Alexander The Great, King Of Macedonia, is one of history’s foremost military leaders. Alexander established an empire that extended from Greece to India.
He was the first to be called “the great”. He conquered the Persian empire and annexed it to Macedonia. Alexander was the son of Phillip the second and Olympas. He was born in 356 B.C.,and was brought up as a crown prince. Alexander was taught for a time by Arisdotle, a Greek philosipher, and he aquired a love for the works of Homer, and an infatuation with the Heroic Age. When his father Phillip divorced his mother Olympias to marry a younger princess Alexander fled. Although allowed to return, he remained isolated and insecure until Phillip’s mysterious assassination about June of 336 B.C.
Alexander was at once presented to the army as king. Winning its support he eliminated all other rivals and gained the allegiance of the Macedonian nobles and the Greeks. Then he defeated the neiboring barbarians, after a rebellion that destroyed Thebes. Next he started a campaign through the Anatolian highlands where he met and defeated the Persian army under Darius the third at Issus(near modern day Turkey). He then occupied Syria and after a long siege of Tyre, then Phoenicia and then he marched into Egypt,were he was accepted as pharaoh. From there he visited the famous Libyan oracle or amon. The oracle certainly haled him as amon’s son and probably promised him that he would become a god.
He then organized Egypt and founded the city of Alexandria, next he crossed the Easter Desert and the Tigris an Euphrates Rivers. Then, in the autumn of 331 B.C. he defeated Darius’ grand army at Guagamela(near modern day Iraq). Darius then fled to the mountain residence of Ecbatana,while Alexander occupied Babylon, the imperial capital of Susa, and Persepolis. Henceforth Alexander acted as legitimate king of Persia. Yet a major uprising in Greece had him so deeply worried that he destroyed the great palace complex as a gesture to the Greeks.
Alexander increasingly oriental behavior led to trouble with the Macedonian and Greek nobles. He then restored discipline and invaded Punjab. After conquering most of it he was stopped from pressing on to the distantGanges River by a mutiny of the soldiers. Turning south he marched down to the mouth of the Indus River, were he engaged in some of the heaviest and bloodies fighting of the war. He was nearly killed while assaulting a town. On reaching the Indian Ocean he sent a Greek officer named Nearchus with a fleet to explore the coastal route to Mesopotamia. Part of the army returned by way of a more tolerable land route while Alexander with the rest marched back through the desert of southern Iran. He emerged safely in the winter of 325-24 B.C., after the worst sufferings and losses of the entire campaign, to find his personal control over the heart of the empire weakened by the many years of his absence and rumors of his death. On his return he executed several of his governors and senior officials and replaced others.
In the spring on 324 B.C. Alexander held a great victory celebration at Susa. He and 80 close associates married Iranian noblewomen. When he discharged the Macedonian veterans a little later, after defeating a mutiny by the estranged and exasperated Macedonian army, they had to leave their wives and children with him, because national prejudices had prevented the unification of his empire. His aim was apparently to prepare a long-term solution(he was only 32)by breeding a new body of high nobles and mixed blood and also creating the core of a royal army attached only to himself. But, after his death nearly all the noble marriages were disolved.
In the autumn of 324 B.C., at Ecbatan, Alexander lost his boyhood friend Hephaestion, by then his grand-vizer, he was probably the only person Alexander had ever loved. The loss was irreparable, and after deep mourning, he embarked on a winter campaign in the mountains. Then he returned to Babylon, were he prepared an expedition for the conquest for Arabia. But he died in June of 323 B.C. without designating a successor. He was only 33 years old.
