
But naval power had revealed its limitations in the Pelopon-
nesian War of the previous century; supremacy was henceforth to be
vied for on the land. Thebes had defeated the traditional infantry su-
perpower, Sparta, through its innovative use of land forces, and Philip
had spent several of his teenage years at Thebes observing these in-
novations. When he came to power in Macedonia he quickly demon-
strated how much he had learned in the school of Epaminondas. He
drafted ten thousand infantrymen and began drilling them to fight as
a Greek-style phalanx but with newly designed equipment: a small,
shoulder-slung shield and a long, heavy wooden lance called a sarissa.
These lances, cut from hard native wood and weighted at the butt end
so as to balance at a point three-quarters down the shaft, instantly
changed the dynamics of land warfare, rendering the traditional
Greek phalanx obsolete. An infantry soldier wielding it with both
hands could jab his opponent from a distance of twelve feet; the Greek
hoplite (“armed foot soldier”), whose left hand was employed in hold-
ing a heavy shield, could manage a weapon of only half that length.
Thus, whereas the Greek phalanx maintained a balance between of-
fensive and defensive weaponry, the Macedonians concentrated their
offensive power so as to make defense (or so they hoped) unnecessary.
Philip’s new infantry phalanx proved its effectiveness in his very
first battle, and he went on to employ it, in many kinds of terrain and
against many opponents, for the next twenty years. Constant drill and
frequent battlefield experience brought the core of his new force to a
state of seasoned, toughened professionalism. In most engagements
Philip deployed this massive phalanx, bristling with its enormous
spikes, at the center of his line, with cavalry contingents at either
wing; while the phalanx pinned down and immobilized the opponent’s
center, the cavalry waited and watched for weak points at which to
launch its devastating strikes. Meanwhile, contingents of lighter,
more mobile infantry, dubbed the shield-bearers, helped fill in the
spaces between phalanx and cavalry. In time, as Philip’s land empire
expanded, new contingents were added to the army from the subject
peoples or hired from abroad: additional cavalry from the Thessalians
and Paeonians, javelin-throwers and archers from Balkan neighbors,
slingers from Crete, and a crack infantry force from the Agrianians.
At the time of Philip’s death the Macedonian army had swelled to