Alexander the Great’s Siege of Tyre and the Construction of a Legendary Causeway
Reading Time: 9 minutes The Siege of Tyre in 332 BC is a testament to Alexander the Great’s audacity. As a decisive episode in Alexander’s military campaign, it demonstrated his strategic brilliance and indomitable will to conquer the island fortress of Tyre. Located on a small island, Tyre was a significant maritime base and one of Phoenicia’s most formidable cities.
Faced with the daunting task of besieging a water-surrounded city, Alexander initiated an unprecedented construction project that would cement his place in history.
The Prelude to Siege: Alexander’s March Across Persia
Before Tyre, there was the Persian campaign. After Alexander had ascended to the throne, he started a campaign to the east. Alexander the Great’s decision to invade Persia in 334 BC was influenced by the Ten Thousand, as well as by the need to fund his army and the enormous 500-talent debt he inherited from his father, Philip II. The Greek mercenaries who fought against the Persians exposed the Empire’s significant weaknesses, which boosted Alexander’s self-confidence. Because he trusted the cavalry he had raised, he felt he could defeat any Persian force he encountered.
Alexander’s first goal was to secure his flank. In the spring of 334 BC, he set out across the Dardanelles with his army, which he raised to an impressive 30,000 infantry and over 5,000 cavalry with the help of the League of Corinth and mercenaries. He also had several units under his command that gave his army an edge, including Cretan and Macedonian archers, Agrianian javelin men, and siege engineers. He was both the commander-in-chief and leader of his Companion Cavalry, and second only to him was Parmenio.
Alexander’s army also included a full range of professionals to support the campaign, including surveyors, engineers, and historians. In fact, an army so large and so well-rounded that it can be described as a society on the march. His first major encounter with the Persian army was at the Granicus River, which nearly cost Alexander his life when the Persians lured him into charging across the river and focused on slaying him. However, it ended in a decisive victory, allowing Alexander to gain control of most of western Asia Minor.
It was as much a propaganda victory as a military one, and his Panhellenic policy was furthered by the democratic institutions he established in the cities he freed. His overtures to Greece were then symbolised with his golden shield dedicated to Athena at Athens. Alexander, despite requests from his Greek sailors, refused to risk a naval battle with the Persian fleet, but instead he would “defeat the Persian fleet on land”. The battles were a shining example of his ability to adapt to and improvise in various situations.
Alexander chased Darius III into the region that is now Syria and engaged him in what was to be one of the most famous battles of all time. Alexander’s troops engaged the Persians again at the Battle of Issus. Alexander won the battle, securing the respect of his men and of many future generations, while Darius’s family was captured. Alexander’s march to Syria and Phoenicia, intended as a blow to Persian naval bases, prefaced one of the most renowned sieges of antiquity.
The Biggest Challenge of The Siege of Tyre
Tyre posed a significant challenge to Alexander. Tyre was the pride of Phoenicia, built not only on the mainland but also on an island, a kilometre off the coast. The island was heavily fortified, with a wall on the mainland side rising to 45.8 m (150 ft) above sea level. This made Tyre an almost impregnable fortress on the seashore.
At the start of Alexander’s siege, Tyre was a thriving, heavily fortified city-state with a population of about 40,000 people. The majority of Tyre’s women and children were evacuated to Carthage (a former Phoenician colony and a dominant power in the western Mediterranean) before the siege, and the Carthaginians committed their fleet to support their ancestral city, Tyre. In light of this commitment from Carthage and with no major naval power with whom to break Carthaginian control of the Mediterranean, Alexander was in a position where he had to maintain the element of surprise and quickly capture Tyre.
Tyre’s defensive strength was based on its two harbors and the nearly impregnable walls that encircled the island city. Hoping to enter Tyre in peace and out of respect for the city, which he considered his own ancestral home, Alexander asked to be allowed to go to the temple of Melqart to offer sacrifice.
The Tyrians, whose primary concern was keeping their city out of Macedonian or Persian hands, were more than a match for his flattery. They told him to worship at the temple on the mainland, and thus refused to allow him to land on the island. The Tyrians’ insult to Alexander, and subsequent murder and desecration of his ambassadors, only increased his determination to conquer Tyre by siege.
Alexander’s decision to besiege Tyre and thus end its existence as the last Persian naval base in the area was met with an unexpected show of defiance from the Tyrians. Tyre’s strategic importance and the impregnable reputation of its defences, in combination with the help Carthage promised the Tyrians, made the ensuing Siege of Tyre one of the most difficult and famous sieges in Alexander’s conquests.
The Ingenious Causeway that Changed the Tide on the Siege of Tyre
Alexander the Great was forced to resolve the situation through an incredible feat of engineering. Alexander could not mount an amphibious assault on the island city because he did not have a large enough fleet to support a successful landing under Tyre’s great walls. He decided to build a causeway from the mainland to the island, which extended for over a kilometer out to sea. Historian Diodorus wrote that the resulting causeway was 200 feet wide, built on a natural land bridge that was no more than 2 meters below the surface. This new causeway allowed Alexander’s siege engines to be placed within range of the city walls.
As the causeway inched closer and closer to the island, the engineers constructing it had to reach deeper and deeper into the water, and work under increasingly dangerous Tyrian counterattacks from both their navy and the defenders on the island. To protect the engineers and himself, Alexander ordered two 50-meter siege towers to be built, and these wooden leviathans, covered in rawhide to protect them from fire arrows, were pushed forward on the causeway. The towers were filled with catapults to clear the walls of defenders and ballistae to rain missiles down on the city walls and the Tyrian ships that were attacking the causeway. But the Tyrians were not afraid to challenge these giants either.
Constructing a causeway out to an island under fire was a long and arduous task. Alexander’s engineers had to dredge up timber and stone from the sea bottom and pile them up. Alexander was desperate to capture Tyre, but Tyre was equally desperate to hold out. Tyrian catapults were powerful enough to make it challenging to build the causeway up from the mainland. Still, Alexander was a man of iron will, and the causeway was eventually completed after seven months of building and fighting. Alexander and his men were finally able to walk right onto the island of Tyre.
The Final Assault on Tyre
The completion of Alexander’s causeway to Tyre marked the beginning of the final phase of the Siege of Tyre. The Tyrians, by no means cowed into submission by all of Alexander’s previous efforts, launched an unsuccessful counter-attack using ships against the Macedonians’ siege equipment. In this assault, the Tyrians launched a fire ship at the siege towers and successfully set much of it on fire. The attack was not without effect, however, as a large part of Alexander’s army was lost, and the Macedonian towers were destroyed. This, however, would only be a temporary setback.
Alexander’s luck changed when he acquired a powerful fleet. The fleets of recently subjugated Phoenician cities joined him, as did more ships from Cyprus and the Ionian cities. Alexander was able to blockade Tyre effectively, as he now had over 200 galleys. He was also able to attack Tyre’s ports directly. Battering rams and crane ships were used to clear the way for Alexander’s troops. While the Tyrians defended valiantly and had the rams’ anchor cables cut, Alexander improvised, using chains to achieve the same end. This was just one of the many innovations that Alexander had at the ready to foil the Tyrians’ strategies.
The final stage of the siege took place in a massive coordinated attack on Tyre’s walls, when Alexander’s troops charged through a breach in the wall made by his battering rams. The Macedonian king was at the forefront of this attack, leading his men to victory and breaching the walls of Tyre. Thousands of Tyrians were slaughtered, while others were sold into slavery.
The siege of Tyre was a remarkable display of Alexander’s leadership, military strategy, and the perseverance of his troops. It was a critical victory in Alexander’s war against the Persian Empire, as the capture of Tyre removed one of the last major naval bases in the area that was still under Persian control. With this obstacle out of the way, Alexander was able to march his forces further into the Persian heartland.
Legacy of the Siege of Tyre
The siege of Tyre is among the most extraordinary military feats of the ancient world, not just for the execution of Alexander the Great‘s brilliant strategy, but for its long-term effect on the landscape. Alexander’s causeway is now a permanent land bridge, and Tyre itself is now part of the mainland. The massive fortifications of Tyre have long since been buried.
The causeway and the eventual fall of Tyre had a lasting influence on Alexander’s subsequent actions. The most direct result of the siege was the foundation of Alexandria, Egypt, the first of several cities Alexander founded. The siege demonstrated that no city would be beyond Alexander’s reach, that there were no limits to his determination and engineering skills. The siege of Tyre was a clear demonstration of Alexander’s broader ambitions and his drive to etch his name in history by any means necessary.
The physical remains of the causeway and the intangible bridges to the future continue to intrigue historians and engineers, testifying to Alexander’s creativity and the role his conquests played in changing the course of history.
