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# Alexander of Macedon and Darius III at the Battle of Issus in Altdorfer's Painting
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/bitva-mezhdu-voiskami-aleksandra-makedonskogo-i-persidskogo-tsaria-dariia-iii-pri-isse/
- Published: 2022-11-14T19:53:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:04:22.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The East, Art, Museums

The Battle of Issus between the armies of Alexander the Great and the Persian King Darius III. A painting by Albrecht Altdorfer of the early sixteenth century. Alexander won this battle, which opened the way for his further conquests.

The inscription on the tablet at the top of the painting reads: “Alexander the Great defeated Darius after 100,000 foot soldiers and more than 10,000 horsemen in the Persian ranks had been slain. King Darius managed to escape with no more than 1,000 riders, while his mother, wife and children were taken captive.”

Alexander is easily recognised: he is clad in gleaming golden armour. The Macedonian armies, however, carry the banners of the Holy Roman Empire, which points the viewer to the realities of the painter’s own day, as though offering opaque hints at a correspondence between past glory and the present. The Persian soldiers wear Eastern dress and turbans in the style of the Ottoman host.

Behind the landscape we see a black Tower of Babel, symbolising the Persian capital and its coming downfall. This is just how the world landscape, the genre in which the canvas is painted, contains within itself an entire world: the moon and the sun in one firmament, Persia and Macedonia on one field.

Each army is marked not only by the number of its troops but by the number of its losses, which only heightens the apocalyptic character of the scene.