(b. 356 BCE, Pella, Macedonia—d. June 13, 323 BCE, Babylon)
A
lexander the Great (also known as Alexander III) was the king of Macedonia (336–323 BCE) who over-threw the Persian Empire. Already in his lifetime the subject of fabulous stories, he later became the hero of a full-scale legend bearing only the slightest resemblance to his historical career.Life
Alexander was born in 356 BCE at Pella in Macedonia to Philip II and Olympias. From the age of 13 to 16 he was taught by Aristotle, who inspired him with an interest in philosophy, medicine, and scientific investigation. He soon showed military brilliance, helping win the Battle of Chaeronea at the age of 18.
In 336, after his father’s assassination, Alexander suc-ceeded without opposition. He promptly exerted his power over other Greek states, taking Thessaly and Thrace before marching on to Thebes, which his army brutally razed. Some 6,000 Thebans were killed, and all survivors were sold into slavery. The other Greek states were cowed by this severity and surrendered to him.
Beginnings of the Persian Expedition
In the spring of 334, Alexander crossed the Dardanelles Strait with his army, accompanied by surveyors, engineers, architects, scientists, court officials, and historians. From
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the outset Alexander seems to have envisaged an unlim-ited operation. He confronted his first Persian army at the Granicus (now called Kocabaş) River, near the Sea of Marmara. His victory there exposed western Asia Minor to the Macedonians, and most cities hastened to open their gates.
Asia Minor and the Battle of Issus
In the winter of 334–333, Alexander conquered western Asia Minor, and in the spring of 333, he advanced along the coastal road to Perga. At Gordium in Phrygia, legend records his cutting of the Gordian knot, which could only be untied by the man who was to rule Asia; but this story may be apocryphal or at least distorted. From Gordium he pushed on to Ancyra (now called Ankara) and south from there. Meanwhile, the Persian king Darius III and his army had advanced toward Alexander, meeting at Issus. In the battle that followed, Alexander won a decisive victory and Darius fled.
Conquest of the
Mediterranean Coast and Egypt
From Issus Alexander marched south into Syria and Phoenicia. In reply to a letter from Darius offering peace, Alexander replied arrogantly, demanding unconditional surrender to himself as lord of Asia. After taking Byblos (modern Jubayl) and Sidon (Arabic S·aydā), he was refused entry into the island city of Tyre. He thereupon prepared to use all methods of siegecraft to take it, but the Tyrians resisted, holding out for seven months before Alexander finally stormed the city in July of 332. The storming of Tyre is considered to be his greatest military achievement.
While the siege of Tyre was in progress, Darius sent a new offer. He would pay a huge ransom for his family (under
Alexander’s domain since the Battle of Issus) and cede all his lands west of the Euphrates. Alexander declined. After Tyre, Alexander advanced south, reaching Egypt in November of 332, where the people welcomed him, and the Persian satrap Mazaces wisely surrendered. While in Egypt, Alexander visited the oracle of the god Amon, the basis of his later claim to divinity; he also founded the city of Alexandria, near the western arm of the Nile.
Alexander’s conquest of Egypt had completed his con-trol of the whole eastern Mediterranean coast, and in the spring of 331, he returned to Tyre and prepared to advance into Mesopotamia. During his advance, he won a decisive battle, on the plain of Gaugamela, with Darius on October 31. Alexander pursued the defeated Persian forces for 35 miles (56 kilometres), but Darius escaped. Alexander took Babylon, then pressed on over the Zagros range into Persia proper and entered Persepolis and Pasargadae. In the spring of 330 Alexander marched north into Media and occupied its capital Ecbatana. By this time, Alexander’s views on the empire were changing, and he had come to envisage a joint ruling people consisting of Macedonians and Persians.
In midsummer of 330, Alexander headed east via Rhagae (modern Rayy, near Tehrān) and the Caspian Gates, where he learned that Bessus, the satrap (governor) of Bactria, had deposed Darius, had him stabbed, and left him to die. Alexander sent Darius’s body for burial with due honours in the royal tombs at Persepolis. Bessus was later captured and killed for the murder of Darius.
Campaign Eastward, to Central Asia
Darius’s death left no obstacle to Alexander’s claim to be Great King. Crossing the Elburz Mountains to the Caspian Sea, Alexander seized Zadracarta in Hyrcania
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Persian notables, after which he continued eastward.
Meanwhile, Alexander ruthlessly quashed real or imag-ined conspiracies among his men. His actions elicited widespread horror but strengthened his position among his critics.
Alexander pressed on during the winter of 330–329 up the valley of the Helmand River, through Arachosia, and over the mountains past the site of modern Kābul into the country of the Paropamisadae. There he founded Alexandria by the Caucasus. Crossing the Hindu Kush northward over the Khawak Pass, Alexander continued on to the Jaxartes (modern Syr Darya) River, the boundary of the Persian Empire. On the site of modern Khujand (Khojent) on the Jaxartes, he founded a city, Alexandria Eschate, or “the farthest.” In 328 he attacked the Bactrian chief Oxyartes and the remaining barons who held out in the hills of Paraetacene (modern Tajikistan). Among the captives was Oxyartes’ daughter, Roxana. In reconcilia-tion Alexander married her, and the rest of his opponents were either won over or crushed.
Shortly afterward, Alexander embraced Eastern abso-lutism and adopted Persian royal dress and customs.
Invasion of India
In early summer 327, Alexander left Bactria and recrossed the Hindu Kush. His advance through Swāt and Gandhāra was marked by the storming of the almost impregnable pinnacle of Aornos (modern Pir-Sar), which lay a few miles west of the Indus and north of the Buner rivers. In spring of 326, crossing the Indus River near Attock, Alexander entered Taxila. In June, Alexander fought his last great battle on the left bank of the Hydaspes (modern Jhelum) River. He founded two cities there, Alexandria Nicaea (to celebrate his victory) and Bucephala (named after his horse
Alexander had advanced to the Hyphasis (probably the modern Beas) River when his army mutinied. On find-ing the army adamant, he agreed to turn back. Alexander then proceeded down the Indus River, with half his forces on shipboard and half marching down the two banks, bru-tally pillaging as they went along.
Consolidation of the Empire
In the spring of 324, Alexander was back in Susa. There Alexander held a feast to celebrate the seizure of the Persian Empire. Attempting to further his policy of fusing Macedonians and Persians into one master race, he and 80 of his officers took Persian wives. This policy of racial fusion brought increasing friction to Alexander’s relations with his Macedonian people, who had no sympathy for his changed concept of the empire. His determination to incorporate Persians on equal terms in the army and the administration of the provinces was bitterly resented. The issue came to a head later that year at Opis, when Alexander’s decision to send home Macedonian veterans was interpreted as a move toward transferring the seat of power to Asia. There was an open mutiny involving all but the royal bodyguard; but when Alexander dismissed his whole army and enrolled Persians instead, the opposition broke down. An emotional scene of reconciliation was followed by a vast banquet with 9,000 guests to celebrate the end of the misunderstanding and the partnership in government of Macedonians and Persians. Ten thousand veterans were sent back to Macedonia with gifts, and the crisis was surmounted.
Also in 324, Alexander demanded that he should be accorded divine honours. At this point, he seems to have become convinced of his own divinity and demanded its acceptance by others, a symptom of growing megalomania
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and emotional instability. The cities perforce complied, but often ironically: The Spartan decree read, “Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god.”
The next year, Alexander suddenly fell ill in Babylon after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout; he died 10 days later. His body, diverted to Egypt, was eventually placed in a golden coffin in Alexandria. He received divine honours in Egypt and elsewhere.
Assessment
As a general, Alexander is among the greatest the world has known. He showed unusual versatility, both in the combination of different arms and in adapting his tactics to the challenge of enemies who used unique forms of warfare. His strategy was skillful and imaginative. His use of cavalry was so effective that he rarely had to fall back upon his infantry for the final defeat.
Alexander’s short reign marks a decisive moment in the history of Europe and Asia. His expedition and his own personal interest in scientific investigation brought many advances in the study of geography and natural his-tory. His career led to the moving of the great centres of civilization eastward and initiated the new age of the Greek territorial monarchies; it spread Hellenism in a vast colonizing wave throughout the Middle East.
shihuanGdi
(b. c. 259 BCE, Qin state, northwestern China—d. 210 BCE, Hebei)
B
orn in 259 BCE, Shihuangdi (also known as Zhao Zheng or Ying Zheng) was emperor (reigned 221–210 BCE) of the Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) and creator of the first unified Chinese empire. His gigantic funerarycompound—now known as the Qin tomb, located near the modern city of Xi’an—is a significant Chinese archae-ological site.
Zhao Zheng was the son of Zhuangxiang, who later became king of the state of Qin in northwestern China.
His mother was a former concubine of a rich merchant, Lü Buwei, who, guided by financial interests, managed to install Zhuangxiang on the throne, even though he had not originally been designated as successor. The legend, once widely accepted, that Zheng was actually Lü Buwei’s natural son is probably a myth.
When Zheng, at age 13, formally ascended the throne in 246 BCE, Qin already was the most powerful state and was likely to unite the rest of China under its rule. The central states had considered Qin to be a barbarous coun-try, but by that time its strong position on the mountainous western periphery enabled Qin to develop a strong bureaucratic government and military organization. This was the basis of the totalitarian state philosophy known as legalism.
Zheng was officially declared of age in 238. By 221, with the help of espionage, extensive bribery, and the ruthlessly effective leadership of gifted generals, Zheng had eliminated the remaining six rival states that made up China at that time and created a unified Chinese empire under the supreme rule of the Qin. To herald his achieve-ment, Zheng assumed the sacred titles of legendary rulers and proclaimed himself Shihuangdi (“First Sovereign Emperor”).
As emperor he initiated a series of reforms aimed at establishing a fully centralized administration, thus avoid-ing the rise of independent satrapies, or provinces. He abolished territorial feudal power in the empire, forced the wealthy aristocratic families to live in the capital, Xianyang,
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and divided the country into 36 military districts, each with its own military and civil administrator. He also issued orders for almost universal standardization—from weights, measures, and the axle lengths of carts to the written language and the laws. Construction began on a network of roads and canals, and fortresses erected for defense against barbarian invasions from the north were linked to form the Great Wall.
The last years of Shihuangdi’s life were dominated by an ever-growing distrust of his entourage—at least three assassination attempts nearly succeeded—and his increas-ing isolation from the common people. Almost inaccessible in his huge palaces, the emperor led the life of a semi-divine being. Upon his death, he was buried with more than 6,000 life-sized terra-cotta soldier and horse figures—
forming an “army” for the dead king—in a gigantic funerary compound hewn out of a mountain and shaped in confor-mity with the symbolic patterns of the cosmos. His death immediately led to the outbreak of fighting among sup-porters of the old feudal factions, which ended in the collapse of the Qin dynasty and the extermination of the entire imperial clan by 206.
Shihuangdi certainly had an imposing personality and showed an unbending will in pursuing his aim to unite and strengthen the empire. His despotic rule and the draco-nian punishments he meted out were dictated largely by his belief in legalist ideas. With few exceptions, the tradi-tional historiography of imperial China has regarded him as the villain par excellence, inhuman, uncultivated, and superstitious. Modern historians, however, generally stress the endurance of the bureaucratic and administrative structure institutionalized by Shihuangdi, which, despite its official denial, remained the basis of all subsequent dynasties in China.