329 BC

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Events

By place

Macedonian Empire

* From Phrada, Alexander the Great presses on up the valley of the Helmand River, through Arachosia, and over the mountains past the site of modern Kabul into the country of the Paropamisade, where he founds Alexandria by the Caucasus.
* In Bactria, Bessus raises a national revolt in the eastern satrapies using the title of King Artaxerxes IV of Persia.
* Crossing the Hindu Kush northward, probably over the Khawak Pass [Smith, Vincent A. (1908) "The Early History of India", p. 45. Oxford. The Clarendon Press.] , Alexander brings his army, despite food shortages, to Drapsaka. Outflanked, Bessus flees beyond the Oxus river.
* Marching west to Bactra (Zariaspa), Alexander appoints Artabazus of Phrygia as the satrap of Bactria.
* Crossing the Oxus, Alexander sends his general Ptolemy in pursuit of Bessus. In the meantime, Bessus is overthrown by the Sogdian Spitamenes. Bessus is captured, flogged, and sent to Ptolemy in Bactria with the hope of appeasing Alexander. In due course, Bessus is publicly executed at Ecbatana. With the death of Bessus (Artaxerxes IV), Persian resistance to Alexander the Great ceases.
* From Maracanda, Alexander advances through Cyropolis to the Jaxartes river, the boundary of the Persian Empire. There he breaks the opposition of the Scythian nomads by his use of catapults and, after defeating them in a battle on the north bank of the river, pursues them into the interior. On the site of modern Khojent on the Jaxartes, he founds a city, Alexandria Eschate, "the farthest."

Births

*

Deaths

* Bessus (Artaxerxes IV), Persian nobleman and satrap of Bactria, and later the last claimant to the Achaemenid throne of Persia

References