August 19, 2025 • 14 mins
Discover how the Kingdom of Macedonia, under the visionary leadership of Philip II (382-336 BC), rose to dominate ancient Greece through a mix of shrewd diplomacy and military prowess. Philip revolutionized the classical Greek phalanx by integrating soldiers armed with the formidable 6-meter spear known as the sarissa, creating an infantry that remained unmatched until the rise of the Roman legions. After Philips tragic assassination, his son, Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), ascended to the throne and embarked on an extraordinary journey, establishing an empire that stretched from Greece to the far reaches of northwestern India. The Hellenistic culture he spread not only influenced his empire but also laid the groundwork for modern western civilization. (Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section seventeen of the Rise of the Macedonian Empire by
Arthur M. Curtis. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Pamel Andagami, Chapter thirteen, The Death of Darius,
Reduction of Ptarthia, Execution of Pelodus, and Parmenion, Part one. Darius, meanwhile,
(00:23):
who had fled through the mountains to the eastward, was
resting at Agbatana. There were still thirty thousand infantry and
three thousand cavalry with him. He had still the support
of Satraps, undaunted as Bessis and loyal as Artabasis, but
all heart was gone from his resistance, and his one
(00:44):
thought was to flee from Alexander's face to the farthest
corner of his empire. With this view, the heavy baggage
in the Harem had been sent forward some day's journey
in advance, and when he learned that his restless enemy,
not content with being master of his finest capitals and
of the fairest parts of his empire, was bent on
(01:07):
having possession of his person also, he delayed no more
but set out eastwards at once, intending to pass through
Hyrcania and Parthia, and to hinder his pursuer's march by
ravaging as he went. July three, thirty eight days afterwards,
Alexander was an Agbitana. At three days march from the capital,
(01:31):
he was met by the news that Darius had set
out five days before and taken with him all his treasures.
When the Macedonians therefore entered the city, it was only
to make hurried preparations for a forced march in pursuit.
At the same time, a short delay was inevitable, for
some of his Greek troops were anxious to return home
(01:53):
after their four years service, and it was necessary to
remodel the military organization, which had so far served its
purpose perfectly. Henceforth he was to deal not with regular armies,
but with provincial levees, and still more with vast distances,
with mountains and deserts, where rapidity of movement might mean
(02:17):
not victory only but life. Hence he needed archers, light troops,
and flying columns more than the massive weight of the phalanx. Lastly,
he had to provide for the safe custody of the
extraordinary amount of treasure which had fallen into his hands
during the previous nine months. This was lodged in the
(02:39):
citadel of Agbatana and intrusted to the care of Harpalas.
Then once more he started in pursuit of the great king.
In eleven days he traversed three hundred miles of the broken,
difficult ground lying between the desert and Mount Taurus to
the north, passing near the site of the modern Tehran,
(03:00):
and almost at the foot of the splendid peak of
daime Avend, rising twenty thousand feet into the air. On
the eleventh day he reached Ruggai, but only to learn
that Darius had already passed the Caspian Gates fifty miles
to the eastward, and to find that a short rest
was indispensable for his jaded men and horses. In five
(03:23):
days he was again in the saddle. Before him were
the Caspian Gates, a long and difficult series of defiles
where he had vainly hoped to intercept the fugitive. A
day's march beyond the pass, he heard the alarming tidings
that Bessus and his friends had laid hands on Darius,
(03:44):
and that his life was in danger. Headlong as had
been the speed of the pursuit so far, there was
clearly need of yet greater efforts. The Eastern say Traps,
it appears, had resolved to seize Darius and surrender him
to Alexand if it were necessary, but if possible, to
push on across Parthia, outstripping pursuit, and to organize a
(04:09):
resistance on their own behalf in Bactria and Sogdiana. But
Alexander was determined to cut them off, taking with him
only the companion cavalry, the light horse, and some picked infantry,
and leaving Koynas to bring on the rest by slower marches.
He rode on all that night and the next day
(04:29):
till midday. After a short rest, he started again, and
again rode all the night through in the morning, coming
on traces of a camp recently occupied here. Further tidings
reached them to the effect that Bessis had actually superseded Darius,
and that Arde Bezos and the Greek mercenaries, unable to
(04:52):
prevent what they disapproved, had parted company with the others
and turned off into the mountains. Darius, in short, was
utterly in his enemy's hands. So fagged were both horses
and men that another forced march of a night and
half a day only brought Alexander to a village where
(05:12):
Bessis and his party had encamped the day before, And
just when all reserve of energy in his own men
seemed gone, he learned that the fugitives also were resolved
to make a forced march all the next night. To
overtake them was out of the question. Was it possible
to intercept them at this juncture, when his prey seemed
(05:35):
about to slip from his grasp. Some of the natives
informed him of a route shorter indeed, but waste and waterless. Difficulties, however,
were no bar to the impetuous Alexander. Picking out the
strongest and freshest, both of horses and men. Again, he
set out in the afternoon and actually accomplished nearly fifty
(05:57):
miles in the course of the night, Humming suddenly about
dawn upon the weary and bewildered fugitives, the majority of
whom fled at once on sight of Alexander. Bessus and
his friends tried vainly for a while to induce Darius
to mount a horse and flee with them, and as
he again and again refused, they cast their javelins at
(06:21):
their unhappy victim and rode off, leaving him in his
chariot mortally wounded, where though presently found and recognized by
a Macedonian soldier, he breathed his last before his indefatigable
enemy could come up. So died Darius, the last of
the Achaemenids, at the age of fifty, after a troubled
(06:45):
reign of barely six years, hurled in that short time
from the heights of human grandeur to the depths of misfortune.
A man who might have adorned more peaceful times with
the gentler graces of a benevolent despot, but too feeble
and apathetic to cope with so tremendous a crisis. A
(07:05):
king who would have been happier had he never reigned,
more fortunate in death than in life. He was honored
with the burial of a king in the sepulcher of
his ancestors, while his conqueror married his daughter and provided
for the education of his other children. But that Alexander
(07:25):
was mortified at the result of his march cannot be doubted.
For the death of Darius left the hands of the
Eastern satraps free and forced him to pursue them if
he meant to complete the subjection of the empire. It
further changed Alexander's position entirely. The King of Macedon became
transformed into the Great King. Pella ceased to be the
(07:49):
first city of a petty kingdom, and became a second
rate town in a vast empire whose capital was the
splendid Babylon. But it was especial difficulty of this new
position that, though perfect success was scarcely possible, an effort
at least had to be made to unite two incompatible things.
(08:11):
Alexander was forced to endeavor to be King of Asia
and King of Macedon, to rule Macedonian freemen and Persian
slaves at the same time and in the same way.
It is to be regretted, indeed, that his premature death
cut short the plans which he initiated for the amalgamation
of his diverse subjects. But an Alexander usually forms juster
(08:36):
conceptions and has loftier aims than the courtiers in generals
around him. We can perceive that he started from the
sound basis of universal equality, which was so great a
source of strength in after days to Rome, and it
seems probable that his adoption of Persian habits, and his
(08:56):
plans for associating Persians and Macedonians in the army and
elsewhere were due to a desire to harmonize discordant elements,
rather than to vanity. Without such harmony, the government of
so vast An Empire was impossible. On the other hand,
it is certain that Macedonians had begun to be jealous
(09:19):
of Asiatics even before Alexander's death, and were seriously annoyed
by his assumption of Eastern customs and the state ceremonial,
which he himself deemed to be only advisable concessions to
prevalent ideas. And now Alexander was in Parthia, the attac
(09:39):
or skirt of the desert, the beautiful tract of three
hundred miles of mountain, stream and valley, which parts the
desert uplands of Iran from the still more awful desert
of Chorasma, Korazam or Kiva, where the traveler may wander
for weeks without finding a drop of sweet water. The
(09:59):
whole of a Tatar population en camped amidst alienarians as Basques,
amid Teutans or Madiarus, amid slaves who less than a
century later, issued forth to subvert the conquest of Alexander's successors,
and founded an empire which lasted for five hundred years.
(10:20):
From Hecatapolas the capital, he crossed Mount Taurus in three
columns into Hyrcania. There were barbarous tribes in that happy district,
as Strabo calls it, too fierce and independent to be
safely left unvisited. The Greek mercenaries were there, who had
abandoned Arius, and who must be dealt with. Lastly, it
(10:43):
was important to secure the connection between the provinces of
the South and the Caspian Hyrcania itself was speedily reduced,
and the Mardians were taught a bitter lesson. The Greek mercenaries, also,
fifteen hundred in number, came in and made their submission.
As after the battles of Granacus and Issus. So now
(11:05):
Alexander appealed to the resolutions of the Synod of Corinth
as a test of their loyalty or treason. All who
had taken arms in the service of Darius prior to
the Synod he set free at once. They had been
within their rights in so doing. To the rest he
used the language, which he always held. They were traitors
(11:27):
to the common cause of Greece against the Barbarians, and
might therefore think themselves happy to have no worse fate
than to enter his service on their former pay. Alexander
now set his face steadily eastwards for bachtra Balak, and
it seemed as if it would be none too soon,
(11:47):
for news met him on the way, to the effect
that Bessis had assumed the tiara of royalty together with
the name of art Deserxes, that he had a large
Persian and factory and force under arms, and that he
was expecting Scythian auxiliaries from Central Asia. In fact, his
position on the upper waters of the Oxus and Jasarktes
(12:11):
gave him the simultaneous advantages of inexhaustible reinforcements from the
tribes of the steps, and of inaccessible retreat in case
of need. A rapid attack therefore seemed beyond all things necessary,
and yet Bessis was fated to enjoy his ill gotten
power for another year. Alexander had passed the modern Meshed,
(12:34):
the frontier town of Persia, and had crossed the Margus,
the river of clear green waters, which further to the
north creates the oasis of merv Margia, and then is
lost in the sands. When he heard that the say
trap of Aria, SAINTI Barzenes, to whom he had committed
the government of that province, had murdered the forty lancers
(12:57):
whom he had attached to his suite. He was gathering
troops and money in his capital of Artacoana, eighty miles
to the southward, and intended to join Bessis in attacking
the Macedonians wherever they might be found. Alexander did not hesitate.
A variety of motives would lead besses to await an attack,
(13:19):
but the treachery of a pardoned satrap could not be overlooked.
Turning sharply to the south and leaving the main body
under Krateros to a more leisurely advance, he reached Artacoana
with some picked troops by a forced march in two days,
but Sadie Barzanis had heard and fled with a small
(13:40):
body of horsemen. He rode for his life, leaving the
hapless villagers of his satrapy whom he had beguiled, to
the vengeance of the king and his flying column. Still,
Alexander was not satisfied, and he resolved before turning northwards
to face a circuitous march of eight hundred miles, and
(14:00):
to teach the wild tribes of Tronguiana and Aracosia, true
forefathers of the restless Afghans, that they had better acquiesce
in the will of the stronger and of Section seventeen
Section seventeen of the Rise of the Macedonian Empire by
Arthur M. Curtis. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Pamel Andagami, Chapter thirteen, The Death of Darius,
Reduction of Ptarthia, Execution of Pelodus, and Parmenion, Part one. Darius, meanwhile,
(00:23):
who had fled through the mountains to the eastward, was
resting at Agbatana. There were still thirty thousand infantry and
three thousand cavalry with him. He had still the support
of Satraps, undaunted as Bessis and loyal as Artabasis, but
all heart was gone from his resistance, and his one
(00:44):
thought was to flee from Alexander's face to the farthest
corner of his empire. With this view, the heavy baggage
in the Harem had been sent forward some day's journey
in advance, and when he learned that his restless enemy,
not content with being master of his finest capitals and
of the fairest parts of his empire, was bent on
(01:07):
having possession of his person also, he delayed no more
but set out eastwards at once, intending to pass through
Hyrcania and Parthia, and to hinder his pursuer's march by
ravaging as he went. July three, thirty eight days afterwards,
Alexander was an Agbitana. At three days march from the capital,
(01:31):
he was met by the news that Darius had set
out five days before and taken with him all his treasures.
When the Macedonians therefore entered the city, it was only
to make hurried preparations for a forced march in pursuit.
At the same time, a short delay was inevitable, for
some of his Greek troops were anxious to return home
(01:53):
after their four years service, and it was necessary to
remodel the military organization, which had so far served its
purpose perfectly. Henceforth he was to deal not with regular armies,
but with provincial levees, and still more with vast distances,
with mountains and deserts, where rapidity of movement might mean
(02:17):
not victory only but life. Hence he needed archers, light troops,
and flying columns more than the massive weight of the phalanx. Lastly,
he had to provide for the safe custody of the
extraordinary amount of treasure which had fallen into his hands
during the previous nine months. This was lodged in the
(02:39):
citadel of Agbatana and intrusted to the care of Harpalas.
Then once more he started in pursuit of the great king.
In eleven days he traversed three hundred miles of the broken,
difficult ground lying between the desert and Mount Taurus to
the north, passing near the site of the modern Tehran,
(03:00):
and almost at the foot of the splendid peak of
daime Avend, rising twenty thousand feet into the air. On
the eleventh day he reached Ruggai, but only to learn
that Darius had already passed the Caspian Gates fifty miles
to the eastward, and to find that a short rest
was indispensable for his jaded men and horses. In five
(03:23):
days he was again in the saddle. Before him were
the Caspian Gates, a long and difficult series of defiles
where he had vainly hoped to intercept the fugitive. A
day's march beyond the pass, he heard the alarming tidings
that Bessus and his friends had laid hands on Darius,
(03:44):
and that his life was in danger. Headlong as had
been the speed of the pursuit so far, there was
clearly need of yet greater efforts. The Eastern say Traps,
it appears, had resolved to seize Darius and surrender him
to Alexand if it were necessary, but if possible, to
push on across Parthia, outstripping pursuit, and to organize a
(04:09):
resistance on their own behalf in Bactria and Sogdiana. But
Alexander was determined to cut them off, taking with him
only the companion cavalry, the light horse, and some picked infantry,
and leaving Koynas to bring on the rest by slower marches.
He rode on all that night and the next day
(04:29):
till midday. After a short rest, he started again, and
again rode all the night through in the morning, coming
on traces of a camp recently occupied here. Further tidings
reached them to the effect that Bessis had actually superseded Darius,
and that Arde Bezos and the Greek mercenaries, unable to
(04:52):
prevent what they disapproved, had parted company with the others
and turned off into the mountains. Darius, in short, was
utterly in his enemy's hands. So fagged were both horses
and men that another forced march of a night and
half a day only brought Alexander to a village where
(05:12):
Bessis and his party had encamped the day before, And
just when all reserve of energy in his own men
seemed gone, he learned that the fugitives also were resolved
to make a forced march all the next night. To
overtake them was out of the question. Was it possible
to intercept them at this juncture, when his prey seemed
(05:35):
about to slip from his grasp. Some of the natives
informed him of a route shorter indeed, but waste and waterless. Difficulties, however,
were no bar to the impetuous Alexander. Picking out the
strongest and freshest, both of horses and men. Again, he
set out in the afternoon and actually accomplished nearly fifty
(05:57):
miles in the course of the night, Humming suddenly about
dawn upon the weary and bewildered fugitives, the majority of
whom fled at once on sight of Alexander. Bessus and
his friends tried vainly for a while to induce Darius
to mount a horse and flee with them, and as
he again and again refused, they cast their javelins at
(06:21):
their unhappy victim and rode off, leaving him in his
chariot mortally wounded, where though presently found and recognized by
a Macedonian soldier, he breathed his last before his indefatigable
enemy could come up. So died Darius, the last of
the Achaemenids, at the age of fifty, after a troubled
(06:45):
reign of barely six years, hurled in that short time
from the heights of human grandeur to the depths of misfortune.
A man who might have adorned more peaceful times with
the gentler graces of a benevolent despot, but too feeble
and apathetic to cope with so tremendous a crisis. A
(07:05):
king who would have been happier had he never reigned,
more fortunate in death than in life. He was honored
with the burial of a king in the sepulcher of
his ancestors, while his conqueror married his daughter and provided
for the education of his other children. But that Alexander
(07:25):
was mortified at the result of his march cannot be doubted.
For the death of Darius left the hands of the
Eastern satraps free and forced him to pursue them if
he meant to complete the subjection of the empire. It
further changed Alexander's position entirely. The King of Macedon became
transformed into the Great King. Pella ceased to be the
(07:49):
first city of a petty kingdom, and became a second
rate town in a vast empire whose capital was the
splendid Babylon. But it was especial difficulty of this new
position that, though perfect success was scarcely possible, an effort
at least had to be made to unite two incompatible things.
(08:11):
Alexander was forced to endeavor to be King of Asia
and King of Macedon, to rule Macedonian freemen and Persian
slaves at the same time and in the same way.
It is to be regretted, indeed, that his premature death
cut short the plans which he initiated for the amalgamation
of his diverse subjects. But an Alexander usually forms juster
(08:36):
conceptions and has loftier aims than the courtiers in generals
around him. We can perceive that he started from the
sound basis of universal equality, which was so great a
source of strength in after days to Rome, and it
seems probable that his adoption of Persian habits, and his
(08:56):
plans for associating Persians and Macedonians in the army and
elsewhere were due to a desire to harmonize discordant elements,
rather than to vanity. Without such harmony, the government of
so vast An Empire was impossible. On the other hand,
it is certain that Macedonians had begun to be jealous
(09:19):
of Asiatics even before Alexander's death, and were seriously annoyed
by his assumption of Eastern customs and the state ceremonial,
which he himself deemed to be only advisable concessions to
prevalent ideas. And now Alexander was in Parthia, the attac
(09:39):
or skirt of the desert, the beautiful tract of three
hundred miles of mountain, stream and valley, which parts the
desert uplands of Iran from the still more awful desert
of Chorasma, Korazam or Kiva, where the traveler may wander
for weeks without finding a drop of sweet water. The
(09:59):
whole of a Tatar population en camped amidst alienarians as Basques,
amid Teutans or Madiarus, amid slaves who less than a
century later, issued forth to subvert the conquest of Alexander's successors,
and founded an empire which lasted for five hundred years.
(10:20):
From Hecatapolas the capital, he crossed Mount Taurus in three
columns into Hyrcania. There were barbarous tribes in that happy district,
as Strabo calls it, too fierce and independent to be
safely left unvisited. The Greek mercenaries were there, who had
abandoned Arius, and who must be dealt with. Lastly, it
(10:43):
was important to secure the connection between the provinces of
the South and the Caspian Hyrcania itself was speedily reduced,
and the Mardians were taught a bitter lesson. The Greek mercenaries, also,
fifteen hundred in number, came in and made their submission.
As after the battles of Granacus and Issus. So now
(11:05):
Alexander appealed to the resolutions of the Synod of Corinth
as a test of their loyalty or treason. All who
had taken arms in the service of Darius prior to
the Synod he set free at once. They had been
within their rights in so doing. To the rest he
used the language, which he always held. They were traitors
(11:27):
to the common cause of Greece against the Barbarians, and
might therefore think themselves happy to have no worse fate
than to enter his service on their former pay. Alexander
now set his face steadily eastwards for bachtra Balak, and
it seemed as if it would be none too soon,
(11:47):
for news met him on the way, to the effect
that Bessis had assumed the tiara of royalty together with
the name of art Deserxes, that he had a large
Persian and factory and force under arms, and that he
was expecting Scythian auxiliaries from Central Asia. In fact, his
position on the upper waters of the Oxus and Jasarktes
(12:11):
gave him the simultaneous advantages of inexhaustible reinforcements from the
tribes of the steps, and of inaccessible retreat in case
of need. A rapid attack therefore seemed beyond all things necessary,
and yet Bessis was fated to enjoy his ill gotten
power for another year. Alexander had passed the modern Meshed,
(12:34):
the frontier town of Persia, and had crossed the Margus,
the river of clear green waters, which further to the
north creates the oasis of merv Margia, and then is
lost in the sands. When he heard that the say
trap of Aria, SAINTI Barzenes, to whom he had committed
the government of that province, had murdered the forty lancers
(12:57):
whom he had attached to his suite. He was gathering
troops and money in his capital of Artacoana, eighty miles
to the southward, and intended to join Bessis in attacking
the Macedonians wherever they might be found. Alexander did not hesitate.
A variety of motives would lead besses to await an attack,
(13:19):
but the treachery of a pardoned satrap could not be overlooked.
Turning sharply to the south and leaving the main body
under Krateros to a more leisurely advance, he reached Artacoana
with some picked troops by a forced march in two days,
but Sadie Barzanis had heard and fled with a small
(13:40):
body of horsemen. He rode for his life, leaving the
hapless villagers of his satrapy whom he had beguiled, to
the vengeance of the king and his flying column. Still,
Alexander was not satisfied, and he resolved before turning northwards
to face a circuitous march of eight hundred miles, and
(14:00):
to teach the wild tribes of Tronguiana and Aracosia, true
forefathers of the restless Afghans, that they had better acquiesce
in the will of the stronger and of Section seventeen
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