5 - CONQUEST OF THE ACHAEMENIDS

Summary

IN THE SHORT INTERVAL BETWEEN HIS ACCESSION AND THE START of the Asiatic campaign, Alexander suppressed rebellion in the south and unrest on his northern borders – all with terrifying ease. A rapid move into Thessaly silenced the first grumblings of discontent, and in the following year (335 BC) he arrived at the gates of Thebes, dispelling by his very presence rumors of his death in the north. A single act of terror – the destruction of the city and the enslavement of its population – served to impress upon the Greeks the futility of opposition. The Spartans refused to join the League, just as they had after Chaeronea, but theirs was for now a passive resistance. When they did finally attempt to reassert themselves, they found few allies and no military success.

SETTING THE STAGE

In 334 Alexander's army crossed the Hellespont from Sestos to Abydus on 160 warships and an assortment of cargo craft. That Alexander did not build a boat-bridge was probably a matter of economics – his finances were an ongoing concern at the beginning of the expedition – and the recollection that Xerxes' “chaining” of the Hellespont was regarded as hubristic. Instead he used every symbol in the Panhellenic arsenal. At Dium in Macedonia he staged games in honor of the Muses and the Olympian gods. Still on the European side, he propitiated Zeus the god of safe landings and made apotropaic sacrifice to Protesilaus, the first man in the great expedition against Troy to die on Asian soil, hoping to avert a similar fate.