Philip is murdered at his daughter’s wedding, in a theater full of people. His son Alexander is twenty.

Philip spent years building the army his son inherits, with long pikes for the infantry and cavalry trained to fight beside them. Engineers can bring siege engines against city walls. His father’s officers still hold the commands. Parmenion, the senior general, has sons and relatives in important commands. Alexander needs their support to keep the throne and carry the war into Asia.

Before he can leave for Asia, he has to hold Macedonia and its allies together. News of Philip’s death has reached the Greek cities and the peoples along the northern frontier, where some see a chance to break free.

Money is short. Plutarch preserves different accounts of the funds available when Alexander leaves for Asia, including a treasury of seventy talents and heavy debts. He also tells a story about the king giving away his property. Asked what he is keeping for himself, Alexander answers, “My hopes.”

Alexander marches north in spring 335, defeats the Triballi near the Lyginus, and follows their retreat toward an island in the Danube. Across the river, Getae infantry and cavalry wait on the northern bank.

That night his men stuff leather tent covers with hay and gather fishing boats for a crossing of their own. Four thousand infantry and fifteen hundred cavalry make it over in darkness. At dawn the infantry press their spears across the standing wheat and push forward, with the horsemen close behind.

The Getae flee to their town, then abandon that too as the Macedonians approach. Alexander takes the plunder and destroys the town. His force is back across the river before nightfall.

News from Illyria sends him west. At Pelium, hostile troops hold the heights above his narrow route out, watching as he draws up the phalanx below them. He makes the men drill in silence. Spears rise and lower together as the formation turns, first one way, then the other.

Arrian describes the enemy drawing back when the phalanx advances toward them. Alexander clears a height and gets his troops across the river. A few nights later he returns to attack their camp.

A rumor reaches Thebes from the Illyrian hills that Alexander is dead. Exiles return to the city, kill two officers of the Macedonian garrison, and call for a revolt against Macedonian rule.

Alexander marches south. The Thebans learn he is alive when his army reaches Boeotia, but they refuse his demand to surrender the leaders of the revolt.

The accounts differ on how the assault begins. Arrian follows Ptolemy in saying that Perdiccas attacks without orders, while Diodorus describes a planned attack. Macedonians break into the city with troops from Thebes’s Greek enemies. Diodorus gives six thousand dead.

Alexander leaves the city’s fate to the allied council, which orders its destruction and the sale of the survivors. The ancient accounts put the number sold at thirty thousand. Temples and Pindar’s house are spared as the rest of Thebes is destroyed and its land divided among neighboring allies.

Athens sends an embassy. The revolt has ended before other cities can join it, and Alexander begins preparing to leave Greece with his army in the spring.

At the narrow crossing of the Hellespont, Parmenion loads the army onto warships and merchant vessels to carry the troops and their animals into Asia. The Persian fleet does not intercept them.

Alexander takes a separate route south, toward the coast associated with the Trojan War. During the crossing he sacrifices to Poseidon. Diodorus describes him throwing a spear into the Asian shore before stepping from his ship in full armor. He claims the land as won by the spear.

Beyond Macedonia’s supply base, the army will have to find food as it marches. The provisions and money it brings will last only a short time. Ahead are the Persian provinces of Asia Minor, with their grain, ports, and treasuries.

Before joining the advance, Alexander turns toward Troy.

Before marching inland, Alexander visits Troy to sacrifice to Athena and honor Achilles, whose story he has known since childhood.

Arrian records Alexander crowning Achilles’ tomb and Hephaestion honoring Patroclus. Plutarch adds the footrace around the tomb, with Alexander stripped and oiled for it. Alexander praises Achilles’ good fortune in having Homer to tell his story.

At Athena’s temple he exchanges his own armor for weapons said to date from the Trojan War. Men will carry these sacred arms before him in battle. The weapons’ age cannot be checked. Alexander has them brought out of the temple and into the army’s keeping.

Persian forces are gathering inland while he visits the shrines. He leaves Troy to meet them.

The Persian commanders meet at Zeleia to decide how to stop the invasion before Alexander marches further into their provinces. Memnon of Rhodes, a Greek serving Persia, advises against a battle.

Burn the crops and deny the Macedonians food, he argues. Alexander cannot stay long in a country that will not feed him. Persia can also carry the war across the Aegean and threaten Macedonia itself.

Arsites, the governor of Hellespontine Phrygia, refuses to let the farms in his province burn. Arrian says the other commanders also distrust Memnon, suspecting that he wants to prolong the war for his own advantage.

They choose the Granicus, where cavalry can hold the riverbank with Greek mercenary infantry on the higher ground behind. To reach them, Alexander will have to cross the water and bring his troops up the bank.

Late in the day, the scouts find Persian cavalry along the far bank of the Granicus, with mercenary infantry on the higher ground behind them. The bank is steep in places, and the crossing will break up any formation that tries to climb it.

Parmenion advises waiting until morning, when he expects the crossing to be easier. Alexander refuses. Arrian has him say the Hellespont would be ashamed if he feared this smaller river after crossing the strait. He brings his cavalry forward.

The Persians can see him across the water. His armor and the men around him mark his position, and their commanders gather opposite him.

Diodorus places the crossing at dawn, before the Persians can stop Alexander from forming his army on the other side. The battle shown here follows Arrian’s account of an assault through the river.

Alexander sends three hundred suits of Persian armor to Athens for display on the Acropolis. The inscription names himself and the Greeks, except the Spartans, as the victors over the peoples of Asia.

The dedication presents the invasion as a Greek war. Sparta has refused to join it, and the inscription makes that absence public.

After burying his dead, Alexander visits the wounded and asks each man how he received his injury. Arrian says he lets them tell their stories and brag about what they have done. The families of the fallen receive exemptions from taxes and services. The twenty-five Companions killed in the first attack will have bronze statues made by Lysippus.

The Persian commanders have lost their field army. Alexander can move south into Asia Minor, where the cities must decide whether to resist him.

High above Sardis, a citadel with steep sides and a triple wall overlooks the army’s route into Lydia. Alexander is still outside the city when Mithrenes, the Persian commandant, comes to surrender it with the treasury inside.

Alexander lets the Lydians use their own laws while his garrison holds the citadel and his officials take over the province’s revenues. Mithrenes joins his entourage, with an honored place beside the king.

The surrender gives Alexander a strong base and access to Persian money. An army that crossed into Asia short of funds can now draw on the territory it occupies. The surrender has spared him a siege and given him a base for the advance toward the coast.

From Sardis, Alexander sends troops to take nearby towns and turns toward the Aegean coast. Persia still has a fleet there.

When the Persian fleet reaches Miletus with about four hundred ships, Alexander’s much smaller fleet already holds the anchorage it needs.

Parmenion urges a sea battle and points to an eagle seen near the ships as a favorable sign. Alexander reads the omen differently, since the eagle was on land, where his army has the advantage.

Miletus falls after an assault on its walls. Mercenaries who escape to a nearby island prepare to resist, but Alexander offers them service in his army. They accept. At the Granicus he had refused terms to Greek troops fighting for Persia.

He then dismisses most of his fleet. Arrian gives the expense and the risk of defeat among his reasons. Alexander intends to take the ports from land, depriving the Persian ships of bases and the cities that supply their crews.

Further south, Memnon holds Halicarnassus. Its harbor is still open.

At Halicarnassus, Memnon has strong walls and a harbor where Persian ships can bring in supplies throughout a siege. Alexander has no fleet capable of closing it.

His men fill the ditch and move their siege engines forward. The defenders make sorties to burn them. At night both sides repair the damage done during the day.

Arrian tells of two Macedonians who get drunk and challenge each other to attack the walls. When other soldiers follow, both sides send reinforcements until Alexander himself has to intervene in the fighting.

When the outer defenses become untenable, the defenders burn their stores and withdraw into fortified positions by the sea. Alexander leaves troops to contain them and marches on.

He gives authority in Caria to Ada, a displaced ruler who has welcomed him and adopted him as her son. The coastal campaign continues with enemies still holding positions behind him.

As winter approaches, Alexander sends recently married Macedonians home on leave, with newly married officers to lead them. They are to return in spring. The officers also have orders to bring recruits from Macedonia and Greece.

Arrian says few of Alexander’s acts won him more affection among the ranks than this chance to spend a winter with their families.

The rest of the army keeps moving. Parmenion takes a force inland while Alexander follows the coast through Lycia and Pamphylia, taking towns that resist and accepting the surrender of others.

Every port captured is another anchorage denied to the Persian fleet. The detachments will meet again at Gordium, where the men returning from leave are expected with their recruits.

At Gordium, Parmenion rejoins the army from the west, and the officers sent home for the winter arrive with new recruits. Alexander has fresh troops for the march across the plateau.

In the citadel stands an old wagon with its yoke bound so tightly that nobody can find the ends of the knot. A local tradition promises rule over Asia to whoever can undo it.

Alexander goes to look. Arrian preserves two versions of what happens when he tries the knot, one in which he cuts straight through it with his sword. Aristobulus says he draws out the pin holding the yoke and lifts it free.

Thunder and lightning follow that night. Alexander offers sacrifices the next day, and the soldiers leave with a story about their king’s claim to the country ahead. Their road leads toward the Taurus Mountains.

The road into Cilicia narrows between the walls of the Taurus Mountains, where a force holding the descent could stop an army in the pass. Xenophon had described how hard this ground would be to cross against defenders.

Arsames, the Persian governor, has troops at the Cilician Gates and is burning parts of the country below. Alexander hears that Tarsus may be destroyed before he can reach it.

He takes light troops forward by night. The guards withdraw, leaving the Macedonians to descend toward the plain without having to force their way through the pass.

Alexander presses ahead to Tarsus, where Arsames abandons the city before he can burn it. Behind the advance guard, the rest of the army and its baggage can now come down through the mountains.

At Tarsus, Alexander falls gravely ill, and the army’s advance stops while his physicians consider what to do. Arrian gives two explanations for the illness, exhaustion and a swim in the cold Cydnus.

Philip of Acarnania offers treatment. Before he brings the medicine, a letter arrives from Parmenion warning that Darius has bribed the physician to poison the king. Alexander keeps it to himself.

When Philip hands him the cup, Alexander gives him the letter to read and drinks the dose. Arrian describes the physician showing no alarm at the warning. Plutarch also tells the scene, with each man watching the other’s face.

The treatment works, though recovery takes time. When Alexander can return to the troops, he shows himself to men who have been afraid for his life. Beyond Cilicia, Darius is gathering an army.

While Alexander marches inland, Memnon takes the war into the Aegean. With Persian ships and money, he captures Chios and gains control of most of Lesbos. He begins the siege of Mytilene.

From these islands he can threaten the passage between Greece and Asia. A war near Macedonia could force Alexander to turn back or divide his army.

During the siege, Memnon falls ill and hands his command to Pharnabazus until Darius can confirm an appointment. He dies before Mytilene falls.

The Persian fleet keeps fighting and takes Mytilene, though Darius now needs troops for the army he is gathering inland. He summons Greek mercenaries from the fleet to join him.

Alexander has lost an experienced opponent without meeting him in another battle. What Memnon might have achieved remains uncertain. Darius is preparing to fight the invasion himself.

While Alexander marches south through the coastal gates, Darius brings his army across the Amanus Mountains on another road. He reaches Issus behind the Macedonians, on their supply route.

At Issus, the Persians find the wounded Alexander has left behind. Arrian says Darius has them killed. Curtius describes mutilated survivors sent back to Alexander.

Alexander sends men by boat to confirm the news before turning his army around to march north in the dark.

At Issus, mountains crowd the sea. Darius has brought his army into a narrow coastal plain where much of its numerical strength cannot be used at once. His men hold the Pinarus, facing the Macedonians as they approach from the south.

Alexander brings his columns onto the plain and extends them into a battle line as the ground widens. There is little room between the hills and the shore.

Darius escapes from Issus, but his mother Sisygambis, his wife, and his children remain in the captured camp. They are Alexander’s prisoners.

Several accounts tell of a visit the next morning, when Alexander comes to see them with Hephaestion. Sisygambis mistakes the taller man for the king and kneels to him. On learning her mistake, she begins to apologize. Alexander tells her she has done no wrong, for Hephaestion, too, is Alexander.

Arrian repeats the story but will not vouch for it. He does credit Alexander with treating the family respectfully, allowing them their royal standing and the attendants who have served them.

They travel south under guard with the Macedonian court. Darius’s letters will now have to reach the man who defeated him before he can even ask for his family’s return.

Darius writes to ask for his family back. Alexander demands that he come to him for terms and address him as the lord of Asia.

Further offers follow. The sources differ over their dates and sums, but all describe Darius offering territory and a marriage to one of his daughters. Alexander refuses to settle for part of the empire.

Arrian places an offer of ten thousand talents and the land west of the Euphrates during the siege of Tyre. Parmenion says he would accept if he were Alexander. Alexander replies that he would too, if he were Parmenion.

The letters pass between the two courts while the royal family remains in Macedonian hands. Darius gets neither their return nor an agreement to halt the invasion.

Aradus sends an embassy as Alexander approaches the Phoenician coast. Byblos also submits, while Sidon welcomes the enemy of the Persian king whose forces have devastated the city.

These cities supply ships and crews to the Persian fleet. Their submission changes the war at sea. Kings and sailors serving elsewhere have to decide whether to keep fighting for Persia while their own ports belong to Alexander.

Squadrons start returning. Alexander gains ships from the same cities he has reached with his infantry, and Persian commanders lose bases along the eastern Mediterranean.

Tyre offers friendship and supplies, but refuses to admit his army to its island city. A channel separates the walls from the mainland, and Tyrian ships can pass between them and the Macedonians gathered on the shore.

When the Tyrians send him a crown and supplies, Alexander asks to enter their island city and sacrifice to Melqart. The Greeks identify the god with Heracles.

They refuse to admit either Persian or Macedonian troops. Alexander can sacrifice at the older temple on the mainland, they tell him.

He will not leave a fortified port outside his control while marching on toward Egypt. Curtius says later envoys are killed and their bodies thrown into the sea. Arrian does not include that episode.

Alexander orders a causeway built across the half mile of water between his army and the city. Near the mainland, the water is shallow enough for work to begin with stone and timber brought from shore.

The soldiers start carrying material into the sea. As the work moves outward, they will come within range of the walls and the Tyrian fleet.

Batis holds Gaza with Arab mercenaries behind walls raised on a mound above the plain. The town blocks the road south to Egypt.

Alexander’s engineers doubt they can bring siege engines high enough to attack, so he orders an embankment built against the town. During the siege, a missile pierces his shield and armor and wounds him in the shoulder.

The defenders repel repeated assaults before the Macedonians break in. Even then, the men of Gaza keep fighting where they stand, and Arrian says they are killed there. The women and children are sold into slavery.

Curtius tells of Alexander having Batis dragged behind a chariot while still alive, in imitation of Achilles’ treatment of Hector. Arrian omits this episode. Its historicity is disputed.

The siege has taken two months. Alexander can now lead the army down the coast toward Egypt, a week’s march from Gaza to the frontier at Pelusium.

Mazaces, the Persian governor of Egypt, has little force with which to resist the army coming south from Gaza. He hands over the country and its treasury.

At Memphis, Alexander sacrifices to Apis and the other Egyptian gods, then holds athletic and musical contests with performers brought from Greece. Egyptian monuments will show him with the titles and images of a pharaoh. Whether he undergoes a formal coronation remains uncertain. Arrian describes the sacrifices but says nothing about a crowning ceremony.

Alexander leaves troops to hold Egypt and divides its administration among several officials. His army now has access to Egyptian revenues and the southern end of the coast it has been securing since Asia Minor.

Before he returns east, he travels down the Nile toward the sea and the shore west of its mouths. The island of Pharos lies offshore.

Between Lake Mareotis and the sea, with Pharos offshore, Alexander chooses a site where a new harbor could link Egypt to the Mediterranean routes his army now controls.

He marks out walls, streets, and places for temples. Arrian says the plans include sanctuaries for Greek gods and for Isis.

Plutarch tells of surveyors marking the plan in barley meal because they have no chalk, only for birds to descend and eat the grain. The seers reassure Alexander that the city will feed many people. The anecdote survives alongside differing accounts of when he lays out the city, before or after his journey to Siwa.

The building will continue after he leaves. Alexander has chosen the site and given orders, but he will never see the great city that develops here.

Alexander follows the coast west, then turns inland toward the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, across a stretch of desert far from his army’s route.

Water runs short. Arrian describes rain relieving the travelers and guides losing the track, but his sources differ on what brings the party through. Ptolemy names two snakes. Aristobulus says crows appear to guide them when they need help finding their way.

The consultation at the oasis remains obscure. Plutarch says Alexander writes to his mother about the answers he has received and promises to tell her more in private.

Stories spread that the god has acknowledged him as a son. Alexander returns from the desert with that claim attached to his name, though the surviving accounts leave much of what happened inside the sanctuary uncertain.

On the march north through the captured coastal cities, Alexander stops at Tyre to offer sacrifices and hold games. He settles appointments and finances for the territory his army is about to leave behind.

The Persian naval threat has weakened as ports and squadrons change sides. With much of the eastern Mediterranean coast under his control, Alexander can move inland without leaving the same threat to his rear.

Greece still needs watching. News arrives from the Aegean, where the war continues under commanders who must manage it while Alexander marches east. Antipater remains in charge of Macedonia and its allies.

Beyond the Euphrates, Darius has gathered another army on open ground with room for cavalry and chariots. Alexander turns inland toward Mesopotamia, followed by the baggage that has traveled with him along the coast.

After crossing the Euphrates at Thapsacus, Alexander leaves the river road to Babylon for a northern route through Mesopotamia. Arrian says there is more fodder here and some relief from the heat.

Mazaeus has cavalry near the crossing but withdraws as the Macedonians approach. Alexander learns that Darius is near the Tigris and marches toward him.

The Tigris holds up the army even though no enemy has come to defend the far bank. Men struggle against the current with their equipment as the column makes its way across.

Alexander gives them a rest on the far bank before moving east toward Darius, who has chosen ground for his cavalry and chariots. Before the Macedonians reach that plain, they see the moon darken.

Eleven days before Gaugamela, the moon darkens. Alexander sacrifices to the Moon, Sun, and Earth while the army rests beyond the Tigris.

Aristander interprets the eclipse for him. Arrian says the seer predicts a battle and a Macedonian victory before the month is out.

Babylonian astronomers record the eclipse too. Their observation survives on clay, a record made in the country Alexander is invading. An eclipse could carry warnings about a king’s fortunes. Its meaning depended on who read the omen and which king the warning concerned.

Alexander resumes the march with a favorable prediction. Darius has assembled cavalry, infantry, elephants, and scythed chariots on the plain ahead of him, with room to spread his army beyond the Macedonian flanks.

Darius has chosen a broad plain near Gaugamela, where his army has the room it lacked at Issus. His men clear and level the ground for the scythed chariots.

After Alexander inspects the field, Parmenion proposes a night attack to offset the Persian numbers. Alexander refuses. In Plutarch’s account, he tells his officers that he will not steal the victory.

Darkness would also make it harder to keep his own formations together. He prepares to fight in daylight, placing reserves behind the line with orders to turn if the enemy gets around them.

Arrian says Darius keeps his men under arms all night, expecting an attack that does not come. The Macedonians sleep.

His officers have to wake him in the morning, with the army waiting to move into position on the plain.

Babylon opens its gates to the army that has just beaten Darius. Mazaeus comes out to meet Alexander, while priests and officials welcome his troops into the city.

Mazaeus will govern Babylonia for Alexander, only weeks after leading Persian troops against him at Gaugamela. Other men receive the military and financial posts, leaving the province under several officers rather than one.

Alexander orders the temples restored and follows the priests’ directions in sacrificing to Marduk, whom Arrian calls Bel. The priests can help him govern a city that has surrendered without a siege.

For the soldiers, Babylon brings supplies and a long halt after the march across Mesopotamia. Curtius disapproves of how they spend their time here. The army stays for about a month before setting out for Susa.

Susa’s governor sends word that he will surrender the city, with the treasure in its palace, before Alexander arrives.

Arrian records fifty thousand talents of silver, while Plutarch gives forty thousand in coined money and more wealth in furnishings and other goods. Either figure dwarfs the funds Alexander brought across the Hellespont.

Among the captured objects are the bronze figures of the Athenian tyrant-slayers, carried away by Xerxes. Alexander orders them sent home.

Diodorus describes him sitting on the Persian throne with his feet short of the footstool. A page slides a table beneath them. The sight makes a Persian attendant weep because Darius used to eat at the table now under Alexander’s feet.

Reinforcements arrive from the coast while Alexander prepares to enter the mountains between Susa and Persepolis. He has money to pay them. The passes ahead will limit how many men he can bring into a fight.

The Uxians demand payment for passage through their mountains. Persian kings have paid to bring armies along this road, they tell Alexander, and he can do the same.

He tells them to meet him at the pass and collect it.

That night, guides take Alexander and a detachment along another route. His men attack the villages before moving up to the position where the Uxians expect to receive their payment. Other Macedonian troops block their escape.

When the defeated Uxians ask for terms, Curtius says Sisygambis, Darius’s mother, intercedes for them. Alexander lets them keep their land and requires tribute in horses, cattle, and sheep.

Beyond these mountains, Ariobarzanes has troops at the Persian Gates to block the road as it climbs toward Persepolis.

At the Persian Gates, Ariobarzanes stops the advance. His troops hold a barrier across the gorge, with more men posted on the heights above it.

Stones and missiles fall on the Macedonians as they enter ground too narrow for their formations, beneath positions they cannot reach. Alexander pulls back. His dead remain in the pass.

Following a route learned from prisoners, he takes a force around the Persian position through the mountains at night. Troops left near the barrier wait for his signal.

When his men reach the defenders from behind, both Macedonian forces attack. The barrier gives the Persians no protection from the troops coming down on their rear, and the position breaks.

Alexander presses on with cavalry and lighter troops, ahead of the main army. He has received word from Persepolis that he must come quickly to secure its treasury.

Alexander secures the palaces and treasury at Persepolis, then gives the soldiers permission to plunder the rest of the city.

Curtius describes men killed for their possessions and soldiers fighting each other over the loot. Houses are stripped. The surviving accounts leave no reliable total for the people killed.

The wealth in the royal vaults goes under guard. Diodorus reports a hundred and twenty thousand talents, while Plutarch describes thousands of pack animals needed to carry the treasure away.

At Sardis and Babylon, Alexander accepted surrender and kept much of the local administration in place. At Persepolis, the army takes private property by force while the palace stores remain under his control.

The Macedonians spend the winter in the region. Above the plundered city, the royal buildings still stand, their stone reliefs showing delegations bringing tribute to the Persian kings.

The palaces at Persepolis burn before Alexander leaves. The sources disagree about how the fire begins.

Plutarch, Curtius, and Diodorus describe a drinking party. Thais, an Athenian woman traveling with the army, urges the company to burn the palace in revenge for the destruction of Athens. Alexander joins the torch procession that comes out of the banquet.

Arrian describes an argument between Alexander and Parmenion, who asks why the king would burn property he now owns. Alexander answers that Persia must pay for its invasion of Greece and the destruction of Greek sanctuaries.

Alexander takes part in the burning in each account, though the sources differ over whether he ordered it after debate or joined a drunken procession.

The army prepares to leave the ruined palaces. Darius is still alive at Ecbatana, to the north, with troops and money he can take east if Alexander pursues him.

Darius leaves Ecbatana as Alexander approaches, taking his remaining forces and money toward the eastern provinces.

At Ecbatana, Alexander releases the Greek allied troops and Thessalian cavalry. He pays them before they leave and offers wages to those who choose to stay. Parmenion remains behind with troops and the treasure.

On the road toward the Caspian Gates, Alexander learns that Bessus and other officers have seized Darius. If they get him farther east, Alexander faces another army gathered around a captive king.

Forced marches through the summer heat leave men and horses behind. Alexander takes a smaller mounted force forward, trying to reach the wagons before the captors move their prisoner again.

By the final stretch, only a fraction of his men are still with him. The officers holding Darius have little time left before the Macedonians reach the wagons.

The pursuers find Darius in the wagons his captors have abandoned after wounding him. Bessus escapes east.

Plutarch describes a Macedonian soldier bringing water to the dying king, who asks him to thank Alexander for the treatment of his family. He dies before Alexander reaches him.

In Plutarch’s account, Alexander covers the body with his own cloak before ordering Darius sent for burial among the Persian kings.

Bessus takes the royal title Artaxerxes and gathers support in the eastern provinces. Alexander treats him as the murderer of the king whose territory he now claims.

The soldiers have beaten Darius, taken his capitals, and found his body. They will next be asked to pursue the men who killed him.

Curtius describes news spreading through camp that the expedition is finished now that Darius is dead. Some soldiers expect to go home.

Alexander calls the men together to argue for continuing the pursuit of Bessus and the eastern commanders. They still hold forces in provinces he claims.

The army enters Hyrcania, south of the Caspian Sea, where Persian officials and troops come in to surrender. Greek mercenaries who served Darius also seek terms.

Four years earlier, at the Granicus, Alexander had attacked mercenaries who asked for terms after the Persian cavalry fled. Here he accepts men into his own army. Some of those who expected to fight him will now march under his orders.

After the summer pursuit, the troops have reached wetter country, but Alexander’s next orders take them away from the road west.

Philotas hears of a plot against Alexander but fails to report it. When the accusation reaches the king at Phrada, the commander of the Companion cavalry has to answer for his silence.

The sources disagree over his guilt and the proceedings, with Curtius describing torture followed by a confession. Arrian reports the charges and the verdict against him. The army assembly condemns Philotas, and he is killed.

His father Parmenion is at Ecbatana, commanding troops near the treasury and the road behind the army. Alexander sends orders to his subordinates before the old general can hear of his son’s death.

They kill him without a trial. Arrian says Alexander fears leaving Parmenion alive after what has happened to Philotas, whether or not he shared the plot.

Alexander divides command of the Companion cavalry between Hephaestion and Cleitus. Parmenion’s troops remain far behind him, guarding treasure in the city where their commander has just been murdered.

The pursuit of Bessus takes the army south and east through Aria, Drangiana, and Arachosia. Alexander must secure the roads behind him while the man he is chasing gathers forces beyond the Hindu Kush.

Settlements and garrisons follow the march. Sites associated with these foundations include Herat and Kandahar, places already important for their water and the routes that meet there.

Soldiers assigned to the new posts stay behind as the main army moves on. They have to hold the roads and settlements Alexander has passed through, with smaller forces than the one now leaving them.

Winter brings the column toward the Hindu Kush. Snow and scarce supplies slow the approach to the passes. Bessus waits in Bactria, hoping the mountains will keep Alexander away long enough to prepare.

The Macedonians begin the crossing before the snow has cleared.

Snow still lies on the passes when Alexander takes his army over the Hindu Kush into Bactria.

Strabo describes men eating their pack animals raw because they have no wood for fires. A plant growing on the mountain helps them digest the meat, he says. His account brings the army to Adrapsa on the fifteenth day after leaving its winter quarters.

Arrian also describes deep snow and scarce supplies, though neither account gives a secure total for the men lost on the crossing.

Bessus has stripped the country beyond the mountains so that an army arriving hungry will have little to eat. Alexander keeps coming. Bessus withdraws across the Oxus, burns the boats, and leaves the river between himself and the Macedonians. His Bactrian cavalry disperse to their homes.

The army follows him to the water. With little timber near the bank, Alexander will have to improvise a way across.

There is too little timber near the Oxus to build a bridge across it. The men fill leather skins with dry material and float across, using a method they used at the Danube six years earlier. Arrian says the whole army is over in five days.

Spitamenes and other leaders seize Bessus and offer to hand him over. Ptolemy’s account has him collect the prisoner with a fast-moving force. Aristobulus says Spitamenes and Dataphernes bring Bessus themselves.

Alexander receives him stripped and bound. Bessus is flogged and later mutilated, then sent away for execution as a traitor to Darius.

The men who held him have given up a rival claimant to the Persian throne. They still have forces and allies beyond the river, where Alexander is now leaving garrisons and issuing orders of his own.

Towns revolt behind Alexander’s army, killing Macedonian soldiers while Spitamenes besieges the garrison in the citadel at Maracanda.

Arrian connects the rising with a summons to the region’s leaders, who fear that Alexander means to arrest them when they arrive.

Near the Jaxartes, Alexander attacks the towns that have expelled his garrisons. At Cyropolis, troops enter through a watercourse while others assault the walls. Many defenders die. Those who survive the fighting are taken captive when the town falls.

The sieges occupy Alexander while Spitamenes threatens the posts farther south. Every detachment sent to protect a road or relieve a garrison reduces the force available to fight elsewhere.

A column goes toward Maracanda without the king. Alexander remains near the Jaxartes, where Scythian horsemen are gathering across the river.

Curtius describes a massacre of the Branchidae near the Oxus, while Strabo also records the town’s destruction. Arrian omits the episode.

In Curtius’s account, the town’s Greek inhabitants descend from priests at Didyma who surrendered their temple treasure to Xerxes. Resettled far to the east, their families have lived here for generations when the Macedonians arrive. The descendants come out to welcome them as fellow Greeks.

Alexander asks the Milesians in his army what should happen to them. They disagree. He orders the town surrounded.

Curtius describes the killing of the inhabitants, the demolition of the buildings, and the uprooting of the sacred groves. The people killed are descendants of those accused of betraying the temple more than a century earlier.

Scholars disagree over whether the massacre happened as Curtius tells it, centuries after the army passed through this region. The town’s site has not been securely identified.

Scythian horsemen gather across the Jaxartes, now the Syr Darya, while Alexander establishes a fortified town on his side of the river.

Artillery fires from the bank to drive the riders away from the water while Alexander’s troops come across on rafts. They reach the far side.

Once over, the Macedonians have trouble catching the mounted archers. Alexander sends cavalry and lighter troops against them together, forcing them into a closer fight. The Scythians retreat into the steppe.

As the pursuit carries the army farther from the river, Alexander becomes ill after drinking bad water, according to Arrian. He stops the chase and returns to base.

The new town needs a garrison. To the south, Spitamenes is attacking the positions Alexander left behind on his way to this river.

The relief column reaches Maracanda after Spitamenes lifts the siege. Several officers share command, with Pharnuches, who knows the local language, sent along to help them.

They follow Spitamenes away from the city. His mounted archers can strike without closing, keeping the column under attack as it tries to find shelter near the river. The formation breaks up. Most of the men are killed.

In one of the two accounts Arrian records, Pharnuches tries to hand command to the Macedonian officers while the force is under attack. None will accept it.

Alexander hurries back, buries the dead, and pursues Spitamenes into country where he cannot catch him. He then ravages settlements along the river that are accused of supporting the attack.

The campaign spreads into separate columns, moving between posts and strongholds while Spitamenes continues to raid. Reinforcements arrive. Fresh men join an army fighting over roads and towns it has already passed through.

At a banquet in Maracanda, Cleitus the Black objects when praise of Alexander turns to mockery of older Macedonian officers. He saved the king’s life at the Granicus.

The argument grows as he defends the men who fought under Philip. He reminds Alexander of the hand that saved him at the river, and Alexander takes his words as insults.

The accounts differ over how Cleitus comes back within reach after friends restrain Alexander and try to separate them. The king takes a spear and kills him.

For days, Arrian says, Alexander grieves and refuses food while men at court try to console him. The philosopher Anaxarchus argues that a king’s actions must be treated as just.

Cleitus had been appointed to command in Bactria. When Alexander returns to his duties, he must find another man for the post.

The defenders of the Sogdian Rock have supplies, snow, and steep cliffs between them and Alexander’s army. Oxyartes has sent his family there for safety.

Asked to surrender, they tell Alexander to find soldiers with wings. He offers twelve talents to the first man above the fortress and smaller rewards to the climbers who follow.

Three hundred volunteers take flax ropes and iron tent pegs to the cliff at night. They work upward with the pegs driven wherever they can find a hold in the rock or frozen snow. Thirty fall, Arrian says. The others cannot recover their bodies from the snow below.

At dawn, the survivors signal from above the fortress. Alexander sends a herald to point them out. The defenders surrender, believing the men on the heights are more numerous and better armed than they are.

Oxyartes’ daughter Roxana is among the captives. After hearing how his family has been treated, her father comes to Alexander.

Plutarch says Alexander falls in love with Roxana, the daughter of Oxyartes, when he sees her at a feast. They marry. Arrian also describes him falling in love with her before the wedding.

Her father can help him reach leaders who have resisted the army. Oxyartes persuades Chorienes to surrender another mountain stronghold, using his own reception by Alexander to reassure him.

Macedonian troops are still campaigning in the region. Strongholds remain to be taken, and the army has to leave enough men behind to hold them when it moves on.

The soldiers have spent years reaching this country and fighting over its roads and settlements. Some will stay in the garrisons. Those who continue toward India will march with Roxana as part of the royal household.

At court, Alexander tries to introduce proskynesis among his Greek and Macedonian companions. The gesture is customary before a Persian king, but the Greeks associate such submission with worship.

Callisthenes, the historian traveling with the army, speaks against the gesture before it can become a custom among the Macedonians. The attempt fails.

Later, royal pages plot to kill Alexander in his sleep, led by Hermolaus, whom the king has punished after a hunting incident. Someone reports the plan. The boys are tried before the army and killed before they can carry it out.

Callisthenes is arrested too. Arrian says Ptolemy and Aristobulus report that the pages implicated him, while other writers disagree.

Ptolemy describes torture followed by hanging, while Aristobulus says Callisthenes dies ill in captivity. Arrian notes that two men close to Alexander cannot agree on the death of a man they knew. The surviving accounts do not establish Callisthenes’ part in the plot with certainty.

Coenus defeats Spitamenes in battle. Sogdian and Bactrian allies desert him, leaving him to retreat with the Massagetae into the desert.

Arrian says the Massagetae kill him when they hear that Alexander is coming after them. They send his head to the king, hoping he will call off the pursuit.

Curtius gives another account. Spitamenes’ wife is worn out by their flight and wants him to surrender. After a feast, she kills him in his sleep and takes his head to the Macedonian camp with a servant’s help.

Neither account gives Alexander a final encounter with the man he has been pursuing. Spitamenes is dead before the last mountain strongholds surrender.

The soldiers who remain in the region have to hold those places. Alexander will take the rest of the army toward India, leaving garrisons and local allies to maintain his rule.

The army splits at the approaches to India. Hephaestion and Perdiccas lead part of the force toward the Indus, where they will prepare a crossing for the troops following behind. Alexander takes the hill roads, attacking towns along the way.

At Massaga, mercenaries hold out with the defenders through days of siege. They negotiate terms and leave for a separate camp, where Alexander surrounds and attacks them.

Arrian says they have agreed to join his service but intend to escape. Diodorus describes an agreement allowing them to return home, followed by Alexander surrounding them. His account includes women fighting beside the men and surviving women and unarmed people taken into custody.

Plutarch condemns the attack as a breach of faith. The accounts give different explanations, but the negotiated departure ends in killing.

Other communities resist or abandon their positions. Some refugees gather on a mountain stronghold called Aornos. Alexander takes troops toward it before joining the rest of the army at the Indus.

Refugees gather on Aornos, a mountain stronghold with water and cultivable ground on its summit. Arrian repeats a story that even Heracles failed to capture it. He says Alexander is eager to succeed where the hero failed.

The site is usually identified with Pir-Sar above the Indus, though the identification remains debated. Steep approaches make an assault difficult.

Ptolemy reaches a neighboring height and signals with a fire. Alexander can see where his men are, but the defenders block the route between them. He fights his way up to join them.

A gap still separates the troops from the stronghold. Alexander orders each man to cut stakes, and the soldiers begin an embankment of timber and earth. Missiles cover the work as it creeps forward. When the mound reaches a height beside their position, the defenders seek terms and begin to withdraw.

Alexander attacks during their departure. Men are killed on the difficult escape routes. He occupies the summit, sacrifices, and leaves a garrison before returning to the river.

At Taxila the army receives a welcome. Its ruler, known to the Greek writers as Taxiles, has already offered Alexander support. He supplies troops and receives gifts and confirmation of his position in return.

Taxiles has rivals nearby. Porus, across the Hydaspes, has an army of his own. Alexander’s arrival changes the balance between rulers whose disputes began before the Macedonians crossed the mountains.

The soldiers rest at Taxila before the next river crossing, among people whose wealth and rivalries they are only beginning to learn about.

Greek accounts also describe meetings with Indian ascetics. The visitors ask about their way of life and try to persuade some to accompany them.

Porus does not submit. As Alexander moves toward the Hydaspes, troops gather on the opposite bank with elephants ready to oppose a landing.

Porus holds the far bank of the Hydaspes. The river is swollen by rain, and elephants stand ready to oppose a landing. Arrian gives Porus two hundred elephants. Curtius gives eighty-five.

The horses will not land within reach of the elephants. Alexander sends troops up and down his own bank, making noise and threatening crossings through the night. Porus follows them at first. After repeated alarms, he leaves sentries along the water and stops moving his main force to answer each one.

Alexander also gathers grain and spreads word that he will wait for the river to fall. Meanwhile, he searches upstream for a crossing place. A wooded island and a bend in the bank offer cover.

Craterus stays opposite Porus with orders to watch for a chance to cross. Alexander takes a picked force upstream, keeping back from the bank to hide the movement. During the night a storm breaks over the men preparing their boats and rafts. Thunder covers the sound of their work.

Bucephalus dies around the time of the battle. The sources differ over whether wounds or age kill him. Arrian gives his age as about thirty.

Plutarch tells the story of Alexander taming him as a boy. The horse shies and will not accept a rider. Alexander notices his fear of his shadow and turns him toward the sun before mounting. Philip watches the successful ride and tells his son to find a kingdom large enough for him.

Plutarch writes long after both horse and rider are dead. Arrian also describes Bucephalus, including his markings and refusal to carry anyone else, as he records the loss in India.

Alexander names a city Bucephala in his memory, across the river from Nicaea, the city commemorating his victory. The army leaves both behind when it resumes the march east.

At the Acesines, the swollen current carries boats onto submerged rocks, throwing men and equipment into the water. The army crosses and moves on toward the Hydraotes.

At Sangala, the defenders wait behind lines of wagons before falling back into the town, where Alexander has to prepare a siege. Escape attempts fail. When the place falls, Arrian counts seventeen thousand dead and many more captured. Alexander orders it destroyed.

Diodorus describes worn weapons, horses with damaged hooves, and soldiers cutting Indian garments to replace the clothes they brought from home. He counts seventy days of rain, with thunder and lightning.

Beyond the Hyphasis are reports of fertile country and rulers with large armies, including more elephants than the Macedonians faced at the Hydaspes. Alexander wants to cross.

Arrian describes men gathering in groups to complain about their hardships, with some saying they will go no farther even if the king insists. Alexander hears what is being said and calls the officers together.

At the Hyphasis, the men gather in groups and talk about the years of marching. They will go no farther. Alexander calls his officers together to persuade them to continue, with the river still waiting to be crossed.

In Arrian’s account, he recalls their victories and promises that the eastern sea is close, beyond the country they have yet to conquer. Once they reach it, he says, the empire’s borders will be secure.

The officers remain silent until Coenus speaks. He asks Alexander to consider how few remain of the men who left home with him. Some have died, others are wounded or settled far from Macedonia. The survivors want to see their parents, wives, and children while they still can. He asks the king to go home with them.

Others weep and show their agreement, angering Alexander so much that he dismisses the meeting. The next day he offers to go on with anyone willing to follow him, leaving the rest to explain their return at home. Then he withdraws to his tent.

For three days he waits for the army to change its mind. No one comes to ask him to continue.

When Alexander sacrifices for the crossing, the omens are unfavorable. He announces that the army will turn back. Soldiers crowd around his tent with cheers and blessings for the king who has finally agreed to take them home. Arrian says he has allowed himself to be defeated by them alone.

Before leaving the Hyphasis, Alexander orders twelve great altars built. He offers sacrifices and holds games. Arrian describes the altars as thanks to the gods and monuments to how far the army has come.

Diodorus and Curtius describe an oversized camp left beside the river. Its beds and equipment are meant to make later visitors believe that unusually large men once camped here.

Coenus dies during the return from the Hyphasis. Curtius places his death soon after his appeal to Alexander, while Arrian records it later, before the fleet begins its journey downstream.

Alexander gives him a splendid funeral. The officer who spoke for the men will not make the journey home with them.

At the Hydaspes, preparations are under way for a fleet. The return route will lead down the rivers toward the Indus.

Shipbuilders prepare vessels on the Hydaspes. Fighting ships and horse transports join the smaller craft already working the rivers. The ancient totals differ, partly because they count different kinds of vessels.

Nearchus receives command. Sailors from Mediterranean ports serve alongside men familiar with the local rivers. The army also receives reinforcements and replacement equipment.

Alexander plans to follow the river system to the Indus and then the sea. Troops will march beside the fleet, with separate commands moving along the banks. Boats carry supplies and men who do not have to march.

Alexander pours an offering into the river and gives the signal to leave. Trumpets sound. The crews take up their oars, and the banks echo with shouted commands and the beat of so many vessels rowing together. Arrian describes people running down to watch, astonished by horses being carried aboard ships.

Communities downstream still have to submit or resist. Alexander takes fighting troops ahead against the Mallians while the other columns continue toward their meeting points.

At a Mallian town, Alexander climbs a ladder onto the wall ahead of his men. They crowd up behind him until the ladder breaks. Only a few companions have reached him, and the defenders can see him above them.

He jumps inside. Peucestas carries the sacred shield brought from Troy. Leonnatus and Abreas are there too. An arrow kills Abreas.

Another arrow pierces Alexander’s chest. In Arrian’s account, air escapes from the wound with his blood before he falls. Peucestas stands over him with the shield while Leonnatus helps hold off the attackers.

Outside, Macedonians force their way over the wall and through the gates. Arrian says they kill the inhabitants without sparing women or children. The wounded king is carried out.

The arrow has to be removed. The accounts differ over who performs the operation. Alexander survives, but rumors of his death spread through the army.

When he can move, he has himself brought downriver where the troops can see him. They still doubt what they are seeing. He mounts a horse at the bank, then dismounts and walks among them as the soldiers reach toward him and weep.

At Patala, the Indus divides on its way to the sea. Alexander explores the channels with part of the fleet.

The tide falls, leaving ships stranded on the mud. Arrian says the crews are alarmed by a change unlike anything they know from the Mediterranean. When the water returns, some vessels float free, but others collide and suffer damage. Alexander has them repaired and finds local pilots to guide him farther down the channel.

Alexander sails beyond the river mouth. He sacrifices bulls to Poseidon and pours offerings into the water. The army has reached the sea after years of marching inland.

Now the fleet needs a route west. Nearchus will follow the coast, while land forces travel by separate roads. Craterus takes one force through the interior. Alexander chooses the coastal desert of Gedrosia, intending to arrange supplies for the ships along the way.

Alexander takes the army into the desert of Gedrosia. The fleet needs water and supplies along the coast, but the land route cannot reliably provide them.

Arrian gives another reason for the choice. Stories said that Cyrus and Semiramis had lost armies here, and Alexander wanted to succeed where they had failed. Arrian attributes this explanation to Nearchus.

The army marches at night to escape the heat, but some stages are too long to finish before the sun rises. Watering places are far apart. Men who fall behind cannot always be brought forward again. Pack animals die or are killed for food, leaving less transport for the sick.

One night the army camps beside a stream. Rain falling in distant mountains sends a flood through the camp, carrying away women, children, animals, and equipment. Arrian says the soldiers barely escape with their weapons.

He also tells of men bringing Alexander water in a helmet. Alexander pours it out where the troops can see, refusing to drink while they go thirsty. Arrian places the story here but notes that others put it on an earlier march.

The crossing takes about sixty days. Its losses cannot be counted securely from the surviving accounts. The men who emerge into Carmania have lost companions, dependents, and much of what they carried into the desert.

In Carmania, the army reaches supplies again. Craterus arrives with the force he has brought by the inland route, and other officials bring animals and provisions.

Nearchus comes up from the coast with a few men to meet Alexander. In Arrian’s account, the king at first fears that these are all who remain of the fleet. Nearchus tells him the ships are safe nearby. Alexander weeps at the news.

The reunion is followed by celebration. The accounts differ about its form. Arrian records sacrifices and games. Curtius and Plutarch describe a procession of drinking and revelry across Carmania, with Alexander imitating Dionysus. Arrian rejects that story.

The soldiers eat and rest among men who have come by other routes. The fleet still has more coast to cover, and the land army must continue toward the Persian capitals.

Alexander returns to reports of abuses by men left in charge behind him. Some governors have raised mercenary forces. Others are accused of plundering temples and mistreating the people under their authority.

Among the men accused are Cleander and Sitalces, who helped carry out the killing of Parmenion. Their own soldiers join the inhabitants in testifying against them. Alexander orders both men executed.

Harpalus, the treasurer and an old associate, flees with money and mercenaries. He makes his way toward Greece.

Alexander orders governors to dismiss their mercenary troops. The men released from service have weapons and experience, and many begin looking for other employment.

Other officials lose their posts or their lives as Alexander moves toward Susa, hearing accusations against the men he left to govern in his absence.

At Susa, Alexander arranges marriages between his officers and women of the Persian and Median nobility. Arrian gives about eighty couples. Chares, quoted by Athenaeus, gives ninety-two.

The bridegrooms sit in order of rank while the brides are brought to them. The ceremonies follow Persian custom, and Alexander pays the dowries. He marries Stateira, Darius’s daughter, and Parysatis, daughter of an earlier Persian king. Hephaestion marries Stateira’s sister.

Arrian also records payments to soldiers who have married Asian women. The royal court is binding families together after years of war between them.

Then Alexander offers to pay the men’s debts. They hesitate to give their names, suspecting that the inquiry will expose how they have spent their money.

Alexander drops the demand for names and has officials pay the creditors without recording the debtors’ identities. Arrian puts the sum at twenty thousand talents. The men accept the money once they believe they will not be punished for asking for it.

At Opis, Alexander gathers the Macedonians to announce that men too old or disabled for service will go home with rewards. The army protests. The soldiers hear that he no longer needs them.

Persian recruits have arrived trained in Macedonian methods, while Alexander has brought other Persians into the cavalry and positions close to him. Men shout that he should discharge them all and campaign with his father. They mean Ammon.

Alexander comes down among them with his officers and points out the men he wants seized. Thirteen are taken away for execution. He returns to address the army about everything Philip and he have done for them.

Then he withdraws. After two days he gives Persian units Macedonian names and admits Persians to honors the Macedonians have valued. The men crowd the palace and wait to be received.

When Alexander comes out, Callines asks why Persians are called his kinsmen and allowed to kiss him. The king says all Macedonians are his kinsmen. Men come forward to kiss him, and the quarrel ends in tears.

A banquet follows, with Macedonians seated nearest Alexander and Persians beside them as prayers are offered for concord between the two peoples. Ten thousand veterans prepare to leave with Craterus, their pay settled and gifts provided for the journey. Others remain in service.

At Ecbatana, Hephaestion falls ill during the autumn festivities. He has become one of the most powerful men in the empire and has recently married into Darius’s family.

Plutarch says his doctor leaves him to attend the theater. While he is away, Hephaestion eats a boiled fowl and drinks wine against his advice. Alexander is summoned from the games but reaches him too late.

The accounts of the mourning differ. Arrian says some writers describe Alexander lying over the body all day and night. He reports agreement that the king refuses food for three days. Stories that the doctor is executed are less secure, and Arrian presents them as such.

Alexander cuts his hair and orders public mourning. He sends to Ammon asking what honors may be paid to Hephaestion. The answer permits honors as a hero.

At Babylon, preparations begin for an immense funeral. Ten years after the two men visited Troy, Alexander has to bury the companion who followed him through the campaigns.

Embassies arrive as Alexander approaches Babylon. He is preparing an expedition to Arabia, with ships being built and crews assembled.

Chaldean priests warn him against entering the city. If he must enter, they advise a direction of approach. Arrian says marshy ground prevents Alexander from following that advice.

The sources gather other warnings around these weeks. Plutarch tells of ravens falling and a tame ass killing a lion. Arrian describes a stranger found sitting on the royal throne in the king’s clothes.

The writers who preserve these stories already know what will happen in Babylon. They arrange the warnings around a king still making plans to leave.

Nearchus has work to do on the fleet. Men are assigned to ships while Alexander prepares for the voyage to Arabia.

After a banquet, Alexander goes on drinking at the house of Medius, then develops a fever. Accounts quoted as the Royal Diaries follow the illness day by day.

At first he still bathes, sacrifices, and gives orders for the expedition. As the fever continues, he has to be carried to the sacrifices and postpones the sailing. Officers wait outside while he grows weaker. Eventually he can no longer speak.

The soldiers insist on seeing him, some because they fear that he is already dead and the officers are concealing it. They file past the bed. Arrian describes Alexander greeting each man with his eyes and a movement of his head.

Some accounts say he leaves his kingdom to the best or the strongest. The stories differ, and the famous answer cannot be treated as a secure record of what he said.

He dies in June 323 BCE, aged thirty-two. In Babylon, a scribe records his death in an astronomical diary on the twenty-ninth of Aiaru, corresponding to June 10–11. The entry also records cloud.

Later stories blame poison and name people involved in the struggles that follow his death. The cause of the fever remains uncertain.

The officers still have an army, a court, and orders for Arabia, but no agreed adult successor to take command of them.

Alexander has been king for twelve years and eight months. The campaign mileage used here totals about twenty thousand miles, including movements beyond the main route drawn on the map.

The army has changed repeatedly along the way, taking recruits and local troops into ranks left empty by death, discharge, and garrison duty. Its final strength cannot tell us how many of the original marchers will see Macedonia again.

No reliable total survives for the dead of the wars. It would have to include soldiers on both sides and the people killed in towns, sieges, and the country through which the armies moved.

The commanders divide the empire and fight over it. Roxana and Alexander’s son are later murdered. Ptolemy keeps Egypt, where his descendants will rule for nearly three centuries. Soldiers settle along the route in cities and garrisons far from the places where they were born.

Christopher Martin’s memoir, Chasing Alexander: A Marine’s Journey Across Iraq and Afghanistan, tells how his interest in Alexander led him toward the Marine Corps, and what he found there.

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