334 BC
year
Year 334 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Caudinus and Calvinus (or, less frequently, year 420 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 334 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. It is the year that the Achaemenid Empire was invaded by Alexander the Great.
Events
By place
Persian Empire
The king of Caria, Pixodarus, dies and is succeeded by his son-in-law, Orontobates.
As the Persian satraps have gathered for a war council at Zeleia, Memnon argues that it is preferable for the Persians to avoid a pitched battle and adopt a scorched earth tactic. Arsites, the satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, will not allow his land to be burned and agrees with other satraps to reject this cautious advice.
Macedonia
King Alexander III of Macedonia crosses the Dardanelles, leaving Antipater, who has already faithfully served his father, Philip II, as his deputy in Greece with over 13,000 men. Alexander himself commands about 30,000 foot soldiers and over 5,000 cavalry, of whom nearly 14,000 are Macedonians and about 7,000 are allies sent by the Greek League.
May – Alexander wins a major victory against the Persians commanded by the Greek mercenary Memnon of Rhodes, in the Battle of the Granicus near the Sea of Marmara.
“334 BC” enters the record as year. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what year can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“334 BC” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, year provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q80856. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “334 BC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.