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Alexander sacked and destroyed Tyre and Gaza in 332 BC, killing all men of military age while selling women and children into slavery: Phoenicia, and its sailors, would never again be a problem for the Greeks. At the same time, his Greek viceroy Antipater, a seasoned politician, pardoned the former Macedonian governor who led the uprising in Thrace and eased off relations with other regions with the help of Persian booty sent by the king.
With Greece secured, Egypt was next. Skipping Jerusalem, in his view an unimportant provincial town, Alexander was received as a liberator in the old country, and proclaimed pharaoh in the temple of Ptah in Memphis. He consulted the oracle of Amun-Ra at the Siwa Oasis and founded a city he called Alexandria on the western end of the Nile Delta, for centuries exposed to Libyan raiding and now safe.
In 331 BC, Alexander launched his final campaign towards Susa. From Egypt, he marched into Upper Mesopotamia and off to meet yet another gigantic army raised by Darius while the Macedonians took over the western part of his empire. Darius, who had seen a second offer of peace scorned, made a third attempt at settling in which he offered Alexander co-rulership of the Persian Empire and three times as much wealth as in the first offer.
Diodorus tells of a meeting in which Macedonian general Parmenion argues that, if he were Alexander, he would accept the offer; Alexander replies: “So would I, if I were Parmenion.” On October 1, 331 BC, Alexander’s army, numbering perhaps 50,000 including more than 15,000 cavalry, met a Persian army of around 100,000 at a place called Gaugamela in old Assyria.
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