Dan Snow's History Hit - Alexander The Great: The Siege of Tyre

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

The renowned conqueror Alexander the Great was known as 'the two-horned one' by his enemies, and for good reason. His campaigns were bloody affairs even by the standards of the time. But the city of Tyre was not going to be intimidated - Alexander would have to think outside the box if he was going to take it.Dan is joined by Katherine Pangonis, a historian of the medieval Mediterranean world, to tell us the tale of Tyre from bloody beginnings to the bitter end.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This is one of the most epic stories you've ever heard that hasn't been made into a gigantic movie yet. This is the story of one of the most hard-fought sieges of the ancient world, the greatest test of one of history's greatest commanders. Alexander the Great may have brushed aside the Persians on the Gramicus, he may have humiliated the world's largest power at the Battle of Issus, but he almost came a cropper, attacking a coastal city in what is now southern Lebanon. I went to Lebanon a few years ago as I was passing through there on the way to Syria when I was making a history show about the outbreak of the Syrian

Civil War. A miserable assignment, I can tell you. And the one happy day of that project, when I spent most of the rest of the time hiding under my bed, terrified I was going to get either hit by one of Bashar Assad's shells or abducted by an Islamist revolutionary group, was when I went down the coast of Lebanon and looked at some of the wonderful historic cities and towns that dot that coast. Byblos, so beautiful. And Tyre. Tyre, which now sits on a peninsula joined to the mainland by an isthmus. But in the shallow waters that surround the city, you can see the remnant of its ancient fabric, fluted columns breaking the surface of the water. It's a place with a rich historic atmosphere. In this podcast we'll find out why Tyre is connected to the mainland and we'll learn

about how Alexander the Great realised he needed to transform himself into a maritime as well as a terrestrial power. I've got the brilliant Catherine Pangones, she's a historian, she's an author, she's written a new book, Twilight Cities, Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean. Alexander's assault on Tyre looms large. This is the story of how Alexander almost became a cropper before he became the great. And how the defenders of Tyre mobilised every element known to the Greek world. Water, earth, fire and air, to try and defeat him. This is the story of Alexander's greatest siege. Enjoy.

Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Catherine, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Right, Alexander the Great. Well, he's not, is he great yet? He probably is on his way to greatness. He's confirmed his position as kind of leader of the Greek world.

He's invaded Persia. He's survived death on the Granicus River by an inch. He defeated King Darius at Issus, extraordinary victory, but he's got a lot more to do. And what's his next job? Before he can just conquer the whole of the Persian Empire, what's he got to do? Well, he's got to subdue the Phoenician coast. So he's got to subdue the maritime coastal powers down the coast of modern day Lebanon, which have been providing Persia with their navy so far. And he has to bring those cities under his control. So that's the next great challenge that Alexander has in store. Are you sort of suggesting there's sort of quite a bit of autonomy within this great Persian empire, these Phoenician cities to have their identity, their own vibe going on?

Yeah, very much so. I mean, Tyre was originally conquered by Persian King Cyrus. I mean, it's been conquered many times, but conquered by Cyrus the Great, who was one of the more benevolent conquerors of the antique period, of the ancient world, and very much was after submission, but not genocide, not destruction of a people and an identity, but he wanted submission and support. So despite the Persian conquest, Tyre and many of the other coastal cities have retained a distinct identity. And Tyre, perhaps foremost among them, I mean, down the aisles of history, is known for having retained a particular autonomy and identity throughout. So this is still very much the case when Alexander

arrives. And these coastal dwellers in what is what is now lebanon and up into parts syria and parts of israel they are seafarers right i mean they are the og seafarers we people have had the phoenicians and yeah very much so yeah i mean so tyre in the phoenician cities they have this reputation as being the sort of maritime powerhouse of the ancient world so they're sort of it's very difficult to pinpoint exact origins but this merging of the ancient world. So they're sort of, it's very difficult to pinpoint exact origins, but this merging of the Sea Peoples and the Canaanites together. And they're famous for building these ships of cedar wood in ancient times that created the trade networks across the Mediterranean that are still in use today. And they founded many cities around the Mediterranean basin. And crucially, the Phoenicians, the antecedents of the Tyrians that Alexander is now

facing, they were not conquerors, they were colonizers, and they were traders. So the cities that they made, they found that they didn't capture from other people. And they found that there was trading outposts. So everywhere from recognizable names like Carthage and Cadiz, to Motia of the coast of Sicily, they've created this network of maritime trading points around the Mediterranean Basin, and they're known as the master mariners of the ancient world. And so Persia's arguably the world's first sort of continental scale superpower, but this is where their navy are based. Why can't Alexander just charge inland? Because he's worried their navy will then strike at his homeland, strike at Mastin or Greece while he's fighting a land war in Asia.

Oh no, I mean, the Phoenician cities are not powerhouses in their own right, so they quail before the armies of Alexander. They are no match for Alexander's armies, even with their ships. Alexander doesn't have the navies to match them, but it's not necessarily a problem as long as he can attack them on land. This is the crucial point. So for the first Venetian cities that he comes up against, our words, Byblos, Saida, he can overrun them with relative ease. His army is about 35,000 strong at this point. He just sweeps down the coast, taking city after city. But there's one city which presents a particular logistical challenge, which is the city of Tyre, which is on an island off the mainland. It's about half a mile,

just under a kilometre from the Lebanese coast. And his armies can't get to them, and he doesn't yet have the fleet that he would need to match theirs. So this is what poses a problem for him when he comes to try and take Tyre. So it's an island off the coast, heavily fortified, and he doesn't have a fleet mythically so i mean the ancient descriptions we have of tyre describe these these walls of unparalleled height that rise directly out of the churning waves so it's about as as impregnable as well defended a city as it's possible to have defended not only by these mythically high walls you know virgil talks about them in the anir the tyrian towers they're still famed all those years later. And also just this expanse of sea between the coast

and the city. So yeah, a land army isn't much use in that particular situation. So what's his plan? How does he do it? It starts with him just sort of sending envoys saying, oh, I'd love to visit your city and I'd love to make a sacrifice at the altar of your great temple. And the Temple of Melkart or Heracles Melkart, these two figures of the Phoenician deity Melkart and obviously the Greek figure Heracles sort of become conflated and interchangeable. And Alexander claims Heracles as an ancestor. So he just says, you know, I'd love to come and make a sacrifice at your temple of Melkart. But this is a very loaded statement because only the kings of Tyre are allowed to make sacrifices in this temple. And the Tyrians are like, oh, not so sure

about that. We'll send you a nice gold crown. You like crowns. Here's a crown. And we totally invite you to make a sacrifice on the mainland. We've got another really nice temple to Melkart on the mainland. But this isn't quite the temple of Melkart. It doesn't have the same symbolic resonance as this very famous temple within the walls of Tyre, which Herodotus describes. Herodotus, in early travel writing, he talks about traveling to Tyre just to see this temple with this sort of ethereal columns made of pure gold and pure emeralds. So it's a place that Alexander will have dreamed about visiting, and he wants to make a sacrifice there. And they say no to him. And not only do they say no to him, they execute his envoys and throw their

bodies into the sea. So there's an act of aggression. And the Tyrians probably feel quite smug and secure, because as we've talked about, they have these ridiculous high walls, and all this sea on their side and alexander yeah he needs to come up with a plan for how to do that and his plan is sort of it's just very much the pinnacle of a can-do attitude he sees the sea and he's like right i need them to be on land i need there to be not sea here and so he decides to fill in the sea it's quite straightforward the tyrians have this other settlement on the mainland which is it's called old tyre it's sort of like the supply center for the island city and he decides to first take that which is not difficult with his massive army and then destroy it you know pull down the

buildings as you basically use it as a stone quarry of like nicely cut building blocks he pulls down all these buildings and commands his army so he's got a lot of manpower at his disposal, to fill in the sea between the mainland and the city of Tyre. He wants to construct a land bridge, a causeway between the mainland and the island. And that way, he can completely sidestep the main issues of the siege that he's coming up against, and he can use his army to full advantage. And you say in your book, that's what, 750 metres or so? Something like that. And the water's five metres deep. That's a big civil engineering job, even today. And it gets even deeper as they go. So it's not easy. And the sources don't really relate how long exactly it takes him to do this. But yeah, it's a major underseeking. And his men are probably like,

yeah, this is not what we're here for. And like the Tyrians at first certainly don't think this is going to be successful. And no idea what his armies were thinking when they were just told to start throwing rocks into the sea. But little by little, it sort of starts to take shape and it starts to be quite worrying for the Tyrians. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit, talking about Alexander's greatest siege, more coming up. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. so they would have just watched this mole i think is the the word that people use just get longer and longer inexorably every day were they not using their ships to try and interrupt this and they had some advantages didn't they yeah exactly i mean so they have ships which they're using to harry the workers so they're sending sort of triremes laden with archers to sort of pick off the builders as they're working. I mean, it sounds like the worst building job you can imagine. But so much of warfare in antiquity was literally about building walls and was about building defensive structures rather than just maneuvering on the battlefields. But this would have been a pretty grim construction job because, yes, you're working in the sea,

like a massive scale project that certainly in their lifetime hasn't been undertaken before and yeah you have hostile belligerents circling you in boats taunting you shooting arrows at you throwing fire at you and alexander alexander comes up with you know his own strategies to sort of head off some of these challenges he constructs these two massive uh siege towers at the head of the causeway as it's developing to sort of defend the workers. So sort of timber structures covered in animal skin with catapults and other siege equipment on it to keep the attackers away, to allow his men to work. And also he constructs a palisade wall out of wood, probably Lebanese cedar along the

sides, very strong wood, very readily available, again, to protect the workers. But then the Tyrians, you know, sort of meet this initiative with their own and they start sending fire ships. So one incident described by one of the sources is they take an old horse transport ship, so a big vessel with lots of space on board. They weigh it down at the stern so that the bow is lifting out of the water and they fill it with combustibles and bracken and oil and all these things and set it alight and then ram it towards the land bridge and because the bow is slightly raised it rams onto the land bridge and it completely destroys

the siege towers that they built it burns the palisade wall it will probably kill a good number of the builders and it destroys a large amount of the causeway that's been made so far and then following that it seems this is a point where you know if it was the Iliad the gods would be favoring the Tyrians because then a huge storm comes and it clearly seems the land birds are building it's not super stable the way they've done so far because the storm also does a lot of damage to the progress they've made and sets them back a long way. So it's, yeah, it's a battle for the causeway. But Alexander pushes on. He's very keen to construct this because he knows without it, his odds of taking Tyre are low. And he sees Tyre not just symbolically important, but also

strategically important because he doesn't want this remaining adjutant city like a fly on his back, harassing him as he tries to move into Persia and continuing to supply the Persians with a navy. So he really wants to take this city. It makes you wonder what the hell Darius of Persia was doing when Alexander the Great was locked in this appalling siege warfare on a dodgy causeway halfway across a stretch of water. I mean, why didn't the Persians attack while they had the chance? This is crazy. It sounds like Alexander was really hard pressed. Well, he is and he isn't. So Persia is regrouping after the Battle of Issus, as you say, a major defeat. But also Alexander isn't exactly on his knees. This isn't a battle he's losing.

It's a logistical challenge he's failing to deal with quickly. His army is not being significantly depleted by the Tyrian attacks on the causeway. His army is not being significantly depleted by the Tyrian attacks on the causeway. His army is as strong as ever. They're probably a bit hot, a bit bored, ready to move into Persia, but the army is still there and ready and seasoned soldiers. So he's not vulnerable in that sense. If Persia swept in on the land, they would still meet an army that would be a huge challenge for them. But this is exactly what the Tyrians are thinking. The Tyrians, when Alexander starts building this causeway, feel quite safe because they think they're just waiting for the Persians who they retained allegiance to, they've shown loyalty to. They think they're just waiting for a relief force to arrive,

and it never comes. And they also think that they're waiting for a relief force from Carthage. They send envoys to Carthage, their now very powerful daughter city, saying, send help. And the Carthaginians promise to send aid. But this aid never comes from either Persia or from Carthage. And the Tyrians are very much left alone in this endeavour. Their smugness must have worn off. And yet, you've just described a big defeat for Alexander. His barricades, his walls, defensive structures, his towers have been burned. Does he just keep plugging away using the same strategy? Yeah, he keeps plugging away with the same strategy as far as we can see. And eventually the land bridge is constructed. They do manage to finish it. And

again, the sources don't give us a lot of details, unfortunately, about different building techniques or different defensive techniques after this point, only that he does continue to finish this causeway. He must have rebuilt the palisade walls. He must have rebuilt the siege towers. But it's a major setback. It's a major setback nonetheless. And then eventually he does complete the land bridge, but it doesn't bring the easy victory that he hoped for. And he realizes he does still need maritime strength to subdue Tyre. And he calls up fleets from the other cities further up the coast that he's already conquered. And yeah, it does beg the question,

why hasn't he called for ships from Sidon sooner? But again, it's not there for us. Maybe it was difficult to get them to cooperate, old allies and rivals of the Tyrians. But eventually he succeeds in getting ships from Sidon and also ships from rhodes and from cyprus he basically sends out he puts up a bat signal saying send ships now we're at the point we we need this and the ships eventually arrive just as he's completing the land bridge and they manage to take the city prior to this the tyrians when they see the land bridge being completed they evacuate the women

and children. So although Tyre hasn't sent aid, because they're not in circles, because they still have their ships, they send the women, the children, and presumably a chunk of the vulnerable population, and a lot of their treasure in ships to Carthage for safekeeping, because they know the battle is now on their doorstep. And the Tyrians also sort of feel that the end is upon them because there's reports of this collective vision, mass hallucination, whatever you want to call it, of the god Apollo deserting the Tyrians. And so it's desperate, but they, following this vision, they go to the temple of Apollo and they take the statue of the god and they bind it with gold chains to the altar in a

way of keeping the god on their side, keeping god in the city. But all to no avail. Alexander is there and he's there with ships and his armies and he does succeed in storming the city. Well, I'm glad Alexander has finally learned the lesson that he needs a fleet if he's going to conduct maritime operations. He can't just make more land. Not even Alexander the Great gets to do that. So he's bridged the water. He's got a fleet blockading the island now.

He can complete his land bridge. He's up at the walls of Tyre. How does he storm those walls? Well, he would follow the regular structure of siege war. He literally is battering rams, creating cracks in the walls. So he brings all the siege equipment across the walls. And now he's got the ships as well to return fire. They're hurling missiles.

They're using catapults. They're following all the traditional methods of ancient siege warfare. And the Tyrians know they're on their last legs. So, you know, they're sending ladders over the walls. They're sending grappling hooks up. They're sending men over the walls. They're attacking the walls. They're firing fire over the, you know, burning arrows over, you know, all of this. And the Tyrians know they're on their last legs and they do things like they create these sort of pads out of dried seaweeds to try and soften the blows of the battering rams on the gates of the city and of the walls. They send out divers in the nighttime to cut anchor chains of the boats that are anchoring around the city to besiege it. But it's all ultimately to no avail. They're putting up a

very brave final stand against this inexorable force that is Alexander's army but it's ultimately short-lived and they can't sustain it and it cannot repel the army so they resist him for some time but not a lot and eventually yeah the army succeed in going over the walls breaking through the gates destroying the ships and storming the city and yeah crucifying most of the inhabitants most of the the defending soldiers and it's only those who take shelter in this famed Temple of Melkar that are spared in the massacre. So he is furious about the time and the casualties that have been inflicted upon him, the time that he's lost

in fighting this small regional power. Yes, indeed. So he's certainly got an axe to grind. This has been one of the most irritating and frustrating episodes of Alexander's career thus far. He spent far more time on the coast of Tyre, of the coast of Lebanon, than he wanted to. I mean, he knew it wouldn't be a straightforward operation. Perhaps that's why he keeps drawing these allusions to Heracles and the labours and so forth, because it's an undertaking that he knew would take some time. But with all the setbacks that he's had, such as the fire ships, these storms, the resistance of the Tyrians, the time it took for ships to arrive, it's taken him a very long time. And he's furious.

And also we have to remember the men of Tyre, they did execute his envoys when he sent them. There was a chances for cooperation throughout. And then they were taunting them. And then they didn't submit at the end when it was clear that they were going to be defeated. There wasn't this sort of, OK got us we submit that no it was a last stand it was a fight to the end they'll have taken a lot of Alexander's troops down with them and taken a lot of his time and you know it's been a frustrating process so yes he's angry and he takes this anger out on the population. Don't kill Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great's envoys, folks. It's a key, key lesson in history and people need to get across it. At the end of this, you've got to say

it sounds like this campaign was more difficult than his three famous battles against the Persian army itself. The Tyrians gave him more of a fight. Yeah, well, certainly not in terms of strengths of numbers. They had the logistical challenges of the siege on their side. Alexander had to overcome many more hurdles to reach them. And also, you know, to what extent these stories of the bound up pads made of seaweed to soften the bashing ram's blows are true. A lot of this can be put down to creative license. But they certainly held out against him for a long time and made a very brave last stand and gave all they had,

gave them as good as they could to resist him. So thousands of men killed, others crucified on the beach. You see Alexander the Great at his most vicious in this campaign. Well, exactly. And we call him Alexander the Great, but in Lebanon, the Arab world, he's often referred to as the horned one. So certainly not an epithet of admiration at all. It's the different perspectives on this conquering figure in different parts of the world. It's crazy. And although we said even

Alexander the Great couldn't turn water into land, actually, he sort of did, right? He sort of did. Yeah. Tyre is now part of the mainland it's on an isthmus and what's amazing is that today you can walk it's very hard to detect where this land bridge was it's not some narrow causeway it's now been you know that's silted up all around it and it's been expanded and tyre is now very much part of the mainland it's an isthmus sure and you can certainly feel when you're on the edge of it in the heart of the old city of tyre and you see roman columns jeremy collins the edge of it in the heart of the old city of Tyre and you see Roman columns, Roman columns and Byzantine columns

sticking up with the water around you. It's a very atmospheric place. You can really feel the history and in that certain part of it, you can feel that it was once an island, but it's now, yeah, the Alexander's Causeway never collapsed after it was finally built.

It's just strengthened and widened down the millennia. And yeah, Tyre is now very much part of Lebanese mainland. That is one legacy of Alexander the Great that has endured to the present day. Indeed. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast. Tell everyone this is just one of the episodes from your wonderful new book which I'll hope you'll come back and talk to us about others. What's the book called? Twilight Cities Lost Capitals of the episodes from your wonderful new book, which I hope you'll come back and talk to us about others. What's the book called? Twilight Cities, Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean. Which other cities do you do?

Well, we start with Tyre, because as we talked about, that's where it all began, the trade routes across the Mediterranean. But Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse, Ravenna and Antioch. Wonderful. That's such a great collection. I'm looking forward to talking more about all those. Thank you very much. Good luck with the book, Catherine,

and thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks so much, Dan. you