Azemilcus
Azemilcus was king of Tyre when Alexander besieged it, and he was away with the Persian fleet when the siege began. Tyre was the greatest Phoenician city, built on an island half a kilometre offshore behind walls said to be forty-five metres high, and it had survived a thirteen-year siege by Nebuchadnezzar. Its answer to Alexander in 332 BC was a diplomatic refusal rather than defiance: the city would accept his authority, but he could not enter to sacrifice at the temple of Melqart, because that would settle which side it was on while the Persian fleet was still at sea. He was serving with that fleet at the time and the city was run by its council in his absence, which is one of the few things known about him with any confidence. Alexander built a causeway from the ruins of the mainland city and spent seven months on it under fire, with fire ships, towers and eventually the Phoenician and Cypriot squadrons that changed sides once Persia's naval power broke. He returned to the city before the end and was inside it when the walls were breached in July. Some eight thousand were killed and thirty thousand sold into slavery, and two thousand men of military age were crucified along the shore. He took sanctuary in the temple of Melqart with the leading citizens and envoys from Carthage, and Alexander spared everyone who had done so. He was left on the throne of a city that no longer had a population. Tyre was resettled and recovered as a port, but never again as an independent power, and nothing further is recorded of him. The causeway silted up on both sides over the following centuries and the island is now a peninsula, which is the most durable thing the siege produced.
- Nationality: Phoenician
- Roles: head_of_state
