By most accounts, he was short and stocky. Many historians also think Alexander had heterochromia—one eye was brown, the other blue.
Alexander was born in B. As a young boy, Alexander was taught to read, write, and play the lyre. He developed a life-long love of reading and music. When Alexander was a teenager, his father hired Aristotle to be his private tutor. Alexander included botanists and scientists in his army to study the lands he conquered.
In B. Alexander began his reign by subduing rivals in the Greek and Macedonian regions. At a council of the League of Corinth, he was chosen as the commander of a military invasion of Asia. King Alexander began his invasion of the Middle East in B. He spent most of his reign on a military campaign through northeast Africa and southwestern Asia.
Alexander built many new cities in the lands he conquered, including Alexandria in Egypt. He went on to conquer the lands of the Persian Empire, establishing more cities, and like Alexandria, often naming them after himself. At this point, his army refused to continue further into India, exhausted and discouraged by heavy rains. Philip was assassinated in B. The person who stabbed him was said to have been one of Philip's former male lovers, named Pausanias.
While the ancient Greek historian Cleitarchus pointed to jealousy and betrayal as the motive, as outlined by Diodorus Siculus in " Library of History ," other ancient sources like Justin in " Epitome of the Philippic History Of Pompeius Trogus " suspected that Pausanias may have been part of a larger plot to kill the king — one that may have included Alexander and his mother. At the time of his death, Philip was contemplating invading the Persian Empire, also known as the Achaemenid Empire, which at its peak stretched from the Balkan peninsula to modern-day Pakistan and had repeatedly attempted to conquer the Greek world.
Upon his father's death, Alexander moved quickly to consolidate power. He gained the support of the Macedonian army and intimidated the Greek city states that Philip had conquered into accepting his rule. After campaigns in the Balkans and Thrace, Alexander moved against Thebes, a city in Greece that had risen up in rebellion. He conquered it in B. With Greece and the Balkans pacified, he was ready to launch a campaign against the Persian Empire.
While Alexander may have had his own reasons for expanding eastward, "his official reason for wanting to conquer the Achaemenid Persian Empire… was to lead the allied Greeks in a war of liberation: to free forever from Persian control the Greek cities along the Anatolian coast and on the island of Cyprus, and in so doing also to exact revenge for the Persians' invasion of Greece under Great King Xerxes in BCE," Cartledge wrote.
Nevertheless, Alexander was hugely successful against Persia. The first major battle he won against the Perisans was in B. The ancient Greek historian Arrian wrote that Alexander defeated a force of 20, Persian horsemen and an equal number of foot soldiers. He then advanced down the coast of west Turkey, taking cities and depriving the Persian navy of bases.
The second key battle he won — and perhaps the most important — was the Battle of Issus, fought in B. Arrian estimated that Darius had a force of , troops probably wildly exaggerated and initially positioned himself on a great plain where he could mass his force effectively against Alexander, who hesitated to give battle.
Darius is said to have thought this as a sign of timidity. So, Darius gave up his position and chased Alexander. In his haste, Darius left much of his family behind, including his mother, wife, infant son and two daughters. Alexander ordered that they be "honored, and addressed as royalty," Arrian wrote. After the battle, Darius offered Alexander a ransom for his family and alliance, through marriage.
Arrian wrote that Alexander rebuked Darius in writing, saying "in the future whenever you send word to me, address yourself to me as King of Asia and not as an equal, and let me know, as the master of all that belonged to you, if you have need of anything.
Alexander then moved south along the eastern Mediterranean, continuing a strategy designed to deprive the Persians of their naval bases. Many cities surrendered, but some, such as Tyre , which was on an island in modern-day Lebanon, put up a fight and forced Alexander to lay siege. In B. On its northern coast, he founded Alexandria , the most successful city he ever built.
Arrian wrote that "a sudden passion for the project seized him, and he himself marked out where the agora was to be built and decided how many temples were to be erected and to which gods they were to be dedicated…".
The precocious Alexander was already a seasoned commander in the Macedonian army when he became king at the age of 20 in B. In one of his most decisive moves, the young monarch forcefully proved his authority over rebellious Greeks by storming the defiant city of Thebes, slaughtering thousands of residents and enslaving the rest. In B. The versatile force included cavalry and heavily armed foot soldiers, who wielded spears and formed a phalanx, advancing relentlessly behind raised shields.
Alexander deployed his troops with great skill and earned their devotion by leading them in battle and suffering several wounds. Alexander visited the fabled city of Troy as he crossed the Bosporus into Asia Minor and routed the Persian forces there. Greek cities in Asia Minor that had been under Persian control welcomed his rule. At the Gulf of Issus in B.
Refusing to make peace unless Darius yielded to him as emperor, Alexander swept south along the sea toward Egypt. He seized strategic ports, including the defiant Phoenician port of Tyre. He met with more reverence in Egypt, where he was honored as a god-king like the pharaohs of old—veneration he considered his due.
Once again, Alexander demonstrated that a small army acting in concert was superior to a sprawling, disorganized one. When a gap opened in the Persian ranks, he and his elite cavalrymen dashed into the breach, splitting the opposing army in two. He had conquered the Persians at last.
By adding the vast Persian realm to his Balkan kingdom, Alexander forged a Eurasian empire of unprecedented scope. In , after Alexander had recovered, he and his army headed north along the rugged Persian Gulf, where many fell prey to illness, injury and death.
In February , Alexander at last reached the city of Susa. Desperate to retain his leadership and recruit more soldiers, he tried to connect Persian nobles to Macedonians in order to create a ruling class. To this end, at Susa he commanded that a large number of Macedonians marry Persian princesses.
After Alexander managed to recruit tens of thousands of Persian soldiers into his army, he dismissed many of his existing Macedonian soldiers. This enraged the soldiers, who spoke critically of Alexander's new troops and condemned him for adopting Persian customs and manners. Alexander appeased the Macedonian soldiers by killing 13 Persian military leaders.
The Thanksgiving Feast at Susa, which had been geared towards solidifying the bond between Persians and Macedonians, shaped up to be quite the opposite. He was just 32 years old. Rhoxana gave birth to his son a few months later. After Alexander died, his empire collapsed and the nations within it battled for power.
Over time, the cultures of Greece and the Orient synthesized and thrived as a side effect of Alexander's empire, becoming part of his legacy and spreading the spirit of Panhellenism. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
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