[epic music playing]
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: I won't lie to you.
They are strong and they are many,
and we fight on the ground of their choosing.
The danger we face is great.
But they are Persian...
and we are Greek!
[soldiers shouting]
[soldiers chanting]
Alexander the Great is one of the greatest conquerors
in all of the world.
- King Alexander! - Alexander!
- Alexander!
JOHN W.I. LEE: Successful general,
going from victory to victory,
accomplishing seemingly impossible feats.
Alexander never lost.
The sheer scale of Alexander's accomplishments
are impossible to ignore.
[people chanting]
He built one of the largest empires in human history,
and he did so in just 13 years.
His craving inside to succeed drives him,
but there is a dark side to Alexander.
- MAN: You are no king! - [people shouting]
He was ruthless, he was a colonizer,
he was an imperial,
but he was a young man who wanted to prove himself.
What's left to fight for?
Everything.
His desire to be remembered
is one of the things that connects him to us.
Alexander wanted to rule the world,
and the glamor of his success
shines on even in the 21st century.
There was the world before Alexander,
and the world after Alexander.
Alexander completely changed human history.
[epic music playing]
[horses stampeding]
[tense music playing]
NARRATOR: It's 331 BC...
and two empires are clashing.
Persia and Greece.
[Alexander speaks indistinctly]
[soldiers shouting]
ALEXANDER: I would not lead us to battle.
NARRATOR: The Greek army is launching
a full scale invasion of their enemy's lands.
A war between Persia and Greece is a huge mismatch.
Persia assembles an army of more than 200,000 men.
The Greeks were hugely outnumbered.
ADAM MARSHAK: We're talking about five to one.
These are unthinkable odds.
NARRATOR: Even so,
they charge, because leading the Greek army
is their remarkable young king...
Alexander.
[Alexander shouting]
[soldiers shouting]
[swords clanking]
To glory!
Alexander wants to invade Persia
because Persia is the last frontier.
SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE: The ancient world
was dominated by the Persian Empire,
that stretches from the borders of India,
Pakistan today,
all the way to Egypt in the South
and Greece in the north.
It was a huge, successful,
and seemingly invincible world power.
NARRATOR: Defeating Persia
has long been Alexander's consuming ambition.
When Alexander looked at Persia,
what he saw was a cause.
[swords clinking]
But the deeper he went into it,
the more confirmed he became that this was his mission.
[soldiers grunting]
ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY: But if Alexander loses here,
the war is lost.
- [soldiers grunting] - [swords clanking]
NARRATOR: Facing Alexander is his nemesis,
Darius, King of Persia.
- [man shouting] - [swords clanking]
[soldiers grunting]
If Alexander can capture Darius
or if he can kill Darius,
then it will be a tremendous psychological blow
against the entire Persian Empire.
- [soldiers shouts] - [spear whooshing]
SOLDIER: Hold the line!
KENNETH HARL: Everything was shaped on this battle.
Whoever won the Battle of Gaugamela
would win the Persian Empire.
[sword clinks]
[shouting]
[echoing shouting]
[mysterious music playing]
[both grunting with effort]
NARRATOR: Alexander's training begins
as a young prince of Macedon,
a minor province on the northern fringes of Ancient Greece.
Macedon is just one of a number of territories,
city-states, regions, that all comprise together
what we think of as ancient Greece.
PATRICIA KIM: The main powers in Greece include Athens,
Sparta and Thebes.
These are the centers of political life,
philosophy, and culture.
REBECCA BRADSHAW: For the Greek city-states,
Macedon is very much uncultured,
uncivilized, and still is ruled by this,
for them, archaic form of government,
which is the monarchy.
NICOLA DENZEY LEWIS: Alexander's father, Philip II,
is the King of Macedon,
and he ascended to the throne
when his brother was killed in battle
against a rival kingdom.
PATRICK WYMAN: One of the things that makes King Philip stand out
is his familiarity with violence
and his willingness to use it for his own ends.
Move your feet. Put your shoulder into it.
Faster, harder!
PHILIP FREEMAN: Physical prowess
was incredibly important to the Greeks.
It was important that they were educated,
but it was nothing unless they were able to run
and jump and fight.
PARMENION: I don't think you're really trying, boy!
Come on, harder, harder!
From an early age, Alexander's trained physically,
he's given great opportunity,
but it's also clear that his father is the man
and Alexander is not.
Okay, stop.
NARRATOR: Alexander has mentors other than his father.
That bag, one hand, go.
NARRATOR: Parmenion, his father's most trusted general.
There must be fire in your belly, boy!
Good. Stop, stop, enough.
NARRATOR: And Cleitus the Black,
the brother of Alexander's nurse.
We may have to keep an eye out for this one, eh, Parmenion?
Well done, well done.
PHILIP II: Well?
How's the boy progressing?
He may survive a skirmish or two.
NARRATOR: From the sidelines, Alexander watches
as his father transforms Macedon's fortunes.
The other city-states, particularly Athens,
looked down on Macedon.
The Athenians see Macedon
as an upstart, even as barbarian.
The Macedonians don't see themselves that way.
They see themselves as the future.
Philip's top priority when he takes the throne
is to bring Macedon
out of the barbarian status that it has
and turn it into a world power.
He wants to build up the economy,
build up the infrastructure and the roads,
but most especially,
he wants to build up the army.
Transforming them from simply a gaggle on the battlefield,
who might throw sticks or stones or whatever,
into a fully trained armed force.
NARRATOR: Philip's most significant change:
transforming the use of a battle formation called the phalanx.
ADAM: The phalanx consists of a tight formation
of infantry men.
Heavily armed, standing toe to toe,
shoulder to shoulder, with shields interlocking.
Philip changes the nature of the phalanx
from a defensive formation to an offensive one.
GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Philip adds the sarisa,
a spear of about 20 feet in length.
And by being about twice as long as the spear of the opposition,
you can hold the enemy at a greater distance.
If every one of your soldiers in the phalanx is strong,
your phalanx is unbeatable.
♪
NARRATOR: By 345 BC,
Philip has used his highly trained army
to aggressively capture territory from his neighbors.
Macedonia, at the start of Philip's reign,
is a very small kingdom.
But what Philip does is he expands Macedonian power
north, south, east, and west during his rule.
His expansion continues year after year.
[thunder rumbling]
- [fire crackling] - [men shouting]
Philip does spend nearly all of his reign at war.
I leave tomorrow. A new campaign.
Can I come with you?
Not this time.
ALEXANDER: When?
PHILIP II: When the time is right.
I promise.
NARRATOR: While Alexander is trained physically,
he also prepares intellectually.
[thunder rumbling]
He is tutored by the great philosopher, Aristotle.
Aristotle is the Leonardo da Vinci
of the ancient world.
He did it all.
ADAM: Aristotle provided Alexander
with his foundations for almost everything.
His notions of justice, of virtue, of manliness,
his thirst for knowledge and information.
NARRATOR: Aristotle also fueled Alexander's lifelong obsession
with the epic poem, The Iliad,
and its central hero, Achilles.
Achilles, for Alexander and for many Greeks,
was a paradigm of Greek masculinity.
Good at war, noble, courageous.
For Alexander, Achilles is not just a myth.
It is somebody that he can be.
Achilles, for Alexander, is his goal.
♪
NARRATOR: By the time Alexander is 18 years old
in 338 BC,
the Southern Greek states decide
they can no longer ignore Philip's expansion.
The Athenians and the Thebans
create this confederation of Greek states
that will fight against Philip in 338 BC
at the Battle of Chaeronea,
probably the biggest battle that Philip ever fights.
♪
NARRATOR: Now, Alexander will get a chance
to show his skill.
Philip's Macedonian army prepares to meet
the combined Greek forces 70 miles north of Athens.
PHILIP II: Alexander, I want you to lead the cavalry
here on our left flank.
This is where the soldiers of the Sacred Band will be.
MAJ. GEN. MARCIA ANDERSON: Under the circumstances,
Philip gave Alexander some pretty heavy responsibility.
Alexander is lined up against the Thebans
and their elite Sacred Band of warriors,
an extraordinarily well trained
and fierce and effective fighting force.
There are 300 of them
and they are composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.
This was thought to make them fight harder in battle,
knowing that their beloved was by their side.
In the more than 30 years
that the Sacred Band was in existence,
they never once lost a battle,
and they were seen to be invincible.
SHELLEY HALEY: Alexander is often represented
as a man who knows no fear.
That's rubbish.
Every man feels fear.
For Alexander, it is the fear of failure,
it is the fear of disappointing his father.
We know they will fight to the death...
and you must be prepared to do so as well.
I won't let you down.
Any of you.
When your moment comes, you must be ready.
That's the fire.
NARRATOR: Alexander is assigned to lead Macedon's cavalry.
For Philip to give Alexander command of the cavalry
meant that he was giving Alexander responsibility
for the decisive blow
that would decide the outcome of the battle.
It's an elite fighting force
drawn from Macedonian nobles who have the best weapons
and the best equipment and the best horses.
And it's made up of, at this point,
also many of Alexander's friends.
The most important is Hephaestion.
JEANNE REAMES: Hephaestion was his closest friend,
his emotional rock.
They were raised together,
educated together, under Aristotle.
They may have been lovers, at least when they were younger.
AARON IRVIN: But for Alexander and Hephaestion,
there's an even deeper level to it.
They are inextricably linked together.
The Battle of Chaeronea
is a very important moment for Alexander.
You could raise someone
and educate them to be a prince and a warrior...
but until they actually face the enemy in the battle lines,
they fight, and they win...
they haven't shown that they can really do the job.
[Alexander shouting]
[epic music playing]
[battle din]
NARRATOR: At the Battle of Chaeronea,
Alexander proves his worth.
He defeats the Sacred Band...
the most elite fighting force in all of Greece.
And he leaves practically no survivors.
The Battle of Chaeronea establishes Alexander
as a great war leader,
as a leader of men.
As a man who does not shrink from danger.
This is going to be
one of the greatest characteristics of Alexander
for the rest of his life.
♪
It's also a way for a very young Alexander
to demonstrate that he is a warrior
and that he could in fact be a future king.
COL. DOUG DOUDS: Leaders grow and develop over time,
and at some point, we start to refer to that as wisdom,
but Alexander seems almost wise from the beginning.
He was very pleased with his performance on the battlefield
because he had lived up to the expectations of his father
and he had played a key role in this important victory.
You're as fearless as the gods.
The victory at Chaeronea makes one thing clear.
Greece has been united
and they've been united under Macedonian rule.
NARRATOR: Finally, Alexander's father, Philip,
is supreme leader of virtually all the Greek states.
He orders the defeated to join him for a summit,
at the coastal town of Corinth.
What Philip decides to do
is to create the League of Corinth,
and this is essentially a Pan-Hellenic confederation,
and the idea behind it is that each member
will contribute a number of people to a regional army
and that they will not go to war with one another.
They have no choice, with their militaries defeated,
but to make peace with Philip and to follow his lead.
AARON: The League of Corinth, we might think of it
as the Greek equivalent of, say, NATO today.
The Greeks coming together as part of a common alliance,
setting aside centuries of warfare
and competition against each other
to instead stand together,
defend each other, and fight for a common cause.
But what Philip very much has in mind
is using the League of Corinth as a uniting force
against the Persian Empire.
NARRATOR: 150 years earlier,
Persia twice attempted to conquer Greece.
In 490 BC, King Xerxes I
had launched an invasion of the Greek mainland
and the Greeks win a tremendous victory
at the Battle of Marathon.
Ten years later,
the Persians had returned, now with a massive army.
This time, they were eventually repulsed from Greece
at the Battle of Plataea in 479.
PHILIP II: To our new alliance.
ALL: To our alliance!
They want vengeance. Philip understands this.
He is a master of marketing, as Alexander will be.
And so, he uses this as a campaign of vengeance
on Persia for their invasion of Greece.
♪
NARRATOR: Before Philip is able to launch his Persian offensive,
he brings his family together for a celebration.
You go in first. I'll be right behind you.
[overlapping conversation]
ADRIAN: Philip II is at the height of his power
as the year 336 BC comes to its end.
He's summoned envoys from all the Greek states
to witness the marriage of his daughter.
NARRATOR: The bride is Alexander's sister.
Their mother, Olympias, is Philip's fourth wife.
She is from basically modern day Albania
and she claims descent from Achilles,
who is the great hero of the Trojan War.
SIMON: Olympias does well that she produces a son,
and Alexander is the most capable
of Philip's legitimate Children,
therefore the most likely heir,
but certainly not the inevitable heir.
Olympias is a fascinating character.
She's masterful, she's majestic,
she's suspicious, she's dangerous,
and she's ruthless.
She's only interested in protecting the future
of herself and her son, Alexander.
[people grunting]
[horrified shouting]
The king! Help, help!
Just as Philip is walking into this wedding feast,
one of his own bodyguards stabs him fatally.
And Philip is dead within seconds.
ALEXANDER: Secure the walls, now!
JEANNE: In the immediate aftermath of Philip's murder,
it would have been quite chaotic.
OLYMPIAS: Alexander is king!
JEANNE: We're not told a lot of details.
Alexander is king!
King Alexander!
JEANNE: But it does seem that Alexander was acclaimed king
more or less on the spot.
[people chanting] King Alexander! King Alexander!
[chanting fades]
[mournful music playing]
You did more for Macedonia than any king before.
You were a lion.
OLYMPIAS: No, he was a king.
A good king.
But you, Alexander, you are the lion.
Olympias tells Alexander that on the night before her wedding,
she is struck in her womb by a thunderbolt.
[thunder rumbling]
The thunderbolt is the symbol...
[thunder rumbling]
...of the god, Zeus, who was the king of the gods
and really imbues Alexander with this idea
that he is somehow of divine birth.
ADAM: This is a prophecy come true for Olympias.
She has always believed that her son will do great things
and reach great heights of glory, and now he can.
NARRATOR: Alexander inherits his father's kingdom
at just 20 years old.
JEANNE: In many ways, he was ready to become king,
but he's following this giant.
And to be able to walk in Philip's shoes
would have been very difficult,
and Alexander has to figure out how to do this.
He's just Philip's young son
and nobody really knows what he's capable of yet.
NARRATOR: Alexander makes the decision
to follow through with his father's plan...
to invade Persia.
SHELLEY: Alexander thinks,
"Imagine if I am the one who can bring 'civilization'
"to the barbaric Persians."
NARRATOR: But Alexander wants more than simply to invade.
He wants to defeat Persia,
and then rule it.
To do so, he gathers an army of 40,000 men.
In the spring of 334 BC,
Alexander invokes the League of Corinth,
marches them from the Macedonian capital
to the Hellespont to cross over
and begin his campaign against the Persians.
AARON: Alexander has a main force
of about 32,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry.
So, this is a hardened, battle-ready,
core group of soldiers.
PATRICK: And he's blessed by having
experienced commanders of men in battle
who understood how to run a war.
Alexander makes Parmenion his second in command.
Parmenion, who was the friend
and close ally of his father, Philip.
Cleitus the Black is one of the leading cavalry commanders.
He's a member of the bodyguard of Alexander.
Ptolemy is one of Alexander's oldest friends.
They would have studied together with Aristotle.
Hephaestion is tasked with logistics.
He is responsible for making sure
that the army has food, has supplies.
Alexander and his companions, at least in the early era,
would not have acted as a king and subjects,
but rather, Alexander would have acted
as the first amongst equals.
NARRATOR: Alexander ferries his vast army
across the Hellespont...
and onto Persian soil.
[birds cawing]
♪
Alexander begins his invasion of the Persian Empire
in a wonderfully symbolic way.
He takes his spear...
and he says, "I claim Asia...
"as won by the spear for myself and for my empire."
He has not won anything yet,
but this is a declaration of what he intends.
Alexander had an almost electric charisma.
He understood the power of words
and the ability to inspire people.
For him, it's the start of a journey.
For Greece, it's the start of a campaign.
For world history, it's the start
of an epic change, and Alexander knows it.
He's going to be greater than Achilles.
♪
[epic music playing]
NARRATOR: At the time of Alexander's invasion
in the spring of 334 BC,
Darius III is the King of Persia.
Darius III was a successful and experienced commander,
a skillful and shrewd politician.
He's restored stability in the Persian Empire.
He is deeply respected.
JEANNE: When Alexander arrives in Asia,
Darius is well over 1,000 miles away
on the other side of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Philip had been alarming for the Persians.
Alexander, not so much.
He's a 22-year-old kid.
Alexander has invaded with a few tens of thousands of troops.
Darius says, "I'm going to let
"my governors in Asia Minor take care of this."
The local governors collect together their forces
and face Alexander at a place called the Granicus River.
And they have every confidence
that they are going to wipe the Macedonian army off the map.
[water flowing]
[armor clattering]
NARRATOR: Alexander brings 32,000 men
to the banks of the River Granicus.
The Persian governors have around 10,000 more.
ALEXANDER: So?
They will be upon us as soon as we cross the river.
Alexander was a man who had a mission,
and he knew that mission entailed risk.
Ready the troops. Be quick.
KENNETH: Parmenion, the leading general of Alexander,
advises him not to do it.
It's late in the day, the army is weary,
the Persians may have an unusual advantage
with defensive position.
But Alexander knows that he has to join the battle
for a number of reasons.
The first one is psychological.
"What would it look like
"if the first time we engaged with the enemy,
"we withdrew, we ran away?"
JOHN: The second pressing reason is logistical.
If Alexander does not fight and win a victory early on,
he is going to be shut out of the cities
that he needs to provide supplies.
He's commanding the most powerful force
ever assembled from the Greek city-states.
He's got them unified under his command.
And he knows that he has to produce results.
MARCIA: Fording a river and then engaging the enemy
with some of your force still left
is a very difficult military problem
and, tactically, most people don't want to do it.
Alexander understands the Persian mentality.
He understands why the Persians
have set up the battlefield the way that they have.
[shouting indistinctly]
The Persians think they are dealing
with an older version of the Greek army
who would be heavily armored, who would be weighed down.
Alexander's forces are lighter,
meaning the river isn't the obstacle
that the Persians think it is.
[soldiers shouting]
NARRATOR: Emerging into the shallows,
Alexander's men face their enemy at close range.
Trying to ford a river,
people are shooting things at them.
[bowstrings snapping]
[men shouting]
They are exposed,
so this is a very terrifying moment.
[epic battle music playing]
NARRATOR: From the eastern bank of the Granicus,
Alexander releases his most potent force.
Alexander has the phalanxes that his father had created.
This incredibly hardened
and experienced battle force that is at his disposal.
[battle din]
DOUG: I don't believe the Persians
had any idea of what they faced.
They have now run into a force
that has innovated in ways they have not seen.
[battle din]
DOUG: Plutarch talks about this as frenzy.
The clash, the close order nature of it,
the idea that every killing blow is a personal one.
To look someone in the eyes as that happens.
[battle din]
Alexander finds himself involved in cavalry melee,
spears and swords going in every direction.
NARRATOR: The Persians know, if they kill Alexander,
the Greek army will collapse.
This is what warfare is.
It is kill or be killed.
♪
Alexander is knocked to the ground from his horse.
[high-pitched ringing]
He receives a blow to the head
that takes off one of the plumes on his helmet.
If Alexander is killed here, the war is over.
The League of Corinth breaks up.
The future of Macedon is at stake.
[battle din]
♪
[soldier wails]
He's saved by the speed
of the sword arm of Cleitus the Black.
Had he been a few seconds later, fractions of a second,
then Alexander might have been killed or crippled.
That encounter wins the first stage of the battle.
The Persian cavalry is routed.
The Persian infantry are abandoned by their leaders.
Once the Persian commanders have scattered,
the rest of the Persian lines flee.
[soldiers shouting]
Alexander has won an incredible battle against the odds
and Alexander's decision to fight this battle
has paid off.
[soldiers cheering]
The Battle of the Granicus shows us
Alexander's qualities as a leader in many ways.
He builds his confidence.
He becomes more and more assured,
his troops become more loyal, they strengthen him.
Everything follows him,
cementing his purpose and mission.
Alexander's victory sends a very strong message
to the rest of the Persians.
They may think this is a young general,
an upstart, a child, a boy.
He's a force to be reckoned with.
Alexander!
[soldiers shouting]
ALL: Alexander!
Alexander!
[horses clomping, neighing]
♪
NARRATOR: Victory at the Granicus
fuels Alexander's ambition.
He starts to think about the world as a whole
being an empire of the entire earth
for which he is the ruler.
Alexander's ability to visualize an empire without end
I think far exceeded
what anyone thought was possible in his time.
During his travels, Alexander keeps
in constant communication with those back home.
Alexander leaves one of his generals, Antipater,
in charge in Macedonia,
but Olympias is also there.
Olympias is installed as co-regent,
so very, very important in terms
of the day-to-day runnings of Macedon
when Alexander was away.
NARRATOR: Through letters from his mother,
Alexander learns of a threat
that could bring his campaign to an early end.
Darius has sent 400 warships
to attack Alexander's allies in the Aegean Sea.
It leaves Alexander with a dilemma.
If Alexander goes back to aid the islands of Southern Greece,
then he risks losing any initiative that he had.
Exactly what Darius wants.
ALEXANDER: Attention!
ADAM: But if he doesn't go back and help,
then he risks losing the support
of all of those Greek city-states.
It's an impossible decision.
NARRATOR: In the fall of 334 BC...
- [men shouting] - [swords clanking]
NARRATOR: ...Alexander begins his response
to the Persian fleet.
Alexander's primary means
of countering Darius's naval threat
is to remove the coastal cities from play,
to conquer them, to deny Darius's fleet safe harbor.
NARRATOR: By laying siege to Darius' ports,
Alexander ensures the Persian Navy will be stranded at sea.
Because they can't restock and resupply,
they can't threaten Greece any further.
NARRATOR: Alexander can now push onward.
PATRICK: He is reaching away
from the fringes of the Persian Empire
into the heart of a world that's unfamiliar to him.
There's very little resistance
and indeed, many people hail him as a liberator.
♪
[market din]
NARRATOR: In April, 333 BC,
Alexander reaches the city of Gordion,
where the temple of Zeus is the site of an ancient prophecy.
[overlapping conversation]
♪
In Gordion, there is an ox cart.
According to legend, Zeus had given King Gordias,
the father of King Midas himself,
this ox cart as a gift.
NARRATOR: The cart is tethered with a complex knot
that only a future king can untie.
♪
Whoever unties this knot becomes king of all Asia.
"I have to do this."
This is catnip to Alexander.
If Alexander fails to untie the Gordian knot,
he risks his reputation,
he risks the story that he has told his men,
that the gods are on their side.
[tense music playing]
[rope squeaking]
He looks at it carefully,
but it's so intricate that he sees
there is no way that he can simply untie it.
[sword clinks, crowd gasps]
NARRATOR: So, Alexander changes his approach.
"It doesn't matter how I undo it as long as I undo it."
[sword clanking]
[crowd murmuring]
ALEXANDER: There.
The knot is undone.
Today, we talk about cutting the Gordian knot,
the seemingly impossible task
that is solved in a way that nobody had thought of.
It took somebody with Alexander's ability
to see alternative solutions, to think outside the box,
in order to solve it in the way that he did.
Tell the troops we march south.
AARON: But not only that, this is the idea
that the universe itself is on Alexander's side.
He cannot help but be victorious.
Gordion is a huge turning point for Alexander.
After this, he's all in.
He's going to stay and challenge Darius.
[metal gate clanking]
♪
NARRATOR: Darius realizes he has no other option
than confronting Alexander on land.
He knows now that the only way
he's going to beat Alexander
in the western part of his kingdom
is to face him in a great battle.
NARRATOR: Over the next six months,
Darius assembles fighting men
from across the Persian Empire
to form an army double the size of Alexander's.
♪
Darius' solution to Alexander
is to simply overwhelm him with numbers.
So, Darius leads his grand army into Syria
as Alexander comes south along the coast.
And almost by chance,
Darius ends up behind Alexander's army.
[horse neighing]
NARRATOR: In November, 333 BC,
Alexander considers his options.
ALEXANDER: How many?
Many more than us.
We don't fight him yet. We take more cities,
send for more men, boost our numbers,
then we fight them on our terms.
No.
He has made a mistake chasing us into this valley.
We fight him here. Now.
The problem that Darius faces
is that he is forced into a narrow coastal plain
and he is facing Alexander in a place
where he is not able to use all of his soldiers at once
to surround and overwhelm Alexander.
We have yet to be defeated.
They will run whilst we stand united.
ALL: For Greece! For Greece!
If he wins, he will have proven
the prophecy of the Gordian knot correct.
He will become the master of Asia.
Eat and sleep well tonight.
Tomorrow, we march at dawn.
[soldiers shouting]
[epic music playing]
NARRATOR: By dawn, the Persians should have been advancing.
Instead, for the most part, they are standing still.
MARCIA: Darius' favorite position
is to wait for an enemy to come to him.
I think that is a mistake.
You give up a lot of flexibility.
You basically have a plan A and no plan B.
In warfare, timing is everything.
Alexander has the initiative.
"I can take all the time in the world I need to set this up
"and I will do it on my good time."
♪
It must have been incredibly unnerving
for the Persians sitting and watching this.
To have this foreign enemy coming along
so eerily quiet in the way they do it
and so organized...
moving as groups, not individuals.
It's not only tactical genius,
it's also psychological warfare.
When he was about 200 yards away from the Persians,
just out of range of their arrows,
he does something really quite unexpected.
[music stops]
He has all of his army stop and wait.
The Persians on the other side
simply left to await the inevitable attack.
That pressure built up over that long, slow march...
Alexander lets it sink in.
♪
Because Darius simply waits there
with his superior army,
Alexander concludes that Darius is afraid of him,
that he is a beaten man.
[soldiers shouting]
NARRATOR: Discovered in the ashes of Pompeii,
the nine-foot wide Alexander mosaic
is the closest thing we have to an eyewitness account
of the battle's climax.
[battle din]
The Alexander mosaic shows
a very particular moment in the Battle of Issus,
which is when Alexander, leading from the front,
charges straight at Darius.
[battle din]
So, there's that moment,
there must have been that moment...
where their eyes connect.
This is no longer an ethereal idea of,
"Alexander wants me dead,"
this is reality, "He's coming for me."
Darius has gone from, "I need to defend my empire"
to, "I need to save my own life."
The great king turns and runs, and once he turns,
the rest of the army quickly follows him.
Alexander pursues Darius roughly 25 miles after the battle
with Darius throwing off insignia,
throwing off signs of his royal status as he goes,
looking to disappear into the countryside,
become simply another soldier running from the battlefield.
He's defeated.
- The empire is yours. - No.
Not while he's still alive. [exhales]
And now that he's seen what we can do,
he'll be better prepared next time.
More dangerous.
[tense music playing]
♪
NARRATOR: By the end of 333 BC...
Alexander's army has traveled 1,000 miles from home.
Victory at Issus means he now controls
the entire western part of the Persian Empire.
ALEXANDER: Hiding in the servant's quarters.
When Alexander captures the camp of Darius,
he finds there the wife and the daughter of Darius.
Having been told that Alexander, as a foreign barbarian king,
will have them executed,
and now they find themselves completely at his mercy.
You need not mourn for your husband.
He's alive and free.
You're coming with us.
You have my word as guests, not slaves.
Make sure they understand.
You want us to treat them as equals?
Yes, Ptolemy.
JEANNE: Alexander's officers, particularly the old guard,
would feel betrayed by this.
They're there for vengeance.
PHILIP: But he makes a very deliberate decision
to treat them well,
and he does this in order to show the Persian world
that he will treat them well if they will only yield to him.
WESLEY: It's part of his innate compassion.
It's also a part of his leadership,
because Alexander is now a political leader
as well as a military figure.
And he's got to rule politically.
NARRATOR: News of Alexander's victory
at Issus spreads rapidly.
Soon after the Battle of Issus,
Alexander works his way down the Mediterranean coast
in order to capture the cities under Persian control.
Nearly all of the coastal cities in Persia
surrender without a fight.
However,
when Alexander reaches Tyre,
his progress is halted.
♪
NARRATOR: Founded over 2,000 years earlier,
Tyre is one of the oldest fortified island cities
in the world.
It was immensely powerful, immensely rich.
It was also the most important naval base
for the Persians in the Mediterranean.
And if he didn't take it, it could become a source
of counter offensives against his invasion.
[waves crashing]
PABLO DE ORELLANA: Very often, Alexander would send envoys
to fortresses and cities
that would carry his message that,
"You will be allowed to live
"if you pay allegiance to Alexander."
So, when Alexander comes to Tyre,
he does the usual thing and sends envoys in
to some of the Tyrians to surrender.
Help, help! Help!
ADRIAN: The Tryians murder them,
violating all the rules
of civilized behavior by any state.
This is an absolute outrage.
JEANNE: Alexander has learned from his father
the value of diplomacy.
At least start there,
but if that doesn't work, use shock and awe.
So, for Alexander, this now becomes,
you might say, almost a religious duty
to avenge the killing of these ambassadors.
♪
PHILIP FREEMAN: The city of Tyre is very well protected.
It is at least half a mile off shore.
There is no way to reach it
and Alexander has no real navy and no way to attack it.
And so, the citizens there believed they were safe.
NARRATOR: Scouting the area,
Alexander discovers a natural sand bridge
that connects Tyre to the mainland.
It's around six feet under water.
It's not enough for him to get his army across,
but he could build a causeway on top of it.
ALEXANDER: We can use the stones from the old city ruins.
This forest has plenty of timber.
Here the sea is shallowest.
- So-- - A bridge?
It will take months to build.
Water will not hand us our first defeat.
Alexander, it won't be easy.
The gods have assured us of victory.
Leave me.
PATRICK: What he does at Tyre shows
a strategic ability to see the big picture.
So, no matter how much effort
that this was going to take to capture Tyre,
in the long run, this was going to make it possible
to deliver the death stroke to the Persian Empire.
[water splashing]
They bring in rocks,
they bring in rubble to form a solid surface
stretching from the mainland to the island of Tyre.
[waves crashing]
There are attempts to kill the workers,
to kill the engineers,
but Alexander remains determined.
[fire crackling]
And even when sections of the land bridge are destroyed,
Alexander's forces simply keep building.
♪
After seven grueling months,
Alexander and his troops finally reached
the city walls of Tyre,
and this time, he sends no messengers.
He is going to destroy this city.
[horses whinnying]
[music intensifying]
[soldiers shouting]
[swords clanging]
[battle din]
ROBERT CARGILL: Alexander slaughters
the civilian population for defying him
and he does so in a humiliating fashion.
Alexander wants to send a message
to the entire world at the city of Tyre.
[battle din]
30,000 women sold into slavery.
8,000 men killed.
2,000 executed.
Modern historians sometimes call this a genocide.
Alexander wants his new subjects to understand...
defiance will not be tolerated.
[indistinct chatter]
[mysterious music playing]
When Darius hears about the fall of Tyre,
he decides to cut a deal with Alexander.
- A message from Darius. - What?
He will give up all claims to land west of the Euphrates.
This is about half of the Persian Empire.
In addition, Darius will offer gold
roughly equivalent to about $10 billion in modern currency.
- [Parmenion laughing] - What's it say?
It is good news, my friends.
[Parmenion chuckles]
[Hephaestion sighs]
[all laugh]
Tell the messenger I do not accept.
MAN: What?
Alexander...
[scoffs] ...he's offering us more than we ever wanted.
- [Hephaestion] Yeah. - What's left to fight for?
Everything, Parmenion.
JEANNE: Parmenion gets to speak
sort of as the conventional wisdom.
And we are starting to see
as Alexander is more and more successful,
he wants to do it his way.
And so, you do start to see
a little bit of tension growing here
with this old guard that he had inherited from Philip,
headed, more or less, by Parmenion.
Alexander is compelling because
of the scope and scale at which he operates
at a time when nobody operates at that scope and scale.
♪
NICOLA: And so, nothing is left for him
except for the jewel in the crown of the Persian Empire.
That is the vassal state of Egypt
and that's where he sets his sights next.
♪
[adventurous music playing]
[eagle cawing]
By the time Alexander had reached Egypt
in November of 332,
he had been on the road, campaigning in Asia
for about two and a half years.
He had covered 1,800 miles.
AARON: Egypt is one of the most developed territories
in the Mediterranean.
And so, Egypt is absolutely a vital prize
for Alexander to capture as part of his conflict.
♪
It's been over 3,000 years
since the great pharaohs built the pyramids.
And since then, Egypt's seen
30 dynasties of pharaohs coming through.
But in the more recent history, Egypt's power has waned
and it's been controlled by the Persians
since the sixth century.
[swords clinking]
The Egyptians had never accepted Persian rule.
Just about every single generation had tried to rebel,
tried to throw the Persians out.
So, with Alexander having defeated
the Persian king himself at Issus,
he is already a celebrity upon arriving in Egypt.
Our envoy returns.
Still alive? Good sign.
What do they say?
They will welcome you.
And?
They want to crown you pharaoh.
A god on earth.
♪
NARRATOR: In January, 331 BC,
Alexander becomes pharaoh of Egypt.
It's the fulfillment of a supposed destiny
as a divine being.
♪
Now, a pharaoh is a king, of course,
but the pharaoh is actually equated with the god, Osiris.
Alexander is in effect being acclaimed as a god.
So, all of this seems to be playing together,
the stories that his mother has told him,
that he has this divine background,
this divine ancestry.
And, of course, he believed, increasingly,
his own propaganda, his own myth that presented him as divine
and as unstoppable, as invincible.
And once you believe that about yourself,
there are no boundaries.
[adventurous music plays]
NARRATOR: Before resuming his campaign against Darius,
Alexander demonstrates his power
by building a new capital city for Egypt.
ADAM: Alexander decides that he wants to build
a permanent Greek colony on the Egyptian coast.
He's going to name this city after himself:
Alexandria.
Alexandria will someday become a center for science
and learning, the trade capital
of the entirety of the Mediterranean Sea.
PHILIP: A place where all sorts of
different people can come together.
Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, everybody.
It will be home to two
of the seven wonders of the world...
the Lighthouse at Pharos...
and the Library of Alexandria.
Alexander only stays in Egypt for a few months,
but his effect will be felt over the next few centuries
as Egypt becomes a true cosmopolitan nation
because of its introduction
to the greater empire that Alexander will found.
It's now the summer of the year 331 BC
and Alexander is heading east, deeper and deeper into Persia.
NARRATOR: In just over three years,
he has conquered an area
over 10 times the size of Greece,
and his army will soon have 15,000 new soldiers.
He's heading for the city of Babylon,
this ancient wealthy city
which has existed for thousands of years.
Babylon is the perfect place for Alexander,
who has already declared himself king of Persia,
to establish his rule.
NARRATOR: Alexander's route takes him
by the town of Gaugamela,
in modern-day Iraq.
Here, his scouts spot the Persian army
is blocking the path forward.
The enemy has returned, this time better prepared.
ALEXANDER: I have never seen so many men in my life.
KENNETH: Darius has assembled a large army.
The ancient sources give us
wildly large numbers of a million.
It probably is somewhere in the order
of 200 to 250,000.
It's at least five times larger than Alexander's army.
PHILIP FREEMAN: Darius chooses the place of Gaugamela
very carefully.
It is utterly flat and stretches for miles in every direction
so he can line up all of his men,
he can line them up deep,
and he can strike against Alexander
without worrying about being constricted on the sides.
Darius is determined to use his numbers to an advantage.
[soldiers shouting]
ADAM: Alexander's cavalry is his strongest asset,
but his 7,000 horsemen are outnumbered,
possibly two, maybe even five to one.
These are unthinkable odds,
so Alexander is going to have to come up
with a really good strategy.
JOHN: He has fought the Persians on multiple occasions.
He has observed their cavalry and infantry.
He has seen their strengths and their weaknesses.
DOUG: These are all patterns that are now
part of his decision-making matrix.
He has vast patterns that he can draw upon
to decide how to best employ his army.
STANLEY: Alexander believed that the center of gravity
at Gaugamela was Darius himself,
and he felt that if he could kill,
or capture Darius, that the army would fragment.
There's simply no other way to do it.
And so, he has to find a way through the lines
to the great king.
Just in time.
Come, take a look.
You will hold the left flank--
Alexander, a request.
For the sake of the men,
think what you are asking of them.
The same as I always ask.
Everything.
The same as I ask of myself.
Yes, but we have never faced numbers like this before.
At least at night, we might surprise them.
I will not steal victory like that.
Come take a look at the plan.
You will hold the left flank and the line
The phalanx is strong...
And so, everything was staked on this battle.
[horse huffs]
If Alexander wins, the Persian capitals are his,
and with it, the legitimacy to claim the Persian throne.
If Persia wins, it is likely
Alexander and his army will be annihilated.
♪
NARRATOR: In the final moments before the battle,
Alexander gives one of the most inspiring
speeches of all time.
ALEXANDER: I won't lie to you.
They are strong and they are many,
and we fight on the ground of their choosing.
But I would not lead us to battle
if the gods were not with us!
[soldiers cheering]
Today, we not only defeat an enemy,
but we conquer an empire!
For Greece!
- For glory! - [soldiers cheering]
The Macedonian king, young Alexander, is launching
a battle that's gonna decide not only their lives,
their reigns, their destinies, their dynasties,
but also the greatest empire in the world.
That's the promise.
♪
[tense music playing]
NARRATOR: In October, 331 BC...
though vastly outnumbered,
Alexander enacts his battle plan.
Now!
♪
PHILIP FREEMAN: At the start of the battle,
Alexander does something that Darius and the Persians
did not expect at all.
He himself leads his cavalry
and he begins to lead them to the right of his own lines.
He is trying to create a window of opportunity.
By riding to the right, I force them to maneuver.
They have to make decisions, they have to start to move.
NARRATOR: Alexander predicts the Persian cavalry
will take up the chase and follow him,
stretching their own defensive line too thin.
And if the line breaks, it will leave Darius exposed.
Alexander keeps going much farther than anyone would expect
in order that the Persians would follow him.
NARRATOR: The success of Alexander's daring strategy
depends upon the actions of his most trusted general.
[shouting]
Parmenion is the commander on Alexander's left.
His job is to hold.
We need Parmenion to hold his own on the left.
Alexander's movement to the right
means that Parmenion on the left flank
is left entirely on his own.
MAN: Hold the line!
[battle din]
He has no support.
He has no reserves. He is entirely isolated.
If he doesn't hold, the plan doesn't work.
NARRATOR: Darius sees an opportunity
to further weaken Parmenion.
AARON: Darius unleashes his terror.
Side chariots.
Chariots with long spiked blades coming out of the wheels
designed to chop up
the Macedonian soldiers that might get in his way.
They're a powerful shock weapon
and Darius has not just a couple--
he's got 200 of them.
The phalanx has seen this trick before.
As the chariots thunder in,
the phalanx parts
and the chariots roar through the gap.
NARRATOR: At the same time, Alexander weighs up
his enemy's positions.
As he draws them out, he's watching,
he's waiting for the moment.
♪
It's a 30-second opening and, like a snake,
he pivots that cavalry and he's gone.
AARON: Alexander's plan is to now outrun the Persian ranks
to cut them off entirely...
and beat them back to the Persian king.
For glory!
Once that cavalry is on the charge,
Darius realizes, "I am in trouble."
NARRATOR: Darius' options are to fight or flee.
He makes a last ditch attempt
to wipe out the outnumbered Greek army.
Darius launches some of his best cavalry forces
against Parmenion, and that left wing
is in the fight of its life.
[battle din]
WESLEY: These Greeks are far from home.
They know there's no surrender,
this is victory or death, and that's the way they fight.
Hold the line! Hold the line!
[shouting indistinctly]
As Alexander gets closer, he can see the king.
He can end this war in just a moment.
Alexander, Parmenion's line. It's been broken. He needs help!
In the midst of his decisive attack,
Alexander gets bad news.
- MAN: Alexander. - [indistinct].
If we don't stop now, we'll lose the entire army.
WESLEY: Parmenion says, "Don't leave me, boss.
"These cavalry have surrounded me.
"You gotta come save us."
If Alexander chases after Darius,
which is what he wants to do, he might lose half of his men.
But if he goes back to Parmenion,
then Darius will get away.
And Alexander makes a critical decision
to save his army rather than kill and capture the king.
The Persian king, having fled the battle,
many in his army flee as well.
NARRATOR: After defeating the Persians,
Alexander achieves his mission, but it's not enough.
I had him. By the Gods, I--
I had him in my sight and I let him go.
We routed his army.
The empire is yours--
So long as Darius draws breath,
he will rally men against me.
We have won nothing.
His army has nothing left.
What will ever be enough?
Alexander has all of Persia within his grasp,
but not the one thing that he wants most of all:
Darius.
♪
NARRATOR: Alexander's victory at Gaugamela
puts Darius on the run.
ADRIAN: Gaugamela wins the war for Alexander.
This completes the conquest of Persia.
But Alexander will not give up the pursuit of Darius.
He pushes on into the heartland of the empire.
He overruns the famous cities,
Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, and he keeps on going.
But there's a changed mood in the army
because everyone can sense that they've won.
So, they're starting to think,
"Well, why are we still fighting?
"Why are we still chasing?
"Can't we enjoy the glory,
"but also the rest, but also the spoils?"
- [camel grunts] - [horse neighs]
NARRATOR: By June, 330 BC...
after five years away,
there's dissent in Alexander's camp.
Cleitus, his foster brother,
and another childhood friend, Ptolemy,
do not like the change that they see in Alexander.
Once he conquers Persia,
they feel Persia has conquered him.
ADAM: Alexander learns of a possible conspiracy
brewing in the ranks.
Talk of assassination.
[horse neighs]
My king. I must warn you. There is talk among the troops.
Go on.
They complain that--
They complain? Of what?
The details are quite murky,
but what we do know is that there was a connection
between talk of conspiracy
and Philotas, Parmenion's son.
[dramatic music plays]
Get me more wine.
AARON: Alexander takes the rumors
as a chance to move against Parmenion's son,
to have him tried before the entire army,
and to have him executed for treason.
It's not clear whether Parmenion ever had
any part of this plot, or knew about it at all,
but what is clear is that after Alexander
has his son put to death,
any chance of the two of them
being friends and allies after that
is pretty much gone forever.
NARRATOR: Alexander acts to prevent retaliation
from a grieving Parmenion.
He sends him on a scouting mission.
ALEXANDER: Send a message when you arrive.
Let me know what you've learned.
♪
Travel safe.
You as well, Alexander.
You as well.
NICOLA: After fighting in battle after battle with Philip first
and then with Alexander...
Parmenion's fate is to be stabbed to death
by one of Alexander's soldiers on Alexander's orders.
PARMENION: Onward.
This is a very sad ending for Parmenion.
Parmenion had been a very loyal retainer.
He had been a very effective general.
PHILIP FREEMAN: We understand, on the other hand,
Alexander's point of view.
Once he had killed his son,
he really didn't have much of a choice
except to kill the father.
[tense music plays]
♪
In the aftermath of the Battle of Gaugamela,
Alexander becomes more lonely, more isolated,
more paranoid, ever more obsessed
with challenges to his power, to his crown.
AARON: Alexander is trying to build himself up
into what he thinks he needs to be
to rule over this vast empire,
but he is increasingly finding that he is losing his friends,
that he is losing what it is
that made him great in the first place.
ADRIAN: It is getting more and more tense,
more and more difficult.
And Alexander's solution is to keep campaigning.
NARRATOR: Alexander doubles down on his singular obsession:
capturing Darius.
Alexander learns that Darius has been sighted
in Northern Iran.
Heading into the regions
of Bactria and Sogdiana in modern-day Afghanistan.
PATRICK: So, to catch up with him,
Alexander drives his men 450 miles
over a three-week march,
including a brutal 200-mile stretch
in just 11 days.
Alexander doesn't rest.
He keeps pushing his men farther and farther
beyond their physical limits.
Again and again, he demands more from them
than could reasonably be expected.
And again and again, they deliver.
♪
- MAN: We found something. - What?
Come and see for yourself.
Come on.
Alexander and his men have traveled 5,000 miles
and haven't set foot in Greece for four years
when they finally find Darius.
- ALEXANDER: Where are they? - MAN: Fled.
And Darius?
Pursued by Alexander's troops with no respite,
Darius' nobles make the terrible decision
to essentially betray him.
They stab Darius and leave him bleeding
by the side of the road.
For Alexander, the death of Darius means he's won.
He has avenged the Persian invasions of Greece.
His whole reason for having begun this invasion
in the first place has been achieved.
You are now truly the Lord of Persia.
- MAN: The king of kings. - He'll have a king's burial.
Take him back to rest alongside his ancestors.
Leave him where he fell, surely--
We shall do as he said.
PABLO: Alexander was very sad at Darius' fate.
He was outraged, in fact.
Alexander, by all accounts, treats Darius
as his legitimate predecessor
and indeed tries to defend his memory
by chasing and killing the assassins of Darius.
The Macedonian soldiers begin to discuss going home,
returning to their families, and what it is
they're going to do once they get back.
To the Lord of Asia.
To the fallen.
Look here.
We need to go north and east.
That is where Darius' men are hiding.
[scoffs]
The men are celebrating, Alexander, let's join them.
Ask Cleitus when the men will be ready to travel.
Ask Cleitus when the men will be ready to travel!
SHELLEY: Alexander's goal all along
was to conquer Persia,
to bring Greek culture into Persia.
He does that.
Stop?
He can't stop.
This has now become almost a primal urge,
to go as far as he can go.
Alexander is both a conqueror and an explorer.
For him, there never is an end.
There's always another land to conquer,
another feat of glory to achieve.
♪
NARRATOR: In March, 327 BC,
three years after the death of his old enemy, Darius,
Alexander and his men are still on the move.
His army cuts through Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, the Western Himalayas,
and even a part of the Hindu Kush.
I mean, this is undiscovered territory for a Greek.
These areas rebel very quickly.
They've been difficult for the Persians to control
because the people there are fiercely independent.
So, Alexander fights some of the most vicious campaigns
without the dramatic battles, without the Gaugamelas,
without the Issus or Granicus in these years.
WESLEY: He realizes he's got to manage,
not just lead in war.
He's not an instrument of chaos.
He's a foreign element
injected into an existing civilization,
and he takes from that civilization
and learns from it and gives to it.
Through his travel, Alexander retains
his relationship with his former tutor
and great philosopher, Aristotle.
Alexander writes regularly to Aristotle,
sends him samples of plants
and animals, clothing and artifacts.
And it is likely that many of these subjects
and insights made it into what we now know
as the founding moment of biology,
the idea of classifying nature systematically
and thinking about it scientifically.
There's this word that got attached to him, pothos.
It's like a longing to see something new.
He was fascinated
by other cultures, other peoples.
That range there.
How long do you think it would take to cross?
Alexander, what are we still doing here?
There's nothing left except rocks.
You are a Macedonian king,
and a Macedonian king must return to Greece.
We have come further than any Macedonians before us.
Look at these people.
These people need us.
Now deep within the mountainous region of modern-day Uzbekistan,
Alexander has taken a mighty fortress
known as Sogdian Rock.
NARRATOR: Alexander welcomes those
who surrendered to him without a fight.
What's your name?
Well, that's very impressive.
What's your name?
Because out of all of you here,
you're the only one who's not afraid of me.
I'm Alexander.
Roxanne is a woman of unparalleled beauty,
but she's also potentially the source
of what Alexander needs more than anything, an heir.
And he thinks that having an heir with Persian blood
will really solidify the connections
between the two kingdoms.
Alexander's decision to marry Roxanne
was not out of some romantic urging.
It's pure policy.
JEANNE: His advisors, particularly some
of the older guard, are like,
"No, what do you think you're doing?"
But Alexander understands he's doing
what Philip, his father, had done before him seven times.
Marry your way to peace.
But that decision reveals
that he didn't necessarily understand
the strength of feeling
that men in his inner circle had
in terms of their own ethnic values and beliefs.
In particular, Cleitus, who gets very upset.
♪
[castanets clinking]
PABLO: His relationship with his general
goes from one of the first amongst equals,
essentially a group of men deciding the future together,
to a more tyrannical model of rule,
where Alexander is ever more the great king.
♪
By this point in time,
Alexander is drinking a huge amount.
The Macedonians already have an established drinking culture,
but Alexander's so-called insatiable fondness for wine
really seems to go to a different level.
And his patience begins to thin.
His allowance of people questioning his authority
begins to get a little bit tight.
♪
We don't exactly know what happened at this feast
and it's not really surprising,
given the general level of intoxication.
What we do know is that Cleitus,
always hot tempered, was stirred up,
probably because of all of the Persians
that were at this feast.
I must ask you, Alexander...
are you a Greek or a Persian?
Are you a man...
or a god?
Why don't you find out, Cleitus?
You're not a god.
You're not even half the man your father was.
[smacks]
♪
You dare to strike me? Your dare to fight me?
- MAN 1: Come on. - MAN 2: Leave it!
CLEITUS: You are nothing.
- MAN: Cleitus, leave! - CLEITUS: You are no king!
[screaming ] You are--
[Cleitus groaning]
- [blade clinks] - [Cleitus grunts]
♪
PABLO: Killing Cleitus is all the more tragic
because Cleitus hasn't just been loyal,
Cleitus has been fighting literally side by side
with Alexander and has saved his life several times,
including at the Battle of the Granicus.
[murmuring]
He's broken the sacred bonds of trust
that built the army together.
Still-- still, he's Alexander.
He's unvanquished. He's the leader.
You can't abandon him, but he's not the same person.
He's wearing these Persian robes,
he's not our man anymore.
Who is he?
♪
[birds chirping]
NARRATOR: By the fall of 327 BC,
Alexander has traveled more than 6,000 miles.
CLEITUS: You are no king!
NARRATOR: His campaign is taking its toll.
CLEITUS: You're not even half the man your father was.
After Alexander kills Cleitus,
there is a change in his behavior.
There's a depression, I guess you could say,
that just doesn't leave Alexander at this point.
How are the men?
In mourning.
They want to go home.
And you?
Wherever Alexander is, that's my home.
PABLO: Alexander seems to start changing, psychologically.
He hides from everyone for days on end.
And at this point, seems to suffer
ever more the tragedy of his distance from Greece,
the original world that is slipping from his hands.
NARRATOR: Still, Alexander's desire for conquest
drives him on.
Alexander heads South,
following the Hindu Kush mountain range,
going through the Khyber Pass,
and ultimately into the Indus River valley
in modern-day Pakistan.
Upon entering India,
Alexander has officially gone off the Greek map,
but Alexander believes that there is an end point,
there is a point where the world stops.
Alexander finds that what lies next
is not the end of the world at all, but is, in fact,
the Nanda Empire, an empire that has
a massive standing army of 200,000 strong,
4,000 war elephants, 6,000 chariots,
40,000 cavalry, all of which are highly trained
and mobilized and ready for Alexander's forces.
He learns that the world is so much bigger
than he ever thought it was and it makes him determined
to keep pressing on in order to conquer the world.
NARRATOR: In 326 BC,
Alexander has marched his army 11,000 miles,
nearly half the circumference of Earth.
By the time they arrive at the Hyphasis River in India,
the morale of Alexander's men is borderline mutinous.
They don't know when they're going to stop
and they're essentially waiting for geography
to stop Alexander.
If the world does not end,
then they might be fighting forever.
My king...
we cannot continue.
This is the line in the sand for his men.
He cannot push them any further.
[tense music plays]
PABLO: Alexander's troops demand to turn around and go home.
He tries to get a handle on the situation,
but this is too big for him.
His charisma that had driven his army
for 10 years across all of the known world
had essentially run out at this point.
Stand!
Take it.
Take it!
Coward.
He hasn't been defeated in India,
he's been defeated only by his own soldiers
that insist that he turns around.
NARRATOR: Alexander relents,
and in August, 326 BC, begins to lead his army home.
But he does not intend to take his men back the way he came.
He seeks a new route.
ADAM: Alexander discovers that the Indus River
connects with the Persian Gulf.
It holds the possibility of a quicker route to Persia.
NARRATOR: He splits his army into separate units.
PABLO: One that would return by sea,
and the other half, led by himself,
that would cross the Makran Desert.
♪
The route that Alexander takes
is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.
It was a horrific desert with no features,
unmapped and unknown at the time, with no cities,
oases, or stopping points.
DOUG: But because he suffers all the dangers
and deprivations from his troops,
he marches when they march, he's hungry when they're hungry,
he's thirsty when they're thirsty,
he makes them feel like they are part of things
bigger than themselves.
MAN: This is all there is, my king.
A brave warrior...
has handed me a helmet...
half filled with water.
All that he could find.
But the king drinks...
when his men drink.
If his men don't drink...
no one drinks.
This one simple gesture inspires the men.
Whatever thoughts they had about Alexander,
whatever doubts, disappear in this moment of sacrifice.
♪
[indistinct chatter]
NARRATOR: It takes Alexander's armies
the best part of six months
to travel back to Persia's heartlands.
They arrive in the city of Susa
in the spring of 324 BC.
It becomes clear that Alexander has no intention
of ever returning to Macedon,
that he will be sending his soldiers home,
he will be sending veterans home,
but Alexander himself will be staying
in the new domains that he has conquered.
ADAM: He's now spent about 10 years there.
That's nearly a third of his life.
He's adopted Persian customs, he's adopted Persian dress.
And why not stay in Persia?
It's the center of the world.
NARRATOR: For Alexander, it's time to consolidate power.
If you're going to administrate, well, you have to stay put
and figure out how to make this empire work.
He ends up picking somebody to do that for him,
and that's Hephaestion's role.
NARRATOR: Then Alexander arranges the marriages
of his Macedonian generals to Persian princesses.
Alexander is trying to fuse together
the elites of Macedonia and the Persian Empire
by creating them into married networks
that would owe loyalty to one another,
that this is not so much a change of identity
as much as a change in political commitment.
Alexander is moving from King of Macedon
to King of the World.
Ptolemy...
this one's for you.
The only way to truly rule Persia
is to establish Macedonian blood.
Enjoy it.
NICOLA: Alexander takes two more wives for himself,
the youngest daughter of one of the Persian generals,
and also, he marries the oldest daughter of Darius,
so he's going to become a polygamist like his father.
Hephaestion...
meet your new wife.
PABLO: For his best friend and loyal retainer, Hephaestion,
Alexander arranges a marriage
with the best bride available in Persia,
one of Darius' other daughters.
This makes Hephaestion essentially
Alexander's brother-in-law.
ALEXANDER: This is for us.
Our children will grow up together...
like we did.
They will share the same blood.
It is possible that Alexander hoped
and planned to grow old with Hephaestion in Persia,
to raise their children together as Hellenic Persians,
essentially to establish himself, Hephaestion,
their families, for the future.
NARRATOR: Just seven months later
in the fall of 324 BC,
Alexander's plans are derailed.
♪
He receives devastating news.
The culture of drinking in Alexander's army
seems to get even stronger.
Lots of parties, lots of celebrations.
And Hephaestion becomes ill
after one of these drinking bouts.
Alexander, hearing that the health
of his closest friend is declining,
makes his way to Hephaestion's side,
but doesn't arrive in time.
Sleep well.
Hephaestion is really his emotional touchstone.
His bedrock is gone.
The man who he had hoped would help
administrate his empire is gone.
What is he going to do?
♪
PABLO: When Hephaestion dies, Alexander loses his mind.
Alexander is so distraught that he blames the doctors
that failed to save Hephaestion's life
and has them all crucified.
He withdraws in agonizing pain and mourning and sadness.
NARRATOR: In the spring of 323 BC,
Alexander emerges from mourning
with a new vision for his future.
Alexander decides it's time for another conquest.
This time, he sets his sights on Arabia,
another land that's associated with opulence,
riches, and exoticism.
Alexander knows what he's good at.
I think he fears that if he stops,
the music will stop.
NICOLA: And so, he sends out some troops
on a kind of exploratory mission.
But he himself will never make that trip.
♪
NARRATOR: In 323 BC,
Alexander arrives in the Persian ceremonial capital of Babylon.
His health declines rapidly.
[Alexander groaning]
AARON: He is struck with severe stomach problems.
He begins passing blood.
[Alexander groans]
His fevers begin to spike
and he passes in and out of consciousness.
Was it a poisoning, which was very common
in the Macedonian circles?
Was it an illness?
It could be malaria,
it could be typhus,
it could simply be all of the accumulated injuries
of his long campaign.
[groaning]
What we do know is this is a man that lived hard.
SHELLEY: The mood of his inner circle is desperate.
They're very concerned.
What is going to happen to Alexander's vast empire?
There must be provisions for the future.
Name a successor.
- ALEXANDER: Go. - An heir.
- That's all I ask of you. - Go.
- Stop. - I will rule.
I will rule!
Think of Greece.
Think of all we have fought for.
[whispers] To the strongest, to the best.
He says, "To the strongest, to the best."
NARRATOR: In June of 323 BC...
Alexander dies.
He is just 32,
and his refusal to acknowledge any of his companions
as a worthy successor is a disaster,
seeding the collapse of his entire empire.
Alexander dies too soon, too young.
He leaves an empire that's conquered
and just about established,
but hasn't yet settled into a system of government,
so everything is to play for.
His wife, Roxanne, is pregnant,
and the child in the womb is proclaimed king
if it turns out to be a boy, as, in fact, it does.
But this young child, of course,
is in no position to rule the kingdom.
REBECCA: By the time of Alexander's death,
his empire stretches from Greece
to modern-day Pakistan and down into Egypt.
It's around two million square miles
in terms of territory, which is bigger
than the Roman Empire will ever become.
As for the rest of the empire,
various generals begin a war for supremacy
and control over the entire thing.
Alexander's vast empire
breaks up into several different kingdoms,
never to be united again.
[birds chirping]
NARRATOR: Ptolemy takes the biggest gamble.
He claims Egypt,
the jewel in the crown of the Persian Empire.
Ptolemy is actually able to carve out
a stable and successful kingdom in Egypt.
More than 200 years later, his direct descendant,
Cleopatra, comes to the throne.
Histories look back on Alexander traditionally
as a romantic figure of immense glamor and success.
In battle, he proved capable
of original and bold tactics,
incredible personal courage, quick decision-making,
and limitless ambition.
And, of course, success breeds success.
We are Greeks!
[all shouting]
Alexander's story shapes the centuries that follow
because he becomes a model
for every ruler, every potential general,
every want-to-be-king for centuries thereafter.
There are few, if any, human beings in history...
that have as great an impact as Alexander does.
[shouting]