Why Did Darius Take Alexander So Lightly

[jasonxx]

I wonder why Darius and the Persians in the beggining never took the Macedodians and Alexanders as serious as they should have.

Persian war history with Greeks was bad. Marathon. Platea. Salamis.Xonophon.

We get Greek intercity wars first Sparta, Thebes then the Macedonians smash them. And cross the Hellespont. I wonder why still the Persian Hierarchy still held them in contempt and thought they would defeat them easy. Where did this arrogance and ill placed confidence come from?

Memnon knew and advised how dangerous a threat this trained disciplined fighting machine was.Yet they still threw scorn at Memnon and laughed at the threat. Why would the Persians still feel confident. Was it that they were on home turf is all I can think or was Darius throwing his dice with numbers and knowing where he could fight. Or even was he relying on the old formula . That the Greeks Macedonian would undo them selves as before with Persian gold. If the Persians had a little bit more nounce they could have made things more difficult yet not impossible for a man particulally like Alexander. Before any scorched earth policy. To blackade the helespont would be the first.

Therefore honour must have played a part in it. as it must have in the ancient world. To face your enemy and to defeat him in open battle, which can be the only explanation for missing rudimentary tactics that we realise now.

Kenny

[marcus]

I wonder why Darius and the Persians in the beggining never took the Macedodians and Alexanders as serious as they should have.

Two reasons, I think.

1. He was very young, and despite his early successes in Greece, Darius can't have viewed him as more than a little upstart who would soon be smacked soundly and sent back to Macedonia without supper.

2. Too much arguing amongst the Persian satraps. Don't forget that Memnon tried to get them to adopt a scorched earth policy, which they refused to do, and arrogantly ruined their best chance of defeating Alexander by trusting to the Persian cavalry rather than the Greek infantry. We know that this happened after A's army crossed the Hellespont - who knows what arguing and wrangling went on even before that!

However, it has just occurred to me that we are assuming that Darius took him lightly. There's nothing to suggest that he did - it was traditional that local satraps would be deputed to defend their lands from an invader - the Great King couldn't be expected to rush all over the empire to deal with dissent. That's what satraps were for. It was they who underestimated Alexander; and Darius took him pretty seriously, and fairly quickly, too, once Alexander had liberated Ionia.

ATB

[rocktupac]

And I think that's evident, marcus, with Darius showing up for the Issus battle in person after Alexander defeats a Persian army at the Granicus. There is no reason at the time really for Darius to have a personal concern with Alexander. We have to remember that at this time he was little more than an unproven successor of an assassinated king, leaving behind a fragmented Greece and a small army compared to that of Persia.

It's impossible for the Persians to have known what was to happen after Issus. They were probably relying on meddling with other Greeks, as in the past, giving them money to start trouble with Macedonia, forcing Alexander to return home.

[jan]

I thought that King Darius had written a letter to Alexander calling him a little boy and telling him to go back to mother so to speak. He clearly did not have a good scouting system that would let him know of Alexander's reputation, which most authors try to make us believe that Alexander had wanted to be feared and have his reputation made as fearsome. Wasn't that what he had wanted from the first group that he had encountered, for them to fear him and dread him? I have always been under the impression that Alexander made certain that his reputation would be known far and wide so that all would fear him. Apparently, King Darius had not yet got the word that Alexander is someone to be reckoned with when he ridiculed him and told him to go home and play with his toys.

[Paralus]

I I have always been under the impression that Alexander made certain that his reputation would be known far and wide so that all would fear him. Apparently, King Darius had not yet got the word that Alexander is someone to be reckoned with when he ridiculed him and told him to go home and play with his toys.

The whole thing is rather an interesting question. What has tended to be forgotten here is that Persian court was in a state of turmoil. Bagoas, a eunuch and serial killer with an Achaemenid obsession, had recently bumped off Artaxerxes Ochus – a fellow of some mettle – which likely prompted Philip’s decision to send an advance force some 10,000 strong to secure the Hellespont and win over what Greek cities it could. This was dealt with by local garrisons.

That this was apparently the beginning of a great “panhellenic” crusade to defeat the great eternal enemy – the Persians – will have been received in Susa much like a modern tele-marketing call: not again. This great expedition had been happening for some seventy years. Indeed had not the Spartans sent their king Agesilaos on this very crusade? The satraps will handle this like every other time.

Then Arses, Bagoas’ boy, ceased reading from the script and he too exited the scene, stage death. Enter a “certain Codomannus” who, whilst evidently grateful to the execrable eunuch for his elevation, nevertheless did not fail in his first duty – that of securing the throne – and retired Bagoas with prejudice. At about this time Alexander, after another regicide, assumes the Macedonian throne.

The scene in Persia, then, is one of considerable confusion. Whilst Alexander had his Balkan troubles, Darius had his accession problems and an army of some size on the loose in northern Asia Minor. Whilst he sorted the former, his satraps and, Darius’ new appointment Memnon, saw to the second. By the time Alexander was ready to cross into Asia, the advance force had been forced back to its bridgeheads in the Hellespont. (Just on which, given that 47,000 Greeks and Macedonians can whip 500,000 - 1,000,000 Persians at Gaugamela, it is rather odd that 10,000 could have such difficulty with satrapal garrisons)

The obvious strategy will have been to use the “Phoenician fleet” to take control of the Hellespont. This, though, is not as simple as it might sound. The Persians were not ever a “naval” empire or people. Their “fleet” is often spoken of as existing as if it were some standing army – it was not. Whenever Persian Kings needed to assemble a navy it was, by and large, constructed and made ready for service. This was the case for Xerxes as it was for Artaxerxes Memnon (for Egypt in the 390s though it wound up being put to use by Conon at Cnidus) and Ochus in the 350s. Indeed the fleet used by Clietus against the Athenians in the Lamian war was ordered to be constructed by another "Persian King", Alexander.

It is instructive that Alexander sets out with a fleet that is, by any stretch of the imagination, modest. It includes only some twenty Athenian triremes. If he’d any idea that there was a realistic prospect of a royal fleet being put to sea one suspects that half the Athenian population will have been put to the rowing benches.

Up until the defeat at the Granicus there likely will have been little reason for the Persians to expect that this “panhellenic” invasion was too much more than previous attempts by the bellicose Greeks. It could be dealt with in the same manner too: gold Darics. Much Persian money found its way to Greece. Unfortunately for Darius, it was not well received by a cowed Athens gazing over her northern frontiers to the hill where once stood the city of an implacable enemy. That did not stop it flowing though. Laconians longing for former Peloponnesian dominance gladly stockpiled and harboured hegemonic dreams.

Interesting that, by the time the Persians put to sea a decent fleet, Alexander had decided on the altogether left field plan of denying it harbours. A dangerous gambit. Had Memnon not died and raised the Aegean Islanders in revolt – with Persian money doing the same in Greece (well, at least the Peleponnese) – the invasion may well have come to an embarrassing halt.

The Persian response, given the problems begotten by Bagoas, was fairly typical. After the defeat of the satrapal army at the Granicus, that response altered.

[Callisto]

Most likely Darius believed the Macedonian threat was eliminated with the death of Philip. Persians could hardly knew initially whether Philip's successor continued his father's ambitious plan or not. They knew pretty much what was going on Philip's court from the high-ranking officials of Darius who had spent a few years in Macedonia during their exile but the question mark remained about the young successor. Later they could get valuable info from Greek exiles who passed in the Persian side but the most reliable information about Alexander came from one person, Amyntas, son of Antiochus.
It is likely a few Macedonians had followed Amyntas, especially those who feared for their lives after Alexander's accession to the throne. Unfortunately we know the names of only a few notable ones, like one who joined Persians a little later, Neoptolemus son of Arrhabaeus (Arrian, 1.20.10).