The Battle of the Granicus (334 BCE)

The Battle of the Granicus, fought in May 334 BCE on a river in north-west Anatolia, was the first clash between Alexander of Macedon and the Persian Empire. A coalition of satraps from Asia Minor tried to stop him at the riverbank and kill him in a cavalry fight. They failed, many of the Persian commanders died, and western Anatolia lay open to the invader.

Persia waits for the invasion

The war did not begin with Alexander. Philip II had already sent an advance army across the Hellespont in 336 BCE, and Memnon of Rhodes, a Greek commander in Persian service, had pushed it back to a small bridgehead. When Alexander crossed in spring 334, with roughly 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry by Arrian’s count, King Darius III was far away in the heart of the empire. Defence was left to the satraps of Asia Minor, the governors of the western provinces, who gathered their cavalry at Zeleia, east of the Hellespont.

The council of Zeleia

Arrian reports a war council there. Memnon advised against a battle. The Macedonian infantry was better, he said, and Alexander had little money and few supplies. The Persians should burn the crops and villages, retreat, and starve the invader out, while the Persian fleet carried the war to Greece. Arsites, satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, refused to see a single house of his province burned, and the other Persians backed him. Arrian adds that they distrusted Memnon, a Greek who seemed to want to drag out the war to keep his position.

The decision makes sense from the Persian side. A satrap’s duty was to defend the king’s land and its people, and the Persian nobility saw itself as a cavalry class that met enemies in the field. A scorched-earth retreat would have destroyed the estates that paid for their troops.

Forces on the riverbank

The Persians drew up on the east bank of the Granicus, a river with steep banks that Alexander would have to cross. Arrian gives them 20,000 cavalry and nearly 20,000 Greek mercenary infantry. Diodorus gives 10,000 cavalry and 100,000 infantry, and Justin far more. Modern historians think the Persian infantry figure is much too large, though the cavalry may have been close to Arrian’s number. The Persians placed their horsemen along the bank and kept the mercenary infantry in a second line behind, an unusual order that Arrian criticises. It may reflect a plan to fight Alexander with cavalry at the water’s edge.

The battle

Arrian says Alexander attacked late in the day, against Parmenion’s advice to wait. A first force of cavalry and infantry went into the river on the right and took heavy losses from Persian javelins on the high bank. Then Alexander led the Companion cavalry across at an angle, so that his men came up the bank in a line.

What followed was a horseman’s fight on the bank. The Persian commanders threw themselves at Alexander, whose white plume made him easy to find. Alexander killed Mithridates, the son-in-law of Darius, with his lance. Rhoesaces struck Alexander’s helmet with his sword, and Spithridates, satrap of Lydia, raised his blade to finish him, but Cleitus the Black cut off Spithridates’ arm. Meanwhile the Macedonian infantry came across, and the Persian centre gave way.

The Greek mercenaries had not yet fought. They stood on a rise and, Plutarch says, asked for terms. Alexander refused, surrounded them and destroyed them. About 2,000 survivors were sent to Macedonia in chains to work as forced labourers, punished as Greeks who had fought for Persia against the Greek cause.

Two versions of the day

Diodorus tells a different story: Alexander camped for the night, crossed unopposed at dawn, and fought on the eastern bank. Some historians, such as Peter Green, think Arrian’s dramatic same-day assault hides a failed first attack, which Alexander’s court historians preferred to forget. The question is still open.

A heavy loss of Persian leaders

Arrian puts the Persian dead at about 1,000 cavalry; Plutarch gives 2,500 cavalry and 20,000 infantry. On the Macedonian side Arrian lists 25 Companions killed in the first charge, for whom Alexander ordered bronze statues from the sculptor Lysippus, and fewer than 100 others. The Macedonian figures are certainly too low.

The worst damage to Persia was among its leaders. Arrian names the dead: Spithridates; Mithridates; Mithrobuzanes, satrap of Cappadocia; Arbupales, a grandson of Artaxerxes II; Pharnaces, the brother of Darius’s wife; Niphates, Petenes, and Omares, commander of the mercenaries. Arsites escaped to Phrygia and, Arrian says, killed himself because the Persians blamed him for the defeat. So many senior nobles falling in a small cavalry action suggests they really did aim to kill Alexander personally, a gamble that nearly succeeded.

After the Granicus

Alexander sent 300 sets of Persian armour to Athens as an offering to Athena, with a dedication from “Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks, except the Spartans”. Sardis, the Persian capital of Lydia, surrendered without a fight; its commander Mithrenes later served Alexander. Miletus resisted and was taken by siege. At Halicarnassus Memnon and the Persian Orontobates held out for months before abandoning the city.

Darius now gave Memnon supreme command in the west. With the Persian fleet, Memnon took Chios and most of Lesbos in 333 and threatened to move the war into Greece, where Sparta was ready to rise. He died of illness while besieging Mytilene, and the naval strategy faded. The decisive battle on land came that autumn at Issus.

For the background to the satraps’ power in Anatolia, see the Great Satraps’ Revolt; for the overall story of the war, start with Darius III.