In 334 BC, Alexander set off with his Macedonian army on what would prove to be a lifetime of victorious military campaigns, beginning with his defeat of an army led by a group of Persian nobles in the Battle of Granicus. His victory freed Greek city-states under Persian control and set the stage for the occupation of Asia Minor.
The Macedonians next met the Persian army, led by King Darius, in the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Outmaneuvered on the battlefield, Darius fled, debilitating his army and abandoning his family. Alexander subsequently led his troops down the Mediterranean coast, taking Tyre and Gaza in successful sieges. After conquering Egypt, having met no resistance, Alexander moved into Mesopotamia, the heart of the Persian Empire. It was there that he met Darius III on the battlefield for the final time, in the legendary Battle of Gaugamela – a conflict that ended with Darius’ defeat, breaking the spirit of his army and the backbone of his empire.
"Alexander" vividly captures this astonishing encounter, in which the Macedonian forces of just 7,000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry soldiers were pitted against the Persians’ 40,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry and 6,000 Greek mercenaries. Incredibly, the vastly outnumbered Macedonians were able to defeat the Persians, largely due to Alexander’s strategic employment of the “phalanx,” a military formation developed by King Philip and later perfected by his son. A phalanx consists of 256 men formed 16 by 16 squared, carrying 18-foot-long sarissas (lances), assembled into a nearly impenetrable formation. King Philip’s creation of the indomitable phalanx and his idea of maintaining a standing army of paid soldiers ensured that when Alexander rose to power, he had the tools in place to conquer the world.
Swirling dust, the sounds of men in desperate hand-to-hand combat and the thunder of pounding hooves permeated the filming of the Battle of Gaugamela. The first time Robin Lane Fox caught a glimpse of an extra mounted on horseback in the full regalia of a Macedonian Companion Cavalrymen, he was deeply moved. But the historian wouldn’t only be a witness to this recreation – he would be a participant. Part of his arrangement with Stone was that he would play a part in Alexander’s immortal charge at the Persian center.
“I saw my mind’s-eye of the battlefield coming alive,” says Lane Fox. “What I wrote in Alexander’s biography 30 years before was being realized as I watched. Oliver and his crew took great care to get people armored with due reference to history from the ancient sources and to show the main maneuvers. The result is a really terrifying battle that has an exceptional degree of authenticity.”
Lane Fox was impressed with the scope of Stone’s staging of the seminal battle. “The Gaugamela battle is based on the surviving ancient evidence, with a few inevitable compromises,” he says. “In my view, these battle scenes could be circulated to schools, historians and universities for fruitful discussion. They give a splendid impression of the units in action, the blood, the chaos – above all, they give a stunning sense of scale. No historian, certainly not I, has ever truly imagined the enormity of these battles, so the film shows us this scale for the first time. The size of these armies was never matched again in Europe until the 17th century. We unmilitary modern professionals, I now realize, have lost an eye for the great mass-conflicts of the ancient world. Happily, film restores what archaeology cannot.”
