The organization of the Empire of Alexander the Great was delegated to different people since it was very extensive and indirectly governed each conquered territory.
The immense Empire of Alexander was ideologically based on the idea of the hero .
Alexander's monarchy had a multiple character, since he was, at the same time, King of Macedonia, Hegemon of the League of Corinth. Conqueror of Asia:King of Kings of the Persian Empire as well as liberator of Egypt from the Persian yoke and Pharaoh.
Alexander maintained to his advantage the principles of the Eastern monarchies, accepting with total naturalness the divine characteristics as his own, a criterion that differed from that of the Greeks and, of course, of the Macedonian peasants who accompanied him, and he died without having been able to impose that conception on them. divine of the monarchy.
Empire Administration
The union between Macedonia, Greece and Asia, three different worlds that formed the Empire of Alexander, was maintained only by the power of the king. But the contrasts that separated those three parts of the world, so different and distant from each other, are also found in the person of the sovereign who governed them, who had to reconcile them and find a principle that would unite the Macedonian tradition, the hegemony that he exercised over Greece and the divine right that constituted him the lord and owner of the East.
This principle could be the very personality of King Alexander, his personal prestige, that he was not only human but also divine, for which he became a god-king in the oriental manner, adopting the various theories of divine right of the Egyptian kings. , Babylonians and Persians, although this seemed inconceivable to Greeks and Macedonians and only in his last year of life, Alexander expressed his desire that the Greeks render him divine honors.
Become a king in the oriental manner, he tried to introduce in his Court the ceremonial used in the Court of the Great Persian King, although according to his biographers, he never carried it to its last consequences.
The proskynesis or genuflectionli; he could not impose it on either the Greeks or the Macedonians.
The court
Alexander took from the Persians some dignities and titles. He had, as the Great King , relatives close to his person, positions that we will see are preserved in the Hellenistic monarchies. After the Opis mutiny, he designated all Macedonians by this title. He claimed the title of benefactor to people who had done great services to the State. And some trades that appear distributed among his generals (cupbearer, baker, chamberlain) seem to be of Persian origin. The institution of the King's Pages was fully Macedonian.
The central government
This complex Empire was governed by centralized principles in the person of Alexander himself, helped by his most direct collaborators in the following way:
- All important matters were decided by Alexander and his Council of Ten Guards de Corps, which were not only a kind of General Staff but a kind of Council of Ministers. Later, the civil and military functions were separated, and together with the somatophilakos (chiefs of inspection services and extraordinary envoys), true ministerial departments, although around Alexander everything retained a fully military character. Besides, there were also purely civil officials.
- The proto-secretary of the king or archigrammateus . Eumenes de Cardia whose father had also served under Philip II. To him we owe the official newspaper published with the title of Royal Ephemeris . Among his functions are, in addition to keeping the Court diary, keeping all the monarch's correspondence, for which he was in charge of the Royal Chancellery, also directing the Information Service and diplomacy. He was also Supreme Chief Justice.
- The Guardian of the Treasure , charge entrusted by Alexander to his friend Harpalus, prince of Helimiotis, useless for the service of arms due to his illness. He was a real Minister of Finance from the year 336, until in the year 325 he fled from Babylon to Greece. betraying the trust of his boss. The Royal Treasury had three locations. He was first in Susa, then he went to Ecbatana and later he ended up in Babylon.
- The Chief of the Chiliarchs , charge taken from Per-sia in the last years of Alexander's reign. In this country he was the officer who commanded the personal guard of the Persian king, made up of a thousand chosen soldiers, the Immortals.
The army
At the beginning of the year 334. Alexander left the Macedonian city of Amphipolis, at the mouth of the Strymon river with an army of 30,000 infantrymen and about 4,500 horsemen, remaining in Europe, under the orders of Antipater, whom he appointed governor of Greece. , a total of 12,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry. They embarked some three weeks later in the port of Sestos and passed the Dardanelles in 160 triremes and almost 400 cargo ships.
When they were joined by the rearguard, sent nearly two years earlier by Philip II, they mustered some 43,000 foot soldiers and 6,100 knights plus some 800 mounted scouts. In total, about 50,000 combatants, of whom the majority were Macedonians. The pezetairoi or Falangists formed the line infantry. Covered, like the hoplites, with strong defensive armor made up of a helmet, greaves, a small shield and possibly also a metal-trimmed cuirass, they had a sword as their offensive weapon, but above all the sarissa , long and solid pike with which the united groups formed a bristling line of battle. In Alexander's time, these pikes varied in length depending on the row occupied by the soldier who carried them, since it was wanted that all or almost all the points exceeded the front line. The longest, which was held with two hands, must have been between five and a half and seven meters long.
Alexander's army was especially effective thanks to the balanced combination of its different weapons. A large part of the responsibility rested with the Cretan archers , the Macedonians provided with light weapons and the Thracians and Agrians equipped with javelins. But the shock force was the cavalry and in the event that their charge left the battle indecisive, the infantry phalanx or pezetairoi , the 3,000 hypaspistai provided with large shields and royal battalions. This army was also accompanied by a large number of surveyors, engineers, architects, scientists who provided numerous and powerful war machines, more court officials and official historians and chroniclers, in addition to those who provided accommodation, food, service and entertainment. .
The first act of the young king, before landing at Koum Kale, in Asia Minor, near Cape Sigeion, not far from Troy, was to throw his spear, plunge it into the ground, and leaping ashore declared Asia conquered by the spear .
Macedonian Cavalry Structure
Among the numerous troops of Alexander's army, the cavalry stood out.
The Macedonian cavalry was made up of various elements:
a) Of 8 squadrons of King's Companions , hetairoi , former noble guard of the war chief. Each squadron had 225 horses. During the reign of Philip, the cavalry was the elite force of Macedonia, whose Macedonian and Thessalian horses were selected and trained with great care. Bucephalus Alexander the Great's horse was Thessalian.
The first of the eight squadrons, the noblest, commanded by Klito the Black , served as the Sovereign's personal guard and was the one who attacked first, bearing the name of agema , row leader .
b) The light cavalry was composed of 5 squadrons of lancers, of which 4 were Macedonians and Thracians and the fifth from the Paeonian tribe.
c) Between the years 330-328, corps of mounted archers and spearmen with javelins on horseback were created, imitating the Eastern ones. The function of this cavalry was to attack the flanks of the adversary and disperse it.
The Macedonian Phalanx
This unit was distinguished, above all, by its esprit de corps. It was made up of 6 squadrons and constituted a national militia with a great spirit of devotion to the person of the king.
Without breastplate or large shield, his only weapon was the sarissa , long spear of about 7 meters according to Polybius. The phalanx of 150 men was formed 8 rows deep, with the lance of those in the front row being a little shorter. They directed the lokhagos and the leaders of the ranks. This is, more or less, the formation of the classic phalanx, which throughout the campaigns of Alexander, as after the campaign in India, underwent some modifications.
Auxiliary and mercenary bodies
The allies and mercenaries of Alexander's army were, at first, about 12,000, made up of hoplites with heavy shields, and the peltasts with small shields. There were also three battalions, each of 1,000 men, called Corps Guards or hypaspistes , personally recruited by the king from among the free men of Macedonia.
After the battle of Issos, due to their magnificent behavior, Alexander had their shields covered with gold, for which they were called the Argyraspides They were the king's foot guard, like the Agema it was on horseback. Cretan archers, who fought on foot, are also mentioned in the sources, but since the king had contact with the mounted archers of Sogdiana and Parthia, a corps of horse archers was also created in the Macedonian army, where the slingers were also present. The best came from Rhodes.
Among the auxiliary bodies of this well-organized army, we must not forget the existence of special contingents dedicated to war machines, their transportation and conservation, as well as a true team of inventors, engineers and mechanics, one of the great innovations of the army Macedonian.
To all these must be added, the auxiliary bodies of craftsmen, locksmiths. carpenters, blacksmiths and quartermaster, transport and mail, etc. Their families, artists and intellectuals, such as Calisthenes of Olinto, Anaxarchus of Abdera, Onesicritus of Astyphalea, and a series of zoologists, botanists, geologists and doctors such as Philip of Acarnania, who studied the different species of minerals and plants that were discovered, that they sent to the school of Aristotle.
Alexander's great generals
After Alexander's death, they come to the fore in history, we will point out three above all:Parmenion. Craterus and Hefastion .
Parmenion
The son of Philotas, he belonged to the ancient Macedonian nobility and gradually rose through the different ranks of the military hierarchy of the Macedonian army.
He was somewhat older than Philip, of whom he was a companion. he friend and adviser in Illyria, Thrace and the Chalcidic peninsula, helping the king to organize his infantry.
Around the year 340, one of the daughters of Parmenion married Attalus, Cleopatra's uncle, Philip's second wife from the year 337, with which the repudiated queen's hatred grew. Olympias, against Parmenion and his three sons:Philotas, Nicanor, and Hector.
Escaping from the vengeance of Olympias, after Philip's assassination, Parmenion organized in a few months the concentration of naval and land forces of Macedonia and the League of Corinth in Amphipolis and commanded the left wing of the Thessalian cavalry in the battle of the Granicus River .
He participated in the sieges of Miletus and Halicarnassus and in the battle of Issos , commanding the entire left wing of the allied army and was in charge of seizing the camp of the Persian king, the booty and his family. His good fortune brought him admiration and respect but also envy, and his whole family was implicated in a plot in October 330, and he himself was treacherously executed at Ecbatana in his seventies. Q>
Crater
Son of a Macedonian nobleman from the tribe of Orestis, he was born around the year 360. His first performances in the Macedonian army were under Parmenion, at the battle of Issos (year 333). Craterus was a kind of vice-admiral of the fleet, who actively participated in the capture of the Phoenician city of Tire (year 332) and in the battle of Gaugamela (year 331), commanded the Peloponnesian cavalry and the Locrian, Achaean and Malian squadrons. .
On the occasion of the mass weddings of Susa, held in the spring of the year 324.
Craterus married a niece of Darius III named Amastrina and was in charge of leading ten thousand Macedonian veterans to his homeland and replacing the regent Antipater.
On Alexander's death, he only obtained the title of protector of Philip III. He married Phila, daughter of Antipater. Craterus died in 321 in a battle against King Eumenes of Cardia.
Hefastion or Hefestion
He was the son of Amyntas of Pella. He had grown up with Alejandro, with whom he had been a friend and confidant since childhood, as well as a possible lover.
He was part of the squad of armored knights or hetairoi and was commander of one of the eight squadrons of the royal cavalry. In the battle of Issos he was one of the seven superior officers of the army and the one in charge of welcoming the family of Darius III.
He led a large number of expeditions in Sogdiana, Bactria and India, helping to found numerous cities. At the Susa wedding he married Drypetis, one of the Persian king's daughters. He accumulated a large number of positions and honors:Hipparchus (chief of the cavalry of the Companions of Alexander), Chiliarch (Chief of the Thousand of the Persian court or Grand Vizier), being the first after the king.
He died at Ecbatana after a series of excesses (apparently he drank more than ten liters of wine in a row), on November 10, 324, and was cremated in Babylon, receiving almost divine honors. Less than three months later King Alexander died.
They were, moreover, among Alexander's generals. Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Antigonus the Cyclops and Seleucus , whom we will see dispute the domain of the territories obtained by Alexander.
The administration of the territories
Alexander's empire had no real capital, and Babylon was only a theoretical capital . Initially, all the conquered territories depended directly on the king but later, due to the circumstances and the magnitude of the conquests, a great variety of situations arose, derived, in part, from the strong disparity of the different regions that formed the Achaemenid Empire. Several forms of government can be distinguished:The regions administered by the royal satraps , governed them in an indirect way, the autonomous cities. Egypt, which initially retained greater autonomy, the particular case of the Greek cities, territories de iure outside the sphere of influence of the satraps, such as Cyprus and Cyrene, which only had alliance treaties with Alexander and which, naturally, were not included in the distributions that followed his death.
Alexander retained the satrapies or administrative divisions of the Persian Empire, although Alexander's thirty administrative divisions, with which he endeavored to provide satraps, only partly cover the imperial space of Darius III.
- In Asia Minor several cases occur. In some territories it was limited to replacing the Persian satrap with the Macedonian satrap, chosen, in general, among the hetairoi though guarded by faithful Macedonians.
When the one who governed a territory was not Persian, but it was a local nobleman, submitted to Persia. Alexander presented himself as the liberator of the Persian yoke and kept him in power, with Alexander exercising an indirect domain . Such was the case of Queen Ada of Caria, by whom she was adopted in the year 334, and continued to reign, appointed satrap of all her domains, until her death, although, apparently, closely watched by Asandros , satrap of Lydia. Cappadocia, Armenia, Paphlagonia and Bithynia can also be considered indirectly ruled.
Alexander also used some Asians, such as Sabictas, who was Deputy Governor in Cappadocia. - In Syria , separated from Phoenicia in 329, appointed Macedonian satraps.
- The Phoenician cities voluntarily submitted, they retained their autonomy. Tire and Gaza, which had opposed Alexander, were subjugated, becoming Macedonian strongholds.
- In Babylon and the easternmost regions, such as Susiana, Media, Persia, Hyrcania, Parthia, Aria, Drangiana, Sogdiana, Bactria and Carmania, retained their Persian satrap, although after Satibarzanes' rebellion in Aria he put trusted Macedonians in charge, over all in the border regions.
- In the Government of India there are several differences between the eastern part and the western and southern part.
- In Arachosia and Gedrosia there were Macedonian rulers at first, and later they were united into a single satrapy, under the authority of Siburtios.