In the Battle of Gaugamela, Alexander the Great (of Greece) surprises the Persians (Darius III) with an original and seemingly bizarre maneuver, which nevertheless succeeds in opening a subtle gap in the Persian line. And changes the course of civilization.
Alexander consolidates his hold on far–flung Persia, and then continues his legendary march eastward.
Thus the First Persian Empire (Achaemenid Dynasty), spanning from 648 BCE (under Cyrus the Great) until 330 BCE, falls at Gaugamela.
Ramifications for the Jews of Alexander’s defeat of Darius III at Gaugamela:
Alexander seizes Palestine from the Persians in the process, and the “Hellenization” of Palestine/Judea commences (Hellenization meaning the layering of Greek culture onto the regional landscape).
The Persian potentates had been good to the Jews, sometimes overwhelmingly so. The Hellenization of Judea, begun under the Greeks and ongoing under the Romans 300 years later, triggers a series of extraordinary interlocking events. These events will include the Jewish revolts against Rome, the destruction of Temple II, the ascendancy of Christianity, and the eventual morphing of the Roman Empire to an increasingly anti–Jewish Christian Europe.
This morphing of Rome to Christendom will trigger often grave persecutions of the Jews, scattered across far–reaches of Europe, which will unhinge the Jews for centuries, through the twentieth century.