Alexander the Great | Lord of Asia

As friendships fracture and old alliances break, Tristan Hughes and Dr Adrian Goldsworthy chronicle the epic downfall of Alexander the Great. Alexander’s relentless campaigns from Bactria to Babylon push his empire, army and inner circle to breaking point, hear the battles, betrayals and decisions that hastened a legendary conqueror’s tragic end. MORE The Romans and India with William Dalrymple Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-romans-and-india-with-william-dalrymple/id1520403988?i=1000668187744 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RSacQ0ngYW2YjrE2UMeVF Successors of Alexander the Great Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/successors-of-alexander-the-great/id1520403988?i=1000709565712 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6uYXQErL0yRrA2UWU5rRKT Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The 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: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:44Tristan Hughes?

  329 B.C. The ancient land of Bactria, modern-day Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. An incredibly affluent area of the ancient Middle East. A real crossroads of Asia that connects east, west, north, and south. Home to verdant river valleys full of fertile lands, surrounded by towering mountain ranges full of precious minerals: gold, silver, not to mention the precious bluestone that Egyptian pharaohs, Indian elites, and Chinese emperors alike have all sought for millennia: Lapis lazuli. Bactria has a long and prestigious history.

• 1:28Tristan Hughes?

  Flowing through its heart was the mighty Oxus River, the Nile of Central Asia. Dozens of prosperous centuries-old cities line the river and its many tributaries. Their formidable walls are made of thick unbaked mud brick, towering several meters high. Their houses within are also made of this abundant mud brick material. These cities are home to large populations, sustained by the nearby nutrient-rich farmlands irrigated by the Oxus along both of its banks. No wonder Bactria became known as the land of a thousand cities.

• 2:10Tristan Hughes?

  The Oxus River has already witnessed many great armies crossing its waters. Now, a new formidable force reaches its banks, tens of thousands strong. Most of these soldiers are tired and veteran, serving thousands of kilometres away from their homelands. For years on end, they haven't seen their loved ones back home. Instead, they have followed their king into countless battles and sieges, fighting their way through great plains, overcoming coastal strongholds, and crushing fortified mountain defences. They have won numerous victories to conquer the ancient superpower of the time: the Persian Empire.

• 2:55Tristan Hughes?

  But their fight isn't over. King Alexander, their revered leader, wants to go even further. So now, they cross this mighty life-giving river, north, towards the lands of Saktia, modern Uzbekistan, and the great step that lies beyond. For now, these lands prove welcoming to Alexander and his men. The locals offer food, knowledge, and hospitality. They expect Alexander's army to move on pretty quickly, and indeed, this commander has every intention of moving on. Alexander's eyes are already fixed southeast, on India.

• 3:37Tristan Hughes?

  But before he leaves, Alexander wants to found a city, permanently leaving his mark on this north-eastern fringe of his new, expanding empire. Does he have any idea that his actions were about to upset the status quo and spark some of the most vicious fighting of his entire career?

• 4:02Tristan Hughes?

  Welcome to episode four, the final part of this series about the life and legend of Alexander the Great, one of history's most formidable commanders. Last week, we followed Alexander's journey from Syria to Afghanistan, his final great victory against the Persian king of kings, Darius III, and his takeover of the Persian Empire. But alongside this remarkable conquest, we started to see cracks emerging in Alexander's retinue, culminating in the executions of two high-ranking generals, Philotas and his father, the esteemed Parmenion. Today, we continue the story. In this episode, we will track the last few

• 4:45Tristan Hughes?

  years of Alexander's life, from the most intense battles of his entire career in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, to his campaigning in India against armies that included mighty elephants, to ultimately, his return to Babylon, and the early demise of this legendary conqueror. We're going to see how Alexander's condition deteriorated over these years, leading to his death aged just 32. Joining me in this episode, once again, is Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy, the author of Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host,

• 5:26Tristan Hughes?

  and this is the fourth and final episode, Alexander, Lord of Asia.

• 5:34Tristan Hughes?

  Adrian, welcome back.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me again.

• 5:38Tristan Hughes?

  For the fourth and final time, episode four of Alexander the Great. We've covered quite a lot already, so we've gone from 356 B.C., Alexander's birth, to now when he's entering Afghanistan, this is 33329, around that time. So he is 26, 27 at this time. What were you doing when you were 26, 27?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, having finished my thesis, I was starting to try and write another book, being a research fellow at university. But I wasn't conquering the world, I think. I'm far too lazy for that sort of thing.

• 6:14Tristan Hughes?

  And now he is in Afghanistan. He's just captured the regicide Bessus. And so it very much feels like by this time, he's Lord of Asia, and things are also looking quite good in Afghanistan, because he hasn't faced too much resistance here either.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  It's the basic problem, though, you can conquer all of this. But Philip had found this in, you know, for Alexander's father. He'd taken, he'd won lots of wars, people had submitted, they'd said, we'll be your ally with your subject. But very often you then face rebellions. You have to create a regime that works. You have to create, consolidate your power and set things up. Alexander hasn't really done that. He's just kept on going. And he's kept on going because the war has been there all the time. And there's been the threat of Darius. The Persian Empire is so big, recovering, coming back to hit you and lead you. And it comes back to that first thing, from the time when Alexander landed in Asia, he only needed to lose once and that would be it.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  In any sort of major encounter, he has to win and keep on winning and he has to keep on going. But you've absorbed all of this. Now, you have the advantage to some extent that this had been the Achaemenid Persian Empire for several centuries. So it's used to operating as a unit. There is an administration there. Very often you've tried to take over as much as you can. And you've also, particularly locally, so we talked last time about being in Babylon, and how you would expect the city and the areas around it to run their own affairs, to do their own thing. With often, local leaders stay in power or new men that their locals are appointed to take over. And the number of Greeks and Macedonians actually running things early on is very small.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  You've tried to basically say, I'm now the equivalent of the great king, whatever I call myself. I am now your ruler, I am your friend, I'm going to rule well, I will respect you, I will treat you well. You deal with the day to day stuff and, you know, I won't trouble you, but I will need a few things. I'll need some money, I'll need some food for my army, I'll need supplies, I'll need some troops, something. But you're not demanding too much. But it's very hard to make that sort of transition so quickly. You may have locked the head off the empire, but the Persians had their problems in controlling areas. They'd had problems on the western fringes, Egypt kept rebelling. Sometimes they sat trapped to the Asia Minor, coast of Asia Minor rebelled. In the east, in this area, Bactria, Sodiana, all these areas.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  This was a volatile population that the Persians. Generally speaking, kept within what they saw as their empire, but there were often rebellions. There were local disputes. It was hard to control. The people were fiercely independent, fiercely competitive with each other and willing at times to resist. So, so Alexander has done the dramatic stuff. You're now getting into the consolidation, the confirming the fact that you're in control. And you're dealing now with leaders and with communities who are not controlling big areas. So that you have to make sure every single one of them is convinced that they should be loyal to you.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  It's not like defeating Darius is hard, fighting a battle like Isus or Galgemela is hard. But when you've done it in a day, you've half conquered the Persian Empire. You've taken, you've done a major blow against the great king. Whereas if you've got some local warlord in a city in what these days would be Afghanistan, you fight him, you defeat him. His neighbour, five miles away, 10 miles away even closer, doesn't necessarily think, well, he's been beaten, therefore I should give in.

• 9:44Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  So you're dealing with a far more complicated environment and one you don't know at all. You've had some perception of the Persian Empire. You've had a lot more of what Egypt's like and particularly what Asia Minor's like. But this is now really alien.

• 10:00Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And apart from in a few places, you know, you're not the first Greek to get there. There have been a few others, but they are very few. And it's the part of Persia that is less familiar to you. So everything is a new challenge, a great struggle to develop. And it's, it's unsurprising that it proves complicated, that Alexander can't win so easily and so quickly as before.

• 10:20Tristan Hughes?

  Well, shall we mention first of all, that kind of bizarre Greek presence that they encounter when they get that far into, well, what is now Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. So Samarkand today, in the capital of Uzbekistan, there was actually a Samarkand in ancient times called Marakanda. So that's, there is a place called Samarkand there at the time, which is interesting. But as Alexander is marching through this area, you know, early on, post-Bessus, there doesn't seem to be big opposition to him. The, the local people are still in place. Maybe they're still thinking the army's just passing through. And as Alexander's trying to march to like the fringes of what was the Persian Empire in that area, they encounter this this Greek population in one of our sources, the Brankadi,

• 11:02Tristan Hughes?

  but this idea that they are Greeks who'd been relocated there centuries earlier from Myelitus, which is like on the Aegean coast. And this idea that Alexander sees this this Greek descendant population, then I think he kills them all or something like that. It's quite.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  I mean, the tradition isn't a clear one, and it's not in our most reliable sources. It's this perception. It's part of the weird and wonderful, you know, we mentioned last time, an encounter that some people claimed with an Amazon, Queen of the Amazons, that famously one of Alexander's commanders then later said, well, where was I when this happened? Because I don't remember that. I think I would have noticed that. So you're never quite sure how much is embellishment. On the other hand, the idea of transplanting most of a population, or sometimes just the elite of a city from one end of the empire to another, is something that the Persians and some of the other big powers that their predecessors have done, and will continue to be the case. The Persians in the third,

• 12:00Speaker 01

  fourth centuries AD are doing it with captured Roman populations. So the the idea is that Alexander comes to consider these people as traitors to Greece, and then massacres them for that reason. It's a sort of last flash, really, of this great war of revenge of the Greeks against the Persians, because by this time, it's very hard to maintain that that's what you're doing anymore, because the Persian Empire isn't there. And you've also, you've sent home your Greek troops, your allied troops, you then send home some of them, like the salient stay for a bit, then you send them home as well. And you've still got your Macedonian, you've got lots and lots of mercenaries, and you've got lots and lots of Asian troops now. So your army is numerically bigger than it's ever been,

• 12:42Speaker 01

  but it's changed fundamentally. You're no longer really there as the the leader of the League of Corinth that Philip had created, and get modern term, but that's the idea of this alliance of Greek states to come under Macedonian leadership and avenge themselves on the Persians for this ancient wrong done to them.

• 13:00Tristan Hughes?

  So let's get on to which seems to be the next big episode in Alexander's story. We mentioned in the last episode, one of the greatest legacies of Alexander is the founding of Alexandria in Egypt, still a city today. And then we get here when Alexander the Great is in ancient Sotia, roughly approaching, I think it's Tajikistan as well by this time in this area. And a river which is known in ancient times as the Jaxartes River. Modern day, it's a river called the Syradaria, or the Syradaria, which ends up in the Aral Sea, the Aral Sea. But there is seen as like kind of the, the, the end of what was the Persian Empire of Persian control.

• 13:43Tristan Hughes?

  And Alexander decides to found a new city here, a new Alexandria, which he calls Alexandria, quite fittingly, Alexandria the furthest.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:55Tristan Hughes?

  And it seems to have been near Monday Kojend, I mean, like the Fergana Valley. I won't go into many names because it's, it's not, you know, they're not well-known names in the Western Hemisphere.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  That's a too much precisely for them.

• 14:09Tristan Hughes?

  But what this seems to be is almost a trigger. Because from then on, at least to me, it seems that both the local populations, the Sodians, the Bactrians further south, and the Sidians or the Saka, the people who live north of the Jaxartes River, they now start realising that Alexander's not just passing through. He's here to establish this as part of his territory. It feels at least to me, Adrian, this is a big moment in the shift of opinion towards Alexander in this area.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And it's often the way with other empires, that when they first arrive, they're actually welcomed and they're seen as a protector against some other enemy. But it's that when they settle down, it's what do they want in turn for this? And then they go to stay, then you start to think, actually, no, I don't want that. And I didn't invite them, so let's change our mind. Then there may be some disruption to trade. It may just be the sense that someone is marking out farmland and saying, this is now mine, in areas where you've grazed your, your flocks. And it is that permanence. It's that I wouldn't. Mind you as a friend, I wouldn't mind occasionally if, you know, I'm in trouble, you come and send some troops and help me. But why are you here? You know, why are you on my doorstep? Why are you staying? So it is, it's a big deal and it's something the Persians hadn't done.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  There are colonies of Persian troops settled out here. They had tried to run their empire in a different way by, again, winning over the local aristocracy, controlling by a mixture of bribery and force. And Alexander's doing something different. And again, Alexandria, the furthest, it must have seemed a pretty bleak, distant place to the settlers. But those settlers would seem all the more weird and strange and alien and intruders to the local population, as well as the inevitable disruption of the power balance between the local nobility. And add in the, the sense that these people who are settling there

• 16:03Speaker 01

  are acting as the conquerors of the world, because they are the conquerors of the world as far as they're concerned. So they're not likely to be too respectful of your customs either.

• 16:11Tristan Hughes?

  Very much so. And it seems to all kind of go downhill there for Alexander, or at least, you know, chaos erupts again across the region. And I think he tries to summon lots of the local nobility for a meeting. And then they get worried that actually they're going to be killed off. So that seeds more mistrust. You get the emergence of this new kind of figurehead of man called Spiterminis, who becomes a thorn in Alexander's side. And it's not just the Sogdians, who are largely the people overseeing this revolt, the Sogdian revolt. You also get, I mentioned earlier, those people north of the river, the eastern Sidians, the Saka, these horse riders famous for their horse archery and so on.

• 16:49Tristan Hughes?

  It's much like the Sogdians and the Sidians, they become aligned in their resistance to Alexander and, and these tumultuous events that follow.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  It's the convenience factor. It's not that they're necessarily always going to be united. It's just that they feel they have a common, so it would be better for both of them if the Macedonians go away. So therefore let's combine to fight them. It, it doesn't need to be a permanent political revolution. Though obviously Spiterminis' leader wants something, he thinks he's building up permanent power. But he can rally them enough against a common enemy.

• 17:22Tristan Hughes?

  So what are some of the big events from the early stages of this revolt agent? I can remember there's a siege of Cyropolis with Alexander. So there's a town named after Cyrus that very quickly Alexander, when he realizes the local area, the cities are turning against him. He takes them one by one and then the Cyropolis is the big city that's resisting him. And it's quite a difficult one to take. So once again, we have another big kind of city siege that he has to deal with.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Which is something the Macedonians are good at. They've done before. In this case, they're going through the normal preparations. Alexander is supposed to spot this water course, basically, that goes underneath the, the fortifications that has dried up. So sneaks in ahead of some of his men, under cover of darkness. They open the gates, let more in. But remember, I mean, you can see this in some ancient city sites you go to in this part of the world. And it was all the more true in areas like this. There's not lots of wide open space when you're inside. What you've got are very narrow alleyways rather than streets. This is not built for wheel transport. This is built for a donkey with panniers on. It's that sort of width, lots of houses closed together.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  So although Macedonian troops getting in and inside the fortifications, the people don't think, oh, well, we've got to give up. This is their home after all. They keep fighting for it. So you end up with very brutal fighting inside. Alexander gets hit on the head with a rock of some sort, possibly just dropped or thrown from a roof. You know, that's the risk. You're in this very crowded urban environment and it's, it seems to concuss him quite badly. He passes out, can't see for a while. Again, in modern terms, you'd be quickly doing x-rays of the skull and all this sort of thing. But it's that sort of injury. So there's, there's a real danger that again, Alexander could die. And yes, it's not quite the same as the position at Granicus all the way back at the beginning. But if Alexander died, there is no air.

• 19:13Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  What do the Macedonians do? And there's also, the only reason they're here in the first place is because of Alexander. He wants them to do this. But they, they've gone way beyond their cause of, you know, seeking vengeance from the Persians. So it, it comes about how much of this whole campaigning and this whole expedition is focused on him and what he wants. In fact, enough men get inside, they fight their way, they get control of the city and sack the place. But it's, it's a danger and it shows how this is not a famous battle. And it's not even a famous siege like Tyre. And yet it could have been the end of Alexander and could have been the end of his campaign. And it's it's a reflection of the fighting in these later years that he fights a lot.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  He spends much of his time if he's not marching from one place to another, he's besieging a city. They're assaulting one of these little and they're called cities. They're often very small settlements, mostly of mud brick. But nevertheless, they've got walls, they're not easy to get into. The Macedonians tend to win all the time, but it takes them time. It means losses, it means risks. In all the fights of Alexander's campaigns, right from the beginning through, it is striking how there's always a very high proportion of wounded to the number of dead, which does suggest that quite a high proportion of his men, like Alexander, are taking hits and they are recovering. So they're going on with wounds to the arms, the legs, the head, the memory of it.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  And there will probably tend to be more and more wounded and killed amongst the men who go first, the first up the ladder, the first through the open gateway. So your most aggressive, your sort of real cutting edge of the army just gets ground down.

• 20:56Tristan Hughes?

  And also the lieutenants, like the key commanders. So we think of Alexander, the great spore wounds. But actually, many of those generals who outlive Alexander, you also hear either through the accounts of Alexander or what happens afterwards, because they have that similar mindset, they suffer wound after wound if they're leading their contingents up the ladders or wherever.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  It's an interesting thing because when you think they're basically wearing a cuirass of some sort, a helmet, perhaps greaves, it does seem very successfully to protect the vital organs against the weaponry that's deployed against it, whether arrows, spears, bows. So there are, at some of the times where it's mentioned, there are 10 times as many wounded as there are fatalities. So a lot of people are getting hurt. They are recovering and coming back eventually, but you know, they've got their scars and there may well be mental ones as well as the physical ones. So it's it's wearing everybody down and it's it's hard. It's it's arduous, it isn't pretty, it's ugly fighting. But they keep doing it and they keep winning, but at a cost.

• 21:56Tristan Hughes?

  This revolt endures for two years or so, and it's almost that Alexander will plug the gap one place and then another force will appear somewhere else or threaten them elsewhere in battery or stop it or attack a garrison somewhere and and deal a lot of damage. From the earlier stages, I just wanted to bring up quickly two other big events that happened. So after the siege of Cyropolis, Alexander taking those towns, there is actually, I guess, a kind of large scale pitched battle against the Cidians at the at the Jackzartis River. I don't know how large we can say it is.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  It's not on the scale of Issus or Galgemela. It's difficult and it doesn't, you know, it's not really when modern scholars look at the the history of warfare and the history of battle, it doesn't tend to get get listed. But it is this river crossing and where it's because he's fighting mainly against cavalry. You have to be quite careful about keeping together, not being broken up by them and then driving them off and killing their leaders. So there's a lot of fighting and it involves large parts of the Macedonian army, but it is that classic thing. Winning one of these battles doesn't gain you as much as winning an Issus or a Galgemela in that far fewer communities are inclined to say, all right, Gav, it's a fair cop. I'm giving in because you've done that. A, people happily run away

• 23:11Speaker 01

  and think that's no, no reflection on the manhood. They will fight again another day because that's just common sense as far as they're concerned. But also, it's this fragmented society, all these different communities. They don't feel obliged. Alexander can sack one mudwall city after another, but the next one he comes to doesn't feel that it has to give in. As far as it's concerned, it's always defended itself. Why shouldn't it against these people?

• 23:33Tristan Hughes?

  And you also have in this region, which is, you know, this is the first of many that we'll get to this, these great rock fortresses, you know, these very impregnable, not impregnable, as we'll find out, but you know, they are still formidable defensive locations. Almost think of it like, like, you know, the traditional view of a hill fort in in Iron Age Britain or wherever that, you know, somewhere strong that you could retreat to and really difficult for someone to attack. So those kind of safe havens that these little bands, guerrilla bands would venture back to. And over the course, I also want to mention the fact that Alexander Great does arguably suffer the worst loss of his entire career here. It's not him himself, but he, like a detachment of two to 3,000 men are lured out near Samarcand.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:17Tristan Hughes?

  And annihilated by a Sogdian Scythian army. And that's unprecedented for Alexander to lose so many men. And he's no like wounded or barely anyone that's killed, they're all killed.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yes, it's not. And it's not, we lose a lot of casualties as we're gradually taking tyre. It's we're defeated as well.

• 24:33Tristan Hughes?

  We are defeated.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely smashed.

• 24:35Tristan Hughes?

  A river crossing, Polytimis River. It's terrible for Alexander. And the revolt will continue, like hit and run tactics across Sogdia. Alexander kind of, you know, different detachments of his army trying to face them off. For two years or so, morale inevitably, it must have plummeted around that time.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Well, they've all been away from home a very long time. You know, we go back to the second episode. I think we talked about the men who were allowed to winter's leave. The men, the recently married to go home to Macedonia. But in contrast to Philip's campaigns, where generally speaking, every year you've got to go home for at least a bit of time. That's no longer the case. You have become, your home is now mobile. You're moving around. We'll learn from later on that many of the soldiers have taken local women as their companions. They've got children, they're building up because they, you know, they've been away from so long. They've been cut off for so long, but clearly a lot of them still think of themselves as Macedonian. That's still home that they, they think of this as, well, we go to war. Okay, it's bigger scale than Philip's stuff, but basically it's the same idea.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  We go off, we win victories, we get loot, we get glory, then we go home to enjoy those things. But you're not going home and the fighting continues. And you've, you've already won more spectacular victories than anyone's ever heard of. And yet it's still not enough. And now you're fighting as well, smaller scale, but as brutal, if not more so. People are dying. You have this defeat that's embarrassing, that's costly. And it doesn't seem to get you anywhere. You take one of these places and the one across the other side of the valley now rebels against you. Or the one in the next valley over and people keep raining you, you can't. Relax, you can't see any path that's clear and simple because there's no one leader, there isn't a Darius or a Bessus even to take out.

• 26:24Tristan Hughes?

  Well, exactly. You get the name Spiterminis, but then Spiterminis is actually killed, supposedly by his wife.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  And it doesn't matter.

• 26:30Tristan Hughes?

  Doesn't matter because others take up the mantle. Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  It's, and it's, again, it's why so many powers and empires in history have had trouble in the same region because of this very fragmented political system with a strong, strongly independently minded people, but also the landscapes that make campaigning difficult, that give plenty of strongholds. And you need a lot more soldiers if you go to garrison all of this and hold everything down. And you just don't have the numbers. So even with the army that's bigger, he can't put a garrison every, can't be strong everywhere. And the reason for the defeat was that he wasn't strong enough in that one place at the time, because he's busy with most of the army off elsewhere. And by the time they come up to aid them, the comms are wiped out.

• 27:22Speaker 02

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• 28:07Speaker 02

  winning network, History Hit.

• 28:25Tristan Hughes?

  We need to move on from the Sultian revolt, but before we get to the ending, we do also have to mention one of the big infamous events of Alexander's life. It's, you know, psychologically for six, and this is around a figure that we've already mentioned a couple of times in our series. The important general, the veteran general of Clitus the Black. So I think this is 327 B.C. now, we're in Samarcand. And for context, Clitus, this key adjutant of Alexander, one of Alexander's father's generals. I think Alexander has just appointed him to be like the new governor of this region as well, which doesn't really seem like a great, great posting, quite frankly.

• 29:09Tristan Hughes?

  But what happens? It's this infamous drinking party.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  It's one of the lulls. You know, it's not 12 months of a year, every year they're campaigning. It's very intensive, but it's one of the quieter periods. And it's partly why he's appointing Black Clitus, as he's called, to this, this posting, basically as, as governor. So there's a brief pause and you often find you get trouble as soon as you get my knees in armies, when they get some rest period, because while they're busy fighting, they're just too busy and too preoccupied and then too exhausted. But when you get a bit of time to stop and think, things tend to get fractures, grievances have time to grow a little bit. And in this case, you've got some feasting. They're celebrating when they do stop on those rare occasions, they do have big parties, they celebrate.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  All of this has got more lavish because Alexander is now fabulously wealthy in a way that he wasn't ever as king of Macedonia. You've got the Persian luxuries, you've got trappings of the Persian court, you've got... All of this coming in and the celebration, the ceremony surrounding the king, and you've also got the changing of the guard to some extent in terms of the people around Alexander are more of his contemporaries and younger men who've proven themselves in recent years. The men like Clitus the Black are fewer in number, Philip's old hands, the real veterans. And that clearly Alexander likes being flattered, and that's reflected in the histories that

• 30:40Speaker 01

  are written by his court historians that ridiculously exaggerate events that have occurred, you know, when he didn't need to. It is rather childish almost that this man delighted in being, say, he's even more wonderful than he really was, because if he didn't, if they just stuck to the bare facts, it's spectacular. So you get a group that are praising Alexander and denigrating Philip. And Clitus, who is, as are all of them, quite highly inebriated at this point, because again, you've still got this very strong drinking culture of the clansmen of the king and his warriors, basically, celebrating together. So he starts mocking this. Some of his friends realise that it's going a bit too far. He's starting

• 31:25Speaker 01

  to criticise Alexander, you know, and reminding him about, you'd be dead if it wasn't for my right arm, this sort of thing, you know, you need, we're the people who fought this. Some of his friends manage to sort of usher him out. And then, as is sometimes the way with drunks, he somehow gets free and thinks it's a great idea to come back in and start insulting Alexander again. Alexander flies off the handle completely, grabs a spear from one of the guards that's there and runs Clitus through and kills him. At this point, is shocked by what he's done. He grabs, he takes the spear and is then trying to kill himself with it. So he has to be stopped and restrained from that. And then goes into this depression mourning period where, you know, he has just killed a man who saved

• 32:10Speaker 01

  his life. He has killed a man who's the brother of his nurse as a child, who's been loyal to him at every stage, all the way through this long journey. And he's done it because an argument's got out of hand. And while you can think back to, you know, Alexander himself as a youth going into exile when his father's marrying Cleopatra, his last wife, and, you know, mocking Philip when Philip falls over when he's coming across the couch to get at him. Shouldn't end in blows and weapons. It's going too far. And Alexander can see that, he knows he's done something wrong. He knows that he's done something that's lacking in his reputation. Nobody's going to protest against this. Clitus is dead. What's the point now? You can't bring him back.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  But it's scaring everybody, I think, including Alexander, that that control isn't there anymore and that you can't. It's shown, there is always a struggle. There has been for quite a while. What is he now? What is the relationship between not just him, but you have alongside the Macedonians and Greeks? Because he's got all these Asians that he's brought in from the aristocracy to try and make sure the regions are happy. They're starting to figure in the army more. They're figuring in the court more. How do they react to? And it's, it'll lead on to the whole Ascanesis, the idea of prostrating yourself before the great king, as you would do, which if you don't do it, is a mark of disrespect and shameful from the point of view of the cultures, the Persians in particular.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  But if you do it, is absolutely disgusting from a Macedonian Greek point of view. So how can you please everybody? And how can Alexander's trying to steer a path through the middle and is often too tired, too drunk, too vain perhaps to do it well? So it's, all of this is getting more, at a time when the war is arduous, unpleasant and apparently unending. Whenever there's a lull, these tensions break to the surface because nobody knows what this is anymore and nobody knows what they're doing and what's going to happen.

• 34:08Tristan Hughes?

  It's kind of scary times indeed. And, you know, following in the footsteps of the killing of Parmenion as well. It's like the old guard, as you say, is, it's very much disappearing. And the infamous end of Clitus, the fact that it also happens at, you know, a point where it is really, really difficult for the Macedonians in, in Bactria and, and Sogdia and, you know, the Clitus, the Black's murder just makes it even worse for Alexander and his companions.

• 34:36Tristan Hughes?

  Of course, they do manage to quash the revolt ultimately after this. And something that we see is, as I mentioned earlier, you have these prominent rock fortresses of several key nobles in the region. There's a man called Oxyartis, I think Corianis is another one. I think one of them is called the Sogdian Rock. It is literally just called the Sogdian Rock. And there was this idea that it was impregnable, that Alexander couldn't take it. But as you've also already mentioned, Adrian, he's got people in his army who are, you know, no strangers to mountainous warfare, to climbing difficult terrain. And he does, one by one, with his special

• 35:16Tristan Hughes?

  troops, manages to climb up these rock fortresses and take them, to the complete surprise of the local Sogdians anyway as well. But interestingly, following that, what seems to be the kicker in finally ending the revolt, yes, probably taking the fortress is part of it. But the other half, is he decides to get married. His first marriage, and it's to the daughter of one of these Sogdian noblemen, who had been in charge of one of these rock fortresses, who had been leading, one of the figureheads of the revolt. He decides to marry his daughter. I think that's very, very revealing.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  It's straight out of Philip's playbook. I mean, it's what he'd been doing throughout his campaigns. Obviously, this is someone more alien than marrying even a, but you know, an Illyrian, a Thracian, you know, these are unusual brides even for a Macedonian. But it's the same idea. It's odd in a way that it's taken Alexander so long to do this. And odd then that he chooses someone who is, you know, the daughter of a local nobleman, a local prince, not somebody with really widespread influence. So it's a strange choice. And the whole story of it that will later become part of, you know, all the embellishment, the Alexander romance and all this sort of thing. It makes political sense up to a point, but it's odd in terms of, until he adds a few more

• 36:38Speaker 01

  other wives, when it starts to look more like Philip just doing this thing, it's a very odd first choice. He's had a mistress for a long time who's Greek. And has had a child with her. So, you know, he hasn't been on his own all these long winter nights. But it's still odd in many respects, but it does seem to be part of giving at least this temporary peace, this stability, bringing this conflict to an end. And it's perhaps, as I say, it's almost a throwback to how Philip would do things.

• 37:06Tristan Hughes?

  And the nobleman, Oxyartes, he remains in charge effectively. Alexander's like, right, I'm done with this. Do the marriage, get peace in this area finally, and then we and the troops can leave this godforsaken land in their idea. That's they're certainly in their mindset.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  It's one of the problems that the army simply being there causes resistance. And when it moves on, well, there's no one to resist for a start, but also they're they're less inclined because it more because the army being there, A, it's a visible presence. It's a challenge. It's humiliating, but also it wants stuff. It keeps on eating lots of fodder, forage. It needs meat. It needs all of these things. It needs leather to replace its harness. It needs new weapons, new clothing. It it it devours material in areas that are not that wealthy. So it's it is starting to, it's a burden. So moving away, and if you can move away whilst saving face, which is what he does, you've got enough of a success that you can say, all right, that's fair enough.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  We're going, we've won. Does help to calm the situation as well in a in a strange way.

• 38:10Tristan Hughes?

  Which leads Alexander to his where he has eyes on next, which is across the Hindu Kush into the Indian subcontinent. Now, he doesn't take all of his army with him because another really interesting thing is he leaves some thirteen to fifteen thousand troops in Bactria, Sogdia, once again hinting at the instability there. I always find this interesting because a lot of those troops are Greek mercenaries who had recently come from mainland Greece.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 38:39Tristan Hughes?

  Those Greek mercenaries had fought alongside a Spartan king against the Macedonians who were still in Europe a few years earlier. The Macedonians had won and the Macedonian in charge back in Europe had sent these defeated Greek mercenaries all the way across Asia to join up with Alexander in Bactria, Sogdia, so Afghanistan, Uzbekistan. Data seems to have enjoyed it and Alexander decides, I can't take them into India. I don't, I think he doesn't trust them at all. So he leaves them in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, where they just have to settle down. And it's a funny story, that one, I find.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  It's odd because in, in some sense, you can see if you go back quite a bit further into Greek history, the whole idea of, well, if you, things haven't been going well in your home city, you go off and you form a colony somewhere else, or you join one. There is that, you know, the Greeks had been great travellers on a smaller scale. It's not quite the same as this. It had tended to be seaborne. You'd gone around the Mediterranean, but you'd also gone around the Black Sea. You know, you had Greek cities in the Crimea, in southern Ukraine, that area from centuries before, as well as in Spain, in southern France, you know, Sicily and Marseille today. So in one sense, taking a load of Greeks and say, well, settle down here, make your own city, make your own laws, be Greek. See, probably take local women as wives and all this other

• 39:59Speaker 01

  thing, but it remains a Greek community, isn't so unusual. But it is more, as you say, it seems to be a problem. These people have fought on the losing side. So their experience of warfare is being beaten by the Macedonians. They've then come all this vast way to try and tack them on to your victorious army, probably is more effort than it's worth. Whereas what can they do that will cause you trouble if you dump them in this place? You know, they might not be happy about it, but what are they going to do about it? And you are, in a sense, doing something honourable for them. You are saying, here's a city, become, you know, citizens here, act here. So I think it is, yeah, they're, they're not worth the effort, probably doesn't trust them, perhaps not simply in terms of their loyalty, but just how good they are.

• 40:39Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  So why feed them? Why pay for them? When he can take away, because the other thing he's doing is taking troops, another way of calming the situation, taking men from the regions that have been rebelling against you and giving them the opportunity to go off and fight on your behalf and win gold and glory against other people. And that's again, another way that powers have tended to work throughout the centuries, where you take away the sort of wilder young men who've got nothing else to do and send them off and go and get them to fight somebody else on your behalf. And they do it very well. Everybody's happy.

• 41:11Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's move on now into India. So Alexander's path into India is through, I think he takes more than one route, he divides the army, but there's like the Khyber Pass, there's the Swat Valley, and to get towards the Indus River Valley. And to get there, it's almost, we've talked about rock fortresses already. There's like another few, there's more, there's more difficult rock fortresses, one called the Aornus Rock is in there and a Massaga, not Massada, Massaga, but it's a similar story. He is able to overcome those formidable defences. There are some romantic stories. There's a particular queen called Cleophas in one story, attached to one of the cities. Whatever the truth, whatever the fact, whatever the fiction, Alexander does ultimately get his army

• 41:55Tristan Hughes?

  into the Indus River Valley. And, and this is the beginning of that, that great, most exotic part of Alexander's story, I feel, at least in the eyes of the Greeks, that they've, they've emerged into this land that was really the furthest eastern edge of the Persian Empire at its height.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  It's, it's areas where the Persians have now and again been to assert themselves and claim power, but that was only really when the local powers were too busy fighting each other and left weak as a result. They never really established. And there is a, there are fanciful elements within the traditions about what happens in India that you don't quite get anywhere else. You feel it is more, you're moving into the, the borders of legend rather than.

• 42:35Tristan Hughes?

  Well, you mentioned earlier how, you know, this idea that there are intellectuals in Alexander, the Great Army. And, you know, when they're in India, whether you're a geographer, a botanist, yeah, a historian or whatever, you know, these are all, a philosopher, you know, all this, this kind of new world that's opened up to you when you get there.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  It, it is staggering because it's, again, a place where civilization is more ancient than Greece. So, so there are roots back, although it's not necessarily any technologically more sophisticated when you get there. This is a very, very ancient culture with its own way of doing things, but more than one, because it is not united, it's, there are different areas. So it's.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  There is a sense of wonder and strangeness about it all. Whether there's partly in the stories as well, the sense that it's even more exotic to explain why they don't, in the long run, stay there quite so long, is you have to wonder. But again, it's the, in other respects, it's the same pattern as you come across, you approach people and you want them either to submit to you, or if they would submit to you, you'll fight them.

• 43:45Tristan Hughes?

  And which he does, isn't he? So this is when we get the last big pitched battle of Alexander's career. So how do we get to this legendary name of the Battle of the Hidasbes River?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  It's an interesting thing. You've got King Porus, who's got a large army that includes not just men on foot and horseback, but lots of elephants. And that's something, there've been a few of these at Gaugamela, but they're not really mentioned. He's got lots, and this is an army that, you know, is used to fighting and using more elephants, they know how to use them. So it's very different. It's also, Alexander's crossed rivers before, he's done it at the Axartis not too long before, he's done it at Granicus, in a sense, but this is a much bigger river. To get across, so that you're in a position to face the enemy, is harder. They're doing it at night, they end up landing on an island rather than actually on the shore, there's a lot of confusion. There's again, some nice detail you get in the likes of Arian that suggests just, A,

• 44:41Speaker 01

  the capability of the Macedonian army, how experienced it is, but also how difficult many of these operations are, so that even when you're experienced, things go wrong. And the deception plan that they've arranged to conceal the fact that they are doing this crossing. So they get across without being opposed, but then advance to encounter Porus and his army, and this is a much more fluid battle than the others. There aren't the straightforward battle lines, both sides are caught a little bit by surprise, and you end up with heavy fighting, quite costly fighting. A prominent role is played by some of the horse archers and others that he's got in his more recent campaigns in Central Asia, so people who've been fighting against him not too long before.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  And again, Alexander wins, but it's a hard fought battle and it's his last really big... Pitch battle in a sense, as I say, whether there are organised battle lines is a different thing. And Corus is captured, brought before him at the end. And again, you get the famous stories, because this will be celebrated. There's an awful lot of art that emphasises elephants and men on elephants and fighting against them. So it does capture the imagination. People can't imagine this massed army of elephants. Corus is brought before Alexander. He's described as very handsome, very, very tall, exceptionally so, almost sort of superhumanly so. And when asked by Alexander, how would you be treated? The answer is supposed to be like a king.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  And Alexander reconfirms him, not only in his own kingdom, but gives him extra lands. And it's another one of those Alexander myth moments where you see the man who is generous to the defeated, generous to someone he respects, willing to trust them, willing to expand their power on the basis that they will then be loyal to him. So it's a great moment and it's one of the last great military moments of Alexander and great diplomatic moments as well in many respects.

• 46:42Speaker 02

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• 47:25Speaker 02

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• 47:44Tristan Hughes?

  You can see it means a lot to him because archaeologically, one of my favourite sets of artefacts is you have these medallions surviving. There's one in the British Museum. I think there are a few others that have been found, but it's believed to be they're almost army medals for the soldiers that had served at that battle. And it shows an elephant with either one or two riders and the elephant is kind of going away. It looks like it's kind of fleeing away and chasing the elephant is a cavalryman with a long zist on lance, looking to spear, I think, the rear man on the back of that elephant. And it's kind of a triumph of a companion cavalryman against the Porus's elephant. But it's amazing to have that sort of artefact surviving. But what I always thought about the Battle of the Hydaspies,

• 48:28Tristan Hughes?

  yes, Alexander wins it. And yes, Alexander takes a lot of pride in it. It'd be great, you know, defeating his army of elephants. But when you look at the bigger picture, Porus's kingdom is a small kingdom, probably the size of Macedonia at most, in a little bit of the Indus River Valley, between two particular rivers, river branches. Alexander's got an army of 100,000 and maybe that's exaggeration, but you know, a big army.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  To win this.

• 48:52Tristan Hughes?

  He ought to win it. And he does, but he still takes a lot of pride around it. And he said Porus becomes an ally, he's got an ally.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  He's not fighting Chandragupta or anyone like this with a big united army that would be.

• 49:03Tristan Hughes?

  There's a myth, isn't he, that he actually meets a young Chandragupta?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yes, because it's again, his main power will occur later. It's post Alexander and it's ever. But it's again, it's a reflection of India is quite fragmented, but it's just at that moment.

• 49:16Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  And then you will get the strong leader to emerge who is a sort of Alexander in his own right.

• 49:21Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  But on that, and they don't meet. And it was interesting. I remember talking to someone who wrote a book about a great contest between generals in history. And said he couldn't really fit Alexander in because Alexander doesn't fight an equal in the sense of a great commander with a great army. He fights one or the other, but not both at the same time. It's not a Scipio and Hannibal. It's not Caesar and a Pompey or whoever you like, see. So it's, it is, he's there at the right moment, but it is, I think as well, they probably don't realise just how big and how populous India is when they arrive there.

• 49:56Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  So that. Particularly because they've so recently been fighting after the big wars against the main united Persians, they've been fighting all these local campaigns. They don't really have enough information. They have gone beyond where they've got detailed.

• 50:10Tristan Hughes?

  What's over the next river? What's over the next branch? Right? You know, that kind of it's it's very interesting. You've also got the local Indian kingdoms around that time. Then they weren't all like porous. They don't all fight Alexander. There's the king of Taxila, Abmi, or Taxiles is quite known, isn't he? But then there are others that also try to resist. There's a siege of a place called Sangala and the Cathayans. And Alexander is slowly advancing eastwards, past each kind of different branch of the Indus River, this far up it. But then they get to the Hiphasus River. And, sorry.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're into the monsoon and it's just hellish. It's it's it's again, it's it's moved to a world they don't recognize. It's like going into the desert in Egypt. This is just strange. And there's no, no end to it. There's, there's just one. And why are they there? Other than the fact that Alexander quite fancies the idea of conquering as far as he can keep conquering. And in a sense, you know, you even have to wonder sometimes, is he, does he keep doing this? A, because he just loves it? Or does he not want to settle down and do the boring stuff of running this empire he's just conquered? But the men are finally get to the point where they are just fed up. They will not keep going. Because these are people who've been at this now for so many years, come so far. And most

• 51:30Speaker 01

  of them had fought under Philip as well before that. And there's only so much you could take out of someone. They must be exhausted. And it's your boldest men have suffered wound after wound, or they've they've watched others die because they've kept on leading the way. Yes, you've had promotion. Yes, you've got, you've had loads of plunder, you've got lots of glory, but what's the point of it if you can't spend it? And if you can't go back to have people admire you? So it's the point where Alexander's inability to read his men sometimes just comes to a head because he thinks he can bluster first of all and make them, you know, go on and do the, oh yeah, you'll back down. And it's crossed the, the Hiphasus River that you will just go across this one and then we'll keep going. But they simply refuse. And you have

• 52:15Speaker 01

  this mutiny that is not a rejection of him. They're not saying we don't want him as king anymore. They don't try and kill him. There's no plot against him. It's not that sort of thing at all. It's not what's happened to plenty of Macedonian kings in the past that somebody is getting rid of you. It's simply, we can't do it anymore. We are fed up. We just can't go on. There's no end to this. Give us some rest. Let us, you know, at least take a break for a bit. Let's have a few campaigning seasons off. Let's let's rest. Let's whether they're already thinking of let's go back home. Some of them surely yes, but it's so far away.

• 52:47Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  And it's that element of utter exhaustion and they will not be moved. Even when he tries to bribe them, then frighten them and then bully them, it doesn't work. So eventually he gives in and retreats, but you have this story of, you know, him building these camps with sort of oversized armor left behind. And this is to suggest to the Indians that some race of giants have come to their edge and you better be frightened of the Macedonians because we might come back one day. But it is space saving. It's it's no more than that. I don't think anybody local is that impressed. But it's that's the point where there have been these situations where he hasn't read the mood of the men at all. Well, even though he can inspire them when they're

• 53:29Speaker 01

  fighting, he's great. He can do all of that. But the why this is happening and why this is going on, he can't seem to sympathize with them.

• 53:37Tristan Hughes?

  We mentioned in the first episode, the taming of Bocephalus. And now we get to the end of Bocephalus's story as well, because this is when Alexander's trusted steed dies. Around this time.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:49Tristan Hughes?

  Pounds a city.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yes. It's, I mean, most of the city gets swept away by flooding before too long. But it's nevertheless, it's a remarkable thing to, you know, Hadrian wrote a poem and left a grand tomb at Tivoli for his, one of his famous hunting horses. But to pound the city and name it after your horses is a big, big deal. And it's clearly, again, though, in that culture where You know, they have been companions in so many wars. Alexander would feel that his life has been saved and has relied upon being able to trust Bucephalus to do what he wanted. So it is a picture, but it's also a sign of exhaustion. You know, even that link with home has died. A lot of people aren't there anymore and the ones that are are just tired and worn out.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  So Alexander leaves a bit of a mark on India. He found some cities, he makes alliances, he imposes his rule, forces people to, but it's, it's not really a deep, deep thing.

• 54:44Tristan Hughes?

  No.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Because he isn't there long enough and it's, he has reached the limit of his power.

• 54:50Tristan Hughes?

  Because we are getting near the end of Alexander's story now.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  We are, yes, yes.

• 54:52Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, because the next part in Alexander's story, once the, his army has said, we're not going any further, Bucephalus has died, it just gets quite, dare I say, repetitive and brutal. Because Alexander now marches his army down the Indus River Valley. He's basically like, okay, we'll go home, but we're going to go down the.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  We're going to go a long way round. I want the Seabed Route.

• 55:12Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, and so he goes down and like the city after city, like some submit, but lots of them resist. And then what we get is brutal capturing of city after city again and again and again. And it's repetitive and, but that is kind of, this is more of the clearly murderous, clearly, dare I say, like psychotic Alexander at this time, I'd say.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  He, I mean, again, what is the purpose of it all now? And that's, it's been fuzzy for a long time, but it's, you come to each of these communities, they're proud, independent communities. He tells them to surrender, they say, no, why should we? So he storms them and he massacres everybody. And then he comes to the next one and the same thing happens again and again. And it's brutal and you have the case where he's quite badly wounded. He's shot by an arrow in the chest during one of the assaults on these things where he's again got impatient with his own men. He felt they were hanging back when they weren't, it's just they were short of ladders. So runs up the only ladder there is, followed by a couple of his sort of close bodyguards and companions who are thinking, oh dear, you know, we've really got to be there because it'll be, we don't want to be blamed for the king getting killed. But the ladder collapses because they're not enough to get up.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  So they're isolated for a while, they jump down into the city and sort of lay about them with swords. He's shot, they stand over him. It's very Homeric. I mean, it's cookie straight from the Iliad till eventually the rest of the army breaks in, but it's where he's getting angry and impatient. There's a sign, they've all done too much, they're all exhausted, they're all really touchy. And Alexander in particular, because he. Again, it's perhaps that sense of even he doesn't quite know what he wants to do and what he should be doing and how to do it. So it's even your return is by a new conquest, new exploration. So it's in a sense, the same old thing is going on and they are just more and more brutal. It is very grim in this last phase.

• 57:00Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely, it is. And finally, they get down to the delta, like the mouth of the Indus River, Patala, I think it's called. No, it is called Patala. And I think there's some archaeological evidence of Alexander's army being there. I'm not going to delve into that. And this is where, you know, Alexander, a much weaker Alexander, because they thought he was, there was a time where they didn't know whether he was going to survive or not. And there were rumours that then got to people further aboard that Alexander had died in India. And then there's a, remember those disgruntled Greek mercenaries I mentioned that were left in Bakhshur in Afghanistan? Some of them think, oh, goodie, this is the time to go back to Greece. Then they find out Alexander's alive and it all goes to pop for them. That's another story. But Alexander does survive,

• 57:43Tristan Hughes?

  gets down to the mouth of the Indus River Valley. And then it's the westward journey home. And it's a big splitting up of the army. There's the navy, which has gone down the Indus River, you know, sailed down, and that will hug the coast. And then Alexander divides his army, and he's gonna go, I think the plan is to be near the fleets. That's the plan. But they're gonna go westwards through this arid, difficult terrain, west of the Indus River Valley, towards, well, southern Iran today, towards, back towards Babylon, and this is the Kedrosian Desert. And it seems because of the monsoons, the navy and the army do not coordinate. And all of a

• 58:26Tristan Hughes?

  sudden, the navy contingent, commanded by a guy called Nearchus, loses track of the army, and Alexander's troops, they really suffer. Marching, this is the worst logistical disaster of Alexander's career.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  It's very hard to know the scale of losses, but it is clearly a traumatic experience for the, all of them going through the Kedrosian Desert, as they run low on water. But it gives, and you half wonder, is this Alexander punishing them? Is it just his longing, you know, this whole Pothos thing that you get? There's this sense of doing something that nobody else has done. I will succeed where everyone else has failed. If that fortress is, you know, impossible to capture, I will capture it, you know. So you have this and you have this odd mixture. There are clearly some mistakes. You know, at one point they camp in dried up water course which floods when it rains. And this is it's fairly obvious stuff. You probably should work out, but they don't. But you have the classic moment as well as they start to lose stragglers.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  People are left behind, but they're running short of water. They have none left and somebody finds enough to fill a helmet, brings it to Alexander, presents it to him. And he makes a big display of pouring it out onto the sand. I mean, you clearly could have perhaps given it to the man who brought it to us. But nevertheless, the message is if you're not drinking, I'm not drinking either. So you get Alexander, the incredible leader, along with Alexander, the unfocused. What's he doing here? What's this this going on? So it's probably not the losses that are reported at the numbers of casualties are probably greatly exaggerated. But it's still a nasty moment for an army that's already tired. And the fact that it is tired means that some of them are reaching the end of their tether

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  and more vulnerable to collapse before they get there. So it's a very odd thing where you have another epic. You have this golden Alexander moment, but then the whole setting riddles. Why this is happening in the first place? Because there's nothing there worth conquering in this area. And as you say, if there had been any attempt to keep in touch with the fleet, that's long since failed. But again, once Alexander's committed to something, Alexander doesn't quit. He keeps going. And of course he does get away with it in the end. They do get through, but it's sort of, you know, after suffering an awful lot, after losing quite a lot of people.

• 1:00:42Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. And one of my favourite books on Alexander the Great is one of the logistics. Very nerdy.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Engels.

• 1:00:48Tristan Hughes?

  Donald Engels.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Tristan Hughes?

  Points out that, yes, like the high numbers. The people that you don't hear about, that were probably the majority of those casualties, was the baggage train people.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Tristan Hughes?

  They're the people who would have like been the first to die or be the stragglers. And the women and children, you know, by this time, you know, most of those soldiers have their own wives. They're the ones who would have lost the most life, you know, the highest casualties, not the soldiers probably. But yes, as we get to the end of of Alexander's story, because when he finally meets up with Nearchus and the team again, I think Nearchus recounts how they go to see Alexander and his withered army. And they've all got beards and stuff and they just look a bit draggled and exhausted. But they've made it.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  But there's also the Nearchus, they've given him up for dead. They think the fleet's gone.

• 1:01:35Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, so he appears and they don't believe who he is at first.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  It's this, because by this time, the army's recovered. So it's the other way around where he's gone and and it's just they've not heard anything. They don't really have that much sense of how far it is. And they just think they've gone and that, you know, there have been problems. It's been a difficult journey, but nevertheless. But through that, they've learned, they've then from then on know there is a sense of, okay, this is India. How does it connect to the heartline of the Persian Empire? So they have learned things. I mean, there is some positive, I suppose, from this, but it's all been expensive, sort of overly costly.

• 1:02:11Tristan Hughes?

  So Alexander gets back to, well, Persia, I guess. So what is now kind of the central area of his empire. One of the first things he does, which is very interesting, is he hears that some of his governors have been like in the nicest way possible, misbehaving or misappropriating funds or not respecting local cultures. And he goes down hard on them. He has quite a few of them executed. One of his boyhood friends, a man called Harpolus, who had been left in Babylon, sees the writing on the wall, which is fitting for Babylon, and flees westwards with a lot of the money and he will try to rise, incur a revolt against Alexander, his whole boyhood friend back in Athens.

• 1:02:53Tristan Hughes?

  That's a story for another day, but Alexander encounters that difficult situation. And then what follows that? I guess it's the big wedding ceremony, isn't it?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  There's a move altogether in that a lot of the people he executes are Asians and they're they're local people that he's kept in power. So as well as some of the Greeks and others who've gone off the rails as far as he's concerned, there's an emphasis more, you get more Greeks and particularly Macedonians appointed subsequently. And then you get this big ceremony where he marries off particularly prominent Macedonians, but also some others more generally to aristocratic Persian and Asian women. Now, this used to be, you know, you've got the old stuff from Thal and people like that. This was all to do with this idea of brotherhood of mankind. You would bring the different races together and all mingle together. The significant thing is that you don't marry any.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Persian men to a Macedonian wife.

• 1:03:46Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, okay.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  It's all one sided. It is purely Alexander's officers get pretty and wealthy, well-connected local women as their wives. So it might be a sense of, well, I'd like you all to settle in Asia and think of these as your main estates. Significantly, all but one, the exception being Seleucus, will, as soon as Alexander's dead, they get rid of these wives, divorce them more quickly or just dispose of them. So it doesn't prove to be happy family. So he's unusual in that he keeps her. But it's a grand gesture, but it's again, it's this whole, who are we now? That raises questions, raises difficulties. Nobody quite knows what's going on. And it builds towards, you're marrying some of your soldiers to Persians and then you present this.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  The youngsters, some of them orphaned, some of the others that you've raised that are Persians and you've raised and educated and trained as Macedonians and trained as a new phalanx. And you present them to your old veterans who are really fed up by this time as your replacements. And unsurprisingly, it doesn't go down terribly well. The sense that, well, we beat these, you know, this this people really easy. We've walked through this. We've conquered everything. And now he wants to get rid of us and just rely on the Asian soldiers we've beaten.

• 1:04:57Tristan Hughes?

  No, exactly. That's what's happening at the same time, isn't it? You can see there's clear incorporation now of Persian, of Asian units into even the Macedonian phalanxes. There's talk of a mixed phalanx, Persian and Macedonians together. There, Alexander is clearly giving a lot of favour to this new. I guess he calls them the epigoni of this particular group, which basically is the successors.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  I know. It's, it's, it's as tactless as you can get.

• 1:05:24Tristan Hughes?

  Slap in the face, isn't it?

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Particularly as they've been complaining and saying they want to go home. You've had the mutiny at office. You've had all of this where they've just, you know, we're fed up. And it's, oh, well, I don't, you know, by the way, meet your

• 1:05:35Tristan Hughes?

  These are the next

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Your successors.

• 1:05:38Tristan Hughes?

  This is the new phalanx.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Incredibly tactless. In one sense, you could see it. It's almost, it's still doing a Philip. It's how, as he had conquered other areas and incorporated them into a greater Macedonia. But they were culturally much more similar. So that, and longer connections, whereas this is something very, very different. On the one hand, what else are you going to do with this empire? And if he wants to go on and fight more wars, then he needs an army to do it. He wants a big army to do it. So where are you going to get recruits? But it's, it's tactless. It's

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  It's not popular and it doesn't even to a vast extent win over the the Asian wider Asian community. The people involved seem to be fairly loyal, but.

• 1:06:22Tristan Hughes?

  Very much so. You mentioned there the Opis mutiny. So this is this as a consequence, you know, the Macedonian soldiers are just fed up. And you get that amazing speech preserved in Arian. I won't say it all now, but Alexander scaves that. I've got all these wounds on my body. I've got none on my back, by the way, because I never turn my back to the enemy kind of idea. And I've suffered them all for you. And this is how you repay me kind of thing.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Till it found you in skins, living in caves, sort of thing. I know we've made you civilized men, the lords of the world.

• 1:06:49Tristan Hughes?

  It's an amazing speech. How much we can believe it. But you know, it's it's still, I can imagine Alexander saying something like that.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  As the ancient authors would say, it's what he, you know, meant to say. It's the essence of what he said. That was his argument.

• 1:07:01Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. And so but then you see some 10,000 of the veteran Macedonians are sent home and Alexander's expecting more recruits to come up to come out to him for future campaigns. But we're getting near the end now. They're not going to happen. Shall I just rattle through a couple of other events that should mention before we get to Babylon? So this is now 324 B.C. So we're very near the end. A big event that happens around this time is Alexander's kind of moving around this central area. I think he's in Ekbitana, that his closest friend and almost certainly his lover, Hephaestian dies, falls ill and dies. And this just sends Alexander. If you thought him mourning Cletus the Black was

• 1:07:44Tristan Hughes?

  bad, this is another level. He is he is grieving and that grief just keeps gnawing at him forever. If it was for the rest of his life, so much so that I think partly in consequence, he hears of, well, he kind of goes on a punitive campaign against nearby mountain people, well, hill tribe people in the mountains, the Cossaeans. And it's brutal. It's enough. This is murderous, vengeful, besotted by grief, Alexander, the last kind of military campaign before he dies. And it is just one of just massacre.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  It's they, you know, they they really chose their timing badly to to upset him because he was just in in an angry mood. So it's they pay the price for that. And it's that, you know, with Hephaestus, you have this spectacular funeral and celebrate and you even the tactful things he's done before, you know, he wants all the flames, but it's all the fire temples of the the local, all the cults are supposed to stop and mourn and everything. It's it's suddenly I am the center of the world. I am feeling bad. Everybody else needs to feel bad. And I've got a big army. So you've got to do this. You haven't got any choice. But it is not very good. But again, sometimes people forget.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Although Alexander has kept some sort of level of control over the empire, he's mostly been too busy throughout his reign to run the area he's conquered. So he apart from the initial contact where he tends to be nice to people and tactful. He's not practiced in dealing all the time with other people's feelings, placating people, keeping them happy. He's not had to do the Philip stuff and keep everybody as happy in a Macedonian court as he's had to. He's always been able to distract with a this is the war. That's what we're going to focus on. Let's just go and fight and win. And then we can forget about things till afterwards. But this is the afterwards. And dealing with that is hard for him.

• 1:09:36Tristan Hughes?

  It is, and he will ultimately venture back to Babylon, which it looks like he might be eyeing up as a new capital. Well, clearly, I think there's a story of him inviting his mother to Nanglon as well, isn't there? But there's a famous story that as he enters Babylon, the local priests or like there's an omen or there's a prophecy that Alexander, if you enter Babylon, you'll never leave. And that will prove to be the case. He's got future plans. I think it's around Arabia. He may have an idea of.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Well, it's more than an idea. They've actually sent the initial, the fleet has gone down the rivers to Reconnoiter. So it's

• 1:10:11Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  They've built up, they've done the sort of preliminaries for a campaign that's going to happen the next

• 1:10:15Tristan Hughes?

  Which makes sense.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  And it's ready to go.

• 1:10:17Tristan Hughes?

  Which makes sense because of those rich trading cities along the Arabian coastline between Egypt and India. And I think he'll he'll go back to. I've said this several times before on record that I do think that he sees, he's got advisers whispering to him about Athens and there is some travel further west. So I do think he probably had eyes on campaigning further west. But that never happens. And that's all, we can only theorise as to what would have happened next. But we get to late May, early June, three, two, three B C and the ill fated dinner party.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:49Tristan Hughes?

  Of one of his companions of Medias of Larissa.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Hmm. Where he's drinking too much and falls ill. And then it's, there are all sorts of rumours at the time and subsequently of poison and various theories to how it could be delivered. You do get a sense that many people are really unhappy with how things are, but don't really know what they want. But there is no alternative to Alexander. Roxanne is pregnant.

• 1:11:14Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  This time, but they don't know whether she'll carry to term. Would it be a boy? It turns out to be.

• 1:11:19Tristan Hughes?

  And we should clarify, because I don't think we actually ever mentioned her name, but Roxanne.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry.

• 1:11:22Tristan Hughes?

  No, no, that's quite right. I should have said earlier. So she is that Sogdian princess or Sogdian daughter of the nobleman to end that revolt here.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  But there isn't anybody, there isn't an adult, you know, even an adolescent, you could have a guardian for a while and you could think of as a viable alternative. So they, they are faced with a problem. So on. It's a bit like Philip's murder. You think with Alexander, well, he might have been murdered because some people might just have felt we really, I can't cope with this anymore. We've got to move on. On the other hand. Nobody has that clear a plan of what they're going to do afterwards. And he's, you know, he's led a, a fairly wild lifestyle. And people fall ill in the age world, particularly people who've moved through so many different environments, become exposed to so many different sorts of germs along the way.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Yes, they're tough in many respects, but there's still that one thing that can just prove fatal. And I, I, so I'm still. I think probably it is just disease and it is just chance that he dies then. But it's impossible to say. And there were, there are plenty of people who were clearly fed up with him. Whether they were that fed up and able to do it, I don't know.

• 1:12:30Tristan Hughes?

  I'm on completely the same wavelength. I don't believe he was poisoned. Partly because the poison myth, you can clearly see its origins in the years that follow. Because it's specifically targeted against one faction that rises to prominence, the family of Cassandra and Antipater. And it seems to have been curated by the faction that were opposing them for power in Macedonia followed it, following that. Secondly, as you've mentioned, you know, you, it seems to be a combination of factors. We've mentioned all of his war wounds he suffered, the heavy drinking throughout his career, the illness. You know, the weaker immune system that he would have had, the grief, the excessive grief of fighting.

• 1:13:10Tristan Hughes?

  All of those things would have weakened him and made him more susceptible for whatever disease, malaria, typhoid. Lots of different ideas being put forwards for him succumbing to that particular illness. So yeah, I'm completely on the same wavelength there. And what I love about the death of Alexander the Great, as morbid as I say that. Is that you have basically almost word for word, the same account of his last week and a half. In two of our different sources, which suggests, and they actually say it in the source.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Tristan Hughes?

  That they took it from the royal journals.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Tristan Hughes?

  Which were written down by his personal secretary, a man who will become fascinating in the following years, Eumeneus of Cardia.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:51Tristan Hughes?

  I'm sure we could talk about him a lot. But it's almost like the account we have in both these accounts, which is the same, almost certainly originates from the pen or the stylus of Eumeneus writing it down. How Alexander's condition deteriorates every week and a half. You know, at first he doesn't seem to be too affected. He's still giving his orders and the like and planning his campaigns. But then he becomes mute. Then the soldiers know that he's going to die. So they all file past his bedside to say their last. The Macedonian soldiers at least, and he's, he's, he can't, he only acknowledges them with a mute kind of acknowledgement. And then a few days later, he dies. Of course, you get the legendary last words to the strongest.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Tristan Hughes?

  If he's mute, he can't say that.

• 1:14:38Tristan Hughes?

  But it's like in hindsight, isn't it?

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's what they feel he should have said.

• 1:14:42Tristan Hughes?

  Because of the absolute chaos that follows.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Tristan Hughes?

  Within forty eight hours of his death, there's a fight in the room where he dies in the palace in Babylon.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Tristan Hughes?

  You know, it doesn't stop. I, it's a symbol for the next, well, you could say twenty years if you want to go down to this Titanic Battle of Ipsus. You could say forty years if you want to go down to the last of these wars or the successes and the Battle of Corupedia. Where, remember you mentioned earlier how at the start, you have like people into their seventies and eighties leading armies. We have a general, two generals in their late seventies or early eighties, leading their cavalry against each other. Like these last two generals who'd fought with Alexander, you know, fighting it off on this last battle. But it shows, doesn't it? You know, Alexander's life ends, his afterlife just hangs around.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Tristan Hughes?

  For decades, for centuries, forever, you could say.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  And it's, it's, as I say, we say right back to the start, that's why it's so hard to pin him down. It's so hard to free ourselves when we're looking at these events from the knowledge that he's going to achieve all this. He's going to do so much and that, you know, others haven't done it. It is still spectacular by any standards when you look at it.

• 1:15:54Tristan Hughes?

  Gosh. And of course, the afterlife of Alexander himself, his physical body is also fascinating. Where is it now? How it ends up in Egypt, this amazing heist? And then ultimately, you know, disappearing several centuries later, um, with early Christians in Alexandria. There's so much to his story, isn't there?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Tristan Hughes?

  Adrian, this has been so much fun. In four episodes, we've gone from the beginning to the end of Alexander's story, his narrative. How do you feel about it? Oh, now that we've done this, now that we've talked through his life, I mean. What thoughts immediately come to mind when you say Alexander the Great? Now we talk through his whole story.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  It's hard. I mean, it's still hard to pin him down, to know who he really was. You could see what he did and why, but why he did it is harder. And it's the frustration and you can understand why. I don't think there'll ever be a great film about Alexander the Great. The story is too big. The canvas is so vast and it's complicated. He packed an awful lot into that short time. You know, there's no, it's no surprise that you have the stories about Julius Caesar weeping when he sees a bust of Alexander the Great, because you know, at his age, Alexander had conquered the world. Caesar's just a minor Roman magistrate at this point. But on the other hand, there's also, as many effects, it's a hard man to like. You could admire aspects of him, you could deplore aspects of him, but he, he wouldn't have been easy to be around.

• 1:17:15Tristan Hughes?

  Very much so. Adrian, I think we'll wrap it up there because you've given us so much of your time to be our guest for this entire series. Last but certainly not least, you have a book which covers the entirety of Alexander's story and of his father Philip, which is called?

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Philip and Alexander, Kings and Conquerors in America. And I think it's something else in Britain, but Philip and Alexander is the main thing.

• 1:17:38Tristan Hughes?

  It just goes to me to say, well done. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Thanks. It's been lots of fun.

• 1:17:47Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr Adrian Goldsworthy and I finishing off this special series on the life and legend of Alexander the Great. Thank you so much for listening. It was such a pleasure to record this series over four episodes and I really do hope you enjoyed. We may well do another series in the future, maybe the follow up, what happened after Alexander's death, the wars of the successors, or perhaps something slightly different, like Julius Caesar's invasion of Gaul or something else. Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Now, if you did enjoy this series, if you're enjoying the ancients, please make sure that you are following the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That does really help us and you'd be doing us a big favour.

• 1:18:33Tristan Hughes?

  You'd be doing us an even bigger favour if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. We really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including quite a few ancient history documentaries hosted by myself, with a new release on History Hit every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.