Empire: World History - 102. Alexander the Great: The Conquest of Persia

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Darius III rules Persia and he has already demonstrated his heroism and skill in battle. The Empire itself, despite having been through a period of court intrigue, was stable. Yet, coming through their western border, originally from Macedonia, was a young man bent on conquering the whole world. His name, Alexander the Great. Listen as William and Anita retell one of the greatest stories in history. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Durunpoor. There's been a few complaints, actually, about the missing pools. I'd just like to say it on Twitter. Is that why you put it back?

I thought we'd put it back, yeah. I just thought I'd ignore it because I drew attention to it. I did. I looked down. I winced and I thought, he's at it again. Twitter, stop encouraging him. It's really annoying. Okay.

Just stop it. I'd perhaps warn listeners that Anita's been at her honey and sesame breakfast, which has been known. I don't know what's made me feel a bit giddy this morning. Yes, it was very nice. I thought I'd eat like Alexander. Anyway, look, this is why we're here today, because we are discussing a man who thought of himself as a god.

He is known in the West, particularly in Greece, as Alexander the Great. In Persia, not so much, Iran, Alexander the Destroyer. They have a very different view of this man. He's also entered both Bollywood and Hollywood, the name at least. So I don't know whether you've seen the Alexander the Great movie with Colin Farrell I thought you were about to say Salman Khan. No, no, this is the Hollywood one. Have you not seen Colin Farrell?

I have. I have seen that. Absolutely, yes. It wasn't very good. Val Kilmer as his terrible father, Philip of Macedon. I preferred Brad as Achilles, the Troy. Yes, but that's got nothing to do with this, has it? Nothing.

It's a different story. But also, it has travelled into sort of India and Hindu parlance. So, Sikanda means Victor a lot of the time. So there's a Bollywood movie, which I, I just wanted to read you. It's Georgita Vohi Sikandar, right? That's the name of the movie. And Sikanda is like, you know, whoever wins is Sikandar, which is how you say Alexander's name. We should also say it enters Hindu mythology. And there's some theories that Skanda, the son of Shiva in the south, is a memory of some distant echo of Alexander. So I've known him by another name, the son of Shiva, is Skartikekeke to me.

Gotteke in the north. Is it? That right? Yeah, God. Is it the same? Are there only two children of Shibha? I think they're the same. I think they're the same. Yeah. So maybe it is just a, yeah, a linguistic thing. But can I tell you about Jojita Wojikunga? Because the plot could not be further away from what we're discussing on this podcast. Okay. It's evoking the name of Alexander the Great. Sanjay, a carefree young man, experiences mental and physical transformation to complete an intercollegiate bicycle race after his elder brother is unable to participate due to an injury. And that is the story of Jujita. Vojisicunda. Whoever wins is Secondo, Alexander the Great. The real man, though, completely fascinating. So, look, we're discussing the end of the Persian Empire ostensibly in this podcast. In many ways, this is the story of two men, Alexander the Great and Darius the third, who come to power within

two months of each other, both fierce warriors, both commanding loyalty from their subordinates, both lofty ambitions and a very high opinion of themselves. It's true to say, isn't it? It's certainly true. And I think, That's, in a sense, a very interesting way to look at this story because in the West, we're always brought up with the version of Alexander. And Alexander is a great hero. And he goes and shatters the Persians and the Persian Empire. And we all cheer him on. And what I think is interesting from our perspective in this podcast is to, in a sense, slightly try to look at from Darius's perspective, what it must have been like to have this strange army crossing into your territory.

You know, not of empires fall when they're in decay. What's interesting about this story is that the Akimani Persian Empire is absolutely at the peak of its power at this point, certainly in terms of territorial landholdings. It's stretching from the Bosphorus right through to the Indus, so from Istanbul today to Attic in Pakistan. And quite a lot of sort of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. We always think of Iran as being the same shape as modern Iran. ancient, the Kamanid Persia stretches right over into Central Asia, right up to the oxus, to the Indus. And it contains hundreds of peoples who today live in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. And it's that whole bit of Alexander's story that fascinates me,

because it's a bit we often forget. But there's a reason. I mean, because a lot of the talk of Alexander, and we've talked about this before on the podcast, there is a, in the west of Greco-Roman fascination. And, you know, those sources are the ones that are looked at, those things that are in ancient Greek or in Latin. But there is a whole heap of other source material that is written by the Vanquished. And that too is interesting. And a lot of the stuff has been dug up fairly recently or certainly been examined fairly recently. There was a whole pile of kaneiform tablets which Lloyd was talking about at the beginning of the series. And some of these do refer to Darius the third. So we do have these little glimpses of him from Persian sources.

But most of the story and most of the telling of the story is based not even on eyewitnesses who saw this from a Macedonian or a Greek perspective, but Romans, looking back to Alexander from 300 years later, sometimes using sources that were contemporary, sometimes adding their own spin, and seeing him as a sort of precursor of the Roman Empire and seeing their battles with Persia. and Persia, at the time of Rome, was also a great power and also quite regularly defeated Rome. I've been to this wonderful rock carving just beyond Persepolis, where there is an image of the great Sasanian Persian Shah on his horse, and on the ground head bowed is the image of the Roman emperor. Wow. Valens, who has just been defeated and led into slavery. And who spent the rest of his life as a slave building Persian bridges.

in Hamadan and so on. So we get a very inaccurate, late view of this story. And what I think we're going to try and do today on the pod is to try and see it a little bit from the Persian perspective, what it must have been like to be at the receiving end of Alexander's advance. Yeah. Well, to that end, let's let's start with the cast list for this podcast, Darius the third. So a grandson of Darius the second, so a Kemenid by blood, but he was a side branch. He wasn't the main line, was he? And that's, I mean, is that important or significant, or do people just forget about that? He's still, like I'm an id, but he has come to power after a period of bloodshed and palace coups. It isn't that the empire is collapsing. They haven't lost territories. The empire is still

obedient to the will of the Shah. What year are we talking? We should put a year on this. We're talking in the 320s BCE. So this is now, what, four generations after Xerxes has attempted to conquer Greece and has been driven back, maybe five generations later. And the Persian Empire is still in very fit shape, but there's been a lot of bloodshed and palace coups. So it isn't the straightforward father to sunlight. No, but he's a man who's in the right place at the right time, and he's served atazerxes, the third, who is the previous king. He's distinguished himself. He's the man to send out when one of your satrapies is revolting, and he puts down a Caducian revolt. The Caduzians are the people who used to be called the Meads. They're the highlanders

occupying the mountainous spine of the Elboats between what's now, I suppose, to Iran and the Caspian Sea. So yes, he's put down a revolt. He's been rewarded with the satrapy of Armenia, which is also under Persian rule at this point. Yeah. And the governorship of Pessalus and Pars as well. But you know what? The reason he distinguishes himself is because he's willing to, you know, basically front up personally with enemies. So it's single-handed combat that he is willing to take part in and he is a ferocious fighter. Very important. And so again, we often, from the Roman perspective in the chronicles that give us the versions that we're used to of Alexander's attack, he's often seen Darius III as this weak, cowardly character who loses successive battles. But in fact,

he has an incredible track record as a very successful general, and that's why he gets the job. So that's it. They choose not the sun, but they choose Darius instead to succeed after Atazerxes. Tell us a little bit about what Persia looks like, the state of the empire at that time, Willie. So I say it's not an empire in decline. It's an empire at the peak of its territorial glory, if you like, and it is based still in Persepolis, which is in southern Iran today, but it stretches down to Baghdad, which is in modern Iraq, and then right down to Egypt. And we often forget that Egypt at this period is entirely ruled from Persia. And I say one of the big surprises when you go to Persepolis is the amount of Egyptian-looking architecture. You always see in the pictures, you know, they obviously Persianate bits, like the double bull capitals and so on. But the stuff that looks just like, you know, the temples at Luxor from an Agatha Christie film, also lying around in Persepolis. Time to introduce Alexander, Sano Philip I second of Macedon, always depicted as this golden-haired youth who is, I mean, certainly in representations in film and in literature, he is godlike. And he puts that about himself quite a lot.

He describes himself as a son of Zeus as well and identifies with Achilles rather a lot, doesn't he? Well, I think we have a pretty good idea of what he looked like because there are coins dating from his reign, although most of the ones that you see on the market tend to be fake, because they're often the most popular coins. But we know his face, and it's much reproduced in classical statuary. So when you go to the Metropolitan Museum in New York,

the largest, most perfect face, sort of 40 times life size, this enormous bust of Alexander, which dominates the classical galleries. So the things, there are certain things that, you know, are put about a lot about him. I mean, first of all, can we do the origin story and the different origin story? So, I mean, one of them is that his mother, Olympias, is dreaming that a thunderbolt falls from the sky into her womb directly. The second has Philip dreaming that he seals his wife's womb with a tablet of wax on which there is an impression of a lion. The third has Philip finding his wife, Olympias, having sex with a huge

snake, which is meant to be Zeus in disguise, and then becomes pregnant with Alexander. And the thing is, he doesn't mind any of this at all in later life. And it is something that he rather builds on and actually starts to possibly believe about himself that he is God-anointed somehow, not a mere man. In my backpacking youth, I spent a night in a sleeping bag on a sleeping roll, in the archaeological site of Pella, which is the Macedonian capital, now in Greece on the way to Turkey and Thrace. And I remember reading that story about Olympias having sex with a huge snake when I was just sitting on the ground,

or spread the leaf on the ground, and kept imagining this snake coming, but there were no snakes in Pella when I went there. Did it not fancy you? It was like, no traction. I wasn't mistaken for Olympias at that night. Sorry, boo hiss for the snake that didn't like. But look, so this is something that he rather enjoys this. Things that we do know about him,

his father was Philip of Macedon, who was a difficult father to grow up with. But his father does try and get him the best education, like every good Indian parent searches around for the very best teachers and appoints Aristotle to teach him from the age of 13. He is a student of Aristotle. And he He maintains this fascination throughout his life of talking to philosophers wherever he will go. Do you know the stories? I mean, I don't know if it's true or not. When he gets to India, when he goes to Taxila, he seeks out the saddos and what he calls the gymnastophists. Yes, the gymnasophists who wear no clothes, the naked saddos and wants to talk and learn about their idea of the world and what is good and what is bad and what is heaven

and what is hell. But the other one that I really like is that Alexander, according to legend, So, I mean, I don't know if this is true or not. There's no source of this, but he goes into the marketplace to look for Diogenes, the cynic. That's right. Do you know this one? He's in a pot or something, isn't it? What's the story? He sleeps in a pot.

That's right. He sleeps in a clay pot because he's abjured everything. There's a picture of Diogenes in his pot by Raphael in the Vatican. You can see Diogenes in his pot. I have not seen Diogenes in his pot. Right. So Diogenes, who is in the marketplace, not in his pot at this moment. Alexander approaches him in the plaza and says, you know, is there anything that I can do for you in great riches?

And Diogenius looks Alexander in the eye and says, yes, can you stand aside you're blocking my son? Brilliant. Isn't that just brilliant? You don't get to be called Dogenes is a cynic for nothing? No, exactly. Yeah, and then Alexander apparently, and again, this is legend probably more than history, but he's so charmed. Alexander, who's an arrogant young youth who could put anyone to death for their cheek, but he's so charmed. by the reply that he says, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. Isn't that great?

It's great. It's good a response. Yeah, yeah. How to deal with Twitter trolls. Yeah. So, but what I want to try and get in here, and what interests me is that certainly I was brought up on this idea of Alexander as the sort of perfect Greek. You know, he's depicted in Greek statuary. He comes from northern Greece. He's taught by Aristotle. But what were not taught in the West is that Macedon was famous in Greece for being an incredibly Persianate court. In the first Persian invasion of Greece, Macedon is allied with Darius, and Macedonian soldiers fight with Darius against Sparta. Then later, when Xerxes comes and wants to again invade Greece, he actually stays for an extended period of time with the Macedonians. And the Macedonians take on

all this Persianate culture. And you can see it in their art. If you go to Philippa Macedon's tomb today, there is an astonishing new museum they've just put up. And it's not just this pure Greek art. There are many, many signs of Persian influence. And I think that is something that we've got to take on, that it's not two different worlds at war with each other. It's a rebellious ally, which is rebelling against the master that's perceived to be weakening. I don't know whether Alexander spoke Persian, but it's quite probable that his father and grandfather did. That's interesting.

Yeah. That's very interesting. And it is Philip who has this notion of invading Persia, and it's almost the son inherits the ambition of the father. That's exactly right. And what's fascinating is that Philip of Macedon, both takes on the Persians, but is living in an incredibly Persianate court. And Philip sits on a throne, crafted on the Persian model, and he drinks from silver

Caymanid style, Riton cups, though there's wonderful sort of silver horns that you see in museums with wonderful prancing tigers at the end of these drinking horns. And there are Persian princesses who've been married into the Macedonian court. and it seems to be that, you know, a Persian who visited Pella and went to the Macedonian court would have felt completely at home. And it's only under Phillips reign that you begin to get a bit of political dissonance. First of all, he starts taking in rebels, Persians who are fleeing the upheavals in the court at Pusepalus. And during the reign of Artaxes, two brothers called Mentor Memnon of Rhodes,

who are rebels against the Shah, come and take refuge in Macedon. And so there is this impression that you're getting in the, I think, the kind of 330 BCs that the Macedonians are beginning to be prepared to cocker snoop at the Persians. So the first clash between Macedon and Persia flares up in 341 to 340 BC when Philip attempts to overpower the Persian held satrapies in Byzantium, in modern Istanbul, and he takes those cities and then he goes into Asia Minor and he takes 10,000 Macedonian soldiers in the summer of 336 under the command of his generals, Parmenian and Atalos. And so Philippa Macedon is the first to actually invade properly into Persian territory, but the invasion doesn't go as well. He retreats

back into his territory. But there is a precedent for Alexander in what his father has done. Okay. And it seems that, you know, two years later after that, 334 BC, is when Alexander, possibly on the plans that his father had made, does his own try at Persia. He crosses the Hellespont. And Professor, what is the Hellespont? We use that phrase. What exactly is the Hellespont? It's the waterway which links the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and it is this stretch of

water which separates Europe from Asia. And it's always been an incredibly symbolic stretch of water. and anyone going from Europe to Asia or from Asia to Europe at that period of history had to cross the Hellasbond weather in the boat, or if you're Lord Baron, you swim it. And my old friend, my mentor, Patrick Lee Furmore, who is the wonderful travel writer and who I hero worshipped as a teenager and used to go and see, he in his 60s did the same. He swam the Bosphorus with his wife following in a dinghy to try and work. wave off any tankers coming to run him down.

Very patient wife to be doing that. But anyway, look, so Alexander, when he crosses the Hellespontal Bosphorus, he does so with 30,000 soldiers, 5,000 cavalry. It's hard to keep that many troops a secret. And one of Darius's spies sees what he's up to. And so the news goes back, he's coming. Yes, and this is three times the invasion force that his father had taken. So he's from the beginning, he's serious.

It's quite clear that this is not a, you know, a little. a raid or border skirmish, 30,000 troops gathered from across the Macedonian lands is a major invasion force. This is the Macedonian equivalent of D-Day. Right. And what I love about the spy's report is that the spy goes back to the Persian court and says, this is the way he did this. He marked his arrival in the Persian Empire by hurling a spear into the ground and claiming, I am the new Achilles, I am going to avenge the Greeks who lost their livelihoods when Xerxes is marched on Greece. So right from the get-go, his reputation precedes him and this sort of godhead business that he wraps himself very tightly in is reaching the Persian court. So whether any of

this actually ever happened is hugely open to question. And many scholars say that this is just, you know, this sort of later Roman, not even propaganda, it's later complete rewriting of this history to reflect Rome's view of what Alexander should have been. And there's absolutely no evidence at all for anything at the time. We do have evidence for Darius's response, though. What does Darius do? So Darius, I think, initially is not nervous. He has his satrapies in Anatolia who are meant to deal with this.

And I think it's from Sardis that the local rulers go and confront this force. I don't think the full scale of this invasion had been recognized yet in Picepolis. And so Darius does not mobilize. He just gets his local guys to take on. these Greeks. And we should say that the Macedonians didn't up to this point have a massive military reputation. They were regarded by the Greeks as northern barbarians and by the Persians as distant allies from the furthest end of the civilized world. So it wasn't that everyone thought that the Macedonians were the great military power, which had to be feared. So Darius just sends his

local guys to take on this. And of course, they are quickly and instantly defeated. And Alexander then does a mopping up operation on the coast. He goes right around the coast of Lydia, modern Western Turkey, and wipes out all the signs of Persian resistance. And we should remember that this area, today, Western Turkey was full of Greek-speaking city-states that had been under Persian rule. So as a Greek speaker, Alexander could have expected a certain amount of local support, and many of people would have regarded the Persians as foreign occupiers who were taking that access. So there's every reason to think that Alexander's force, if not welcomed as liberators, were certainly not seen as something to be frightened of or resisted by the locals.

So, I mean, Darius might have been quite relaxed when, you know, these first reports come from his spies that there's a large Macedonian troop movement coming into his territory. But these defeats start making him nervous. And what makes him even more nervous is that Alexander has the temerity to start issuing coins within the lands that he conquers. So this is an absolute tweaking of the Persian's noses saying, you know, I'm the one on the coins, I'm the one who rules. And this is clearly showing that Alexander is not just doing a border raid, that he's not wanting to take Byzantium on the

Western coast, that he's actually really marching into the Persian heartlands and is serious. So this is the point that Darius mobilizes himself. And when he hears about the defeat of his satiris, perhaps at Zalea in what's now northeastern Turkey, he starts to gather an enormous army. And he, I think he's in Babylon when he first heard the news, in 333. And he gathers this enormous army from across Mesopotamia and marches down into what's now eastern Turkey. And I've been to the site of the battle, which takes places. It's a place called Isis, which is north of modern Antakia.

It's in this dusty plane. I remember actually getting off a bus when I was going somewhere else just to have a look at the planes of Isis, having read all these wonderful stories. What did it look like when you saw it? Well, I loved Robin Lane Foxes, biography of Alexander, and had it with me when I was on the journey. And I got off this bus, I don't know, 20 or 21 or something.

And it was early morning and there was this misty plain stretching down towards the Mediterranean. And in the north, there was what's called the Silician gates, which are these enormous mountain range, which has one path, which leads towards Persia. And so Alexander's waiting at the bottom of the Talism gates when Darius comes with this enormous army of Mesopotamian troops. Darius doesn't just come with his army. Can I just also report that he comes with his mother, his wife, his daughter, her younger sister, Daris's his son and heir, a five-year-old boy called Ocus, which is a very odd thing

because it's almost like a little family holiday rather than. than going into battle. Well, again, it's an indication that he's not taking Alexander to be a sort of, you know, apocalyptic threat at all, no. So one reason that Darius may have brought his family on this family holiday is that south of Antioch was the great classical holiday destination, if you like, the sort of Florida or the Tuscany of the classical world. And I think I'm right in saying that's where Andy Clareypatrick go on honeymoon.

So maybe Darias had a similar sort of... Well, maybe it really is a family trip and we'll just vanquish these pesky Macedonians on the way. Get rid of these pesky Macedonians, they will go off in a nice romantic holiday with all my wives. So he takes, you know, his nearest and dearest with him, crucially, and this is going to be important for later in this story, there was also a satrap called Bessus with him, who rules the powerful satrapy of Bactria. Remember that because it's going to be important later on in Alexander's story. And Bactria is famous for having a really very fierce cavalry. So here he is, he's talled up, he's got his family, he's made promises to his little son,

and the armies meet at Isis. So tell us what happens at Isis. So Isis is, as I said, just below the Silician gates in eastern Turkey today, north of Antioch. And it's inland, it's on a flat plain with mountains in the distance. And Darias has got a much larger army than Alexander. He's pulled in all the spare troops he could find in Mesopotamese. And these figures are never agreed by historians, but the figures I've read about 108,000 Persians under Darius's command. Well, Alexander has a very large force, but about half that, 40,000, including his cavalry.

So the Persians are in a very confident mood. They're not only brought their lovely sort of family on route to a holiday, but they are very confident that this enormous army can make mincemeat of Alexander. is still unproven forces. It's all very well defeating the local chieftains and governors in the uncivilized western half of the Persian Empire. But it's a totally different thing taking on the immortals, the crack troops from Persepolis and from the Persian heartlands. But they do. They take them on and they defeat them. I mean, I'm sort of trying to understand how that happens. So Darius doesn't understand how it happens. And we certainly get a very

confusing and often very conflicting accounts of the battle in the Roman sources. There are no Persian sources for this battle. It isn't referred to in Persian sources. So at least in the Roman sources, Alexander leads personally a charge across the Pinaros River, which separates the two, shattering one of the Persian flanks. And at this point, he cites Darius, and we have this picture in the Roman sources, whether it's true or not, of these two leaders meeting each other. And Darius is in his war chariot while Alexander is on his horse with his companion cavalry. So you have these two legendary elite forces, the Macedonian phalanx and the Persian immortals meeting for the first time. And the Persians depend on their arrows, and they're expecting the Greeks to crumble before this

incredible rain of arrows that come pouring down on them. And you can imagine them raising their shields and the sound of the arrows bouncing off the shields. But it doesn't do the job. And the Macedonians carry on both the cavalry and the foot soldiers. And Darius, realizing that they're coming for him, turns his chariot about and flees the battlefield. Now, you could take two different attitudes to that. The Roman historians definitely depict Darius as this coward who's not up for a battle. But of course, it's the most sensible thing to do.

many, many other leaders when they see a disaster in a battle make the decision to fight another day. And this seems to be what Darius is doing. Yeah, and you're right to caution us about some of the Roman sources. I mean, Plutarch, who I guess is trying to magnify Alexander's bravery and his great victory, estimates that. I mean, you said about 108,000 men under Darius. But Plutarch puts the Persian forces at 600,000, which is just impossible, but it does tell a good tale. Yeah, it's certainly the wrong figure. But again, to try and get, we can make estimates of the losses. And the figures you read about in the scholarly sources say about 7,000 Macedonians die on the fields of Isis, while Darius loses 20,000, most of them in flight. It's always when you're fleeing a battle that you're at your most vulnerable.

Right, because you're showing your back. You turned your back and you're running. And the Macedonians have this fantastic companion cavalry, which just chase after the Persians and cut them down. It's a good point to take a break. Join us after the break when we find out what Alexander does after this victory over Darius and the Persians. Welcome back. So just before the break, we had the Persian forces fleeing, a surprised Darius, who really had underestimated Alexander, who has now been forced to turn around and leave the battle at Isis

and has sustained a huge number of casualties. And this leaves Alexander to take the spoils. And we're talking a lot of loot. I love a list of loot. What are we talking about? Also very important, he captures Darius's bathtub. Well, that's what I mean. This is the list of loot to which I...

Was it a gold bathtub? I'm hoping it was a golden bathtub. And he apparently has a bath in the bathtub. and remarks, so this, it seems, is royalty. So again, you know, we mustn't rewrite history in retrospect. Pella, where Alexander grew up, is by the standards of Picepolis and Sousa, a very small and very minor court. And they didn't have all this stuff.

I mean, if you go and see Philip the second's grave goods, he's got a nice crown and he's got some gorgeous weaponry, but it isn't Persepolis. It isn't the great king. And Alexander's eyes, by all accounts, are on storks when he sees all this stuff. I mean, the bathtub is exciting and interesting, but it's not the most important thing that he takes after this victory. It is because he also seizes the Persian baggage train and the royal harem, because remember, Darius has brought his family and friends to this battle, which, you know, looking back is a little bit baffling. But he captures Darius' wife and children, the five-year-old heir, Ocus that we were speaking about before the break, and a number of important Persian noble women. And this is really important symbolically. Why?

Because it means that Darius has lost his honour. And his future, his heir. And his future is heir. It's a massive humiliation. There has been no precedent for this in the whole of Persian history since Cyrus found the empire. There's never been a loss like this. And then almost insultingly, Alexander doesn't try to finish Darias off. He doesn't head directly into Persia.

He goes off on what seems at the time to be a baffling detour southwards. Towards Egypt. He takes, well, first of all, he takes the coast around Antioch and Daphne and heads down through that coast, through the Phoenician coast, past Biblos, Tire and Sidon, through Gaza, where war is waging at the moment, and he goes into Egypt. Taya's really important because Taya is a crucial port for the Persian Navy. So these are strategically very important. It's also very interesting that a number of these states just give up. They surrender to Alexander because by now he's a rolling stone.

And so, you know, people have this fear of what might happen if they don't give in. And there is an estimate that Alexander, after one protracted siege, puts to the sword roughly six, thousand to eight thousand people, enslaves 30,000. So, you know, this fear, this cloak of fear that now is sort of also around his body, as well as this divinity, this self-proclaimed divinity that people talk about, is making him just ferocious by name alone. Yes, I think what would have not surprised anyone at the time was the 30,000 enslaved. It's a horrific figure for us to contemplate all these people being led away in chains, but that was the nature of ancient warfare. But what was more unusual at the time, I think, was the killing the 8,000 people from

Tahr, because normally you took people hostage or took them prisoner, and you used their services, and people lived on. But Alexander doesn't. He commits a terrible massacre in Tahr, and then he heads on through Gaza, which falls after another siege, into Egypt. And it's there that two really interesting things happen. First of all, he founds Alexandria, which goes on, of course, to be the great city of learning in the eastern Mediterranean and the place of the great, great library. But he goes on down to Upper Egypt and goes to visit and then restore some of Egypt's most ancient temples. He proclaims himself king of Upper and Noah, Egypt, son of Ra and beloved of Amun. but it's what happens next that really intrigues me.

And this is a story that I've always been fascinated in, because having reached what will become Alexandria, having founded this city on the Mediterranean coast and established this extraordinary port that will go on to be the great city of the region. He then heads into the desert towards the Seaward Oasis. You've been there. I've seen your snaps from last year.

You were in Seaward. Not only have I been there. I was there for Christmas last year. And this is somewhere I had always, always wanted to see because I love these stories. The pictures that you sent me, I mean, it did look as though you were on the home planet of Tatouine. If anyone watched Star Wars, it very much looked like that's where you were. I mean, it was just sort of these, I mean, describe it.

You describe it there. Your pictures. It's amazing. Yeah. So even today from Alexandria, it's a pretty epic journey. It takes all day across desert roads. You leave at dawn and you get there long after dark. And you travel for mile after mile after mile through pretty serious deserts.

But Alexander, in the middle of this war, when the Dreddrice III is amassing a new force in Persepolis in the Persian heartlands. And Alexander just goes off on a sort of year off jaunt into the desert. A gap year. A gap year. A gap year in the desert. All this. And he heads off into the desert. And it is, I'd say, even today, a pretty ferocious journey.

But at that time, on horseback, without metal roads, without any sort of roads. Well, without water for much of the distance that you're travelling. Sea well, which is right on the edge of the Libyan Desert. And you get there today. And it is one of the most otherworldly places I've ever been in my life. Out of the desert, suddenly this incredible blue lake. opens out with this spectacular sort of Kingfisher lapis blue glinting in the light. And around the lake are these sort of mountains of the moon, these bare, gnarled, eroded mountains

that look as old as time itself. And today, when you go there, it's all made in mud brick because there's no stone to build with in the area. And the mud brick is half eroded and collapsing. and it's sort of going back to the desert. And in the middle of this is the temple that Alexander went to. And the reason he went there was that in Siwa was this great oracle that could tell the future. It was regarded in classical times as the equal of the oracle of Delphi.

Of Delphi. Even sometimes regarded as a more powerful oracle, because Delphi was accessible to the Greeks. Anyone could go to Delphi if they made the effort. But Seawer was almost impossible to get to. Was he a fancy oracle, like a blind oracle or a one-legged or? I mean, what do we know of the oracle of Sea were? Anything? When you go there today, it's a surprisingly small building.

The old Egyptian temple still stands completely intact. And it's up on the hill overlooking the lake with these massive bantering Egyptian walls. What's a bantering wall? Bantering means a sloping wall. Oh, a sloping wall? I did not. I've learned a thing. They banter inwards. So it's like a 40. degree angle. And around the edge are these ancient, ancient Egyptian carvings of the gods of Horus of

ISIS. But the particular oracle at Siwa is the Oracle of Zeus Amon. And the story goes that Alexander goes in alone and has a personal audience with the Oracle, during which he's told that he is indeed the son of Zeus and that Philip II was only his mortal father. Now, again, we have no idea whether this is true or not, whether whether he was actually told that or whether this is a later... Yeah, he's excited enough about what he is told. We don't know what he was told, but he is excited. He writes to his mother and he says, I've got secrets from the Oracle, but I can only tell you in your own ear, I can't write them down. So when I get to Macedon, I'll tell you all about it. It is literally the most frustrating as a mother. This is what happens.

Mind you, if you're... Can't tell you, mum, I'll tell you later. If you're an Olympus and you've been having a good time with a snake, you'd probably know what your son has discovered. So, anyway, so I would, anyone, anyone... What? Before we allow that thought to go too far, anyone ever wants to go to the most otherworldly place

I've ever been possibly with the exception of parts of Tibet. Yeah. Sewa is that. You should actually put some of your pictures up on Twitter when this goes out. I will. I will do that. But while he's having this extraordinary gap year, Gapyard, which he kind of is, yeah, because he's still young. He's finding himself. It's what they do on the Gapyard. Anyway, so he's finding himself with the Oracle of Sia. What is Darias doing? Because I cannot think that Darias is going to take that defeat lying down.

And he's a mighty ruler. He's a mighty ruler with access to an enormous number of funds as well. This is a very rich empire, his Persian empire. So what does he do? So Darias III is all set to use both stick and carrot. On one hand, he reaches out to Alexander and asks for his family back, understandably. No one wants to lose their wife, their heir, their concubines, the entire Harim. And he promises allegedly half of the Persian Empire to Alexander if he will give the family back and retire. And the story goes that Alexander's general Parmenian advised Alexander to accept. accept the offer. And Alexander replies that if he were permitting, he would, but he won't because

he's Alexander. It's one of those sort of irritating things that Alexander tends to say. But Darius has a second policy, which is, of course, to rearm. And while Alexander's been going around, messing around with oracles in Sia, Darius has been building up his forces. And you've got to remember that, you know, the Persian Empire was centered not in Asia Minor, but in Mesopotamia. So as far as Derrius is concerned, he's still got all his heartlands. That he's got also the whole of Batria, the whole of Afghanistan, the whole of Pakistan, and he's drawing troops in from all these areas and preparing to make another stand. So as you say, the carrot doesn't work, but he's got a pretty big stick as well, William,

and he has been hiring new recruits. He's preparing for a rematch because this is not going to go the way Alexander wants it. Darius is angry. He wants to get his own back. New types of weapons, including war elephants from India, which is just a fabulous detail, a war elephant. Because all the area that's now modern Pakistan was in the Persian Empire. And you have descriptions of Indian troops fighting in earlier Persian campaigns such as in Thermopylae and Salamis. There are Indian legions fighting there, which again, we often forget all this. We don't think about, yeah.

So he's got his war elephants. He's got new types of weaponry. He's got newly trained recruits. But again and again, he gets bad omens. I mean, this is a time where great meaning is read into the activities of the natural world. So there is a week before this battle is meant to be planned. And already you've got a Persian force that has been shaken by what just Alexander's audacity and just how much he has managed to take.

and where he has managed to go where no other Greek or Macedonian has gone before. So just over a week before, they're meant to meet, and they're going to meet at a place called Gargamela. Which is kind of near Erbil in what's today Iraqi Kurdistan, where Saddam Hussein committed those terrible atrocities with gas. That's very close to the site of Gargamel. Brilliant to point that out. The moon, though, just a week before this battle, has turned blood red, and then black. I mean, I wonder if that is it, I mean, is it an eclipse? I mean, I'm sure somebody would be able to tell us. It's an eclipse. So, I mean, the blood red moon before, I mean,

I've seen eclipses. I mean, my husband and I go and follow eclipse. I've not seen that sort of redness of the moon, but that's what they report. Then in another night, they see a meteor flashing across the sky. But the Persian priests aren't sure how to interpret this. And it could be good. They go to Darias. Could be good. Could be bad. Not really sure. But it does really put the sheikhs into some of his troops. And then they receive the news, terrible, terrible news, which you can't mistake for, it could be good, it could be bad. But Darius's wife, Stateria, the second, has died in childbirth.

So, you know, whatever you wanted to read into the natural world, that part of it is unmistakably bad. And of course, the possibility, even the suggestion is that the child that has killed the queen could have been allegation. Alexander's child. The Romans make this great play for Alexander being this figure of sort of chivalry and perfection. And they actually praised Alexander's courteous treatment of Darius's captured, Harry. But it's unclear. And many scholars believe that it's much more likely, given the way the people treated captors in those days, that the queen is raped and she dies in childbirth from Alexander's child, which puts again, this remember is a man that's just massacred in all the inhabitants of Tyre.

And it puts a very dark spin on Alexander, which the Roman sources try to polish up. Well, they leave that out or they play it down. Or in fact, the way the Roman sources play it is that this is a child of destiny. This is a child that mixes the royal bloods of the House of Persia and the House of Macedon, who could be a really potent figure in any kind of conquered future. Take us to the night before the battle. So all of this, Darias knows. He's seen the sky turn red.

He's seen it turn black. His seers have seen meteors flash across the sky, and now he's had this devastating news that his wife has been killed by a child that may not even have been his. What is the night before the battle like? Darius has chosen this site. This is absolutely where Darius wants the battle to take place. And for weeks in advance of this, he's been waiting for Alexander. He's camped here in this position, he thinks, is the perfect battle site.

And they've flattened all the surrounding vegetation in order to give the best conditions for the Persian chariots. You've got to remember that the Persians two main fighting weapons of the elite troops was not the sword, but it's the arrow and the spear. So if you're a Persian aristocrat, you have a chariot, someone's driving the chariot, and you are pouring arrows into the enemy. and then at the last minute you got your spear to throw at it. And so they prepared the perfect plane. But the Macedonians come and they study the battlefield the night before. And there's bright moonlight. It's a full moon.

Derrhus just can't get a break from the sky, Kenny? This guy is not helping him at all. And so there's no surprise. And the Persian spot Alexander's cavalry scouting out the battlefield. and they think there's going to be a night attack, so they stay awake the whole night. So what actually happens, of course, is that you have an exhausted Persian army when dawn breaks the next day. And join us for the next podcast when you'll find out what happens when those first rays of sun hit these troops that are now facing each other for a decisive battle. And if you can't wait to hear the next episode of Empire, when we're going to take this story of Alexander the Great to its conclusion,

and we see what will be. This is like a William Dalrymple spoiler alert, but the end of the Persian Empire. I've got some very, very good news for you. If you join the Empire Club as a friend of the show or a gold tier member, yes, we have gold tears, not baths, but tears. You can hear the next episode of Empire.

All you need to do is go to www. www.empirepod UK.com. That's www.mpirepod. UK.com. And if you do sign up, we're going to see you in a minute. you won't have to wait at all. And if not, we will see you as soon as the next normal pod episode is delivered. So until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Drupal.