The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

Alexander’s absence in the north in this untiring campaign against barbarian tribes, whose homes and habits were hardly known to the civilized states of Greece, was taken advantage of by his enemies. While he was fighting on the Danube, the King of Illyria, Kleitos, whose people had given trouble to Philip and whose father had fallen in battle with the Macedonians, rose in revolt. Several tribes farther north on the Adriatic coast joined with the Illyrians in this anti-Macedonian movement. Without a moment’s hesitation, Alexander turned to deal with his new enemies, and in order to do effective work, penetrated far into the mountainous region of Illyria. The Macedonian army soon found itself in a hazardous position, surrounded on all sides by hostile tribes. By skilful strategy, Alexander withdrew his troops from the danger that threatened them, while they were besieging Pelion in the face of superior numbers, and when he found that the Illyrians were following him, he quickly turned on them, administered a decisive blow, and forced Kleitos to seek a refuge in the territory of the Taulantines, one of the tribes which had been co-operating with the Illyrians in their resistance to his army.

In the meantime, the presence of a Macedonian force in Asia Minor had awakened the Persians to the danger confronting them of an invasion from Greece. Its full meaning was hardly appreciated, and the new situation was interpreted as only another example of the type of attack so frequently made by the Greek communities ever since the time when the Persian invasion of Greece had been successfully blocked. It had always been found possible to avoid a serious attack from Greece on the Persian Empire by playing off one Greek state against another. This well-tried expedient was now used again. Letters were sent from the King of Persia to the states of Greece urging them to rise against Macedon, and offering large sums of money to subsidize the revolt. Sparta alone responded to the invitation; Athens and the other states, which had just renewed a formal alliance with Macedon, seemed to realize the hopelessness of an anti-Macedonian movement, and refused to accept the offer of Persian money. All that the representatives of the great king could accomplish in this direction was to leave in the hands of Demosthenes the sum of three hundred talents, with the understanding that he could use his own discretion in employing it to the best advantage in the interests of Persia.

The action of the great Athenian orator in accepting the Persian gold has been severely criticised and warmly defended. It must be remembered that to him Alexander appeared only as the destroyer of Greek liberty and not as the protagonist of Greek culture, a position which can be understood only as the result of his conquests in the East. There was no reason why an Athenian patriot should have been willing to destroy the Persian Empire at the cost of the enslavement of his own city.

The perils and difficulties of the Illyrian campaign were magnified by the rumors which reached the Greek cities. It was even reported that Alexander had been slain and his army destroyed. This report was soon followed by an uprising in Thebes against the Macedonians. The leaders of the Macedonian faction were murdered and the Macedonian garrison in the citadel closely besieged. The democratic constitution was then restored and Theban officials were elected according to the old constitutional forms. At this juncture, Demosthenes used some of the Persian treasure to purchase arms, which he sent to Thebes to aid its citizens in their contest for the restoration of their independence.

While the Thebans were most active, the rest of Greece was not slow in showing its antipathy to Macedonian control. Athens prepared itself to do battle for Greek autonomy; the isthmus of Corinth was occupied by an army raised from among the Arcadian cities, with Mantineia at their head. And the people of Elis and Ætolia showed that they would be ready to aid the Thebans.

But before any common plan of resistance could be prepared, Alexander and his army had passed the frontiers of Bœotia after a remarkably rapid forced march, undertaken as soon as the news of the defection of the Thebans had reached him in Illyria. It took him but fourteen days in all to cover the distance from the scene of operations in Illyria to the gates of Thebes. He was willing to come to terms with the Thebans, offering them easy conditions provided they would admit his troops into the city; but the mass of the inhabitants preferred to cast in their lot with those who were in favor of resistance.

The exiled citizens of Thebes knew they would receive short shrift at the hands of the son of the man who had driven them from their native city. The chances of successful resistance were overestimated, but Thebes had formerly led a forlorn hope in its contest with the Spartans; and, as the unexpected had happened before, the Thebans, who were preparing to withstand the Macedonians can hardly be blamed for recalling the glorious memories of the battle of Leuktra. But they were now dealing with a new, vigorous army, not with a Spartan force spoiled by routine. As no help could be looked for from the outside, the situation was altogether different. The result proved that the Thebans of Alexander’s day had inherited indeed the valor, but not the intelligence, of the generation of Epaminondas and Pelopidas.

The Macedonian garrison still held out in the Kadmeia, the citadel which lay in the southern part of the city, near the gate of Elektra, through which passed the road to Athens. Its walls were an integral part of the fortifications of the city. The object of the Thebans was therefore to cut off all communication from the Kadmeia by building about it inclosing lines. This operation Alexander aimed to prevent, and with Perdikkas at the head of a contingent of Macedonian mountaineers, he succeeded in breaking through the Theban line of defense, and finally forced his adversaries back to the walls of the city. They were closely pursued in this retreat, and, as they entered the gate in disorder, the Macedonians were able to force their way into the city at the same time. Another division of the Macedonians found little difficulty in entering the Kadmeia, and from this point of vantage they quickly descended into the city. The Thebans made an attempt to rally in the market place, but the rout was soon general. After the city was overrun by the Macedonians and their allies, it was noted that the people of the smaller Bœotian towns signalized themselves by their acts of cruelty done on the now defenseless Thebans, from whose tyranny they had suffered in the past. Six thousand men, it is said, perished in the taking of Thebes, while the Macedonian loss did not exceed 500. (September, 335 B.C.)

Alexander called together his allies to settle the fate of the conquered. The decision was a horrible example of rancorous hatred, for he allowed the smaller cities of Bœotia, smarting, as we have seen, under the sense of long grievances, to work their will on their once powerful neighbor. The town was to be razed to the ground, only the house of Pindar being spared. The sole part of the fortifications of the town to be retained was the Kadmeia, which remained as a military post with its Macedonian garrison. The Theban territory was to be divided among the allies, and all the captive Thebans, men, women, and children, with but a few exceptions, were to be sold as slaves. Those Thebans who escaped from the city were to be outlawed, and no Greek city would be permitted to receive them. The only positive items in this ruthless decree were the provisions for restoring Orchemenos and Platæa, places which Thebes had once treated with the severity now meted out to her.

Such a catastrophe, as the result of a defeat or a siege, had never before been witnessed in Greece, and the impression produced was one of unmitigated terror. It was not simply the misfortunes of the existing Theban community, or the material loss from the annihilation of property. Thebes had the closest associations with the heroic age of Greece, its name was interwoven with the stories of gods and heroes. Kadmus had founded it; within its limits Dionysus and Herakles had been born. The city which had shattered the power of Sparta was left desolate, and the plow passed over the ground where it had once stood. It seemed according to a contemporary as if Zeus had torn the moon from the heavens.