Gates of Alexander

The Gates of Alexander, also known as the Caspian Gates, are one of several mountain passes in eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Persia, often imagined as an actual fortification, or as a symbolic boundary separating the civilized from the uncivilized world. The original Gates of Alexander were just south of the Caspian Sea, at Rhagae, where Alexander crossed while pursuing Darius III. The name was transferred to passes through the Caucasus, on the other side of the Caspian, by the more fanciful historians of Alexander.

Various other passes in the Caucasus and Anatolia have been called the Gates of Alexander since at least the 1st century CE. Later, the Caspian Gates were also identified with the Pass of Derbent (in modern Dagestan) on the Caspian; or with the Pass of Dariel, a gorge forming a pass between Georgia and North Ossetia–Alania. Tradition also connects it to the Great Wall of Gorgan (Red Snake) on its south-eastern shore. These fortifications were historically part of the defence lines built by the Sassanid Persians, while the Great Wall of Gorgan may have been built by the Parthians.

Alongside other motifs such as the Horns of Alexander, the Gates of Alexander became commonly associated with Alexander legends, as in the Alexander Romance, the Syriac Alexander Romance, and the Qissat Dhulqarnayn.

Pliny the Elder (23 AD – 25 August 79 AD), in his Natural History, says that Alexander passed through the Caspian Gates, which he contrasts with the Gates of the Caucasus, a vast natural feature in a mountain chain rent asunder. Here, he says gates with iron covered beams have been placed above a horribly odorous river, along with a fortress to bar the passage of the innumerable tribes. These gates divide the world into two portions.

Josephus, a Jewish historian in the 1st century, gives the first extant reference to gates constructed by Alexander, designed to be a barrier against the Scythians. According to this historian, the people whom the Greeks called Scythians were known (among the Jews) as Magogites, descendants of the group called Magog in the Hebrew Bible. Josephus makes these references in two of his works. The Jewish War states that the iron gates Alexander erected were controlled by the king of Hyrcania (on the south edge of the Caspian), and allowing passage of the gates to the Alans (whom Josephus considered a Scythic tribe) resulted in the sack of Media. Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews contains two relevant passages, one giving the ancestry of Scythians as descendants of Magog son of Japheth, and another that refers to the Caspian Gates being breached by Scythians allied to Tiberius during the Armenian War.

In his description of the Alans, Pseudo-Hegesippus follows Josephus in mentioning the construction by Alexander of an iron gate to section off the barbarian group. In the first of two references to this gate, Ps. Hegesippus, places its location at the Taurus Mountains. This is mentioned in the context of a discussion on Alexander's founding of the Antioch of the Orontes, and therefore represents Alexander not only as a founder of civilization but also its protector. In the second reference, it is informed that Alexander had confined the Alans among other savage nations but that, either due to a bribe or political conflict, they were able to persuade the king of Hyrcania to let them burst out. Although not itself apocalyptic, the description of Ps. Hegesippus foreshadows the development of the apocalyptic narrative of Gog and Magog behind Alexander's wall, for it is first in his text that the notion is developed that the tribe behind the wall have actually been confined or imprisoned behind it.

Jerome states in the late-fourth century in his seventy-seventh letter that "the gates of Alexander keep back the wild peoples behind the Caucasus". Like Ps. Hegesippus, and unlike the later traditions of the Syrian church, Jerome was concerned with the Greco-Roman discourses on civilization and barbarity as opposed to apocalypse.

Jordanes was a Byzantine author of the sixth century. In a detailed discussion on the Amazons in a Latin work of his named the Getica, he wrote that Alexander had built a set of gates and called them the Caspian Gates. These gates, he said, were guarded by the Laz people of Roman Georgia.