jan wrote:I always wonder how Tyre would have responded had it been Philip instead of Alexander who attempted to enter the island and pay respect to the gods. Would they have reacted the same? In other words, was Alexander's youth a handicap for him at that time, so that few took him as seriously as they should have.
Exactly the same: youth, or a lack of it, had little to do with it.
Alexander arrived at the time of the festival of Meqart. His request or, as it turned out, demand to sacrifice on the Island was effectively a demonstration of his sovereignty - the Tyrian king being away with the Persian fleet.
The response of the Tyrian ambassadors was a proclamation - absent their king - of neutrality. The sources don't say but it is no great sacrilege to assume that Alexander's "intelligence" people will have realised this: both the festival and the hoped for neutrality.
Philip was never one to balk at a religious pretext for war and neither, it seems, was his son. Having his desire to sacrifice where he wished denied - the island not the mainland - meant having the import of that island sacrifice denied: his sovereignty.
Alexander's reply, calculated beforehand IMO, was predictable and one of the more horrendously costly of his actions.
Paralus
Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους;
Wicked men, you sin against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander.
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