The launching of this remarkable endeavor began less than two years later when he crossed over into what is now Turkey, leading a relatively modest army of 30,000 Macedonian troops, 5000 cavalrymen, and a fleet of 60 ships against the mighty Persian Empire, at that time unquestionably the largest and most powerful military entity in the existing world.
After visiting both the ruins of ancient and the city of Gordium (famed for its legendary ) Alexander's first major engagement with the Persians came at the in modern day Turkey. Upon winning this initial battle (334 B.C), he moved to liberate all the many Greek city-states under Persian rule. Then, in the following autumn, he won an even greater victory at in the southeastern corner of Asia Minor. Here he faced himself, who had amassed a huge army that easily outnumbered the Macedonians by as much as 10 to I. Though it was Darius' intent to crush the upstart invaders once and for all, the Persians were themselves utterly defeated, falling victim to Alexander's brilliant military tactics and his superbly trained army. Seeing his inevitable defeat unfolding, Darius fled the field.
Now Alexander marched straight south along the Mediterranean coast, taking all of modern Syria, Lebanon, and Israel - and too, the rich coastal cities of , Sidon, and Gaza, thus effectively starving into non-existence what little remained of the once powerful Persian fleet. This accomplished, in 332 B.C. he then turned his attention to claiming one of the richest possessions of Darius' dwindling Empire, the Persian province of Egypt.
Little military effort was required to oust Persian forces from this most ancient of lands. In truth, the Egyptians welcomed Alexander as a liberator from what they deemed unacceptably harsh Persian rule. In the city of , Alexander was even crowned Pharoah, given all the titles and authority that this honor bestowed. During his lengthy stay in Egypt, he accomplished two things of long-lasting importance. First and foremost, he founded the new city of at a pristine site on the Nile delta, a city destined to become one of the two major metropolises around the Mediterranean Sea. Secondly, he found time to visit and consult with the legendary , located deep in the western desert. Here the priesthood proclaimed him the Son of Amun, literally the spiritual son of their greatest god.
After wintering in Egypt, in 331 B.C. Alexander left and turned to the northeast, moving his well-rested army back up through Palestine towards the . Waiting for him there at was Darius, in command of yet another huge Persian army. But once again the inspired military tactics of Alexander were not to be denied. Despite their incredibly superior numbers, the Persians went down in defeat for the third time. This time when Darius abandoned the field, he fled into the province of Bactria, only to be seized and slain by his own disheartened people. Rightfully claiming the title of King of Persia, Alexander gave orders for Darius' body to be given all full burial honors.
Leading his army swiftly into the heart of the Persian homelands, Alexander took the surrender of the major, royal cities; and - and with them their storehouses of accumulated wealth, doubtless the largest single haul of precious metals in antiquity. Using this vast wealth as he felt it was intended, his mints began issuing a steady and unprecedented stream of gold and silver coins to encourage commerce throughout his domains. After choosing Babylon as the future center of his growing empire, he was now determined to expand his conquests even further. Before doing so, however, he committed an act of destruction that he later much regretted: perhaps thinking it to be a symbolic retribution for the Persian invasion of Greece some 150 years earlier, he allowed all the ceremonial royal palaces of Persepolis to be put to the torch.
Alexander's next campaigns to the east (330-327 B.C.) were hard-fought and difficult, becoming the stuff of legends beyond count. It was during this time that Alexander slew his longtime friend after a violent argument. Also during this period he impulsively married a tribal leader's daughter in , a deceptively strong-willed girl of 16 named , someone destined to become of enormous dynastic importance. Eventually he crossed the (327-326 B.C.), reaching the western part of ancient India where in May of 326 B.C. he fought the last (and perhaps most brilliant) of all his major battles, defeating the Indian monarch at the river of Hydaspes. Only when his bone-weary and ragged troops finally refused to go any further did Alexander lead them back to Mesopotamia in triumph. After a mere eight years of campaigning, Alexander was now the sole ruler of a truly massive empire, the largest and most populous the ancient world would ever see.
At Susa in 324 B.C, Alexander began the complicated process of solidifying his empire, starting with his marriage to (also known as Stateira) the eldest daughter of Darius III. To further promote this union between Macedonians and Persians, he forced many of his top commanders to do likewise at the same ceremony. To his faithful comrade Hephaestion, he gave Barsine's younger sister Drypetis, for it was his strong desire that his and Hephaestion's future children would be cousins.
Upon returning to Babylon, Alexander's fabled luck began to run out. Still not fully recuperated from an arrow wound to his chest taken during the Indian campaign, he now suffered the sudden and untimely death of Hephaestion, which came after a brief fever. The loss so unhinged him that for a time many feared for his continued sanity. Shortly thereafter, he was himself stricken with fever-probably malaria-and began a rapid decline. On June 11, 323 B.C., just four months shy of his 33rd birthday, Alexander succumbed within the royal palace. Prior to his demise, when asked to whom he wished to leave his empire, he supposedly whispered to , senior of his commanders gathered around his deathbed, "To the best."
In the long and confusing hours immediately following Alexander's death, only one person had the will and ambition to act quickly in her own self-interest. Roxanne, pregnant with Alexander's child-and fearing the possibility that Barsine might also be pregnant-arranged to have her rival brutally murdered. She wanted no possible rival to share in her child's anticipated inheritance.
What eventually led to the fragmentation of Alexander's great achievement began within a few days of his passing. His generals agreed that Arridaeus, a mentally deficient half-brother of Alexander, henceforth called , and the new-borne son of Roxanne, , should both be recognized as joint kings. As senior commander, Perdiccas was appointed guardian and regent. To stabilize the empire during this time of transition, it was also decided that the governing of the vast territories would be as follows; in Macedonia, in Egypt, Lysimachus in Thrace, Antigonus in Asia Minor, and Seleucus in Babylonia. (Collectively known as the Diadochi, 'Successors')
It was always the intent of his generals that Alexander's body be interred back in Macedonia's ancient and ceremonial hill fortress of . Towards this end, they spent a full two years constructing a massive, jewel-encrusted sarcophagus of gold to hold his embalmed body, plus an equally elaborate funeral car to transport it a thousand miles up the old Royal Road of Persia to the Mediterranean. To this end, no expense was spared, for even in death his contemporaries considered him to be virtual god. But when this slow-moving catafalque reached Syria, the entire plan fell apart. Under the pretense of paying a last homage, Ptolemy set out with an army and effectively hijacked the entire funeral cortege, diverting it down into Egypt. There Ptolemy declared himself a king, eventually installing Alexander's mortal remains in his new capital of Alexandria (soon famed for its great .) By its mere presence, he believed the shrine would somehow bestow legitimacy to the dynasty he wished to establish. And his ploy worked. Placed within a special temple called the , the body was venerated in Alexandria for almost 400 years, honored by the city and revered by an Egyptian priesthood that still believed he was the last true son of their supreme god, Amun.
And then? As an author of fiction, I, like many others, have often speculated as to just what eventually became of Alexander's body. Unfortunately, the history books have nothing to tell us. Sometime in the latter half of the first century, all truly reliable historical references to the shrine abruptly cease, no explanation given. Under what exact circumstances this happened, no one knows. Theories abound, of course, but, as with writers such as myself, it remains all pure speculation. In point of fact, Alexandria today is so much altered from what it was in ancient times that modern archaeologists and historians really have no knowledge of exactly where the Soma once stood.
