By fair means or foul, at the age of 20, Alexander III became ruler of Greece — and the ruthlessness he displayed in cementing that position bore all the hallmarks of his father. He put down unrest in the north of his kingdom with brutal speed and, when Thebes rashly declared independence from Macedonia, his reprisal was savage: the city was burnt to the ground, its people either slaughtered or sold into slavery. But Alexander was not merely ruthless.
He was also bright enough to know that brute force alone would not keep the diverse collection of states under his power in check. If his study of history had taught him anything — and, with the philosopher and scientist Aristotle as his teacher, he would certainly have been well schooled — it would have been that nothing unites states and their people more than having a reviled common enemy. Now, a century and a half later, Alexander saw an opportunity to turn the tables, and planned a united Greek invasion of Persia.
It was not just his military victories against the odds that defy belief, but also his achievements in overcoming daunting geographical obstacles — from vast African deserts to the precipitous mountain trails of the Hindu Kush in the western Himalaya — in a journey that would eventually cover about 20, miles over the course of 11 years.
The initial impetus and rallying call for the expedition may have been that long-held grudge against the Persians, but Alexander also had an ulterior motive: he was determined to reach the end of the Earth and the great ocean that he believed lay beyond. Certainly, no one could accuse him of a lack of ambition. If those ancient names seem unfamiliar, look in a modern atlas and tally the list of countries his army traversed to get an idea of the enormity of the achievement: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India.
The crucial Mediterranean port city of Tyre now in Lebanon was conquered only after a siege that lasted seven months. And one of them was in Alexandria…. Many welcomed their conqueror with open arms and, often, lavish gifts.
All, however, soon became part of an empire of unprecedented scope — covering over two million square miles, it linked East with West for the first time in history. No figure from ancient history continues to loom so large in the literature and culture of so many different peoples — in many he is deified, in many others he is utterly reviled. But how did he do it?
How did Alexander inspire and maintain allegiance and endurance in his troops as he led them on an expedition that, at times, must have seemed not just ambitious but downright deluded? Providing the military brains behind unlikely victories such as that at Gaugamela helped — everyone likes to be on the side of a winner, particularly one who is seemingly invincible.
Nor was Alexander the sort of general to monitor success from afar. Various sources depict him fighting courageously on the frontline. The shock was simple enough — if you crossed him, he was merciless. The awe, meanwhile, came from creating an aura of one directed from above, encouraging the belief that his rise towards global domination was preordained.
To that end, he employed tactics designed to convince all around him of his credentials. The Greeks were a suspicious and religious bunch, so Alexander made a point of consulting oracles — which would inevitably confirm that his actions enjoyed divine approval; he even undertook a perilous eight-day trek across the desert to the oracle at Siwa in Egypt.
Many people were led to believe that Alexander was, indeed, a god. Eventually, though, even the most successful conqueror meets his nemesis. By BC, long years on the road and battle losses — not to mention tropical diseases and venomous snakes — had taken their toll on his troops. The great adventure was over. The return journey from the subcontinent was not pretty. The weary Greeks saw their numbers depleted first by flash floods and then, cruelly, a horrendous drought.
As for their leader, his once razor-sharp mind became increasingly erratic. He drank more: hour binges became a familiar part of his routine — followed, of course, by a couple of days of hangover.
Unsurprisingly, plots against him began to simmer. Devastated, Alexander declined rapidly. He reached Babylon in spring BC, and in June took to his sick bed.
His condition worsened and within days he was dead, aged just Was it a fever that killed him, or had his liver simply given up? Perhaps he was poisoned? He was, after all, not short of enemies. Alexander the Great never made it home to Macedon. But then he never intended to. As the greatest military leader in ancient history, he left a monumental legacy: his vast Asian empire. Historian Paul Cartledge looks into the personality of the 4th-century BC military genius to discover what drove him to create a huge empire covering three continents….
Alexander the Great had no low opinion of himself. Nevertheless, he appears to have been aware of the value of self-promotion, so besides his armies of soldiers he employed a small army of writers and artists to project the image of himself that he wanted to disseminate to the world at large. Hardly anything of those original writings survives today, unfortunately — though we do have the works of ancient Greek and Roman historians and biographers such as Curtius Rufus, Arrian and Plutarch who themselves had access to the lost texts by Ptolemy, Aristoboulus, Nearchus and others.
On the other hand, large numbers of portrait coins and medallions and sculptures do survive intact, some contemporary or near-contemporary, so that we have a very good idea of the impression Alexander wished to create for his many hundreds of thousands of subjects scattered from what is today Greece including Macedonia in the west, as far east as what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. One thing is very striking about all these various images.
They all aim to elevate Alexander not only above the common herd of ordinary men, but above the status of the merely mortal altogether: to the status of a semi divine hero or even a god.
Scholars argue as to whether Alexander sent down a formal decree from Babylon in Iraq , one of his several capitals, actually ordering his subjects to worship him as a god. But there is no question but that he was indeed worshipped as a living god, by Greeks as well as by Orientals, and there is every likelihood that Alexander wanted to be so worshipped. Philip II was, according to one contemporary historian, the most remarkable man Europe had produced.
He raised his kingdom of Macedon from a small player on the Greek scene to the major protagonist and arbiter of the Greek world. However, Alexander did once quip that the highly-strung Olympias made him pay a high rent for the nine months she had housed him in her womb. Apart from his parents, there were two great influences on his life from boyhood. One was the great Thessalian stallion Bucephalas, whom Alexander himself tamed and from whom he was pretty much inseparable from at least his early teens until the death of the great horse, aged about 30, in Pakistan in So moved was Alexander by his loss that he actually named one of his new city foundations after him, in the Indus valley.
He came from an elite Macedonian family, and was among the close group of comrades who had the privilege of being taught with Alexander by the philosopher Aristotle at Mieza, to the west of the Macedonian capital of Pella. Hephaestion was a bit older, and a bit taller, than Alexander, and it is probable that at some stage their relationship was more than platonic. Yet for Alexander sexual gratification was apparently not that important.
Or, as his best surviving historian Arrian a Greek from Asia Minor writing in the second century AD put it, warfare and military exploits gave Alexander the sort of thrill that others derived from sexual conquest. Not that Alexander was a monk; he is said to have had sex even with a mythical Amazon queen, and to have fathered a child with his beautiful Sogdian bride Roxane from what is today Uzbekistan.
He allegedly had affairs with the Persian wife of a dangerous Greek opponent fighting on the Persian side, and a liaison with a Persian eunuch. Philip is said to have fought his wars by marriages, that is by concluding diplomatic marriage alliances as a way to secure a victory, or as an alternative to fighting in order to decide the issue of territorial control. Alexander preferred to settle disputes by fighting, on the whole. However, even he took three wives, the other two besides Roxane both being Persian princesses.
When Alexander was not fighting, there was nothing he loved to do more, for relaxation, than hunt. Alexander appointed the general Antipater as regent and headed for Persia with his army.
Victory went to Alexander and the Macedonians. Alexander then headed south and easily took the city of Sardes. But his army encountered resistance in the cities of Miletus, Mylasa and Halicarnassus.
Under siege yet not beaten, Halicarnassus held out long enough for King Darius III, the newest Persian king, to amass a substantial army. From Halicarnassus, Alexander headed north to Gordium, home of the fabled Gordian knot , a group of tightly-entwined knots yoked to an ancient wagon. Legend had it whoever unwound the knot would conquer all of Asia. As the story goes, Alexander took on the challenge but was unable to unravel the knot by hand.
He took another approach and sliced through the knot with his sword, claiming triumph. As it became clear Alexander would win the Battle of Issus, Darius fled with what remained of his troops, leaving his wife and family behind. His mother, Sisygambis, was so upset she disowned him and adopted Alexander as her son. By now it was clear that Alexander was a shrewd, ruthless and brilliant military leader—in fact, he never lost a battle in his life.
Next, Alexander took over the Phoenician cities of Marathus and Aradus. He rejected a plea from Darius for peace and took the towns of Byblos and Sidon. He then laid siege to the heavily fortified island of Tyre in January B. But Alexander had no navy to speak of and Tyre was surrounded by water. Alexander instructed his men to build a causeway to reach Tyre. All went well until they came within striking distance of the Tyrians. After rejecting another peace offer from Darius, Alexander set out for Egypt.
He was sidelined at Gaza, however, and forced to endure another lengthy siege. After several weeks, he took the town and entered Egypt where he established the city that still bears his name: Alexandria. Alexander traveled to the desert to consult the oracle of Ammon, a god of supposed good counsel. Legends abound about what transpired at the oracle, but Alexander kept mum about the experience.
Still, the visit furthered speculation Alexander was a deity. Following fierce fighting and heavy losses on both sides, Darius fled and was assassinated by his own troops. Finally rid of Darius, Alexander proclaimed himself King of Persia. With Bessus out of the way, Alexander had full control of Persia. To gain credibility with the Persians, Alexander took on many Persian customs.
He began dressing like a Persian and adopted the practice of proskynesis, a Persian court custom that involved bowing down and kissing the hand of others, depending on their rank. The Macedonians were less than thrilled with the changes in Alexander and his attempt to be viewed as a deity. They refused to practice proskynesis and some plotted his death. Increasingly paranoid, Alexander ordered the death of one of his most esteemed generals, Parmenio, in B.
Pushed too far, Alexander killed Cleitus with a spear, a spontaneous act of violence that anguished him. Some historians believe Alexander killed his general in a fit of drunkenness—a persistent problem that plagued him through much of his life.
Alexander struggled to capture Sogdia, a region of the Persian Empire that remained loyal to Bessus. Supposedly, one of those on the rock was a girl named Roxane. During his leadership, from to B. He also became the king of Persia, Babylon and Asia, and created Macedonian colonies in the region. The young prince and his sister were raised in Pella's royal court. Growing up, the dark-eyed and curly-headed Alexander hardly ever saw his father, who spent most of his time engaged in military campaigns and extra-marital affairs.
Although Olympia served as a powerful role model for the boy, Alexander grew to resent his father's absence and philandering. Alexander received his earliest education under the tutelage of his relative, the stern Leonidas of Epirus.
Leonidas, who had been hired by King Phillip to teach Alexander math, horsemanship and archery, struggled to control his rebellious student. Alexander's next tutor was Lysimachus, who used role-playing to capture the restless boy's attention. Alexander particularly delighted in impersonating the warrior Achilles. In B. Over the course of three years, Aristotle taught Alexander and a handful of his friends philosophy, poetry, drama, science and politics.
Seeing that Homer's Iliad inspired Alexander to dream of becoming a heroic warrior, Aristotle created an abridged version of the tome for Alexander to carry with him on military campaigns. Alexander completed his education at Meiza in B. A year later, while still just a teen, he became a soldier and embarked on his first military expedition, against the Thracian tribes.
In , Alexander took charge of the Companion Cavalry and aided his father in defeating the Athenian and Theban armies at Chaeronea. Once Philip II had succeeded in his campaign to unite all the Greek states minus Sparta into the Corinthian League, the alliance between father and son soon disintegrated. Alexander and Olympia were forced to flee Macedonia and stay with Olympia's family in Epirus until Alexander and King Philip II were able to reconcile their differences.
In , Alexander's sister wed the Molossian king, an uncle who was also called Alexander. In the wake of his father's death, Alexander, then 19, was determined to seize the throne by any means necessary.
He quickly garnered the support of the Macedonian army, including the general and troops he had had fought with at Chaeronea. The army proclaimed Alexander the feudal king and proceeded to help him murder other potential heirs to the throne. Ever a loyal mother, Olympia further ensured her son's claim to the throne by slaughtering the daughter of King Philip II and Cleopatra and driving Cleopatra herself to suicide. Even though Alexander was the feudal king of Macedonia, he didn't obtain automatic control of the Corinthian League.
In fact, the southern states of Greece were celebrating Philip II's death and expressed divided interests. Athens had its own agenda: Under the leadership of democratic Demosthenes, the state hoped to take charge of the league. As they launched independence movements, Alexander sent his army south and coerced the region of Thessaly into acknowledging him as the leader of the Corinthian League.
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