Alexander the Great

[The Last Conformist]

What always struck me as a little weird was the direction of his conquests. He went thousands of miles to the east and south but never conquered the territory a few miles north of Macedonia. It makes sense to go where there is civilization, I suppose, but it is still a little unusual.

After defeating the Achaemenid armies in a few great battles (Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela), most of the empire fell to him with little further resistance. This kind of all-or-nothing conquest just doesn't work against shattered barbarian tribes.

Furthermore, Persia was fabulously rich, whereas the central Balkans were pretty poor. No use robbing poor people.

 

[Masquerouge]

What I do not get is how in these times they managed to keep the conquered countries in line.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Essentially, by giving local elites a stake in the continual existence of the empire.

 

[Masquerouge]

Essentially, by giving local elites a stake in the continual existence of the empire.

To me, that would work only if the elite had no strong nationalistic feelings. It might have been the case in these times.

It might also be that the taxe base didn't really care about who was taxing them. Romans? Greeks? Fine!

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Nationalism wasn't nearly as popular then as it is now. I bet that a lot of those satraps weren't even ethnically Persian. And your average peasant isn't going to get worked up over whether the tax man speaks the same language as him or not.

 

[silver 2039]

What I do not get is how in these times they managed to keep the conquered countries in line.

The Persian Empire was not unified or centralized by any means. The Persian Emperor ruled the vast area through satraps, vassal kings who recognized his superiority and sent him tibute and soldiers. Thats why the Persian Emperor was often called King of Kings since he was King of a number of Kings. I imagine that Alexander maintained the satrap system, the satraps were often rebellious and switched their alligence whenever it suited them so when Aleaxander came along and defeated the Darius they saw that he was a better person to be with and switched their alliegnce to him.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Alex did indeed maintain the satrap system, and a good number of Darius satraps got to keep their jobs in return for switching sides. In the eastern and central parts of the empire, the Seleucids held on to the system after the disintegration following Alex's death.

 

[The Last Conformist]

To me, that would work only if the elite had no strong nationalistic feelings. It might have been the case in these times.

In large parts of the Achaemenid empire, local elites were heavily Persianized by interaction and intermarriage with the Persian aristocracy. This didn't always work as intended - several revolts in Asia Minor were lead by Persian aristocrats that had "gone native" - but on the whole well enough. After Alexander, this "imperial diaspora" was replaced by a similar stratum of Greek or Graecized elites.

The places with the most "nationalistic" ethos appear to have been Babylonia and Egypt. Due to the closeness to the Persian heartland the Babylonian revolts were probably always doomed to failure, but the Egyptians managed to cast off Persian domination for much of the 4th century, only being reconquered shortly before Alexander's invasion.

Both places eventually got used to foreign subjugation, so that in the Roman period they became loyal subjects of respectively the Romans and the Parthians.

 

[North King]

There's no real reason to doubt the speed of his conquests. The timing does work out, and sources from independent civilizations (notably India) indicate that there was an Alexander, and he did conquer where he is said to have conquered.

Now. Prove to me that JFK existed and was not simply a god worshipped by these "Americans".

 

[Aegis]

 

[The Last Conformist]

The camera never lies. Now, photographs is a whole other story ...

 

[GoodSarmatian]

This is not JFK, this is the young Bill Clinton.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The question was asked: how did he conquer so much of the Middle East so fast, when it took forever to dela with just Greece? The answer is population density and terrain. There were many more people living in the smaller area of Southern Greece than there were in Anatolia or Persia. Also, Greece is mountaineous and hilly; easy to defend. Anatolia is too for the most part, but then again Persia only challenged Alexander once in Turkey. Most of the rest of his to-be empire, Egypt, Persia, the Russian steppes, and the Indus valley, are very flat and hard to defend.

 

[silver 2039]

Persia,

Persia is very hilly and mountainous as well, furthermore many of the areas his armies marched thourgh are desert, harsh terrain. Besides terrain wasn't used as defenses back then. Walls and cities were the main defense.

 

[Sidhe]

Essentially, by giving local elites a stake in the continual existence of the empire.

Aye Satrap was equivalent to tax collector/king in the Persian empire, so essentially you could become very rich and all you had to do is ensure the flow of money to the capital, the Satraps were given a surprising amount of autonomy as well, it's really more a vassal state deal where provided you pay on time and provide troops if necessary you can do whatever you like.

 

[The Last Conformist]

There were many more people living in the smaller area of Southern Greece than there were in Anatolia or Persia.

I seriously doubt this. Reference?

 

[Sidhe]

I think the problem with taking Greece was the triumvirate, Sparta,Athens and Thebes, these three sates would never let one state surpass another and years of war would mean they had bitterly held views against each other, of course though they would join up if all were threatened just as the greeks had against Xerxes' Persian invasion. Persia was terrified of Greeks military might(understandably it had been repulsed twice before) So they paid vasts somes of money to keep them at each others throats by any means necessary. Philllip though defeated the combined forces of Greece in one single battle and began preperations to invade Persia soon after. As a matter of interest Phillip is credited with the first use of the phalanxes 18 foot spear, which was much longer than greek hoplite spears and prooved vital in his conquest of Greece. they out teched them and it prooved decisive.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

(FYI: The Mongols' real strength was in strategy, leadership, and organization. Stirrups and composite bows were used by many of their opponents.)

I know. I was just pre-empting a rebuttal that the Mongols may have had better technology in the 1700 years since Alexander. In fact, it was virtually the same technology.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

What always struck me as a little weird was the direction of his conquests. He went thousands of miles to the east and south but never conquered the territory a few miles north of Macedonia. It makes sense to go where there is civilization, I suppose, but it is still a little unusual.

He was following the grand plan of his father. Philip was planning on conquering the Persian Empire, as revenge for wars of 150 years before. It just so happened that the entire Persian Empire lay east of Greece. Alexander simply followed through on the plan. Had he lived longer, he might have attempted other conquests, but that's speculative.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

What I do not get is how in these times they managed to keep the conquered countries in line.

There is actually a chapter in Machiavelli's "The Prince" in which he explains this with great precision. The Persian Great King had a bureaucracy of satraps (governors) which answered to him. Satraps had no personal authority outside of the monarchy, and therefore nothing to rely upon besides the king. The people of the satrapies (provinces) knew that the satraps were ministers of the king and were replaceable, so that the people essentially answered to the king directly. The Persian Empire was rather benign in that local customs were respected. When Alexander toppled the Persian monarchy, he simply replaced himself as the Persian King, and kept the satrapy system intact (although he replaced some satraps). The satraps had no resources to command of their own, so they could not rise against him. The people had no special loyalty to the satraps because they were nothing but goons to them, nor did they have incentive to revolt, as the King was just a figure to whom they paid taxes. This is why the locals made no effort to revolt. They neither had the incentive, nor the resources, as everything was centralized in the king's domain.

Machiavelli notes that a kingdom that is centralized is hard to conquer, because it can command great resources, but that once conquered, is easily kept. On the other hand, it is far easier to conquer a kingdom that is divided into fiefs, where each regional warlord has his own resources, because there is always some among them who is dissatisfied with the central government, and who may not be willing to fight. Once conquered however, such a state is hard to keep, because each lord will resist with his own resources.