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REVIEW BY MARC DeSANTIS
Alexander the Great of Macedonia is one of the best-known figures of ancient history. Comparatively large amounts of written material concerning his short but extraordinarily eventful life have survived from ancient times. This is a boon to modern historians, but it can also prove challenging, because these accounts do not always agree with one another. Reconciling them is no easy task.
A solid modern history of Alexander will have to carefully assess such conflicting sources. David A Guenther has provided one such work in The Siege of Tyre: Alexander the Great and the gateway to empire. The subject is Alexander’s famous 332 BC siege of the Phoenician port city of Tyre, in what is now Lebanon. Guenther balances the accounts of the ancient historians who chronicled Alexander’s campaigns with those of modern historians when offering his own judgements on contentious points.
Having defeated the Great King of Persia, Darius III, at the Battle of Issus in November 333 BC, Alexander was confronted by a dilemma. Should he press deeper into Asia, seeking to meet Darius in another battle that could decide the fate of the Persian Empire? Or should he instead drive southward, leaving the king for later, and attempt to take the Phoenician cities on the Mediterranean that provided Persia with the bulk of its warships?
‘Alexander saw the problem’, writes Guenther, ‘posed by the Persian fleet as being so critical to the success of the invasion [of Asia] that it took precedence over going after Darius.’ He would take the Phoenician cities; their fleets would be his. His rear areas would thus be free of interference by them. Another significant benefit would be that, with all of Phoenicia in Alexander’s control, Cyprus and Egypt could be readily secured. Only then could the Macedonians think about going after Darius, who was now far inside his empire, to the east, rebuilding his army. Holding Tyre was crucial to this plan.
While the other Phoenican naval cities made peace with Alexander, Tyre refused to do so. Notably, it would not let Alexander within its walls to make a sacrifice to Herakles. The Greeks equated this deity with the prominent Tyrian god Melqart, who had a dedicated temple inside the city. To do so would invite, from the Tyrians’ perspective, Alexander to claim his kingship over Tyre.
On a practical level, they had to factor in what switching sides might look like to the Persians if the latter proved victorious. At this juncture, the winner of the ongoing war was uncertain. And so what would be, arguably, the most renowned siege of the ancient world took place over seven months in 332 BC.
It was also incredibly difficult. Tyre was a city of very high walls erected on an island some 700 metres offshore. Simply getting at it was an engineering nightmare that required the time-consuming construction of a mole, or causeway, across the intervening distance. In the meantime, the Tyrians defended themselves with desperate courage. Attackers and defenders employed ingenious measures to either approach the city or fend off those advances. One such was the dropping, by the Tyrians, of sand that had been heated to an intense temperature on the besieging Macedonians.
Without outside help, Tyre did fall in the end. Alexander, once he had stormed the city, was in vengeful mood. Apart from the 8,000 Tyrians who died in the final hours, another 2,000 were crucified by the Macedonian king.
Remarkably, today there is still a visible remnant of the siege. The mole built to reach the island city has long since accumulated sand. As such, Tyre is no longer an island at all, but a peninsula attached to the mainland.
The Siege of Tyre: Alexander the Great and the gateway to empire
David A Guenther
Westholme Publishing, hbk, 256pp (£20.99)
ISBN 978-1594164286
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