Alexander the Great, the End of the Persian Empire, and the Descent into India

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alexander the Great's campaigns didn't end once he had defeated the Persian king Darius III and conquered the heart of his empire; he went still further, into the vastness of the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia, and then south into India.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wunderry Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad free right now.
0:04.4	Join Wunderry Plus in the Wunder the river bottom squelching with every step.
0:21.2	The water rose up to his waist. It flowed quickly, swollen by icy
0:26.3	snow melt from high up in the mountains and the relentless monsoon rains and soaked through
0:31.0	the wool of his tunic. The Macedonian soldier had never seen mountains this high
0:35.1	until he reached this distant eastern land. The peaks of Bactria and Sogdiana and now India
0:40.8	rose up so high that they seemed to scrape the very heavens. They dwarfed
0:45.0	even Mount Olympus where the gods dwelled and the Macedonian wondered what kinds of deities
0:49.3	lived on the summits here. He had often thought about that in the last several years.
0:54.0	Who should he be sacrificing to?
0:55.0	Did Zeus hold any power here at all?
0:58.0	The splash of a throwing spear into the Russian current next to him
1:01.0	snapped him back to reality.
1:02.8	There were horsemen waiting on the far bank, hundreds of them, clutching javelins and
1:07.4	lances and swords and shields. The old wound in his leg taken five years past ached badly.
1:13.9	His long pike felt awkward in his hands.
1:16.8	He couldn't maneuver the shaft properly, not with the water so high.
1:20.0	His balance was off. That was true for all of the hundreds of men around it.
1:24.8	The failings had no cohesion. The king was over somewhere to the side,
1:29.0	conspicuous on his giant black horse, the red plume sticking up above his helmet right at the front of the advancing
1:34.7	cavalry.
1:36.5	Alexander always led from the front, and the Macedonian loved him for it, just as he loved
	...

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