| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
After Issus (333 BC), Alexander took possession of Syria and the Levant coast. The next year he attacked Tyre, a rich and strategic Phoenician port and its largest city-state. Tyre was the only Persian port that had not capitulated. Even this far into the war, the Persian navy still posed a threat. Tyre was located both on the Mediterranean coast and an island with two natural harbours. Alexander built a causeway to allow his army to take the town by land. This engineering feat showed the true extent of his brilliance: he built a kilometer-long causeway on a natural land bridge no more than two metres deep. He then constructed two towers 150-feet high at the end of the causeway. The Tyrians, however, quickly counterattacked. They filled an old transport ship with wood, pitch, sulphur and other combustibles, lit it on fire creating a primitive form of napalm, and ran it up onto the causeway, which was engulfed by the flames.
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