Alexander the Great

Jesse does a history lesson on Alexander The Great & Siege of Tyre

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's perfect into your day.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Jesse Kelly on seventy ten wo.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
R Dreams The Jesse Kelly Show.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Another hour of The Jesse Kelly Show on an amazing,
a fantastic Thursday. And here's what's in store for this hour.
History time, Baby, No more politics. I don't want to
talk about raids and the EPA and the idiots in
Congress and other We've done that all week long. And

(00:42):
I have owed you this story for quite some time.
So we you and me, we're about to take some time.
Maybe this is part one, maybe I'll do the whole thing.
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

(01:07):
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

(01:27):
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,

(01:51):
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

(02:11):
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,

(02:34):
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

(02:55):
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,

(03:17):
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

(03:39):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:24):
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

(04:45):
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

(05:09):
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,

(05:31):
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

(05:55):
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,

(06:21):
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.

(06:46):
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

(07:10):
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

(07:30):
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.

(07:52):
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,

(08:12):
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.

(08:34):
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

(08:55):
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

(09:16):
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.

(09:41):
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

(10:01):
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

(10:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a Thursday.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Driving the show off the rails, as we do from
time to time because it's history time on the Jesse
Kelly Show, delivering on my Alexander the Great Siege of
Tires story that I had promised you. I left it
up to you, and that's the one you wanted, So
that's the one you're getting. So that was tire. The
Phoenicians will come back there, well, more specifically, Alexander the

(11:01):
Great's about to come back there. Alexander the Great. It
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

(11:29):
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

(11:51):
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

(12:13):
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

(12:36):
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

(13:00):
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

(13:22):
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,

(13:45):
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

(14:05):
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

(14:26):
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.

(14:48):
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.

(15:08):
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

(15:31):
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

(15:53):
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

(16:15):
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

(16:38):
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.

(17:00):
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

(17:21):
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

(17:44):
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

(18:05):
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

(18:25):
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

(18:46):
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

(19:10):
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,

(19:30):
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

(19:53):
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

(20:13):
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

(20:36):
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

(20:59):
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.

(21:21):
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,

(21:42):
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

(22:04):
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

(22:27):
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

(22:52):
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

(23:13):
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

(23:34):
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

(23:54):
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,

(24:15):
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

(24:38):
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

(25:05):
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

(25:29):
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,

(25:52):
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.

(26:15):
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

(26:38):
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?

(27:02):
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

(27:24):
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

(27:45):
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

(28:07):
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

(28:29):
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

(28:54):
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

(29:21):
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

(29:43):
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

(30:04):
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,

(30:25):
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

(30:49):
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,

(31:12):
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

(31:36):
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

(31:58):
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.

(32:20):
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

(32:43):
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

(33:04):
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

(33:27):
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,

(33:50):
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.