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The Reign of Alexander III of Macedon

This week, in part as a follow-on to our series on the contest between Hellenistic armies and Roman legions, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about Alexander III, who you almost certainly k…

Alexander is such a well-known figures that it has been, for centuries, the ‘doing thing’ to attribute all manner of profound sounding quotes, sayings and actions to him, functionally none of which are to be found in the ancient sources and most of which, as we’ll see, run quite directly counter to his actual character as a person. So he positions Parmenio for the standard left-flank holding action, but also now puts his extreme right in an oblique as well, partially refusing it and sets a second Greek phalanx behind his first (the Macedonian one) to cover any gaps and provide more resilience, all to buy him the time to deliver that Alexander Battle hammer blow. And here I want to come back to something Alexander did in those battles above, at moments of extreme heightened emotions, three times: having shattered the elite core of the Persian Army (the cavalry at Granicus and Darius’ guard at Issus and Gaugamela) and having them fleeing before them he does not pursue.

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