Introduction

When Alexander set off across the Hellespont in the spring of 334 BCE his justification for war against the Persian king was punishment for the desecration Greek shrines and temples in the time of Xerxes more than a century earlier. His mission could have amounted to no more than the razzias of recent Greek mercenary commanders, carried out for plunder and profit, or to advance the interests of one state or another in the rivalries of circum-Aegean politics. But Alexander’s goal was to establish his personal supremacy by battle against any force that might oppose him, and events gradually revealed that this would entail the submission of all peoples to his rule, potentially as far as the ends of the earth.