As when besieging a city, he first divided his forces to vary his points of attack. Some 4,000 men were to keep the campfires burning and lull the Persians' suspicions; the rest were to bring supplies for three days and follow him up the shepherd's track to the top of the Bolsoru pass, 7,500 feet high. An east wind drove the snow into their faces through the December darkness, and buffeted them against the thick surrounding of oaks, but after about five miles up a route barely practicable for mules, they reached the summit, where Alexander divided his troops. Four brigades of Foot Companions, too cumbersome for the ambush were to descend into the far plain and prepare a bridge over the river to Persepolis; the rest were made to run uphill for another six miles of broken ground, until they had surprised and slaughtered the three outer groups of Persian pickets. In the early hours of the morning, they fell into the rear of the Persian wall. A blast on the trumpet alerted the army beyond in the base camp: from front and rear, the Persians were slaughtered mercilessly. Only a few escaped toward Persepolis, where the inhabitants knew they were doomed, and turned their help away. Of the rest, many flung themselves from the cliffs in despair; others ran into the units who had been stationed behind the ambush to deal with fugitives. After one of the few disasters of his march, Alexander was free in early January to enter Persia as he pleased.

The manner of his entry was a warning for the future. For the first time Alexander had done battle with Iranians on their home ground; they were not to be freed, avenged or won by diplomatic slogans, yet beyond Persia, the mountainous 'deep south' of Iranian allegiance, lay the loosely grouped empire of Iranian tribes which stretched, all but unknown to the Greeks, as far cast as the Punjab and as far north as Samarkand. For the first time, the expedition was moving entirely beyond the myths of revenge and freedom with which it had set out.

In Persia the difference was set without being solved. Alexander was still the Greek avenger of Persian sacrilege who told his troops, it was said, 'that Persepolis was the most hateful city in the world'. On the road there, he met with the families of Greeks who had been deported to Persia by previous kings, and true to his slogan, he honoured them conspicuously, giving them money, five changes of clothing, farm animals, com, a free passage home, and exemption from taxes and bureaucratic harassments. At the river Pulvar a native village was demolished to make timber for a bridge; beyond, the governor of Persepolis could only send a message of surrender and hope for the same reception as his fellow satraps to the west. On receiving his letter, Alexander hurried across the plain called Marv-i-dasht and saw the pillared palaces in the distance before him, raised on a platform fifty feet high.

'This land Parsa,' wrote Darius I, builder of Pcrscpolis, in the inscription on its south wall.

‘which Ahura-Mazda has given me, which is beautiful, containing good horses and good men, by the favour of Ahura-Mazda and of me, Darius the king, it has no fear of an enemy. . . . By the favour ot Ahura-Mazda, this fortress I built, and Ahura-Mazda commanded that this fortress should be built, and so I built it secure and beautiful and fitting, just as I wished to do.

But in early January 330, the ritual centre of the Persian Empire had fallen to a Macedonian invader. Persepolis's fate lay in the balance and there was nothing Ahura Mazda could do to resolve it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Between the Mountain of Mercy and the river Araxes, on an artificial terrace sixty feet high, stood the palace buildings of Persepolis, ceremonial centre of the Persian empire. They were built to be impressive, a vast statement of royal power at the foot of the mountains where Persian rule could never extend: there were two audience halls and a treasury, king's apartments and gates plated with bronze; there were staircases, rooms for the guards and a royal harem. The mudbrick walls stood 65 feet high and were adorned with gold and glazing; tall columns of wood or marble, fluted and set on bell-shaped bases, supported the roofs of cedar timber. The pillar drums were uneven, their capitals grotesquely shaped as pairs of bulls or monsters kneeling back to back; the doors were cumbrous, the paving crazy and the style of the place too jumbled to be pleasing. Once a year Persepolis was the scene of a grand occasion, when envoys from all the peoples of the empire would come with their presents for the Festival of the Tribute. Up the stone staircases and along the front of the terrace walls, the carved reliefs described the ceremony: rows of Immortal Guards stood to attention, their rounded spear-butts resting on their toes; noble Medes and Persians climbed the stairs, some talking, others holding lotus-flowers or lilies, accompaniments of a royal banquet, and while the envoys from the empire waited in their national dress, soon to be ushered in by courtiers, in his hundred-columned Hall sat the King of Kings, carved on a golden throne, holding his staff and attended by the Royal Fly-swatter. For nearly two hundred years, the power of Persia had met in Persepolis for its annual festival.

Now, in January 330, Alexander approached with his army of some 60,000 men, united after their passage through the mountains; he mounted the long low tread of the north-west staircase towards the Gate of Xerxes and its two monumentally sculpted bulls. It was a steep climb into a world of vast pomposity, hitherto unknown to the Greeks, but the Persian governor was waiting to welcome him. He was shown into the pillared hall of Darius I, 150 feet square and linked to the royal living-quarters by a narrow passage; he walked through the small central chamber into the Hundred-columned Hall of Xerxes, at whose entrance the Persian king was shown stabbing the beasts of evil, the winged lion-griffin and the lion-headed demon, those fateful ancestors of the Devil of the western world. Behind this hall stood the treasury, a building of mudbrick whose red-washed floor and brightly plastered pillars were lit through two small skylights, and here Alexander found his reward, 120,000 talents of uncoined bullion, the largest single fortune in the world.

Already he had encouraged his troops with talk of Persepolis as the most hateful city in Asia and for the past four years they had risked their lives in the hope of plunder; they could not, therefore, be left milling round the terrace, and when their king reappeared he gave them the word for which they had long soldiered. Up the staircases they streamed in an orgy of looting which archaeology has since confirmed. Among the ruins of Persepolis pots and glasses were found shattered, the heads of the carvings had been mutilated and there was evidence of vandalism which cannot be excused as the passage of time. The palace treasure was exempted as Alexander's property; elsewhere, marble statues were dragged away from their bases and their limbs smashed and strewn on the ground; guards and inhabitants were killed indiscriminately and women were stripped of their clothes and jewellery until Alexander, it is said, demanded they should be spared. Mad for a share in their limited spoils, the troops then took to fighting among themselves.

Revenge on Persia had been a theme in Greek politics for more than a hundred years, and in this plundering of Persepolis it had at last reached its climax; from an army of Macedonian hill tribes and growing numbers of Thracians, the crusade could have taken no other form. But the climax did nothing for the problems of Alexander's own position, and as often, the peak of enthusiasm already contained the first traces of doubt: one chance story brings this new state of mind to life:

On seeing a huge statue of Xerxes, overturned by the hordes which had forced their way into the palace, he stopped beside it and addressed it as if it were alive. 'Arc we to pass you by,' he said, 'and leave you lying on the ground because you campaigned against the Greeks, or are we to set you up again, because of your otherwise high-minded nature?' For a long while, he stood by himself and thought the matter out in silence but finally, he passed on by.