Issus, Gaugamela, and Alexander's Conquest of Persia

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It took Alexander just three years to effectively conquer the Persian Empire. Two decisive battles - Issus and Gaugamela - proved his supremacy over the Persian king Darius III, and the two-century rule of the Achaemenids died on battlefields in the Fertile Crescent.

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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 clouds of the stuff so thick he could barely see his hands on the shaft of his
0:23.7	ERISA. The pike's head three times the height of a man ahead of him was
0:28.2	completely invisible. The heat of the late summer day was incredible even as the sunlight struggled to make its way through the airborne debris and the sweat poured off him.
0:38.0	It stung his eyes where it ran down from inside his helmet and mixed with the dust to create trails of
0:42.8	gelatinous ooze down his bare arms and legs. The dust muffled the noise too and
0:47.6	he had no idea what was happening beyond this tiny stretch of the
0:51.1	Mesopotamian Plains that wasn't obscured.
0:54.4	The Macedonian soldier had marched thousands of miles during his 27 years of service to
0:58.8	First Philip and now his son Alexander, and he couldn't remember a day more miserable than this one.
1:04.7	Not fighting amid the heat of a burning city, not the insane melee when the phalanx of
1:08.6	pikemen was outflanked and everything was down to swords and fists, not weathering the rain of arrows and stones and burning sand,
1:15.2	he'd endured while scaling the towering walls of the city of Tyre
1:18.2	just this past year.
1:20.2	The Persians were out there somewhere ahead of them,
1:22.2	more of them even than they'd fought two years before, the great king himself leading them.
1:27.0	A sudden vision of piles of gold struck the Macedonian, enough gold to spend the rest of his life sodden and wine and growing thick through the belly with good food.
1:35.5	Not for the first time he wondered how much longer he would have to fight for his king.
1:40.0	The tramping feet of thousands of Macedonians like him churned up still more dust as they marched forward, pikes at the ready.
1:47.0	They might have been alone on the plane of Galgumella, right up until the moment the wave of enemies appeared as if by magic out of the swirling clouds.
1:54.5	The first charged forward so aggressively that he impaled himself on the soldier's
1:59.0	Sarissa, the head of the pike sliding easily into his chest. A twist of the wrist removed the iron tip and he heard
	...

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