Alexander The Inherited Army

2. Inherited Army Alexander is renowned as both a warrior and a military commander, and the early actions of his campaign demonstrated Macedonian military superiority over the Persians. At the battles of Granicus (334) and Issus (333) Alexander faced sequentially larger Persian armies before eventually routing them at the battle of Gaugamela (330), forcing Darius to flee his empire, abdicating the throne by default. At Gaugamela, Alexander was greatly outnumbered, with Arrian—who provides the most detailed account of the battle—suggesting that, “The whole army of Darius was said to contain 40,000 calvary, 1,000,000 infantry, and 200 scythe-bearing chariots.” While it is almost certain that Alexander was outnumbered at the battle, the numbers
The men would be organized in large units, capable of fending off attacks with the length of their spears and the density of their deployments. There light armor meant that the cost to a Macedonian of serving in the phalanx was very low, which allowed for a far greater percentage of the population to serve than if the army was still organized around hoplites. Philip also organized the first “shock calvary” of the ancient world, armed with a long calvary pike called a sarissa that allowed them to charge infantry formations and break them. These two formations allowed for a hammer-and-anvil combined arms approach, with the phalanxes used to either bait the enemy into spreading themselves out, or to fix the formation in place (“anvil’), which would then allow the heavy calvary to shatter the formation (“hammer”). Borza also notes that Philip created a corps of engineers to develop new siege engines, which Alexander used to crack the cities of the Persian empire. When Alexander marched on Asia, he had been king for less than two years; the army that crossed the Bosporus had been organized around the tactics used by Philip II over his nearly twenty year rule andAlexander did not have the time or ability to affect radical change on his own. Without the military tactics of Epaminondas and the reforms of his father, it would have been highly unlikely that Alexander could have achieved
According to Plutarch, Alexander’s Macedonians advisors (who presumably were peers of his father) urged him to resolve the disputes peacefully. Alexander being Alexander, however, he “took the opposite view and set out to establish the safety and security of his kingdom through boldness and determination.” Plutarch positions Alexander’s actions as surprising and against the Macedonian ruling orthodoxy. His actions reflect those taken by his father, though, who during the opening years of his reign, defeated the Thracians and Illyrians in order to preserve the independence of