The Fall and Burning of Persepolis
Alexander burned the ceremonial capital of the Persian empire in 330 BC, and the sources cannot agree whether it was policy or a drunken party. Persepolis was not an administrative centre in the ordinary sense. It was the site of the Achaemenid coronations and the new year festival, built by Darius I and Xerxes, with the treasury of the empire in it — reported at 120,000 talents, which required thousands of pack animals to remove. Alexander took it in January 330 after the battle of Gaugamela had destroyed the Persian field army, and allowed the city itself to be plundered. The palaces burned in April or May. One tradition, in Cleitarchus and repeated by Diodorus and Curtius, has the fire begun at a banquet at the urging of an Athenian courtesan named Thaïs, in revenge for the Persian burning of Athens 150 years earlier, with Alexander throwing the first torch. Arrian, using the more sober sources, presents it as a deliberate act of policy announcing the end of the war of revenge, against Parmenion's advice that he should not destroy what was now his own property. The archaeology shows a fire hot enough to melt and warp stone, with cedar roof beams and the treasury contents contributing. The Persian empire's records went with it. Alexander is reported to have regretted it, and the site was never rebuilt. Darius III was murdered by his own satrap Bessus a few weeks later while fleeing east, and Alexander had him buried with royal honours and hunted the killer down. Whatever the fire was, the war of Greek revenge ended with it and the campaign that followed was Alexander's own.
- Year: 330 BCE
- Category: Cultural
