Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire - Professor Kenneth W. Harl

The Turning Point—Issus and Tyre Lecture 13

Alexander captured two important cities, Tyre and Gaza representing in effect the gateway to Egypt. By these decisive victories, Alexander essentially conquered the western half of the Persian Empire.

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n spring 333 B.C., Alexander seized the initiative when he captured the Cilician Gates and crossed the Taurus mountains that cut off Anatolia from the Near East. The Macedonian army occupied Cilicia, a fertile littoral in southeastern Asia Minor, but the advance was delayed when Alexander suddenly fell ill. In November 333 B.C., Alexander recovered, and entered northern Syria. He had the Levantine ports and Egypt as his objectives. Meanwhile, Darius III, who had assembled an army numbering 200,000 men on the Amuq plain, entered eastern Cilicia, cut Alexander’s lines of communication, and pressed south to the Pinarus River near the town of Issus. Alexander retraced his steps, crossing the Bolan pass at dawn, and marched to the Pinarius where, in another tactical masterpiece, he smashed the Persian army on the Pinarus. Darius fled the field; his harem and treasury fell into Alexander’s hands. By a second decisive battle, Alexander won the Persian satrapies west of the Euphrates, and secured the naval bases of the Persian fleet in the Aegean. The kings of Cyprus and Phoenicia brought their fleets over to Alexander, and rendered homage to the new conqueror. Only Tyre, the leading Phoenician city, refused submission. In an audacious five-month siege, Alexander captured the city by turning it from an island into a peninsula. Gaza, gateway to Egypt, was taken in a siege of only two months. Entering the Nile valley, Alexander was hailed pharaoh by the Egyptians. After Issus, Alexander rejected peace overtures from Darius III, for Alexander revealed world conquest as his true aim. The Macedonians shared their king’s aim, for they had gained the confidence and determination to follow their king to the ends of the Earth. ■

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Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Empire - Professor Kenneth W. Harl

Published on Dec 3, 2016History

Sonjce Marceva

In 359 B.C., Macedon was an unstable barbarian kingdom on the fringes of the Hellenic world. Macedon’s kings, members of the Argead dynasty, claimed Greek descent and ruled over a mix of different peoples including Macedonians, but many others as well, none of whom were regarded as Hellenes, or members of the Greek national race. To Greeks, the Macedonians were regarded as “barbarians.” Archaeology has revealed that the Macedonians never participated in the material culture of the Greek world since the Late Bronze Age. Greek immigrants and goods were welcomed, but Macedonians remained a distinct, speaking a language unintelligible to Greek. King Archelaus adopted Attic Greek as the court language, built roads, and established market towns, but his subjects remained in habits far closer to their Balkan neighbors Illyrians, Paeonians, and Thracians.