Darius sends a new offer while the siege of Tyre is in progress: he will pay a huge ransom of ten thousand talents for his family, cede all his lands west of the Euphrates, and offer the hand of his daughter in return for an alliance.

“I would accept,” Parmenio is reported to have said, “were I Alexander”; “I too,” was the famous retort, “were I Parmenio.”

His causeway to join the besieged island city of Tyre to the mainland incomplete in early 332, Alexander bolsters his troops’ morale by reminding them that the fall of the city means an end to the Cyprus-based Persian fleet, which, fortunately for the Macedonians, now surrenders, enabling Alexander to attack Tyre from the sea with two hundred and twenty ships, tying some of them in pairs to hold rams and allow siege towers to draw up against the city's walls.

The storming of Tyre in July 332, attended with great carnage, is Alexander's greatest military achievement.

When the city at last surrenders, Alexander dishonors the corpse of Batis, its commander, in the way that Achilles in the Iliad had treated the corpse of Hector, and crucifies some two thousand Tyreans, themselves the survivors of the Macedonian slaughter of six thousand of their fellows.

The Sidonians among the Macedonian troops, manage, however, to rescue some fifteen thousand defenders, secretly giving them protection and taking them to their boats, on which they are hidden and transported to Sidon.

Alexander orders the sale of the Tyrean women and children into slavery.

His occupation of Phoenicia complete, he turns towards Palestine and Egypt.

Leaving Parmenio in Syria, …