"2,300 years ago, Alexander the Great invaded Asia, his goal to conquer the Persian Empire." "We followed in his footsteps, a 20,000-mile journey from Greece to the plains of India." "In the third year of the war, Alexander marched into Egypt." "There, at the oracle of Siwa, he was proclaimed Son of God, a true pharaoh." "Now he turned his gaze towards Persia." " Name." " My name is Wood." "Family name:" "Wood." "First name:" "Michael." "Michael Wood." "Thank you." "Our journey now led us into northern Iraq." "Free Kurdistan." "Our plan was to follow Alexander's route eastwards towards the site of his decisive battle with the Persian king," "Darius, the Lord of Asia." "The people here were still hanging on to their precarious independence from the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein." "We were now on one of the great travel routes of history." "This was once the Persian Royal Road, later part of the Silk Route which joined the Mediterranean with China." "It's been fought over for 5,000 years." "Beyond the mountains, the road comes down to a wide plain where the battle was fought." "Darius had already been defeated at Issus." "His wife and family were Alexander's prisoners." "He now staked everything on a battle near the town of Gaugamela." "We stopped for water near where Alexander must have camped that September." "When Alexander came here, the 50-degree summer heat was dying down." "As it turned out, this was as close as we could get to the site of the battle." "Tantalizingly, it was only a few miles to the south of us, out there on the flat plain of Kurdistan," "but it lay beyond the front line of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army and was out of reach." "The area you're gonna be flying over today," "Saddam Hussein's got troop concentrations basically here in Kirkuk and also Al-mawsil." "His troops are also running down a line between the cities." "The British and Americans running Operation Provide Comfort over Kurdistan offered to help out, for Alexander and Darius met on what today's military analysts still see as a fault line of history." "It's amazing how these strategic places stay important through history." "Alexander the Great, when he came, his army moved in from this side and they came down here in this gap." "And the Persian army came up from Irbil, up here." "Just in that gap, there's this hill which is about 3,500 feet, just rises straight out of the plain." "That's where they met." "That must be almost on your front line, I guess." "Almost exactly." "The line is running right along there." "On the AWACS screens, we saw the current military situation over northern Iraq." "The crew fed in what was known to Alexander's intelligence experts in September 331 BC." "Can you bring up the rivers and things like that?" "The rivers and the mountains come up together." " This is the Tigris?" " That's correct." " The Great Zab." " That is correct." " So, can you show us Mosul and Irbil?" " Certainly." "Alexander probably crosses the Tigris between the 15th and the 20th." "It would have taken them several days." "On the night of the 20th there was an eclipse which stopped them in their tracks until the army seers told them it was a good omen." "And then they sighted the Persians probably about the 25th, the scouts did, and they rested for four days." "Darius had moved up through Irbil probably about the 18th of September, crossed the Great Zab about the 23rd." " Can you go in closer on it?" " Onto the battle area?" " Yeah." " We'll put the battle area into the middle." "This is the moment on which Alexander's career stands or falls." "His army's heavily outnumbered by the Persians and now almost completely surrounded, but he knew that this would happen." "In fact, he wanted it to happen." "His plan was his wings would hold the Persians off for long enough to see a gap open in the Persian line through which Alexander could push to hit Darius himself." "Everything depended on the Macedonian troops, on each unit carrying out its instructions even if they couldn't see a thing around them." "And it also depended on the incredible nerve of Alexander himself, who was still only 25." "Darius's greatest army was crushed." "He fled back into Iran." "And with that defeat, said the historian Plutarch, the power of the Persian Empire was seen to be completely overthrown." "Alexander advanced swiftly into Iraq." "Babylon surrendered." "Late November, he marched on Darius's winter capital, Susa." "The invasion of Persia had begun." "Mid-December he reached the Karkheh river near Susa, just inside today's Iranian border." "I'd brought with me an intelligence map made for the British invasion of this region in the First World War." "Alexander wasn't traveling into an unknown country." "Greeks had journeyed and worked in Persia for centuries before his day." "And a huge amount of information would have been available." "And, no doubt, the Macedonian general staff sent their agents into Persia to prepare intelligence dossiers on the distances into the interior, maybe even maps, like this, mapping all the details that an army would need to know." "Which fords were fordable by an army with heavy equipment." "Where the rivers were impassable." "Where they were navigable." "Where there were camping grounds." "Where you could find good water and where it was undrinkable." "Here, marked on this map of 1915, is the ancient Royal Road from Babylon to Susa, running all the way across this landscape and down to Susa, Alexander's destination." "It reminds us of that tale of young Alexander, the ten-year-old boy, talking to Persian ambassadors back home in the Macedonian court, and asking them about the details of the distances of the journey into the heart of Persia." "That boy certainly knew where he was going." "We arrived in Iran during the festival of Ashura, the time of lamentation." "Then the streets are jammed with parades and passion plays." "On the carnival floats are the bogeymen of Iranian history;" "the last shah and the wicked caliphs." "And up there with them, like a fairy-tale villain, is the great Iskander, Alexander himself." "At the climax of the day, they carry huge mirrored coffins to commemorate the dead heroes of Islam." "In few countries is the sense of the wounds of history so alive, the idea that the great defeats should never be forgotten." "And Iran's two greatest defeats were by the Arabs and before them by Alexander." "And that story has never been forgotten here." "This is from the thousand-year-old epic by Ferdowsi, the Homer of Iran." "And Iran now braced itself for the Greek onslaught." "With Darius still in the north," "Susa was unprotected and fell without a fight." "The Greeks burst into the great audience hall here." "Imagine it:" "70-foot high columns holding up a cedar-wood roof, glittering with gilt and precious stones." "Alexander walked over and sat on the throne of Darius." "But being a small man, his feet didn't touch the top step." "One of the pages pushed over a table to help." "At this point, the sound of sobbing was heard in the room." "It turned out to be one of Darius's royal eunuchs." "Alexander asked him through an interpreter why he was so upset." "He answered, "This was the table at which my master Darius used to take his food." ""It breaks my heart to see it used so disrespectfully."" "Alexander, so it is said, felt shamed by the god of hospitality and he ordered the table removed." "But at this point, one of his generals said," ""No, don't do that, Your Majesty." "Your enemy's table has become your footstool."" ""Take that as an omen of your future victory."" "Below the ruins of Susa, there's an old shrine still revered by Jews and Christians here, as well as Muslims." "It's the tomb of the prophet Daniel, who was cast by the Persian king into the lions' den." "And in the Bible story of Daniel, there's a strange vision of the coming of Alexander." "In a dream, the prophet saw four terrible monsters coming out of the sea." "The last of them was Alexander's Macedonians, a frightful beast with iron teeth which devoured everything in its path." "In that image, you've got something of the cyclonic force of Alexander's arrival on the Iranian scene." "As the Iranians said, he was a demon with disheveled hair, born of the race of wrath." "In late December, Alexander left Susa, his army doubled now, reinforced to 70,000 men by a vast flow of manpower from Greece." "He would now strike at the very heart of the empire beyond the Zagros mountains." "Our plan was to walk over the mountain passes in Alexander's footsteps." "Will we be able to sleep up there?" " Yes." " Great." "That's great." "OK." "Alexander's aim now was to capture the Persian capital, Persepolis." "He'd sent most of his army the long way round via Shiraz." "He now took a short cut straight through the mountains to take the Persians by surprise." "Going up this valley, you can hardly believe that Alexander would have risked the elite of his army, 20,000 men, in this kind of terrain." "But they must have had advance intelligence of the route." "He'd sent Parmenio with the baggage trains and heavy troops on the long route to the south." "He was looking for a short cut through the Zagros mountains to get to Persepolis as fast as he could." "They must have known that there was such a short cut." "It was a very ancient route, used possibly for thousands of years, known to the ancients as the key to Anshan, the old name for the heartland of Persia." "It was difficult, narrow passes, but it led straight on to Persepolis through the pass which the Greeks called the Persian Gates." "But Darius's general, Ariobarzanes, had set a trap." "The Macedonians had pressed deep into the Persian Gates before they realized that there was any trouble." "Then, when they came here to the narrows, not far below the watershed of the pass, they suddenly discovered to their surprise that the Persians had walled the path and had defended the path in depth." "Then the Persians attacked." "From these cliffs above, they launched a hail of rocks, stones, spears and javelins down into the river bed below." "Alexander was helpless." "His troops were suffering heavy casualties and he ordered the trumpeter to sound the retreat." "The army pulled out of the pass, leaving the dead where they fell." "For once in his career, Alexander had been outwitted." "And you can imagine how that went down in the royal tent that evening." "Alexander camped back at the mouth of the pass, as we did." "He was furious with himself for leading his men into a trap." "The story of the battle is still told by the local people here." "How the Persian hero, Ariobarzanes, tricked the great Alexander." "How do you know these stories, then?" "It's a tale, as they say here, which has been passed down from chest to chest." "So this is a story that's been handed down from grandfather to father to son in these parts?" "Alexander was now in a desperate corner." "And is there another way from somewhere around here that can get to the back of the pass?" "Urgently now, Alexander asked that same question of his local prisoners." "A shepherd told him there was a path, but it was impossible for an army." "But Alexander had no choice." "At nine in the evening he gave the orders to go." "Hs route has never been found, and Zavoreh and his brother couldn't agree over which way he went." "But Zavoreh seemed to me to be right." "Still arguing, they said they'd take us next day." "Soon after dawn, we set off." "It was about 20km up to the top." "The troops kept absolute silence." "Trumpet signals were forbidden." "Up here." "Nerves were on edge." "They all knew their lives were in the hands of one local guide, says the historian Curtius." "If they were betrayed, they'd be trapped like wild animals." "Look at this." "This is exactly what the Greeks described, isn't it?" "Very difficult country seamed with ravines and gorges, all the more unfamiliar to them because they were traveling it at night." "You can really imagine it here, can't you?" "We were slower than Alexander." "It took us three or four hours to get up onto the top above the pass." " So is this it, Aliakvar?" " Yes." " Dasht-e Tavil?" " That's what it's called." " Dasht-e Tavil." "Right." "Great." "So this is exactly what the Greeks meant." "When they came up the gully and they got to the top, this is it, isn't it?" "On top, at about 6,000 or 7,000 feet, there's a plateau." "Here, Alexander stopped to divide his forces and take some food." "So, Habibullah, what do you think?" "Do you think he could have brought an army of 10,000 or 15,000 men up here?" "Possible." "No tea, though, for them." "So, imagine, the middle of the night, a freezing January night, we're here in the Dasht-e Tavil." "The Macedonian troops are still filing up that narrow gorge we've just come through." "Alexander and his generals sit down to work out the final stages of the plan." "It seems to have been like this." "Three infantry brigades, Amyntas, Philotas and Coenus, were to go straight ahead, on down into the plain, to bridge the river which the Macedonians would have to cross in order to get fast to Persepolis." "Alexander himself with three squadrons of cavalry, including the Companions, one infantry brigade and light-armed skirmishers and archers, maybe 4,000-odd troops, was to head straight over there, round to the back of the pass, behind the Persian position." "And 3,000 infantry, under the general Ptolemy, were to be left just here." "These were probably the specialist long shields who were part of the old Macedonian royal bodyguard." "So, in the dead of night, the last stages of this incredibly risky and dangerous operation began to unfold, and on them the whole fate of the war would depend." "The path plunged down a gorge into darkness, and the brothers used an old shepherds' trick, cutting off strips of gum-tree bark which burn like little torches." "This was the worst part now, says Curtius." "There was snow and the darkness was terrifying." " OK?" "Are we all ready?" " Yes." "Some of the Macedonians began to despair and a few of the boys even started to cry." "But at moments like this, says Arrian," "Alexander had the wonderful knack of cheering his men, calming their fears by his fearlessness." "Soon after dawn, we came down into the middle of the Persian Gates." "Alexander's desperate gamble had paid off." "By the early hours, his night march had taken him right round to the back of the pass, behind the Persian position." "Just before dawn, Alexander launched his attack on the rear of Ariobarzanes' defenses." "At the same time, the Macedonians sent their trumpet signals all the way down the pass to Craterus, who now moved his troops up to attack the wall where the Macedonians had been beaten the previous day." "So the Persians were now caught in a pincer movement." "They fell back on their inner defenses here at this place," "Charguch, place where four ways meet." "Then Alexander launched the decisive stroke." "Ptolemy and his 3,000 infantry had been left behind to come down the gorge where we came during the night." "He launched his attack on the side of the Persian position." "They were trapped on all sides." "The Persians fought bravely, but they were overwhelmed." "As for the shepherd who'd guided him that night," "Alexander gave him 30 talents of silver, a quarter of a million dollars." "He'd been worth every penny." "Could I have another chai?" "Even our guides were impressed." ""But if I had Alexander here now," said one of them," ""I'd like to chop him into little pieces for what he did to Iran."" "The road to Persepolis lay open." "The most hated city in the world," "Alexander had called it at the start of his crusade." "Now he walked unopposed into the great palace." "In these vast reception halls, 10,000 courtiers used to gather to greet the Persian New Year." "Ambassadors from 35 countries had queued here to receive the blessing of the great king and the god of wisdom, Ahura Mazda." "Here had come Ionian Greeks bearing gifts of dyed cloths and beehives." "Indians with humpbacked calves." "Scythians from Central Asia with gold and fine clothes." "This was what it meant to be a king." "In the royal apartments, Alexander would have seen images of the great kings from the Persian past." "Portrayed in all the majesty of Persian kingship." "There's the tiara studded with gold adornments." "These would have been real gold bracelets, presumably ripped out by the Greeks." "He would have had facial cosmetics, the beautifully curled beard, and attended by all the flunkies of the court:" "the bearer of the ointment pot and the towel and the fly whisk and the sunshade." "To the Greeks, this must have reinforced all their stereotypes about Oriental people and their political systems." "It was Oriental tyranny personified." "But this, we always have to remember, is a tale told by the victors." "In Persian eyes, their state was the embodiment of justice, guided by the god of wisdom, Ahura Mazda." "Alexander had moved on Persepolis so fast that he found the treasury intact;" "3,000 tons of gold and silver bullion, more than the reserves in Fort Knox." "Into his hands had fallen the greatest treasure in history." "He could finance any war he wished now, even to the ends of the earth." " Hello." "Thank you very much." " Thank you." "That's lovely." "That night, I stayed in the old hotel below the palace ruins, just where Alexander must have pitched his tent." "He waited here now for three months." "Darius was still at large in the north and no Persians came to acknowledge Alexander as king." "There were arguments among the Greeks about what to do next." "Especially over the palace, the symbol of Persian power." "Some thought the crimes committed by the Persian kings in Greece 150 years before required further punishment." "No one knows precisely what happened next, but the legend told by the Greek historians was so famous it has become fact." "The night Persepolis was destroyed, King Alexander attended a drinking party with friends, perhaps in the tents below the palace." "There were many women present, courtesans, mistresses of the generals." "A huge amount of wine was consumed and everybody got very, very drunk." "And then one of the women spoke up." "She was an Athenian." "Her name was Thais." "After all the king's great achievements in Asia, she said, it would be the crowning glory if he allowed his friends to burn the palace down, to avenge what the Persians had done in Greece and to allow women's hands to extinguish the glory of King Xerxes." "And with those words, it's said, the king himself took fire." "The procession was formed, the torches were lit and the flute girls struck up a tune." "The drunken revelers reeled up the great staircase and into the palace." "After King Alexander, Thais was the first person to throw her torch into the state rooms." "Imagine it, the fire running up gilded curtains to the cedar-wood roof." "In no time at all, this great building was engulfed in fire." "But that still is the Greek story." "How did the Persians see it?" "Deep in the mountains fringing Iran's Great Salt Desert, there's a shrine by a sacred spring." "These people are Zoroastrians, the followers of the ancient religion of Iran, older by far than Christianity or Islam." "And the Zoroastrians have preserved the Persian story of Alexander's conquest." "Their prophet, Zoroaster, who lived 1,000 years before Alexander, had been praised by the king's teacher, Aristotle." "But Alexander would never meet with the magi, the Persian priests." "He never made offerings to their god, even though Arrian says he was usually so careful of religion." "In fact, the Zoroastrians say he persecuted them and desecrated their temples." "So did Alexander continue his campaign of revenge against the religion of Persia and its followers?" "On this, the Greek historians say nothing." "But that night, in the heart of old Iran, even after 2,300 years, the Zoroastrians told the story as if it had happened only yesterday." "As you know, and we accept this, we know he was a great military man, and he conquered many little countries and finally he defeated our empire." "And he took over the palace of Persepolis." "He burned down the palace and he got drunk and, again, he slaughtered our priests." "He forced our youngsters, girls and boys, to marry Greek soldiers." "And, worst of all, he burned our scriptures, our religion bible, which is called Gatha, and it's the word of our prophet, Zoroaster." "And that was a disaster." "They might call him Great Alexander, but in our world we just say this chap was a devil." "In Zoroastrian we say Alexander Gujaste." "That means Alexander the Accursed." "That night, the Zoroastrians told me another story." "The sacred fire which burned at Persepolis was never snuffed out." "For more than 2,000 years, they believe it's been kept alive, carried from place to place." "And today, in a village in the Yazd plain, it still burns, the fire before which Darius worshipped." "At the moment of Alexander's triumph, a Zoroastrian priest gave an oracle, a prophecy about the wicked Alexander and his fate." ""All Asia will suffer his evil yoke," it said," ""for he's the devil's disciple," ""and our earth will be deluged in blood." ""But, in the end, those whom he wishes to destroy will destroy him" ""and he will be swept from the land of Persia."" "In the early summer, Alexander moved north to try to capture King Darius." "We followed him on the road to Isfahan." "Here he heard the news that Darius had decided to flee eastwards towards Afghanistan." "In the tea houses of Isfahan, the storytellers can still tell the tale of Darius's last days." "Alexander's final pursuit of Darius took him along old caravan routes little used now, save by long-distance lorry drivers, one of whom offered to take us." "Alexander set a punishing pace;" "400 miles in 11 days." "More than half his horses died in the summer heat." "The old route leads past Tehran and on through the pass known as the Caspian Gates." "At the end of each day's march was a waterhole." "You can still find them marked by the ruins of the medieval caravanserais." "So this is the ancient road." "And there are still old caravanserai buildings all along this route, are there?" "Yes, these caravanserais are on the route." " Do you ever stay in them?" " Yes." "He sometimes stops at the caravanserai when he's traveling to Mashhad." "For a rest, he stops there." "So the old system still works." "The old stopping places are all deserted now, but just off the old Mashhad road, we halted at one." "Darius must have camped somewhere like this on his last tragic night." "Then he and the desperate Persian nobles held a war council." "They said they wanted a new leader, a fresh start." "They proposed that for now the king's kinsman Bessus should take over the reins of power." "Perhaps, they said, God may then look upon us with more favor." "Darius refused to give up the throne, and they arrested him and bound him in golden chains." "And then from the royal tent came the sound of wailing as the king's servants wept for their king and for their whole world." "When Alexander heard that Darius had been deposed and was only just ahead, he drove his weary troops on through the night." "To follow his route, we picked up the slow train to Mashhad." "How long now between Semnan and Gerd Ab?" " One hour." " Just one hour." "The route that Alexander took in that last dash to try and overtake Darius has never been discovered, but when you look at the map, it's obvious." "The railway contractors faced exactly the same problem:" "how to avoid the mountain." "They needed the easiest gradient possible." "Their solution was to throw their track out in a great loop south of the mountains into the desert." "It's longer, about 50 miles, exactly the distance the Greeks said Alexander covered that night." "But it's quicker, and it leads to a little railway halt in the middle of nowhere called Gerd Ab." "Just below the station is a long-dried-up wadi which circles the hills." "It's good riding country, this." "Easy to imagine Alexander coming through here, harness jangling, muffled commands in Greek." "At first light, Alexander caught up with the Persians." "Bessus and the others told Darius to ride on." "He refused and they stabbed him and fled." "They left him to die at a waterhole just off the road." "As Alexander rode on, searching for Darius, an ordinary Greek soldier called Polystratus walked down to the pool to quench his thirst." "By the edge of the pool Polystratus saw a covered wagon, the animals wounded with spears." "He went over and lifted the cover and inside, covered in blood, was Darius himself, the great king, at the point of death." "Polystratus filled his helmet with water and gave the king a drink." "Then Darius held his hand and gave him a message to take to Alexander." "He thanked him for treating his mother and his wife and children so honorably." "A very Persian thing to say, that is." "He also gave a prayer, hoping the gods would look favorably on Alexander, and that he, in his turn, would rule the earth just as Darius had done." "Then Darius died." "The exact spot has never been found." "But it was here, surely, at Ab Hore, which means the place where you can find drinking water." "The legend of Darius's death is still told by the last of the tale-tellers who used to travel the back roads of Iran with their painted backdrops." "This version of the tale has been told in Iran for at least 1,000 years." "The king is dead." "Long live the king." "Now Alexander was Lord of Asia." "He camped here at the ancient city of Hecatompylos." "His troops were elated." "The war was over." "They could go home." "Alexander, though, had other ideas." "He addressed the army." "Alexander began his speech by looking back over the four years of conquest which had brought them from the Balkans to Afghanistan." "It had been a long haul." ""You want to go home," he said." ""I understand." Milking them for sentiment." ""I want to go home, too." "I'd like to see my mother again and my loved ones." ""But if we go back now, everything will be lost." ""We may have won the military battle, but the battle for hearts and minds is just beginning." ""You don't think the Persians are gonna lie down and accept Greek rule just like that?" ""It's the beginning of a long process." ""Besides, the murderers of Darius are still at large." ""Bessus is claiming to be king of the Persians." ""If we go back, he'll consolidate his power, raise an army." "He'll be knocking at our back door." ""No." "Either we let it all go or we go on to take everything." ""Look, boys," you can imagine him saying." ""It's only a four-day march to catch up with them."" "Lying in his teeth about what lay ahead." ""Nothing for you." "Nothing for men who've crossed so many mountains and rivers." ""Come on." "We're on the threshold of victory and eternal fame."" "Once again, Alexander had won them over." "They camped north of the Elburz mountains in what's now Turkoman country." "They've always bred fine horses here and Alexander could make good his losses." "To keep up morale, he held games;" "horse racing and wrestling." "But as the army enjoyed itself, there were nagging worries about the king's real plans." "The rumor had now spread that he really wanted to go on and conquer the whole world." "Alexander announced that he planned to train thousands of Persian boys as Macedonian cavalrymen, and he himself began to wear Persian robes." "He was going Persian, the veterans grumbled." "This wasn't what they'd fought for." "To placate them, Alexander said his men could now marry their women captives and take them on the campaign eastwards." "But that only suggested that they might never see their own families again." "Slowly but surely, links with Macedonia were being cut." "That night, the Turkomans told me tales of Alexander, who's one of their great folk heroes." "Like Muslims right across Asia, they call him the two-horned one." "To them, Alexander's an almost supernatural figure;" "magician, magus, superman." "In their songs, Alexander climbs the heavens, plumbs the oceans and finds the spring of eternal life." "And he meets a tribe of female warriors, just as he does in a famous Greek tale." "One day, an extraordinary visitor rode into the Greek camp, an Amazon queen who ruled a tribe only of women." "She came with 300 armed female warriors." "To the amazement of the Greeks, she rode straight up to Alexander and leapt off her horse." "Alexander said, "Why have you come?"" "And she said, "I've come to have a child by you." ""You're the greatest conqueror and" "I'm superior to any woman in courage and strength," ""so imagine what child we could have between us."" "Many ill-matched couples have made that mistake in history." "But Alexander, of course, was delighted." "But the historian Curtius says his appetite was not as great as hers and he spent 13 days trying to satisfy her." "Finally, he gave her rich presents and off she went back to her own country and he went back over the Elburz mountains and headed towards Afghanistan." "Before he marched east, Alexander moved into the northernmost province of Iran by the Caspian Sea." "And riding in his track, we entered ancient Hyrcania, the land of wolves." "Our guide was Louise Firoz, who's lived out here with the Turkomans for 30 years." "Our goal was Alexander's Wall, an ancient defense work like Hadrian's Wall or the Great Wall of China, which legend says was built by Alexander to mark the northern edge of his empire." "Off to your right is the beginning of Central Asia here, and on the left, on the other side of Alexander's Wall, is the beginning of the Middle East." "This encloses the sweet water on this side with the Elburz mountains and its springs, and on this side you have nothing but brackish springs, and very few of those, also." "So that's civilization and this is nomads," " the great divide of history." " Yes" "And so more than three years after they'd left Greece, the Macedonian army reached the shores of the Caspian Sea." "Well, after a year's campaigning in Iraq and Iran, it must have felt good to get to the seaside." "No doubt they all had a swim on this beach." "We know they tasted the water, because the Greeks mention that they found it a lot less salty than the Mediterranean." "That should have told them something." "Here, for the first time in the expedition, they reached the limits of their knowledge." "They didn't know, as we do, that the Caspian is a landlocked sea." "For all they knew, and all the fisherman could tell them, this was simply a gulf of the great ocean which encircled the whole of the inhabited earth:" "Europe, Africa and Asia." "You could sail out there and turn off to the left and go all the way round to northern Europe." "You could sail off that way all the way round the world to India." "It was the first hint, perhaps, that the world was a lot bigger than they could ever have imagined." "For the moment, that knowledge eluded him." "But it was in Alexander's nature, says Arrian, to search far beyond into the unknown." "Soon the goal of his expedition would begin to change, as the prospect of a bigger world beckoned." "But that was in the future." "Ahead of him now lay Afghanistan."