@GravitoRaize

4 years ago

While the financial situation of the Macedonians was dire, I think it's important to point out the crazy politics and behind-the-scenes dealings of this era that led to good reasons why an invasion was likely to succeed. Alexander's father had already made plans for invading the mostly prosperous and expansive Achaemenid Empire. In fact, Philip II had been hoping to succeed in an invasion himself before he was killed. The vizier of the Persians/Achaemenids, Bagoas (Note: not Bagoas the Elder who was a courtier), had been blamed by Alexander for orchestrating Philip's assassination in a letter. Historia Civilis did a video on Philip and his death, but Bagoas was left out of the conversation. It's unknown if Bagoas had anything to do with it, and it is sort of implied history that he didn't and this could have just been Alexander blaming Bagoas to get the heat off of him. This Bagoas character was known as somewhat of a king-maker, poisoning or orchestrating the downfall of people in his way (sort of like a Lord Varys/Petyr Baelish from Game of Thrones). He was also very close friends with Mentor who was the brother of Memnon of Rhodes (the only general that came close to stopping Alexander, frankly) after cleaning up a rebellion in Egypt. These were the people most able to know how to thwart any Macedonian threat. Mentor died while commander of the west and that left his brother Memnon to take over. Bagoas seemingly had support of most of the satraps (governors in the Achaemenid Empire) and was effectively the power behind the throne and possibly the reason the Empire was in the state it was. Bagoas was believed to have poisoned the previous ruler, Artaxerxes III (Darius's uncle), and possibly even was involved in the assassination of Darius's grandfather, Artaxerxes II. While Artaxerxes II had mostly quashed all of the rebellions in Achaemenid Empire, the satraps were given wide autonomy, and many of the people hated them for it. Worse, it seemed like anytime someone seemingly had a firm grasp on power in Persia, they were assassinated/poisoned. In fact, Bagoas's downfall would be the fact he was trying to poison Darius about two years before Alexander invaded, when he was caught and forced to drink his own poison resulting in his death. So, a new ruler in Alexander has united everyone in the West seemingly against the Persians, the satraps of Persia just lost their best ally and the real architect of the empire has been killed. No one wants to listen to this "old guard" that were Bogoas's friends (Memnon) and two of the three that knew the real threat the Macedonians posed were dead. Part of Alexander's success lay in the groundwork Phillip had already laid down for "liberation" of the Persians, but some of it was just blind political in-fighting and dumb luck. Additionally, the well-built roads the Achaemenid's had built to help them trade easier and travel quickly to suppress all these satrap rebellions only made a possible Macedonian invasion even easier.

1.4K |