Alexander the Great

I have no earthly idea, but we are about to take a long time, and we're about to discuss Alexander the Great in one of the most amazing sieges you've ever heard of in your life. Alexander the Great in the siege of a place called tire t y R. And actually, maybe depending on your upbringing or your church attendants now, or just reading the Bible, maybe that name sounds familiar to you. You see, there's this prophetic verse or two. There's a couple of those in the Bible.

I think that'd probably be a good place to start out. Maybe you could call this a little foreshadowing, if you will, Ezekiel twenty six, verse three. Therefore, thus says the Lord God. Behold, I am against you, oh Tire, and I will bring up many nations against you. As the sea brings up its waves. They shall destroy the wall of Tire and break down her towers. I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. She shall be in the middle of the sea, a place for the

spreading of nets. For I have spoken, declares the Lord God. Now let us discuss how things worked out for Tire. First, well, before we get to Alexander the Great, let's discuss briefly Tire. Where it is what we're actually talking about here. As always, maps help if you are not driving. May I invite you to open up your phone or a computer if you're in front of it, and I want you to look up Lebanon. Lebanon. You know where it is, Lebanon, just north of Israel. Over there, you know where it is.

This is the Mediterranean Lebanon. Okay, it doesn't mean we don't have to get more specific than that, but you can leave the map open if you'd like. This is our area for our story. Here now we are back in We're three hundred years before Christ. Okay, this is the time of Alexander the Great. That's not exact. But remember history is not names, dates and locations. That stuff

is boring. History is storytelling. Roughly three hundred years before Christ, that's the time we're in, Okay, And at this time, the wealthiest, you would probably argue, most powerful empire on the planet is the achimited Persian Empire. It's often known as just the Persian Empire or the Achimenid Empire, but the achimened Persian Empire, and they are in control of this area at this particular time. Now pause on that for a moment. Let me explain something else. This city tire,

it isn't necessary Persian. It's under Persian control. And this is going to matter for our story at some point in time. That's why I'm boring you with a little bit of this background in this detail. Yes, the Persians wanted the Persians own it, the Persians are in control of it, but it's not really a Persian city. It is a Phoenician city. The Phoenicians. I'm not going to go into all this stuff, but you've heard of a

Phoenician city before Carthage. Carthage is a Phoenician city. What Chris, what Chris said, isn't that Persia, man, It's under control of Persia at the time. You see, the Persian Empire at this time was massive. They had fought wars, they had done all this conquest. They were not only massive, they were infamously wealthy. And I know they're kind of the bad guys in this story, at least for dudes, because dudes all cheer for Alexander the Great. I'm no different.

They were for the time not a bad empire to be conquered by. We're not talking about the Assyrians here where they're gonna stuff a hook through the bottom of your mouth, put it out underneath your tongue. Chain you and your wife and kids up on a long chain and drag you off to slavery, and they might flay you alive when you get there. The Persians didn't really operate in that way. The Persians, you could probably call them the Donald Trump at the time. The Persons wanted

to do business. Hey, you want to do business, Yeah, we're gonna conquer you. And don't get me wrong, we will send our armies and we'll smash you. But why don't we just do business. We'll take over you. You're gonna have to pay tribute when we call for troops. That's fine, but we're not gonna abuse you. You can have your religious practices and you can keep your tradition. I don't care. We're here for business. That's how the Persians handled conquest. And that's why Tire was under control

of the Persians. But was it really Persian? They were Phoenician, the Phoenician people. We're not going to go into all that. Here's your one minute explain around the Persian people. They were a seafaring people. They really ruled the Mediterranean by owning the waves. They were a merchant slash slash navy people, and that's gonna matter for our story. A merchant slash navy people. They figured out how to go to and fro on the water, which was a big deal back then.

And then you know, there weren't speedboats. They figured out how to go to and fro on the water because they were on the ocean, because they figured out how to trade across the water water. They were stupid wealthy. Carthage was wealthy. Tire was wealthy. These Phoenician cities were crazy wealthy. Now, maybe you're focusing on the biblical aspect of this, because I opened up with the Biblical verse, and because you're wondering what was God God's acts to

grind with these people. Ah, they were big on child sacrifices, like really, really really big on child sacrifice. And not that there's any kind of wonderful child sacrifice, planned parenthood, not that there's any kind of wonderful way to kill children. But they burnt them alive. It's horrible, really really terrible. And it's not that this would be okay, we're not even just talking babies, children who were older. They would just cook them alive. A real, real demonic even the Phoenicians.

It was what they did. It was part of their religious practice, and they wouldn't repent, and they got crossways with God. And that genuinely ends with right way of the same way every single time was set that aside. That's tire at the time. Phoenician society Lebanon, that's where you need to think of under control of the Persians. You with me so far, Now let's go the other way. Everyone has seen the movie three hundred or everyone at least has heard of this. I take that back. Kids,

please don't watch the movie three hundred. Definitely not for the kids. People know the story of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopyla if you don't. The Persians invaded Greece, okay, and that was a complicated affair. The Persians felt they were completely justified invading Greece. But the Persians invaded Greece. This was a long time, over a century before where

we are now. But time is a funny thing, meaning how we think about time now isn't how they always thought about it, Because the pace of our life is so much faster now. If you if I was to take you right now, and I was to tell you, hey, you you need to get a hold of your mother, but you need to wait five hours. It's really important that you talk to your mother, but you have to wait five hours to do it. That would be stressful, wouldn't it five hours? Why Why can't I call her?

I need to get a hold of mom. I can text her right now. I could pick up a phone. If I was to teleport you back to just the year nineteen hundred and say you need to talk to your mom now and you'll talk to her in five hours. You'll be blown away by the speed of it. WHOA, really, that's amazing. What are you teleporting me there? Greece had not let go of the Persian invasion. When we hear it was one hundred and fifty years earlier, time to get over it. Everybody's dead by that. They were not

over it at all. For the very proud Greeks. That was an affront to them, That was an offense that was ingrained in Greek society, and they were mortified that these uppity Persians and all their money took a big army and they came and invaded Greece. Now that's the Greek the Tire situation, or that's the Tire situation, the Phoenician situation. That's the Greek acts to grind. Now, let's introduce Alexander the Great.

is one of the most amazing stories ever. And believe it or not, I'm actually not talking about his military conquests. I'm talking about the creation of this man. How do you what does it take to create somebody who's capable of conquering the world at the age of twenty five? What does it take to create somebody who, at the

age of twenty is commanding armies, who never loses. Surely there is something to his background, right well, there is a lot to his background, not all of which I'm going to go into right now, but we have to discuss it because one, it's fascinating. In two, you can't understand the man until you understand first his father. His father is Philip the Second. His father is one of the most amazing and bravest conquerors of my lifetime, of my lifetime that I've ever heard about. He died before

I got here. Philip the Second, Philip of Macedon. Macedonia is considered Greek by us. But at the time when Philip was coming up, they were considered ruffians, barbarians, those northern wilderness people. Okay, picture Athens as New York City and people from New York City who loved New York City. How do they look at people from rural Alabama? That is very similar to how the people of Athens looked at Macedonia. Those stupid hicks said that they're uncivilized. That's

how they looked at it. But Philip of Macedon, he had this upbringing where he had a bunch of military training and hicks or rural or whatever they may have been, the Macedonians were tough as nails. They were just a tough people. They lived in a tough environment. They were always at war. They were at war with Greece, they were at war with other Ruffian tribes to their north. They were a warlike people from a warlike area, and

they were tough as nails. And along comes this very sharp man named Philip, Philip the second, and he has a plan. And his plan is this, no more separate Greek city states. No more Sparta fighting Athens, who's fighting Thebes, who's fighting us? No more of this, I am going to raise an amazing army. I'm going to reform it, and I am going to go conquer Greece and unify it under my command. That's what Philip wanted to do,

and over years and years and years, I did. Look, that could be ten shows what I just breezed through in three sentences. Over years and years and years, he did it. He did it through bribery, he did it through conquest. He reformed the army. His army was experienced, and to his credit, Philip the Second, unlike these loser politicians today, was at the front at all times. Philip almost died in combat more times than I can count. At one point he got shot in the eye with

an arrow. At one point he broke both of his legs at the same time. Philip the Second had more wounds than you can possibly imagine. But he finally did it. Now along the way, Philip the Second picked up a bunch of wives. That was a Macedonian thing. They believed in a bunch of wives. Not our place to judge, I guess at this point in time, but it was there. It was really their fing. They had a bunch of wives and one of those wives was Alexander the Great's mother.

We're not going to go into her in depth, but she is a vicious woman, no question. You don't know what propaganda to believe, but we know she was a vicious woman capable of killing people and did so quite often. You know how I just said Philip had a bunch of wives. Well, Philip is a king who takes the throne when the king dies. One of the king's sons,

Philip had another son. The other son got brain damage, and everyone kind of acknowledges it was Alexander the Great's mother who pretty she did something to him, probably poisoned. She poisoned him and just wrecked his mind. So now look at that, no more succession crisis. Looks like the other boys got some metal issues. Oh is on himself. I guess we'll have to go with Alexander. This is

the kind of woman we're talking about here. She marries Philip, She sleeps with snakes as part of her religious custom. That's not just propaganda, Yeah, Chris, she was a worshiper of Dionysis. It's this weird Greek god that believed in snakes like they. When I say sleeps with I mean there are snakes in her bed. I get it. That's the kind of exotic person we're talking about here, the kind of girl you run off with for a couple weeks in college and then regret your decisions and never

tell mom about it. You got me. That's Philip, that's his wife. So already, what kind of a child are these people going to have? They have? Alexander, Alexander the Great has all the physical tools. Apparently he was short, but not ridiculously short. He was fairly average for the time, five six they think five to seven. No one knows for sure. He was reportedly strong, very strong, and very fast. Some people talk all the time about his speed, that he could run, that he moved very quickly, and he

had quite the education. Hang on, it is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Thursday. We are doing a little bit of history here this hour, a little bit of Alexander the Great Siege of Tire history. And remember we'll be back to politics at some point, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, But tomorrow's ask doctor Jesse Friday. So you need to get your questions emailed in whatever they may be to Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Back to

Alexander the Great. He's got this warrior conquer father who just unified Greece. He has this raging psychopath mother who may just be a lovely well, I don't think there's any chance she was a lovely woman. But she loved her son. She would kill for her son and did. And that wasn't the only upbringing he had. Phillips father, Look, think about this. What kind of a king who can send people to do what he wants? What kind of a king is in the front of his army at

all times getting wounded. Not just a brave one, but a brave one who will demand that of his son. Philip starts to transform Alexander. Starts to train Alexander as a boy into a military machine. Alexander the Great is receiving not just classes, not just alongside his father on military campaigns, not just sitting around the table with the other general's sipping wine figuring out how to move this and that. He is sending Alexander the Great on forced marches.

He hires somebody to harden him, essentially turn him into a beast, put him through a one on one boot camp. But it's more than that, they are training him to be a king. They bring up Aristotle. Ever heard of Aristotle? Alexander the Great and his other friends, his friends would be General's kids and things like that. They receive personal schooling from Aristotle himself. Again, it's like he was created to be a conqueror in a lab. In every sense

of the word, he is competitive. Every account, accounts that hate him, accounts that love him. Every account from the time cites the fact that Alexander the Great is obsessively competitive, and that is one of those qualities. I'm not saying you have to have that quality, because everybody is not built the same way, but that is one of those qualities that Uber's successful people possess almost every time. Michael Jordan is famously so competitive that it gets kind of

unpleasant to be around. He'll play ping pong. When he was on the Dream Team, they would play ping pong, and eventually ping pong became not fun because Michael Jordan couldn't take losing. Just obsessive, just just awful. Tom Brady business leader types Bezos is this way. Elon Musk is the Uber Uber competitive guys that hate to lose. He's one of those types of guys. All right, let's fast forward to the celebration which I reverenced referenced the other day.

There's a huge celebration for Philip the Second. Philip the Second is murdered in front of everybody at this celebration. One of his bodyguards, former lover, I don't know, kind of weird former lover. One of his bodyguards takes a dagger and jams it into Philip the Second's ribs. He bleeds out and dies in front of everyone. Lo and behold, the assassin, instead of being captured, is killed immediately. Little

bit suspicious. You would normally want to grab that guy alive and pull his fingernails out to figure out who hired him. So now we'll never know. Was it Philip the Second's wife? But who knows? We'll never know. It doesn't matter, We're never gonna solve that mystery. Now. Now, Alexander the Great, as a young man I believe he's twenty at the time, is in command of the finest

army in the world. Philip the Second, having unified Greece, was already getting ready to invade the acheumened Persian Empire. The one we had talked about before he already had What do I mean by getting many getting ready? He already had ten thousand men in Persia attacking Persia, basically building up supply depots in Persia. Philip the Second was coming, the boats were ready, he was going, the army was prepped. Boom,

He's dead. Alexander the Great steps up immediately with the backing of Philip the Seconds generals, and Alexander the Great says, I'm the guy. Alexander's mom murders everybody, everyone who may have contended for the throne. That's the kind of woman she was. Look, Alexander the Great, I'm sure helped a bit.

And now Alexander the Great is pretty much free. He first has to put down some rebellions at home, those tribes up north where bad He goes up, beats the crap out of them, does a bunch of really cool things. That's a story for another time. We already talked about Thebes. The other day, the major Greek city decided they were going to rebel. Hmm, bad idea. Greece didn't understand Thiebes

didn't understand what they were dealing with. Also, remember, Alexander the Great is famously short tempered, prideful, competitive, and short tempered. At one point during the peace negotiations, Thebes makes fun of him, almost always a bad idea, and Thebes also brags to Alexander the Great that they're being paid by the Persians to rebel. Now he's really mad. Alexander the Great wipes out the city of Thebes. Whoever doesn't get

killed and raped gets sold into slavery. He tears down virtually every building, eliminated, one of the oldest, greatest cities in Greece, wipes it out gone. Now it's Persia time. Baby. He gathers this army, he crosses the sea. The Persian emperor he's a man by the name of Darius. He is aware of Alexander. He is I will not say afraid,

but he's not taking him lightly at all. He dealt with his father enough to know this is a serious family, and he just sat back and watched Alexander the Great beat the living crap out of all the rebellious people at home. He is aware that this young man is a capable young man. He's young, but he's capable, and he's coming over to Persia with a very capable army. Darius himself, as we mentioned earlier in the show, is in command of really the most you would think before

this look before the war starts. If you're handicapping things, you're looking at it and you're saying, well, the Persian Empire's the most powerful empire on the planet. So Darius gathers up a very large army as Alexander the Great invades, and he squares off with him. This is not the Siege of Tire, It's the Battle of Issus. It's a very famous battle. I'm not going to go into it now, because that's not what we're discussing. Darius gets his teeth kicked in badly. He shows up. I don't want to

say he underestimated him. He brought a very sizable force. But he's not Alexander the mediocre, is he. Alexander the Great is really really good at what he does, and he beats the living crap out of Darius's army. He beats him so soundly that Darius has to flee the field or be killed himself, probably not going to win any shivalry points. He left behind his wife, his mother, and his children, and Alexander the Great took possession of

Darius's wife, mother and children. Now, Darius, remember you need to think about this geographically, because we're about to get to tire itself. Darius has taken off. He still has a bunch of troops, but physically, geographically, that's what I don't want to say. Physically, geographically, the acumuted Persian empire is huge. It's massive. He has disappeared back into the interior of it as he leaves and goes to gather another army so he can go back and fight Alexander

the Great again. When we picture these these old wars, Alexander's battles, for instance, we picture that Alexander, oh, well, he fought him at this one place, and then they moved over to this other place and they fought again, and they That's not how it works. If you're Alexander the Great, you can't leave Persian truth hoops, Persian cities behind you. You have to supply thousands of men with food and weapons and medical supplies and new troops. You

have to secure everything as you go. It's a slow process. It's not show up one day, be win one battle, and you won. Doesn't work that way. Now Alexander has to secure the ports, secure the port cities along the Mediterranean. It's time to go to Tire. Yes, is the Jesse Kelly Show on a fantastic Thursday. I haven't decided if I'm even going to go back to politics. I really genuinely don't know, because I'm not going to finish this story in the next ten minutes. Do I finish it

next hour? Maybe I'll ask Chris and Corey. Chris Corey, do I go back to politics and make him wait till mondays it can't do it tomorrow? And ask doctor Jesse Friday, and do I finish the siege of Tire today? Chris said, we'll see what's in the news. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Now, Alexander the Great just defeated King Darius of the achemend Persian Empire, and he has to do things. Remember I told you to look at Lebanon, because that's the area we're in. He's looking at all that coastline

and along that coastline back then there are cities. Remember we're about three hundred years before Christ. There are cities there. And Alexander the Great he's up north. Okay, so he's going north to south. He starts conquering these cities he wants. He needs control of these port cities. He has to have it. He can't have port cities legal to the Persian Empire in his rear. They'll attack him in the rear. They won't have I realized that made me sound like

Lindsay Graham. They'll they'll attack his supply lines. They'll they'll he can't have it, Okay, So he starts attacking, and he starts taking city after city after city until he gets to the city that is our subject today. And this city is known as Tire. This is the important thing you need to understand. Don't worry. It's easy to understand. He gets to the city on the coast. That city is known as Old Tire. Remember that Bible verse we read at the beginning book of Ezekiel. That's Old Tire

they were talking about. Old Tire is the one right there on the coast. Not exactly heavily defended, but very very old. Why wouldn't it be very heavily defended because the people of Tire, the Tyrenes, they found themselves a new gig about. Look, I've read half a mile, I've read three quarters of a mile. One dirty European said one kilometer, like anybody knows what that means. Right off the coast of Old Tire out into the Mediterranean is

an island. This island is known as New Tire. It is a large, very very large island town slash fortress in every sense of the word. In fact, we get the question a lot on ask doctor Jesse Friday, if you could go witness an old battle or witness something from history, what would be your one thing? This is on my short list, just to see the city and see another aspect of this battle, which I'll get to

in a moment. But this is an island fortress. It has a couple of fortified harbors on it, which is everything. Remember these are a naval people that'll come into play. They have ships. This island has walls that are allegedly there's a lot of dispute on whether people believe this that are alleged the one hundred and fifty feet high Whether or not they were actually one hundred and fifty feet high, that doesn't matter. What matters is they were

high surrounded by high walls. And again it's an island. Alexander doesn't have an army. Alexander cannot allow this Persian loyal city in his rear. He has to take it somehow, some way, So he first tries the clever route. Alexander was a Greek, obviously considered himself to be Greek. And you know they had all these different gods Zeus and all that Tire it had a temple. Old Tire had a temple, and New Tire had a temple. Both of these temples were to Hercules, you know who. Hercules was,

ancient Greek hero. New Tire had a bigger, nicer temple obviously than Old Tire. Remember old tiles, old tires, the one on the coast, just kind of ancient collecting dust. Alexander, trying to be clever, gets with the Tire people and says, hey, you have a beautiful island. I've heard there's a beautiful temple to Hercules, and I Alexander the Great, would really love to go out there and make some sacrifices to

Hercules and that temple. Do you mind of me and some friends come out to your island and pay homage to Hercules. The people of Tire were not fools. This guy had been rampaging through Persia for a while. They said, oh, hey, that's that's going to be a no. But guess what good news we have an we have another temple in Old Tire. Go make your sacrifices there. Okay, so everyone understands the game. Alexander the Great receives that news about

as well as you would expect. He received that news, and so he now decides to wipe out Old Tire. Remember that biblical passage I read in the very beginning, the prophecy that this city is going to essentially be scraped down to soil. Yeah, Alexander the Great did that. He wiped the entire place out, but he wiped it

out with a purpose. You see, Tire made a horrible mistake, a horrible mistake, mistakes that they used to make with that people used to make against Genghis Khan, and for some reason, they made them against Alexander the Great too. Envoys Alexander the Great had sent envoys to Tire. Tire not only killed his diplomats, his ambassadors. These are peaceful people just coming out to talk. Tire not only killed them in front of Alexander. Remember he's half a mile

off shore, he can watch all this. They threw the bodies of his envoys in the Metai tranium. Hmm, that was not a good move to make. So Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great sets about destroying and building at the same time, if you will. Why did he remove all the buildings? Why was essentially no stone there? Apparently there weren't two stones still stacked on each other by the time he was done with Old Tire. Was this purely out of spite? Well, don't get me wrong, that's something

Alexander would do. But no, it wasn't purely out of spite. Alexander the Great doesn't have a navy, he has an army. He needs to attack an island, so he decides to build a bridge, a causeway. More specifically, he is emptying Old Tire of all the stones that had built it, and he's throwing them in the water and building a

causeway out to New Tire. And you know what, I'm not even leaving it up, Kristen Cory, We're gonna tell this tale in its completion next maybe we'll get to some politics in a little bit.