Sidon gladly opened its gates, turning out a pro-Persian governor. This had an interesting sequeclass="underline" Hephaestion’s first independent mission. Before its conquest by Persia some generations back, Sidon had been a monarchy. Alexander directed Hephaestion to choose a king.
It was a graceful mark of honour, implying that Hephaestion himself was worthy of the office, if he could have been spared; but Alexander was realistic about such missions, and this called for both integrity and skill. Hephaestion was at once surrounded with sycophancy and intrigue. His own host, a leading citizen, perhaps fearful of hostile factions, declined with the excuse that he was not of the royal blood. At this, Hephaestion asked if any actual scion of the line survived; to get the unexpected reply that one did, but, born into peasant poverty, he was working as a daily gardener. Hephaestion took up his references and found them excellent; too tactful to intrude on him at his lowly job, he sent him emissaries with a royal robe in which he could arrive with dignity. They found him busy with the watering. The Sidonians, astounded by this choice of the one candidate who could not have produced a bribe, settled down to it pretty well. The carefulness of his own honour, and his friend’s, which such a choice implies, along with its success, tell us much about Hephaestion.
King Abdalonymus remained a good worker, respectable and honest. It is pleasant to record an instance of human gratitude. After Hephaestion’s death, while his grandiose memorials stood unfinished because Alexander too was gone, and jealous rivals were paring to the bone—as Ptolemy surely did—this brilliant officer’s record, Abdalonymus was designing his own sarcophagus. A fine Hellenistic frieze of tinted marble shows a battle scene, with Alexander in heroic action. But the central figure, a handsome cavalryman hewing down a Persian foe, is generally accepted as Hephaestion’s one surviving likeness.
From Sidon Alexander marched on southward towards the formidable obstacle of Tyre. This massive Phoenician fortress port was an island, separated by a deep channel from the shore. It had its own large merchant and war fleet, and a harbour open to Persian ships. On his approach it sent him envoys, offering to be at his orders. He tested them by asking to perform a state sacrifice at the temple of Melkart, the Tyrian Heracles. This brought a refusal to open their gates to Macedonians, with a claim that they would shut out Persians too, an undertaking they were unlikely to honour once he had passed by.
Alexander called a war council, aware of the huge task ahead. If they left Tyre two-faced in their rear, he said, the Persians could use it as an invasion base against Greece, where Sparta was now in open revolt against his Regent Antipater, and Athens awaiting her chance. Ahead lay Egypt, a rich objective, eager to receive him; the brutality and sacrilege of Ochus’ reconquest had never been forgiven there. The coast once secured, and all Asia this side of Euphrates in their power, they could march for Babylon.
This realistic assessment convinced his staff. He made a last attempt to avoid such a costly siege, by sending envoys with an ultimatum. The Tyrians, violating the immemorial sanctity of heralds, brought them out on the walls for him to view their murder, and threw their bodies in the sea. After this, Alexander announced that he had had a dream, in which Heracles stood on the Tyrian walls, with hand outstretched to lead him into the city.
These walls, made of dressed and mortared stone, were 150 feet high on the landward side. Stratagem and surprise were out; he settled down at once to business, and began to run a mole out from the mainland.
Out of missile range, the first stretch went quickly. He stood over the work, giving out prizes for zeal. But the channel deepened, the fill took more stones and time; they came into bowshot of the walls; Tyrian ships now had draught to approach and harry them. He had two moving towers built, mounted with catapults, armoured with hide and with a hide screen stretched between them. Dragged along as the work advanced, it could shelter the carriers till at the last moment they dashed out to tip their loads. When the wind was high, the Tyrians launched a blazing fireship, its tall yards hung with cauldrons of flaming pitch. The towers burned out, their crews leaping off or perishing inside. Alexander ordered new towers, and went off to Sidon to raise a war fleet.
This took a couple of weeks, during which he discharged his restless energy in a ten-day expedition to subdue the neighbouring tribes. With him, for company, went the now elderly Lysimachus, the obscure Macedonian gentleman who had beguiled his childhood with tales from Homer. When he went scouting in the hills, Lysimachus begged to come along, recalling this old game and declaring himself no older than his exemplar Phoenix, Achilles’ guardian. Plutarch continues,
But when, leaving their horses, they began to walk into the hills, the rest of the soldiers went a good way ahead, so that night approaching and the enemy near, Alexander lingered behind so long, to hearten and help the lagging tired old man, that before he knew it he was left in the rear a long way from his soldiers, with a small company, on a bitter night in the dark, and in a very bad place; till seeing many scattered fires of the enemy some way off, and trusting to his swiftness … he ran straight to one of the nearest fires, and killing with his dagger two of the barbarians who sat by it, snatched up a burning brand, and returned with it to his own people. They at once made a great fire, which so scared the enemy that most of them fled, and those who attacked them were soon routed; and thus they rested securely for what was left of the night.
After this tribute to friendship he went back to Sidon, where 120 Cypriot ships awaited him; the island rulers had thrown off the Persian yoke and joined his cause. In all he raised about 200 sail; and led them over to the attack. His own flagship took the post of danger nearest the city walls. But the Tyrians, startled by his numbers, merely closed their harbour with a boom of ships, as he had done himself at Miletus. He could not tempt them out.
His operations were now enormous, using engineers from Cyprus and the whole Phoenician littoral, besides the expert Greeks he had brought along. He mounted catapults on shipboard, and began to bombard the walls with heavy stones. The Tyrians cast rocks into the sea to obstruct the ships. Doggedly he had the rocks fished for and hauled up. For this his ships had to anchor; the Tyrians sent armoured ships to cut their cables. He brought up support ships. The enemy sent divers to cut the cables under water. He replaced the cables with anchor chains. At length the channel allowed his ships alongside the walls, which the mole was also nearing.
The inventive Tyrians, men in advance of their time, produced their most modern weapon. They heated sand red hot, and projected it at the foremost Macedonians. Diodorus says, “It sifted down under their corselets and their clothes, searing the flesh with intense heat … they screamed entreaties like men under torture, and none could help them, but with the excruciating pain they went mad and died.” Many threw themselves in the sea. Unaware that it was to become a commonplace of civilized warfare, Alexander considered it an atrocity. In view of his fondness for leading the van, only chance must have saved him from being flayed alive himself.
Half a year had passed in these labours. In the end it was by ships, supported from the mole though this ran short of the walls, that Tyre was stormed. Master now of the landward channel, he could bring round his assault craft under the weaker seaward walls. His torsion catapults could hurl heavy stones and crack ashlar masonry; the bow type were giant versions of the medieval crossbow, their pointed bronze bolts could pierce armour. His landing craft bore portable towers, a feature of his siege train which carted them in sections. On the day of the final assault he boarded a tower himself. One may picture a broad-beamed galley, with two or three oar banks to give it speed, the weird top-heavy-looking structure amidships crowned with armed men behind the glittering figure of Alexander who directed the pilot here and there on the lookout for a breach; the gangway lolling like a giant tongue, ready to be stuck out when one appeared. Meantime he watched, says Arrian, for brave deeds deserving of honour.