Alexander and the Persians

After the squabbles following the Persian Wars, Macedonia became the dominant force in Greece. Its young king, Alexander, led his armies on an epic march of conquest, crushing the Greeks’ traditional enemies, the Persians.

The Persian homeland was in what is now Iran. The Persians had come to rule an empire that stretched eastward to India and as far west as Turkey. Powerful Persian kings, such as Cyrus the Great, commanded huge and efficient armies. Darius I (521-486 BC) built fine roads for carrying messages quickly across the empire, which he reorganized into provinces called satrapies. From 499 BC, Persia turned against the Greeks, but in 480 BC its invasion fleet was defeated at the Battle of Salamis.

Power then swung towards Greece. In 338 BC, Macedonia’s warrior king Philip II gained control of all the Greek states by victory at Chaeronea. When Philip was murdered in 336 BC, his son Alexander became king, aged 20. It took Alexander just 13 years to conquer the largest empire in the ancient world, spreading Greek (and Persian) culture far and wide.

In 334 BC, Alexander led his army against the Persians. He wanted not only to conquer their lands, but also to replenish his royal treasuries. In 333 BC, he defeated the Persian king Darius III at the battle of Issus, and by 331 BC had conquered the whole of Persia and become its king. To strengthen the ties between the two peoples, Alexander included Persians in his government. He also wore Persian clothes and married a Persian princess, Roxane. He went to invade India, defeating King Porus at the battle of the river Hydaspes. It was to be his final expedition. His exhausted army refused to go on, and Alexander was forced to retreat to Babylon. He died there of a fever in 323 BC, aged 32. After his death, the empire was divided among his leading generals.