Siege of Tyre
Alexander besieged an island city for seven months in 332 BC and built a causeway to reach it. Tyre was the greatest of the Phoenician ports, on an island about 800 metres offshore with walls rising from the sea, and it had never been taken; Nebuchadnezzar had besieged it for thirteen years and settled for a nominal submission. Its refusal was not exactly defiance. The Tyrians offered obedience and declined to admit him to sacrifice at the temple of Melqart on the island, which was the pretext he needed. The strategic reason was the fleet. The Persian navy was manned largely by Phoenicians, and Alexander had no ships worth the name, so the only way to neutralise it was to take the ports it came from. The mole was built out from the shore with rubble from the ruined mainland town and timber from the mountains, some sixty metres wide, under fire from the walls and from ships. The Tyrians sent a fireship into it and destroyed the towers. The siege turned when the Phoenician and Cypriot squadrons defected to him, which gave him a fleet, and the walls were finally breached from ships lashed together carrying rams. Some 8,000 Tyrians were killed and 30,000 sold; 2,000 men of military age were reportedly crucified along the shore. The causeway silted up and Tyre has been a peninsula ever since. The siege is the operation that changed how Greeks thought about walls. Alexander's engineers built towers on ships, floating rams and a land bridge, and after Tyre no city could assume that being difficult to reach was the same as being safe.
- Year: 332 BCE
- Category: Military
