Alexander III of Macedon

Recorded sideMacedon (Philip II, with Alexander)

Recorded resultvictory

Decisive Macedonian victory establishing hegemony over Greece

Philip's combined-arms army (the long-sarissa phalanx plus heavy cavalry) outreached and outmaneuvered the allied hoplites. By engaging and then drawing back his right, he tempted the Athenians to advance and open a gap in the allied line; the wing under Alexander exploited the gap, broke through, and annihilated the Theban Sacred Band, after which the allied army collapsed.

What followed

Established Macedonian hegemony over Greece and led to the League of Corinth, setting the stage for Alexander's invasion of Persia; it ended the era of the independent Greek city-states as great military powers.

Recorded sideMacedon

Recorded resultvictory

Decisive Macedonian victory; collapse of the Persian Empire

Heavily outnumbered, Alexander advanced obliquely to the right, dragging the Persian line sideways until a gap opened. He led the Companion cavalry in a wedge straight at Darius, who fled — and the leaderless army disintegrated.

What followed

Ended Achaemenid Persia as a great power and handed Alexander the heart of the empire.

Recorded sideMacedonian and allied forces of Alexander III

Recorded resultvictory, but costly and not decisive of the campaign

Macedonian victory. Porus was wounded, captured, and reinstated as a subordinate ruler.

Alexander refused the obvious crossing. He held the army opposite Porus with noisy feints night after night until the watching Paurava force stopped reacting, then crossed upstream in a storm with a picked force. Porus had to fight facing the wrong way with his elephants and chariots on ground the monsoon had turned soft, and the chariots bogged. The elephants, once wounded and driven back, did as much damage to their own infantry as to the phalanx.

What followed

Alexander's last great battle, and the point at which his army refused to go further east. It is also the clearest early case in the atlas of a defeated commander known almost entirely through the account of the people who beat him.