The Ancients - The Invasion of Persia | Alexander the Great

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

In spring 334 BC, a young Macedonian king sets out to conquer the Persian Empire.Tristan Hughes and Dr Adrian Goldsworthy explore Alexander the Great’s early campaigns, from the daring crossing into Asia to incredible victories. They discuss Alexander's strategic genius, respect toward Persian royalty, and how these triumphs forged his path to legend.MOREThe PersiansListen on AppleKing MidasListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's spring, 334 BC, and a fleet of ships sail across the small stretch of water that divides Europe from Asia. The ancient Hellespont, the modern-day Dardanelles in Turkey. The sun beams brightly and the waters are calm. A gentle and favourable breeze helps the vessels eastwards. The ships are fooled to the brim with soldiers and horses. Supplies of food, weapons and armour are also not too far away, vital cargo for the campaign ahead. The soldiers wear tunics, not armour. They're not expecting any attack.

For many, this would have been the first time they had ever been on board a ship. They're anxious to reach dry land as soon as possible. The horses likewise are eager for a return to terra firma and the freedom to stretch their legs and graze once more. Thankfully, the voyage is short. Soon enough, thousands of men and mounts will disembark onto Asian soil, ready to follow their leader on his most daring campaign to date. Their leader is a young king, standing at the prow of his own ship. Early in his 20s, he oozes with confidence. He is dressed in splendid royal armour, a purple cloak and a lion-shaped helmet topped by a crest, with white plumes protruding out

either side. His eyes are intensely focused on the coastline that's fast approaching. Asia. This is a king who has already sent shockwaves across his kingdom, winning battles, destroying one of the great cities of Greece, and purging political enemies. A warlord, who is not to be underestimated. His name is Alexander, King Alexander III of Macedon. Soon enough, Alexander's ship nears its own special landing site, a deserted stretch of sandy coastline some distance from where the rest of his invasion force is headed. But close to a site, this young king has dreamed about visiting for years. The fabled city of Troy, where great hope Homeric heroes like Achilles, Odysseus and Hector battled all those centuries before.

Alexander knew the stories off by heart. His heart swells at the thought that he is following in the footsteps of his heroic ancestor Achilles. But this time, his enemy isn't one powerful city. It is a superpower that dominates much of the known world, with this beach being its westernmost fringe. This is the Persian Empire. Taking an iron-tipped spear, the young king launches it from the prow of his ship into the sandy beach. A bold symbolic statement. Alexander is claiming the Persian Empire as is soon to be a Speer-1 territory. This isn't to be a quick raid across the sea. This is a campaign of conquest. Conquering any part of the Persian Empire won't be easy.

Dozens of fortified cities and thousands of enemy soldiers will stand in Alexander's way, ready to resist and crush this young upstart invader before he gets anywhere near the Persian heartlands hundreds of kilometers further east. Already enemy forces are massing nearby, intent on driving Alexander and his army back to the sea. But for Alexander, there is no going back. The invasion of Persia has begun. Welcome to episode two of this special series about the life and legend of Alexander the Great, one of history's most formidable commanders.

In the last episode, we covered the early years of Alexander, the vital role played by his father, King Philip II of Macedon, the influence of his mother Olympias, and Alexander's succession to the kingship following his father's murder, and how he brutally consolidated his position. Now we turn to the main event, Alexander's invasion of the mighty Persian Empire, an empire far, far greater in size than his own kingdom. In this episode, we'll explore the early challenges that Alexander quickly faced and how he ultimately came to confront the Persian King of Kings on the battlefield, Darius III.

Joining me once again is Dr Adrian Goldsworthy, author of Philip and Alexander, Kings and Conquerous. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is episode two, The Invasion of Persia. Adrian, welcome back. It's almost as if we've just finished recording the last episode. I know, it's just like being in the very same room. Time flies when you're having fun.

So this is episode two of our Alexander the Great series. And where we left it last time, Alexander has just to become king and he's done some early military campaigning in Europe, I guess, Bulgaria, up to the Danube and then punishing the city-state of Thebes. And now he's looking east. Now he's looking towards the Persian Empire, isn't he? Yes, I mean, it's the war that Philip has already started, because Philip had sent an advance guard, really, to Asia Minor,

several years before and was planning to join them, but now Alexander has had to wait till he's secured his control on power, his control of the Macedonian throne. But eventually this is the big project. This is how he can outdo his father. There's the story about the younger Alexander, hearing news of Philip's latest victory, looking depressed and his friends ask him and saying,

because he's leaving me so little to do. This is the one big thing that Philip had only done. just started and hasn't done, the challenge of facing Persia, the superpower of the world then and beating them. So this is the great event, the great adventure. And at the time, so this is Spring 334 BC when it all begins. And that's the beginning of the campaigning season, isn't it? So winter finishes and March or April time, that's normally when the army start rolling into action again. Yes, although Philip has broken the rules in recent years by organizing a supply train for his army and keeping some of the mercenaries being paid, some of them Macedonians that will be willing

to serve throughout. So even though he campaigns with fewer soldiers in winter, he has kept on fighting all the year around, which means it's very hard to face him. People think they'll get a bit of rest, relief. Phillips up their throats all the time, and particularly when he's blockaded or besieged towns, he can keep that up throughout the year. And that's been fairly rare beforehand. But it's still much, much easier to keep an army in the field going when the grass is there and you can graze your not so much cavalry horses that matters. It's all the transport animals you need to pull the baggage train. This also feels the time where we now have quite a rich amount of sources surviving

or at least like for the military details. I'm sure I've got here a trusty copy of Ariens and Abbasis, which actually I was gifted to be by one of my best friends when I was 18 years old of all things. So this has been by my side for a long, long time. But so obviously we can't take everything here as completely accurate. But we do get a nice sense throughout Alexander's campaigns, don't we? The nature of his army, maybe a rough idea of army size, if you divide it by 10 sometimes or something like that. But you do get those military details in the surviving sources from now on.

We do. I mean, Aryan was himself a military man. He's Greek by heritage, Greek from Asia Minor. but he's also a Roman senator, governs the province of Capodosia, which is in eastern Turkey, under the Emperor Hadrian. Commands an army wrote about that. So he understood military theory, he understood military practice. At one fascinating point where he's talking about Alexander bridging a major river,

and he says, I don't know how they did this, but this is how the army does it now. And curiously enough, that's the only detailed record we have of the army in the second century AD, the Romans, of how they did it. So he's throwing this in. So there is, he is a knowledgeable sober man relying particularly on Ptolemy, one of Alexander's generals who wrote his own account in the immediate aftermath of Alexander's death. But obviously with the political agenda, this is the man who's founded his dynasty based around Egypt. So Arian gives you loads of detail. It's quite sober. It seems quite precise. It's sometimes frustrating about the numbers that he doesn't always tell you. He just

assumes you know and assumes some practices. So he'll mention that there was a daily order of March for the army and the units of the phalanx seem to have changed over and taken their turn in front, presumably in front, you don't get so much dust in your face. But again, it's a throwaway line. You just mentions this. So there's a lot. Sometimes you have to wonder whether he's actually thinking, well, this is how our army would do it today in the second century AD. Alexander was great, therefore he must have done it that way. But still, by age, as long as you're aware of that great distance in time separating when he's writing. Just because it's ancient doesn't mean it's actually close to the events.

But it does give you, for most of Alexander's campaigns, you can get a fairly clear idea of where he is, what he's doing, some sense of why. And even the battles, you have a clearer sense than you do of, say, Chirona or anything like that. And I must clarify also, he is good with the army sizes of Alexander's army, not so much with the Persians, but we'll get to that in time, won't we? So when he invades, when he crosses the head of spond, Adrian, do we have a rough idea? I always think in my mind it's around 40,000 troops he has, largely infantry, I guess that's about right. It's somewhere between 30,000 and

50,000, so 40,000's probably a good rule of thumb. Half of it at most is Macedonian. Then you have, you have the units of the Pike phalanx that are, and this is the core, the Macedonians, with the sort of Honorary Macedonians, the Thessalian cavalry, who always the Macedonian cavalry tend to be on the right, the Salian cavalry, doing the same thing in similar numbers on the left. You get some other favoured contingents, Illyrians, pionians, people like this, who've been part of Phillips' army for a decade, sometimes two decades. These contingents where they're very much part of the team, everybody knows what they're doing. But you're also adding in then people who've come from all the Greek allies, this great league that Alexander's formed. So it's a little bit hard to be precise

about the total numbers, particularly as we're not quite sure whether you're including some of the troops that are already in Asia Minor and not there. And of course, the tendency in all periods of history, particularly in the ancient world, is your source knows that a unit is supposed to be of a certain size, 200 men, perhaps 300 men, depending on which sort of companion cavalry it is, and then assumes that they are always at full strength and everybody's present all the time, which as the campaign goes on, it's less and less likely. But broadly speaking, it's not a vast army. The tradition of Herodotus is that Xerxes invades Europe with a million men,

and even the sober modern reconstructions put it at 100,000 maybe more. This is not an army on that scale, but it's still a very big army. This is the same sort of size as the biggest Greek army that's ever happened. happened before, which is the Battle of Guitary when they face Xerxes. And it's got more cavalry, although not as higher proportion as you'll get in Persian and other Eastern armies. I mean, quite a fact, for the time, it is a pretty diverse army, as you say as well. You know, the pike phalanx heavy infantry, the hoplites of the Greeks, the light infantry of like the Agrianians, a particular tribe, Thracian tribe, I believe. And then, you know, you've got the

cavalry contingent as well. So they're very different, lots of these different elements to Alexander's army, which all have their own qualities and will help. Alexander in time. So that's what he crosses into Asia with. There's that famous story of him throwing his spear into, well, in the beach in northwest Anatolia and then saying, I'm claiming this as my spear one land. So kind of hearkening to the future of him conquering the whole of the Persian Empire. And I guess it's quite fitting that his first place of visit whilst the Persians are starting to react is Troy. It's certainly fitting for him. It clearly is a big deal to him and it might be partly, you know, the tourist in all of us, you can't go past somewhere like

that, with something you've been, they've been reading the Iliad or hearing it since you were tiny, and your ancestor, Achilles is the great hero, so you can't, you can't not go there. So it is a big, and that's become almost a stereotype of Greeks fighting Asians, Persians, in the later tradition, though, of course, you know, Ciduce himself points out, Homer doesn't call the Greeks Greeks, Greeks. They're Achaeans and there are all these other names, but it's not. So it's a bit of tourism. It's a bit of theatre. And it's a bit of, though, you know, again, his ambitions are clearly much broader than this. But it's, and you have the idea of them acting like the heroes, and running around Alexander, his friends. You have as well,

there are a group of Macedonian aristocrats of a similar, age to Alexander, who are with the army, who are friends of his, people he's perhaps grown up with, perhaps been educated with, perhaps not. They are not yet holding senior command positions within the army. Everybody else are Philip's men. In the case of Parmenio, you know, they're old enough, they surf before Philip. They've served his brothers and other kings. They are real veterans, middle-aged and older men. And there's even that tradition that only comes to us through Roman source that Alexander deliberately chose for his army, not young men, but the mature. And that this is quite by modern standards a fairly elderly army. It's men who are in their

30s of war, really tough, because if they've lasted that long, they're hard as nails. But with this very young king and prince. So this is spectacular, and it's for that audience of your friends, and it's for posterity that he's clearly interested in of his own satisfaction. but whether it impresses the rest of the army who cross elsewhere and don't go. He's been devoted other people are dealing with the main logistics of getting the army over the Darden House at this point. Which of course must have been another big feat, you know, getting 40,000 troops and then beasts and then all the servants and the siege machinery, because this is another big part of Alexander's army. He has got up-to-date siege machinery because his dad, Philips, been very big on getting tors and catapults and all of that. That's modern stuff for them.

I would do a quick shout out on the subordinates, because, yes, the majority are Phillips men and the majority of people we link with Alexander like Ptolemy, Lycemicus and so on come later. There are a few though still from the beginning. Perticus I always find fascinating because he actually runs a contingent from Thebes, from before Alexander crosses. So you do get a couple about Alexander's age, Perticus. I don't know Crashis is slightly older or not, but they're getting sort of regimental commands. They might command a phalanx unit. They might command a squadron of the companions. they don't tend to get the big independent or wing commands.

They're sort of, they're like battalion command, regimental, that level. And again, you know, we think of them as the younger generation, but are they the same age of Alexander, five, ten years older? And of course, they've got all these connections with the older generation because it's the same families that are coming through. But it's still, at this point, overwhelmingly Philip's army. It's not long before they're tested for the first time, isn't it? And given that the Persian Empire is still the superpower, and their king, Darias the Third, who we will meet in time, is hundreds of miles to the east in Babylon or Sousa or Persepolis or wherever.

So the task, first of all, you've got this young, arrogant, ambitious king who's invaded the western fringes of the Persian Empire. It's not down to the king to deal with that. He gives it to the people in the region. It's their job to just get rid of this, well, just looks like a menace at this time. it's the only practical way that the Persian Empire is very large, very strong but it can't draw on that power

quickly. So a problem like this is something that if the king wants to muster an army from all over his empire, it's going to take a year or two to do that. You can't just do it in months and then march it a long way. It's like the old story of when the Spartans are asked to intervene help the

Ionian rebels and they ask, well, how far away is Sepulis from the sea? And at three months, oh yeah, we're not doing that. Sorry, God, if you can forget. Again, it is vast. It is huge. It is very wealthy. So it's got the organization. It's got the administration. It's got the manpower. But it can't mobilize that quickly. So Darias doesn't have, unless he happened to be in Asia Minor, there is no way that he's going to meet Alexander in that first year and no expectation. This is the sort of problem your sat traps can deal with. Remember recent history.

Philip sent an advance guard. They've pushed forward. Quite a few local cities have defected to them or been conquered. But in the... the sort of the lull when Philip's dead and Alexander's busy in Europe, they've been pushed back to a tiny enclave. So it already looks like this is a bit of a damp squib. You think back to King Agis of Sparta, others who've campaigned in 4th century BC, a lot in Asia Minor. They've done a bit, they've sacked a few cities, they've kicked her, you know, kicked down a few doors, made a nuisance of themselves, but they've never required a big royal army to deal with. Oh, for goodness sake, the Greeks are back again. Yeah. Oh, they'll be awful.

And they go again. So there's no particular reason to think this is going to be that different. But your satraps take it seriously. The problem is that they are, as Persian great king, you don't want your satraps to get too organized because one of the other truths of history is that the ones on the fringes tend to rebel fairly often. So you don't appoint one as sole authority and say he can tell everybody. So you've got basically a committee in charge, which is always a bit difficult, particularly when you need snap decisions in a military situation. But you basically get the troops they have in their household, what they can raise locally,

and it's still pretty impressive. You've got 10, perhaps even 20,000 cavalry. You've got 20,000 or so infantry, a significant part of them Greek mercenaries fighting as hoplives. Again, comes back to the problem you talked about before. We get a terrific breakdown of Alexander's army, and particularly the Macedonian bits of it. we don't get the same for the Persians.

The sources are vague, some of the numbers are wildly inflated. The emphasis here in the diversity, the number of different ethnic groups within the cavalry is emphasized, but it's a strongly cavalry force. Alexander, by Greek standards, has got a lot of horsemen. By Persian standards, this is nothing. But traditionally, the Greeks have had much, much better infantry than the Persians. Now the Persians have hired their own Greeks, so that's their... The pick of their army on foot at least as far as our Greek-based sources are telling us,

in that there's always, oh yeah, our chaps are the ones you've got to worry about. I think you've highlighted two really important points. First off, though I just want to extend on a little before we delve into this battle. The first is the fact that there are many Greeks who are fighting on the Persian side, and you'll see this throughout because not all Greeks are happy now that the Macedonians have become supreme, taken over their city-state. Seen what they've done to the Thebans, for instance, and not happy. So you will see that again and again Greeks going and fighting on the Persian side.

This is the first case of it. Secondly, this whole idea of the satraps of these governors in the region. And as you highlighted there, you need to picture, let's say, let's imagine Anatolia, like most of Turkey today, ancient Asia Minor. Think of it divided up almost as a pizza, but not in kind of, not in like equal slices like geographic size. So you've got ancient regions like Lydia, Caria, Ionia, Phrya. Ionia, Phrygia, Cappadocia further east, Hellespontine Phrygia near the Hellespon. Each of those regions is an administrative area ruled by a different satrap. And it's like, as you say, then it's all of them coming together with their own household troops

to create this first army to oppose Alexander. So you're not going to get troops from further than, let's say, modern-day Syria, are you in the fighting? Maybe a couple of exceptions. I don't know. But I just want to mention those two points as well, because it's really interesting to highlight that in that. That is what you need to get in your mind straight away with what Alexander is facing. It's these groups and also Greeks who do not like Alexander. Or who are simply professionals.

They're serving for pay. The other thing, as soon as you learn anything about the Greek city states, you learn about the instability, the stasis, the revolutions that occur everywhere. And very frequently, there are always losers in these, whether it's an aristocracy, that takes over or gets their rivals get thrown out, whether it turns into a democracy, whether it becomes a tyranny. There are always losers who go elsewhere. And the best thing, the easiest thing for many of them to do is to sell their spear. And there's been a long tradition of mercenary service that goes back, almost into the Greek dark ages. And that that period, and there's even the idea that some of the origins of hoplites and phalanx fighting may have

come from organized groups of Greek mercenaries who say, oh, this was a good way of doing it, and bring at home with them. Work out, this is how you work as a group. So there's always been that element. And think back to Xerxes and Darius, you know, the earlier invasions, they come with Greek exiles. So there's always these people around. But yes, it's certainly been magnified by Philip as well, not just Alexander, but Philip and his campaigns. There will be more losers out there. So that tradition is there. And it's not considered dishonorable. Alexander tries, you know, he's trying to make this into a, all the Greeks coming together under my leadership, fighting this, but that's, the Greeks, there isn't Greece. There are, you are an Athenian,

you're Athenban, you are from, you know, Bethune, any of these cities. So it's, again, it's not up to him to say he's in charge and you've got to follow him. So let's get to the Basso the River Granicus. It's interesting one, the details of this. And we'll see it again and again, we get the deployment of Alexander's army. He approaches this very small river, so not a big obstacle. They can get troops across, and it's not going to be, there's no massive current. And then that Persian army, lots of cavalry and the Greek mercenaries are opposing it. And then when we get to the battle itself, there's a funny anecdote and one of many that will follow of Alexander versus Parmenion, isn't it? Parmenion urging caution. Alexander deciding,

no, screw this. We're going to attack straight away. And then it all focuses in on Alexander, doesn't it? Like the narrative follows Alexander as we go through the battle. You get deployment, initial moves, and then the camera pans in and it's all Alexander, particularly in this case, where you get great detail about the blows he strikes, the ones he suffers. So it's, which, in a sense, you could say that's what happens in Homer's battles. You know, you have the sort of the broad sweep and you talk about all these numbers and then suddenly it's named heroes doing their thing. So there's an element of that. The other thing is Alexander's perception of a battle is going to be like that. It goes back to something we talked about a bit in the first episode.

Alexander trusts his subordinate commanders in the rest of the army to do their thing. He doesn't have to supervise. He's not the battlefield manager, the sort of Julius Caesar, Duke of Wellington type, galloping around from here and everywhere, right, you do this now, I need to bring you up to support here. It's basically, I've set you up. This is, we're going to go that way, and then I'm going to go on Busephalus, probably at the head of the companion cavalry, and I'm going to steamstroke, I'm going to fight at your head and show that I'm as brave as the rest of you

and expect you to live up to me as I will live up to your expectations. Once you're doing that, you really are going to be focusing on the people coming through the dust trying to kill you. And he has no sense at all of what's happening in the wider battle and no way of influencing it,

even if he did know what was happening. So it's integral to his style of command. So in a sense, Alexander's experience of the battle, which is what the sources tend to focus on, would actually be this progression from the sort of a big plan, the big scope where the enemy are, my initial order to attack, and then it's just me and what's going on around me. The idea we get in regards

to the larger battle, and then this is basically it, we can focus in on the stories of Alexander is that, I think like cavalry go across first and they're actually annihilated by the Persian, so the Persian's going to get in first blood, then Alexander, who's on the right wing with his companions, he charges across the river. He is actually fighting where all of their governors are on the Persian side. So you can get sense why he's aiming for that area and that will be something that repeats. Or are they aiming for him? Because this is this very fancy looking guy and you know this is a young king. You probably know there's no air. But anyway, you kill the king of Macedon and A, you'll be famous. The great king in Persians are going to be rewarding you, but also

that's it, war one. So all the big figures on that area and then I guess you can just imagine in the meantime the Piedman, the infantry in the middle are going across the river against the Greek against whoever's fight on the Persian side in the middle and then Parmenians on the left with the Thessalians or whatever and he's doing that. We don't hear much about that at all. What we hear about is what Alexander's doing on the right. And as you correctly say, if they know that Alexander's there and they've positioned themselves with properly their best household troops to face him, we do hear some amazing stories, don't we? Yes. I mean, one thing just to throw in quickly, in any form of common sense or military sense,

you don't put cavalry to defend a riverbank, and you don't make cavalry static. So the Persians are wrong-footed. I can't help wondering if they expected Alexander to wait a bit and follow Permanesvon, maybe attack tomorrow. Because you don't normally, even a little river like that, it's a bit of an obstacle, a problem, but cavalry, their strength is their mobility.

You put them all standing on the bank of a river, and the strength will be with the horse. Horses love to climb. so you're coming up out of this, that's going to push them aside much quicker. You don't stand there and barge people. So they've got it wrong from that point of view. They all seem to be clubbed in one place.

They all charge in Alexander. And then you have Alexander steaming forward, running through a man with his ice and his spear, breaks that, calls for another one. One of his friends says, look, I'm sorry, I'm really busy at the moment. I can't spare it to you. Somebody else, interestingly enough, the same man who is supposed to,

have brokered the deal to get Alexander back from exile, self-imposed exile, when he's gone off in a strop after Phillips, the argument of Philip's wedding feast, is there who gives Alexander a spear by this time. So you have him fighting. He then, as soon as he's got that, steams off again at another batch of Persians who look distinguished. While he's fighting there, somebody comes up around him. He's killed a wounded one man. The man's brother comes around behind and is ready to chop down with either an axe or a falchrome or some sort of heavy blow, slices off one of the side plumes of Alexander's helmet, perhaps depending on the version,

knocks him off his horse, maybe knocks him unconscious. He's saved from being killed by Black Clitus, one of the, again, one of Phillips' members who's been set beside his sister was Alexander's nurse at one point, he is quicker off the mark and chops off the Persian sat-trap's arm, the Turkish arm, before he can strike that fatal blow. But had that worked, Alexander could have been dead or crippled in this first battle. And it comes back to that point, if that happens, isn't the war over?

Because there's no obvious successor. Certainly no one who's going to be sufficiently secure to think, I can be fighting in Asia for months, years and not worry about what's happening back in Massachusetts. And Alexander's so distinguishable as well with his big plume, I guess, that people can recognize him straight away. So he is a walking target. Yes, but that's the point. His own men can see him, so can the enemy.

And it's basically saying, you know, it's a bit like the First World War, the Baron von Richthoff and painting his aircraft red. You know who I am. You can find me. Try it if you want to, but I'm better than you. And, you know, medieval knights, samurai, all this emphasis on advertising yourself. I mean, there's a nice story where Pyrrhus later on, who's been acting like Alexander, changes clothes with one of his supporters,

who then gets mugs by this Italian Catholic woman who's been chasing him. You can never imagine that. Alexander doing, Alexander would never pretend to be anybody else. I've got to be, because again, he's trying to assert himself, not just, you know, you've thrown the spear into Asia, I'm claiming Asia, I'm claiming all of the Persian Empire by conquest, you've got to prove to the Persians that I'm going to win. I'm not friend of anything. Gods are on my side. Might is on that, everything is on my side. You're also to the Macedonians, your companions proving that you follow me, I really am your king. I'm the best sort of Macedonian king. I will do everything you

expect of me and more, and I'm not afraid of anything. And it probably helps that he's, you know, he's only 21. It's a lot easier. There's all sorts still going on in your head in your sort of late teens, early 20s, lots of testosterone flooding around, and you don't believe it can happen to you. Perhaps later in his campaigns, Alexander starts to think that maybe it can, but at this stage, he is absolutely convinced he's going to be all right. He thinks he's destined for big, big things, and it proves so. And I think just wrapping up Granicus, it very much feels that the top dogs in the Persian army, many of them fall on the field. And the army kind of disperses from there. They chase them away from the riverbank. The whole army gets across. They're

not too many casualties on the Macedonian side, at least according to Aryan and the like. And then you get this other story, which I'll mention briefly. And it kind of goes back to this idea of, you know, Alexander attacking straight away, catching the Persians off foot. In the fact that quite a lot of several thousand Greek infantrymen, the mercenaries, had not formed up yet on the Persian side. And so the Greeks kind of get there and then they realize that the Macedonians are across and they've already won the battle. And then Alexander has the choice of either, you know, kind of letting them, you know, kind of capturing them or reaching a deal with them or slaughtering them. And he says he sends a message and then he just kind of surrounds them. And he kills quite a few

thousand of them and enslaves the rest, sending like a clear message to the Greek mercenaries, to the Greeks who have decided to defy him and join the Persians. It fits in with this. his story as he's telling it, I am leading the combined armies of all the Greeks coming to seek revenge, therefore if you're a Greek, you can't be on the other side. It's a message to them. I mean, you've got the difficulty from the mercenaries point of view. If they surrender at the drop of a hat, then they're not going to get the next job, aren't they? And even Alexander might think, can I trust these people. So it's a bit tough for them. But Alexander, by this time, he's changed horses because he gets a second man, it's not Busephalus, is killed under him. So the fight

thing here is quite hard. Again, these men do not die easily once they realize, but nevertheless, it's a very clear message, do not oppose me. You need to be my friend and you need to back me, both to other Greek mercenaries, but more generally, you can't catch most of the Persian cavalry that have run away. Partly another reason is because all the Persian commanders seem to have concentrated in one spot, so there's nobody left to try and control the rest. So you end up with a stampede away, or people thinking, well, I'm not, what's the point?

there's nobody watching what I'm doing. I might as well get out of here. If Alexander wants to inflict a lot of casualties on the enemy, the only people he could do it against are these Greek mercenaries. And Philip has emphasized in his campaigns the pursuit. Something that's been quite rare in Greek warfare up until that point is that you beat the enemy, then you chase them down with your cavalry, with your infantry,

and kill as many as you can, so you don't have to fight them next month or next year, and so they're frightened of you. Alexander can only really do that with the infantry at Granicus, because he doesn't have the capacity to catch the rest. I mention it quickly, but I also think it's the proximity of the River Granicus to Greece is probably also something in his mind, because you will see later, as we'll get to later. His attitude to defeated Greek mercenaries does change on occasions, puts them in a faraway place like Afghanistan as garrison troops.

Why? Because that's really far away from where they could potentially cause trouble back in Greece. if you lets them go or whatever, you know, if they're still alive in the Granicus in Anatolia, what's to stop them, as we know in the future, going to the south of the Peloponnese, creating a mercenary camp and then offering their services to Persians or anti-Macedonian figures who gain prominence there in the future. So I feel that's probably another reasoning. And to anybody who's got the money, and let's face it, who's got the money, it's Persian. Alexander hasn't yet, because he's spent it all largely to fund this. expedition. He and Philip, they're investing in this, but he hasn't got lots of cash.

I mean, there is that other thing, isn't it? That, you know, with Alexander, when he invades, he doesn't have the biggest resources in the world. And you get that fascinating story of this figure Memlon of Rhodes, who I think he's still in the picture after Granicus. But he's always like a foil to the barbarian Persian satraps, though, so you need to kind of take of a pinch of salt because he's a Greek. But him almost advising what seems in hindsight the better strategy of them not engaging Alexander and just kind of burning the fields, stopping him getting any resources whatsoever, and so he ultimately has to retreat. Now, it seems like a good idea, until you realize that the satraps, you know, this is their land. So you can actually see why they would want to engage and not

do something so destructive. But yeah. Exactly. It's fine when it's other people's property. And the point of view from the cities, Alexander's basically not most of his supplies to get where he is. He is going to need local cities to give him food, particularly. when the campaigning season ends it comes into the winter to survive over that. So he needs communities to join him, which means he's got to frighten them but also persuade them it's worth their while.

So if your great king is telling you we'll burn everything and you'll make it somehow through the winter we don't worry about it too much, then you might think, well, we're better off with Alexander and once he's won that battle. So again, there is some strategic sense in this

and again, we know it's Alexander and you don't want to fight Alexander, But the logic is actually protect their lands, meet the Macedonians early on and beat them. But with Memnon saying, again, he gets credit because he's a Greek. He's a Greek in the Persian camp. And he tends to get a good press. It's a little bit like with Napoleon's Marshals, Marshall MacDonald, because of the Scottish ancestry. He tends in Anglophone sources to get quite a good write-up rather more than perhaps is deserved, just because we like it's one of ours.

And there is that sort of intrinsic sense that, oh, yeah, we're best at everything. It would make sense, but it's a very difficult thing to impose on anybody, to get them to destroy their own cross. Because you will suffer as the local community. And again, this is something you're going to have to be making your decisions on the spot. You can't consult with the Great King. It takes too long. So they begin to do it after Granicus, largely because they haven't got a field army anymore. So they can't oppose him in the field

So it comes down to let's hold as many strongholds As many cities as we can And let's try and decry from the food But the fact that he's won Has given a boost It's meant that cities are thinking actually Yeah, let's join in And this is what defines the next part, isn't it?

So from Granicus, if you think Let's say near Troy It's like Hisalic, so northwest Anatolia What he does is he follows the Eegean Sea coast down Those which are the Greek cities In Persian occupation at the time And takes them one by one goes all the way down, also goes in Landis Sardis, obviously the capital of the famous semi-mythologised

King Cretus and the like, so another rich area. Ephesus, the story of linking to the Temple of Artemis, of course, you know, with the legend of his birth on the day that that temple was destroyed, so he offers to help rebuild the temple. And there is resistance all the way Miletus, there are like little garrisons, and they try to hold out, but Alexander ultimately does beat them, and you see little contingents going out here and everywhere, trying to get other cities to his side. So much so that you get to place like Haliccanassas, which is now the scene as this is one of the first big notable sieges that he faces.

You've got Memnon of Rhodes there on the opposition. And Haliccanassas, which we mentioned in the last chat, as the home of that guy who was considering to defect to Philip. I don't think he's there at the moment, Pixodaris. But you get that siege, don't you, which is another kind of big step a few months after Granicus, after Alexander's done more conquest down the seaboard. It's again the contrast between Alexander's army and the earlier Greek armies that have come. Alexander's army created by Philip being honed by Alexander himself has that siege capacity. You talked about the catapults, the engineers.

It's not just the technology. It's the men who know how to use it. The ability to organize and to keep fighting. So yes, you win the battle. That's great. But if the cities then just close their gates and you can't get any of them, you're going to starve in the long run anyway. And also, you're not holding any ground. But Philip's war in the way Alexander continues it, you just keep fighting.

You always attack something and you turn up. And if a city comes over to you, great. If it doesn't, you capture it. I think you possibly can. So the next one you come to then has that to bear in mind when it makes its decision. When you turn up outside its gates and say, let me in and also give me this much wheat, this much barley, these clothes for my men, whatever I need. So it breaks down into lots of less famous. All our attention is drawn to the Granicus.

And that's important. Alexander could have lost the battle and his life. lost the war, rather, at the Granicus. But he wins the war, not just by winning that battle, but by taking all of these great places and small places, and by taking the time when he comes to someone like Haliccanus, and having an army with the skill to mount a proper siege that pushes towards an assault.

It isn't just, I'm going to blockade you when I wait for you to starve, because that can take months, years. It takes how many years for the Athenians take Potidaeer at the start of the Peloponnesian War, three or four years, Alexander's not doing that. Even a big place like Haliconassas will fall to him. And that then is something that everybody's got to bear in mind. So it's a mixture of sometimes where there are Persian garrisons,

often of mercenary troops, but that will fight, or the locals trying to make that calculation, what's best for me short term, but particularly long term. How do I come through this, still in power, still prosperous? But it's that's how the war, is one. And this is what makes the Macedonian. It marks the matter as new. There hasn't been anything like this, an army that's really good at battles, but really good at sieges, and just doesn't stop. It keeps on going. And it keeps on going. So he takes that western sea board of

Anatolia. The Persian fleet is mega-powerful and still there and thereabouts. And Memnon of Rhodes is still there and thereabouts. So actually, they go into the Aegean for a bit and start causing chaos. And Alexander realizes that his own fleet's not up to that. So he decides, well, I'm going to focus on the land war and take away the ports of the Phoenicians and the Cypriots and so one, who are the best sailors for the Persian fleet. So he has to kind of, although he takes those cities, he has to kind of leave that fleet and let it be a menace whilst he keeps going eastwards. The thing with fleets is they're incredibly expensive. These are warships that are galleys rowed by very large crews for their side. All those crews need to be paid, fed,

or when they're not doing anything. Alexander doesn't have the money to match the Persians. And it's not a Persian fleet. It's a fleet of all the Persian subjects and allies that live along the coast. The Persians are landlubbers. They're landlocked in the middle of there. They don't do this. So it's a combination of A, Alexander decides, well, I'll have to do more damage

and capture more here than they can do in the Aegean in the meantime, until I've taken their cities, which A, deprives from their bases, but often it's the home port. It's where the contingents in the fleet have come from. So once you've captured their homeland, they're going to change sides as well, as several do. It's incredibly bold. It's probably the only thing realistically that could have worked because he couldn't. And the other thing is the strengths of his army would not be so useful if he fought at sea.

I mean, there's a little bit of fighting in some of the sieges around the harbors. But Alexander himself is not an experienced sailor. You can't charge on horseback on a galley, you know, any of these things. So a lot of what you're good at, you lose and you're a lot of. buying more on allies like the Athenians who are always too big for their boots and you don't want them to get too obsessed with where we're really winning this war. So lots of things come together, but it is risky. But again, the whole expedition is risky. Again, we know it's going to succeed, but it's a logical thing to do within that. And it gradually succeeds, but it

takes a long time. After this, I say, Arsvada-Kanasis, he starts heading eastwards. And by this time, taking control of the old administrative centres of the Persians and either put putting in Macedonians, loyal to him, if the people in charge have switched over. I think he's already leaving it in charge of that local, kind of leaving the administration in place. Or to allies, the famous story with Haliccanassus is that there's almost this mother-like figure of Alexander, Queen Ada, who I think there's one that she cooks in biscuits or cakes and sends them to him when he's on campaign later.

And he reinstates her as queen. So he puts allies in charge of these places he takes over from the beginning. And then he heads eastwards. I always kind of picture it almost like a horseshoe shape because he doesn't then go into the difficult highland areas, which are, as we'll see time and time again elsewhere, they're home to what they think are more backward people, but they're warlike, their hillmen, their tribesmen, and they live in these kind of strongholds up in the mountains if you visit Termesas today. It's some beautiful, beautiful survivingham city high up.

And so he kind of avoids those hillmen, and he focuses in on like the Persian administrative centres, another one, Kelinae, which is just a bit inland. And then he reaches a place, which I guess it's not too far from Ankara today. Or is it that kind of area? Gordium, Gordium. Home of the, once again, we've done Cresus already. This is King Midas and the Midas touch. And this is the story where we get, the Gordian knot.

And it's, again, it's so famous, but it's only famous because of Alexander and what he does. Before this, nobody's talked about, oh, yeah, there's this terrific. puzzle and it was supposed to be the yoke on a wagon that was fastened with this very complex knot and only told in the context of Alexander going along and visiting it that if you were able to unravel this lot, untie it somehow or other, then you were destined for greatness to rule Asia, to do all these sort of thing. We don't know how much of this prophecy is really already there and how much, but there is clearly a sacred wagon within this combat that is of some significance and has stories associated with it and royal associations.

And then you get the two versions of Alexander coming up that when he's faced with it, either he works out that actually you can take the yoke out and then undo the knot, sort of that way, or you just grab your very sharp well-honed sword and slacking it open, which always sounds a very Alexander, but frankly, both of them, either the working out seeing, oh, there's another way of looking at this, I can't do it that way, or the, I can't be bothered with this, I'm just going to cut it through. Again, it's so famous. We talk about it to be used in press stories today,

you know, The Gordia, some insodial problem for politicians faced with. We only know about it because of Alexander. So that makes it hard to know if it really was such a big deal at the time or has turned into a big story because he goes to this and he decides to make it and gets his, he has with him all these historians and effectively it's press corps who are pitching his version of this expedition and writing it up. So you've had another point where the waves are supposed to bow down to him and all this stuff. There's an interesting story about the Roman Emperor Augustus that he realized how Alexander's policy in this way backfired because he had

such flattering historians talking about him that people said they don't believe anything. So that was why he went to the horaces and the virgils and the people like this who did their thing, but did it with great artistic merit rather than just boasting because it made Alexander ridiculous. He didn't need these boasts, given what he does, but he couldn't resist the making, he was obviously flattered by some of this stuff that was being churned out. And of course, with the advantage that people would be reading this so far away, they wouldn't really know, oh, was this really an Asian tradition that people believed in this? But he is also visiting, like, the prime cities all in that area, isn't he? Avoiding the Highlands, we mentioned earlier.

So he's done Sardis, Ephesus, Helicanassus, Kalinae, as mentioned, another important capital of the Persians in Anatolia, and now Gordium, you know, home of Midas. So he's kind of picking those places in his route to go, isn't it? It's also that's where the best land is. It's where the best stores of food are as a result. It's politically. It makes political diplomatic sense as well.

These are the communities you need to come over to you. They're the ones that have been persuaded to join the Persian Empire, but the Persian Empire works by allowing people to run their own affairs and just making it clear, you better be our friend because you don't want to be our enemy. Alexander's doing the same thing. None of these people have any particular feeling of loyalty to the Persians for any other reason, other than there are a dynasty that have done well.

If they can do well under Alexander, so it's a combination of it's the way the ground forces you to move, but it also makes sense. And it's then tied in with, we're talking about earlier, you want to deprive the Persian-run fleet of its bases and win the war at sea on land. it all comes together and makes sense for this to work. And Alexander, he doesn't stay there long. I mean, I do love, I think it's happened just before this. The only time that he allows some of his Macedonian troops to go back to Macedonia,

and I think they're just the newlyweds, aren't they? They've just been married. The young, so they're allowed to go back to Macedonia over the winter or something like that to spend time with their new wives. Yes. It's the idea to father children. To produce the next generation of soldiers, then you can come back and risk your life. And they do.

And they do, isn't it? They have that little time off and then they come back, knowing many of them will never ever see Macedonia again. Well, they probably, I mean, that's... Or maybe not knowing that. They don't know that.

They think, because the way Phillips wars have been fought as you go off, you fight for a lot of the year, but you always come home. And it's been practical because it's never been that far. This is the last time, really, that's practical. And from then on, but they don't know. I mean, it's why they get so fed up in India

that they haven't been allowed to be... Sorry, it is. Yeah, I should have said that better. like not realizing that for many of them, it's the last time they'll ever be back home for a period of time. So from Gordium, it's now 333 BC. So he's been campaigning for a year. He's done quite a lot.

He's taken a lot of the Persian Western territories in the Mediterranean. But continuing that thing of taking the port. So his next stop is going towards, what is one day, Syria, southeast Turkey today, and Talia, I guess. Yes, yeah, basically. And it's, again, it is the easiest way to go. particularly for an army you want to feed, but you've kept busy. There have been very few long rest periods in this time, even if some of the army's been inactive,

the rest has been moot. So you're building up. But there's also one thing, one problem he's got all the way through is he's got to feed his army. And not just the men, but keep the animals, particularly the cavalry horses, fit enough to do their job. And you have, instead of the hot springs, you have Alexander getting ill, you have the, you can't stop in one place. He's got to keep moving. because even these communities, now they've come over to you as friends, you can't strip them

of everything they've got and let the people starve. You've got to take enough, but to leave enough for them as well. So there's an emphasis on you've got to keep moving and keep on progressing. And you're also waiting to see, because what's been going on in the background is that Darius has finally been getting the sort of the muscles of the empire moving, moving things over these vast distances, bringing together a big army, getting the funds, getting it. He's got, once he's done that, he's got to supply it. Now, he controls this big empire and administration. There's a way to do that, but it doesn't mean it's easy. So you have this big army has started to come towards you, but you don't have detailed intelligence.

There's no satellite images to tell you what somebody's doing, where they are. There is a sense, both armies are blundering around blind, but you know that somewhere out there eventually you can't just keep marching around the Persian Empire taking these cities and not expect them to, argue the great king is going to turn up at some point or his army is going to turn up at some point. But again, we know this is going on. Alexander is existing and this could happen at any time. But I can't stop. I've got to keep going because I can't sit down.

Hey, I've got to keep this momentum. I've got to convince people that wherever I come, I will win. So you might as well give in to me straight away, first, rather than last, avoid the suffering. But also at some point I'm going to meet something bigger than this. He knows that sooner or later to rise is going to be ready. And it's interesting, you mentioned. So that ancient region known as Cilicia or Cilicia, that's southeastern Turkey.

If you're picturing the Mediterranean, think of the eastern Mediterranean, west Cyprus is, north and east of that, in that top east corner of the Mediterranean. And that board area is Cilicia. It's famous for its fertile lands. But as you say, they can't stay there too long. That's also, as you mentioned, where Alexander falls ill for grief amount of time. And I think there's a story that Darius or someone tries to bribe the medic, the doctor to kill it. And he doesn't. Yeah.

So, for saying I'm... Alexander shows he'll trust him by drinking the draft that he's, you know, it's again, it's that mixture of, you get Alexander the Savage and Alexander the very kind, the very common, you know, I trust you, I know, it's, it's, it's, they're always both there. And Darius by this time, you know, he's gathered an army, he's come west, and he's a bit to the south in Syria. I think there's a story that he's actually prepared a big plane for his large army where

he wants Alexander to come and fight him, but... Alexander is delayed because he's ill, and he then starts marching south towards present-date Lebanon, but then Darias appears out of nowhere, doesn't he, behind him? It's a shock to everybody. He arrives, he suddenly finds that there's a depot almost, a hospital area where he finds Macedonia wounded and sick that are recovering, and he overruns that. But again, these are, you know, these are two boxes in a dark room. They don't have all the advantages of modern intelligence gathering. They don't know. with the other the enemy is. They hope that as you get closer you'll notice from reports,

from signs from the big plume of dust that the marching feet will throw up. But it's, the whole, you know, Issa is a battle that largely occurs by accident when Darias ends up behind Alexander's. Because he's fed up of waiting for Alexander. Yeah, well, he can't. Again, he can't stay in one place. No ancient army can. It becomes a nightmare to feed yourself. And also, this is something that, again, was a very good book on Marathon by Jim Lacey, where he points out, another thing with an army like this, what do you do with all the waste that everybody's producing? Because it's, they might not know why, but they're going to realize that if you live around a lot of animal and human manure, you're going to get sick. And it's not very pleasant

anyway. So you can't stay in one place. The other thing is, he doesn't know where Alexander is. So if he just waits for him, Alexander might be off to goodness knows where, hundreds of miles away, and you'll never catch him before the summer ends. So it's, it's a clumsy campaign. And then Alexander finds out from reports that the Persians are behind him, doesn't believe it at first, they have to go and check, they go and then thinks, okay, well, I better do something about it. So it turns around and marches towards Darius, who realizes he's there and takes up a sort of, again, he's chosen his ground. It's not quite the perfect spot he wanted earlier, but it's good enough.

It's behind this small river, the Isis, and it's basically another obstacle, as they've done it. Granicus, we'll wait here. You can come to us. and you've got to go through the difficult ground to fight us. To the Pinaris or River Isis, as you say, where he is. And it's so fascinating. You always have to look at a map to see the idea of how he kind of, once again, a horseshoet goes round Alexander to end up in Cilicia in that way, and Alexander coming back up the Syrian coastline to deal with Darias after Darias supposedly kills all his injured, wounded men.

And then you get the first big battle between Alexander and Dorias himself. And I know the ancient sources once again say Dariah. as a massive army, maybe over 100,000 men, it's between 50 and 100,000 is... Plausible. I mean, with any of those plausible figures, we can't prove it. It was probably bigger than Alexander's. You're always going to count the enemy twice. But it's a bit like when you see one of these big demonstrations through the centre of London

or Paris or wherever, and you get figures in the press, there were 300,000, a million. How do you know? The human mind, we can cope in, that's a lot. But the odds are that nobody sat down. down and counted everybody. Darius might have some idea, but it's probably going to be rough. He doesn't need to, as long as the various bits that are supplying them, have got enough for everybody.

It's an army that includes more of these Greek mercenary hoplites. It includes Persian troops that have been trained and equipped to fight in more of a close order style like that. Spear and shield. Yeah, basically, rather than the archery in which they've relied in the past. And lots of cavalry. This isn't particularly great cavalry country. So he tends to focus them, but most of the Persian ones are on the right near the sea, because again, he's to the north of Alexander. Alexander, fairly standard. Sort of you've got, the Thessalians are over on the left with Parmenio facing the Persian cavalry, keep them busy, basically Macedonian infantry, the heart of it in the centre, they go through. And again, we only know about this because it's described in a later source arguing about the details in somebody else.

And Polybius talks about how the Macedonians maneuver. They advance over this long plane, changing formation as the foot the plane widens. So that the phalanx begins, I think it's 32 ranks deep, goes to 16, goes to 8. Split it. Which gives you again an idea of just how there is space between these units. They aren't just the solid walls of men you tend to get imagined. And then the Macedonians attack, Alexander leads a charge. There is a nice theory that he probably leads this charge on foot with the,

the Paspids first to break open and then goes back, mounts up and leads the companion cavalry through the... Here Paspis, they're like the elite foot guards. Yes, they're the close, they're always between the main phalanx and the cavalry, and they're more prestigious, they're the ones that... There's all sorts of arguments about their particular equipment, which we don't need to worry about. Breaks through... There are some problems, there are some bits where the Persians do quite well, where the Macedonian formation breaks up, but basically they're better at this close in fighting. Alexander's leading them again. There's more fighting, and eventually the Persian army collapses and routes. And Darius runs, which, of course, Alexander presents as well,

I'm the king who fights with his men. This is the great king, so he calls himself, but he legs it and lets his men get killed. So it's a moral victory, but he isn't captured. The pursuit, though, pretty bloody, doesn't, you know, there's enough Persians get away. But this is the last time you'll see large numbers of Greek mercenary infantry. There'll be some later, but there's never as many anymore. This is the big one for the Greek... And it's also, it's a big one for the Persian attempts to fight with infantry altogether

because their own troops equipped in Greek style, with those attacks, they suffer badly as well and don't get away and they never really reappear. Next time they fight, it's going to be very much Persian cavalry, but it's all about. And it's a clear victory for Alexander. And bear in mind, this is late 333 BC. So it's less than two years after he's crossed the Hellespont, but he's won the first, the victory against the satraps, then all these sieges, and then, you know, actually defeating the King of Kings.

But it's still two years. We look at a nice chronological chart and we think, historical, oh, that's not very long. But two years of our life, that's quite a long time. Lots of things you've worried about, you've done, you've been very busy up until this point. But it's still, yes, you've beaten the King of Kings in a battle, but he's still got most of his empire. He's still got most of his money. He's still got most of his manpower. He still has the dignity of being the Achaemenid king of this dynasty that's been there for centuries,

the great conquerors, the great superpower. So every time Alexander wins, it's great, but he can't afford even one loss. He's always basically, he's got to prove himself every time. Darias can cope with the loss. It's not great, but he can cope with it. Babylon is still very far away at this stage. One other thing that I'll highlight here is, of course, you know, that flight of Darias at Isis is immortalised in the House of the Thorn at Pompeii, that flaw mosaic.

Or was up? No, it was a flaw, it was a flaw mosaic. because that's why the horse's bum looks really big if you look at it like a painting today. But the proportions were right if it was on the floor. And that is a beautiful mosaic, obviously, from Roman times, but it shows Alexander on the left with his companions. You see that the straight swords and the spears,

and then Darias and his chariotee. Darias looking scared, charity with the whip up, causing chaos in his own ranks and he's trying to flee. But I just love that. You know, you have the written sources, but then you have that mosaic surviving as well. Well, and it's the main coloured representation of Alexander, so all the theories about what colour his hair was and this sort of thing, that's what we've got to go on other than the descriptions.

And it's, you know, all this, he tends to be a peroxide blonde whenever Hollywood gets their hands on whether it's Richard Burton or Colin. An Irish accent, yes, exactly. But, you know, Burton before, there was a Welshman originally. So it's actually, he's shown there with sort of mid-colored hair. Now again, fading, and it's a copy of an original, earlier original. But it might be that Mediterranean, well, it wasn't really black hair. So it was light.

Shall we finish this episode? We've done really well in this doing Granicus and Isis and the early campaign of Alexander in Anatolia. The last great story attached to Isis, which is the immediate aftermath where Darius has fled east, but he's left his baggage behind, which isn't just baggage.

I've seen a rude way of talking about it. We're going to get into a talented film country now. Sorry, I spoiled you all. The baggage, which is not just objects. Right, okay, sorry, yeah. Take it away, Adrian. Go on, take it away. Well, you have the women of the Royal House.

Again, when the Great King goes on campaign, everybody comes with him. The whole court comes with him because the empire, the heart of the empire, is where the Great King is. And the same way he doesn't have a single capital, he's got several. When he goes off on campaign in tents,

just as Xerxes has done, this is now the heart of the empire. So Alexander captures his sister, his wife and his mum. and his mum, yeah. And treats them, you have, first of all, the great bit of story where they think Hephaeusian. Alexander's right is actually Alexander, because he's taller.

And then the, oh, it doesn't matter, you know, everyone's in Alexander in the army and this or the, but then he treats them. He doesn't abuse them, doesn't rape them, doesn't execute them, any of these things. He treats them as royalty. So it's putting himself on an equal with, and if anything, as a superior,

because I can deign to treat you well, but I'm treating you with respect because you were royal. Later on, Statera, one of them will, there's a story of her dying as a result of a miscarriage. So there's all the theories, you know, was he quite as honorable as the man? But the basic, the way the story is told, and the majority of sources show him is treating them with great respect, with dignity, not touching them, not harming them in any way,

protecting them from an army that's just one of Victorun is running riot. And doing all of this, and this will then become a great example to emulate of later commanders, Skippy Afrikanus, for instance, in the Punic War. And the great person who doesn't touch the Spanish-inberian princesses and nobility that he captures at New Carthage, but treats them as Alexander does with respect, doesn't touch them and this sort of thing. And you'll get it later on.

So it becomes one of the great Alexander moments that can be reborn in the medieval period in the chivalric way as showing this is the man who respects ladies and things. treats them properly. The chivalric Alexander and also, you know, another of those stories that links the closeness of Alexander with Hefeistian, you know, that companion, almost certainly lover as well, saying when they misidentify, they think Hefeistian's Alexander and Alexander going like, Hefeistian is just as much Alexander as I am. So it's an interesting one. But that is the aftermath of this, isn't it? We've only done a year and a half, but packed a lot into it. The next episode, we're going to explore the road to Babylon. And I'll always,

ultimately the road to Afghanistan, because this is another really fascinating period in Alexander's story, finishing with the Mediterranean and then going deep into the Middle East. That's the thing with Alexander. He does something spectacular and it's not the end. There's just more to come. It's why it's such a huge story. Just the beginning. Adrian, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show for episode two. Thanks for having it. That was episode two of our special series about Alexander the Great, with the one and only Dr Adrian Goldsworthy. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

In the next episode, we will be continuing the story. We'll explore how Alexander goes from southeastern Turkey today. He goes down the coastline of the Mediterranean, big sieges at places like Tyre and Gaza, his venture to Egypt and an oracle in the desert west of Egypt, Egypt, before finally him continuing eastwards and the great rematch between Alexander and the Persian King Darius III on the plains of Galgamela, the biggest battle of Alexander's career. That is all to come in episode three. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this

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