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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section twenty of Rise of the Macedonian Empire by Arthur M. Curtis.
This librovox recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami,
Chapter fourteen, The Campaigns in Bactria and Sogdiana, Part two.
The events of the campaigns of three twenty eight and
(00:22):
three twenty seven are so obscurely narrated that while the
results are intelligible, it is almost impossible to understand the details.
It will be sufficient, therefore, to recount briefly the steps
which were taken to insure the subjection of Bactria and
Sogdiana and the defeat of Spidamenes. It became clear to
(00:43):
Alexander during the winter of three twenty nine and eight
that his work in these provinces was as yet only
half done. There were many hill tribes still restless under
the interference with their liberty. There were many independent chiefs
whose submission was secure only so long as Macedonian troops
were in the neighborhood. There were several important leaders at
(01:06):
large who might possibly become centers of formidable insurrection. And
there was more than one almost impregnable hill fortress still unreduced,
where an insurgent force might find shelter. He therefore organized
a series of flying columns to act in several directions
at once under himself and his lieutenants in Sodiana, with
(01:30):
orders to rendezvous at Maracanda. Craterus was left with a
sufficient force to answer for order in Bactria. From the
mountains of Nura in the far west, lying to the
north of Bagai Bolkhara, to Marginia in the northeast, Marganon
in Ferragon, and Paraitakhani in the southeast. The whole country
(01:53):
seems to have been swept by these flying columns during
the year three twenty eight and the early part of seven. Meanwhile, Spidomanes,
in their rear, ever on the watch, fell upon isolated detachments,
and on one occasion boldly ravaged up to the very
walls of Bactra. But it was an unequal struggle, and
(02:16):
at last, after a defeated Bagai, more crushing than usual,
the Scythian allies, weary of the struggle and thinking the
cause desperate, first plundered the baggage and then cut off
the head of Spidamenes and sent it to Alexander. Thus
fell the most obstinate active and courageous enemy that the
(02:36):
Macedonian troops had met in Asia, and his death unquestionably
relieved Alexander of a permanent source of anxiety. Of all
the military operations, the king, as usual, reserved the most
difficult for himself. This was an attack on two hill
forts of a similar character, standing on high insulated rocks
(03:00):
puccipitus on all sides, and surrounded by deep ravines so
lofty and apparently inaccessible that the taunting question of one
of the chiefs seems not amiss whether the Macedonians had
wings to fly with. The difficulty, moreover, of attacking the
first of these forts, the famous Sogdian Rock, was increased
(03:23):
to all appearances by the deep snow that lay on
the ground at the time, though in the event it
was the means whereby the place was taken. A reward
of twelve talents was offered to the first man who
mounted the rock, and less in proportion to those who followed.
Three hundred volunteers were soon forthcoming. Armed with ropes and
(03:45):
iron tent pegs. They made for the steepest and least
protected side of the rock in the dead of night,
and fixing the pegs in the crevices of the rock
where possible, but chiefly in the snow, which was frozen
so hard as to bare the weight. Slowly and with
difficulty they made the dangerous ascent. Thirty of the numbers
(04:06):
slipped and perished in the attempt, and their bodies were
buried so deeply in the snow drifts at the bottom
that they were never recovered even for burial. Nevertheless, the
deed was done for the chieftain. Oxiardes, being summoned to surrender,
as the Macedonians he might see had found their wings,
(04:27):
was so confounded by the sight of the adventurous soldiers
in actual occupation of the highest point of the rock,
that he at once gave up the fortress and all
the souls within it. Among the prisoners was his own daughter, Roxanna,
declared by Alexander's officers to have been the most beautiful
woman they had seen in Asia, next to the wife
(04:49):
of Darius. Amid the violent acts which at this time
sullied the conqueror's fair fame, it is just to remember that,
as in the case of Sissy gem So now he
treated his prisoner with honor and generosity, and we can
hardly share anarian's hesitation whether to praise or blame his
hero for making Roxana his wife. After this exploit, the
(05:15):
capture of the second fort in the following year was
comparatively easy, and indeed, when the ravine at the foot
of the rock had been partly filled and the arrows
of the besiegers could reach the battlements, the terror of
Alexander's name and energy seems to have done the rest,
and the fort was surrendered with vast stores of provisions.
(05:37):
Open resistance was now at an end. Spidamenes was dead,
and the Macedonian fortress colonies were numerous and strong enough
to hold the two provinces In subjection. Alexander was therefore
in a position to turn his face towards the one
province of the Persian Empire which he had not yet
entirely reduced. Though he was the master of all the
(06:00):
western part of what the Persians called India, his ambition
and curiosity were both aroused. Stories of the wonders and
riches of India had been rife in Greece for generations.
It was known that in the days of the First Darius,
its tribute, even if not levied beyond the Indus had
(06:23):
amounted to a third of the whole sum received. Among
the adherents of Bessis. Moreover, had been an Indian chief
who had fallen into Alexander's hands. And while the king's
ardent imagination was all on fire, with this man's stories
making clear and precise what before was vague, a timely
(06:43):
embassy arrived from another chieftain, who ruled between the Indus
and the Hedaspis, and whose capital was Taxilla, asking Alexander's
help against a powerful and troublesome neighbor named Porus. Thus
the die was cast, and alex x Ander resolved to
march at once into India. Before, however, we follow his
(07:05):
fortunes on the Indus, it is necessary to recount briefly
two miserable events which a historian would gladly omit, but
cannot because they are clearly true, and because they illustrate
the change for the worse in the character and position
of the king. It was in the summer of three
twenty eight, when the flying columns already mentioned had reunited
(07:29):
at Marakanda, that a great banquet was held on a
day sacred to Dionysus, deep drinking Saysarion was becoming the
fashion in camp, and with the deep drinking, began loud
talking about the heroes of the day and their relationship
to Zeus, and some of Alexander's more open flatterers began
disparaging the deeds even of Heracles, in comparison with those
(07:54):
of the king. There was one man present to whom
these eulogies were specially distasteful. This man was Cleitus, commander
of one division of the Companion cavalry, who had saved
the king's life at the Grannacus, and whose sister had
been the king's nurse. But however intimate his relations were
(08:14):
with Alexander, he had long been secretly offended, like some
others of the officers, by his adoption of Persian habits,
and by the adulation which was expected and given. Heeded
now by wine, he protested aloud against this disparagement of
old world heroes. The acts of Alexander, he cried, were
(08:37):
not comparable to those of Heracles, nay not even to
those of Philip. Philip's greatness was due to himself alone,
Alexander's in part, to others, to Philip's officers, to Parmenion,
then raising his right hand on high. This hand, he exclaimed,
Alexander at the Grannacus saved thy life. The king started
(09:01):
from his couch, maddened by a conflict of feelings. In
vain did his general's crowd around and try to restrain him.
He called aloud for the guard. He protested that he
was a Secondarius in the hands of a second Bessus,
and king only in name. At last, exerting his vast
(09:21):
personal strength, he broke from the group of officers, who
were doubtless afraid to use much physical force, and, snatching
a pike from one of the soldiers, slew Clytus, who,
after having been once dragged from the room, had been
rash enough to return. It was a terrible deed, followed
by a terrible remorse. Alexander hurried from the hall to
(09:45):
his chamber, and for three days neither ate nor drank,
calling aloud with deep groans for Clytus and for Clytus's sister,
and reproaching himself as the murderer of his friends. It
was indeed too true. Parmenian was dead, and now Cleitus
was dead, and each man might wonder whose turn would
(10:07):
be next. But the past could not be recalled, and
the soldiers and officers, seers and philosophers, one and all
feeling how intimately their own safety at the ends of
the world was bound up in the safety of the king, rebuked, implored,
and argued until he was induced once more to eat
and return to that life of energy, which would be
(10:29):
the best solace for his grief. The second episode, yet
to be related, was even more significant of the unsound
state of things in the royal camp. In the spring
of three twenty seven, Alexander celebrated his marriage with Roxanne
at Bactra. There was, as usual, a banquet, and as usual,
(10:50):
the conversation turned for the most part on the greatness
of Alexander. The king's love of adulation had not waned
any more than the servility of his flatterers, and the
tragic scene at Maracanda of the previous summer would be
in every man's memory. When therefore, some of those present
(11:10):
not only maintained the right of Alexander to divine honors
during his lifetime for his superhuman deeds, but proceeded to
set the example of prostration before the demigod. The veteran
officers sat still moody and dissentient, but no one spoke.
To speak might be to provoke the fate of Cleitus.
(11:32):
To Calistines of Olentthos, the nephew of Aristotle, belongs the
honor of possessing moral courage enough to protest against the
unworthy act. The gods would be as little pleased, he said,
to see their proper honors assigned to a mortal as
would Alexander himself be to see a private man claiming
(11:52):
the honors peculiar to a king. Let the king bethink
him whether, on his return to Greece he could enforce
prostrate from all Greeks, and if not, what distinctions he
would draw. Rather, let him be content with whatever utmost
honors mortal man might rightly have. These words were so
(12:13):
clearly in harmony with the feelings of the majority, that,
like Caesar, when offered the crown by antony, Alexander abstained
from pressing the point, but was nevertheless deeply offended with Calistines,
a feeling which was not lessened when the philosopher pledged
the king in a goblet of wine like the rest,
and offered him the usual kiss, but without prostration. Alexander
(12:38):
declined the kiss, and Kalistinis turned on his heel with
the remark that he was going away the poorer by
a kiss. But the matter did not end there. Kalistinis
was intimate with Hermolias, one of the royal pages, and
Hermolias was smarting under a recent injury. He had been
(12:58):
hunting with the King, who was suddenly charged by a
wild boar, and the page, fearing for the king's safety,
launched his javelin and killed it. For this offense, the
page was whipped and deprived of his horse, but the
injustice rankled in his mind, and with a boy's impetuosity,
he arranged a plot with some of his fellow pages
(13:20):
to murder the King in his chamber when they were
on guard. The plot was frustrated by accident and presently divulged,
and the conspirators were arrested and tortured, but no confession
was elicited implicating others. They were therefore arraigned as conspirators
before the assembled army and stoned to death by the soldiers.
(13:42):
If this were all, it would perhaps prove no more
than that Alexander's arrogance was undermining his popularity. But it
is only too clear that the friendship existing between Callestinis
and Hermolius was made an excuse for the gratification of
the king's jealous dislike of the philosopher, who was arrested,
(14:04):
put to the torture, and hanged end of Section twenty
Section twenty of Rise of the Macedonian Empire by Arthur M. Curtis.
This librovox recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamelinagami,
Chapter fourteen, The Campaigns in Bactria and Sogdiana, Part two.
The events of the campaigns of three twenty eight and
(00:22):
three twenty seven are so obscurely narrated that while the
results are intelligible, it is almost impossible to understand the details.
It will be sufficient, therefore, to recount briefly the steps
which were taken to insure the subjection of Bactria and
Sogdiana and the defeat of Spidamenes. It became clear to
(00:43):
Alexander during the winter of three twenty nine and eight
that his work in these provinces was as yet only
half done. There were many hill tribes still restless under
the interference with their liberty. There were many independent chiefs
whose submission was secure only so long as Macedonian troops
were in the neighborhood. There were several important leaders at
(01:06):
large who might possibly become centers of formidable insurrection. And
there was more than one almost impregnable hill fortress still unreduced,
where an insurgent force might find shelter. He therefore organized
a series of flying columns to act in several directions
at once under himself and his lieutenants in Sodiana, with
(01:30):
orders to rendezvous at Maracanda. Craterus was left with a
sufficient force to answer for order in Bactria. From the
mountains of Nura in the far west, lying to the
north of Bagai Bolkhara, to Marginia in the northeast, Marganon
in Ferragon, and Paraitakhani in the southeast. The whole country
(01:53):
seems to have been swept by these flying columns during
the year three twenty eight and the early part of seven. Meanwhile, Spidomanes,
in their rear, ever on the watch, fell upon isolated detachments,
and on one occasion boldly ravaged up to the very
walls of Bactra. But it was an unequal struggle, and
(02:16):
at last, after a defeated Bagai, more crushing than usual,
the Scythian allies, weary of the struggle and thinking the
cause desperate, first plundered the baggage and then cut off
the head of Spidamenes and sent it to Alexander. Thus
fell the most obstinate active and courageous enemy that the
(02:36):
Macedonian troops had met in Asia, and his death unquestionably
relieved Alexander of a permanent source of anxiety. Of all
the military operations, the king, as usual, reserved the most
difficult for himself. This was an attack on two hill
forts of a similar character, standing on high insulated rocks
(03:00):
puccipitus on all sides, and surrounded by deep ravines so
lofty and apparently inaccessible that the taunting question of one
of the chiefs seems not amiss whether the Macedonians had
wings to fly with. The difficulty, moreover, of attacking the
first of these forts, the famous Sogdian Rock, was increased
(03:23):
to all appearances by the deep snow that lay on
the ground at the time, though in the event it
was the means whereby the place was taken. A reward
of twelve talents was offered to the first man who
mounted the rock, and less in proportion to those who followed.
Three hundred volunteers were soon forthcoming. Armed with ropes and
(03:45):
iron tent pegs. They made for the steepest and least
protected side of the rock in the dead of night,
and fixing the pegs in the crevices of the rock
where possible, but chiefly in the snow, which was frozen
so hard as to bare the weight. Slowly and with
difficulty they made the dangerous ascent. Thirty of the numbers
(04:06):
slipped and perished in the attempt, and their bodies were
buried so deeply in the snow drifts at the bottom
that they were never recovered even for burial. Nevertheless, the
deed was done for the chieftain. Oxiardes, being summoned to surrender,
as the Macedonians he might see had found their wings,
(04:27):
was so confounded by the sight of the adventurous soldiers
in actual occupation of the highest point of the rock,
that he at once gave up the fortress and all
the souls within it. Among the prisoners was his own daughter, Roxanna,
declared by Alexander's officers to have been the most beautiful
woman they had seen in Asia, next to the wife
(04:49):
of Darius. Amid the violent acts which at this time
sullied the conqueror's fair fame, it is just to remember that,
as in the case of Sissy gem So now he
treated his prisoner with honor and generosity, and we can
hardly share anarian's hesitation whether to praise or blame his
hero for making Roxana his wife. After this exploit, the
(05:15):
capture of the second fort in the following year was
comparatively easy, and indeed, when the ravine at the foot
of the rock had been partly filled and the arrows
of the besiegers could reach the battlements, the terror of
Alexander's name and energy seems to have done the rest,
and the fort was surrendered with vast stores of provisions.
(05:37):
Open resistance was now at an end. Spidamenes was dead,
and the Macedonian fortress colonies were numerous and strong enough
to hold the two provinces In subjection. Alexander was therefore
in a position to turn his face towards the one
province of the Persian Empire which he had not yet
entirely reduced. Though he was the master of all the
(06:00):
western part of what the Persians called India, his ambition
and curiosity were both aroused. Stories of the wonders and
riches of India had been rife in Greece for generations.
It was known that in the days of the First Darius,
its tribute, even if not levied beyond the Indus had
(06:23):
amounted to a third of the whole sum received. Among
the adherents of Bessis. Moreover, had been an Indian chief
who had fallen into Alexander's hands. And while the king's
ardent imagination was all on fire, with this man's stories
making clear and precise what before was vague, a timely
(06:43):
embassy arrived from another chieftain, who ruled between the Indus
and the Hedaspis, and whose capital was Taxilla, asking Alexander's
help against a powerful and troublesome neighbor named Porus. Thus
the die was cast, and alex x Ander resolved to
march at once into India. Before, however, we follow his
(07:05):
fortunes on the Indus, it is necessary to recount briefly
two miserable events which a historian would gladly omit, but
cannot because they are clearly true, and because they illustrate
the change for the worse in the character and position
of the king. It was in the summer of three
twenty eight, when the flying columns already mentioned had reunited
(07:29):
at Marakanda, that a great banquet was held on a
day sacred to Dionysus, deep drinking Saysarion was becoming the
fashion in camp, and with the deep drinking, began loud
talking about the heroes of the day and their relationship
to Zeus, and some of Alexander's more open flatterers began
disparaging the deeds even of Heracles, in comparison with those
(07:54):
of the king. There was one man present to whom
these eulogies were specially distasteful. This man was Cleitus, commander
of one division of the Companion cavalry, who had saved
the king's life at the Grannacus, and whose sister had
been the king's nurse. But however intimate his relations were
(08:14):
with Alexander, he had long been secretly offended, like some
others of the officers, by his adoption of Persian habits,
and by the adulation which was expected and given. Heeded
now by wine, he protested aloud against this disparagement of
old world heroes. The acts of Alexander, he cried, were
(08:37):
not comparable to those of Heracles, nay not even to
those of Philip. Philip's greatness was due to himself alone,
Alexander's in part, to others, to Philip's officers, to Parmenion,
then raising his right hand on high. This hand, he exclaimed,
Alexander at the Grannacus saved thy life. The king started
(09:01):
from his couch, maddened by a conflict of feelings. In
vain did his general's crowd around and try to restrain him.
He called aloud for the guard. He protested that he
was a Secondarius in the hands of a second Bessus,
and king only in name. At last, exerting his vast
(09:21):
personal strength, he broke from the group of officers, who
were doubtless afraid to use much physical force, and, snatching
a pike from one of the soldiers, slew Clytus, who,
after having been once dragged from the room, had been
rash enough to return. It was a terrible deed, followed
by a terrible remorse. Alexander hurried from the hall to
(09:45):
his chamber, and for three days neither ate nor drank,
calling aloud with deep groans for Clytus and for Clytus's sister,
and reproaching himself as the murderer of his friends. It
was indeed too true. Parmenian was dead, and now Cleitus
was dead, and each man might wonder whose turn would
(10:07):
be next. But the past could not be recalled, and
the soldiers and officers, seers and philosophers, one and all
feeling how intimately their own safety at the ends of
the world was bound up in the safety of the king, rebuked, implored,
and argued until he was induced once more to eat
and return to that life of energy, which would be
(10:29):
the best solace for his grief. The second episode, yet
to be related, was even more significant of the unsound
state of things in the royal camp. In the spring
of three twenty seven, Alexander celebrated his marriage with Roxanne
at Bactra. There was, as usual, a banquet, and as usual,
(10:50):
the conversation turned for the most part on the greatness
of Alexander. The king's love of adulation had not waned
any more than the servility of his flatterers, and the
tragic scene at Maracanda of the previous summer would be
in every man's memory. When therefore, some of those present
(11:10):
not only maintained the right of Alexander to divine honors
during his lifetime for his superhuman deeds, but proceeded to
set the example of prostration before the demigod. The veteran
officers sat still moody and dissentient, but no one spoke.
To speak might be to provoke the fate of Cleitus.
(11:32):
To Calistines of Olentthos, the nephew of Aristotle, belongs the
honor of possessing moral courage enough to protest against the
unworthy act. The gods would be as little pleased, he said,
to see their proper honors assigned to a mortal as
would Alexander himself be to see a private man claiming
(11:52):
the honors peculiar to a king. Let the king bethink
him whether, on his return to Greece he could enforce
prostrate from all Greeks, and if not, what distinctions he
would draw. Rather, let him be content with whatever utmost
honors mortal man might rightly have. These words were so
(12:13):
clearly in harmony with the feelings of the majority, that,
like Caesar, when offered the crown by antony, Alexander abstained
from pressing the point, but was nevertheless deeply offended with Calistines,
a feeling which was not lessened when the philosopher pledged
the king in a goblet of wine like the rest,
and offered him the usual kiss, but without prostration. Alexander
(12:38):
declined the kiss, and Kalistinis turned on his heel with
the remark that he was going away the poorer by
a kiss. But the matter did not end there. Kalistinis
was intimate with Hermolias, one of the royal pages, and
Hermolias was smarting under a recent injury. He had been
(12:58):
hunting with the King, who was suddenly charged by a
wild boar, and the page, fearing for the king's safety,
launched his javelin and killed it. For this offense, the
page was whipped and deprived of his horse, but the
injustice rankled in his mind, and with a boy's impetuosity,
he arranged a plot with some of his fellow pages
(13:20):
to murder the King in his chamber when they were
on guard. The plot was frustrated by accident and presently divulged,
and the conspirators were arrested and tortured, but no confession
was elicited implicating others. They were therefore arraigned as conspirators
before the assembled army and stoned to death by the soldiers.
(13:42):
If this were all, it would perhaps prove no more
than that Alexander's arrogance was undermining his popularity. But it
is only too clear that the friendship existing between Callestinis
and Hermolius was made an excuse for the gratification of
the king's jealous dislike of the philosopher, who was arrested,
(14:04):
put to the torture, and hanged end of Section twenty
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