ABSTRACT

With the horrors of the Gedrosian march behind them, the Macedonian army arrived in Susa in March 324. From there Alexander issued his Exiles Decree, and also held a mass marriage in which he and 91 members of his court married Persian noble women (see Sources 96 and 97), an event that has often been seen as an attempt to unite the races.1 Not long after, Alexander left Susa, and by summer he was at Opis, where he announced the discharge of his wounded and veterans. We would image this ‘honorable discharge’ would have been met with widespread applause, but instead his men mutinied on him. It appears that Alexander's orientialism and his belief in his own divinity, which intensified in the last years of his reign (see Sources 105 and 106), proved too much – for one thing, the men mockingly referred to his association with ‘his father Zeus’. So also a factor was the arrival in Susa earlier of 30,000 foreign soldiers called epigonoi (‘successors’), which were incorporated into the army. Alexander faced the men's refusal to back down for three days, until finally he began to transfer Macedonian military titles and commands to Persians. His men gave in, and to celebrate the end of the mutiny and his forgiving them, he held a great banquet of reconciliation and prayed for concord.2