Mania for Subjugation IV

The Battle of Issus in late 333 BCE was the nearest-run thing to disaster Alexander the Great ever faced. His phalanx was broken, its officers were being slaughtered by Greek mercenaries fighting for the Persian king, and the entire Macedonian invasion of Asia teetered on collapse. Yet within hours, Alexander was standing in Darius III's golden tent, covered in blood, staring at jewel-encrusted bathing vessels and telling his companions: "This, it seems, is what it means to be a king."

The Siege of Halicarnassus and Alexander's Naval Problem

After the Battle of the River Granicus, Alexander faced a consolidation problem. The cities of Anatolia (modern Turkey) needed to be subdued, but his army was weakest at sea. The Persians controlled the Phoenician and Cypriot fleets—among the finest seafaring forces in history—while Alexander's navy was both outnumbered and outclassed. At Miletus, the city shut its gates despite being the sort of Ionian Greek city Alexander had come to "liberate." His solution was ingenious: he seized the islands that controlled access to the harbor, positioned his smaller fleet as a barrier, and effectively turned the approach into a naval Thermopylae. The Persian fleet, though larger, could not reach the city to help.