Encyclopedia
Alexander the Great , also known as
Alexander III, king of
Macedon , was one of the most successful military commanders in history, conquering most of the
known world before his death; he is frequently included in a list along with
Genghis Khan,
Napoleon Bonaparte,
Simon Bolivar,
Tipu Sultan,
Hannibal and
Julius Caesar, as one of the greatest military strategists and tacticians who ever lived. Alexander is also known in the
Zoroastrian Middle Persian work
Arda Wiraz Namag as "the accursed Alexander" due to his conquest of the
Persian Empire and the destruction of its capital
Persepolis. He is known as
Eskandar in
Persian and even acclaimed during the construction of the Great Wall
Sadd-e Eskandar by the
Parthian Dynasty. He is often identified as
Dhul-Qarnayn in Middle Eastern traditions and is called
al-Iskandar al-Kabeer in
Arabic,
Sikandar-e-azam in
Urdu,
Skandar in
Pashto,
Alexander Mokdon in
Hebrew, and
Tre-Qarnayia in
Aramaic , apparently due to an image on coins minted during his rule that seemingly depicted him with the two ram's horns of the Egyptian god
Ammon. He is known as
Sikandar in
Urdu and
Hindi, a term also used as a synonym for "expert" or "extremely skilled".
Following the unification of the multiple city-states of
ancient Greece under the rule of his father,
Philip II of Macedon, , Alexander would conquer the
Persian Empire, including
Anatolia,
Syria,
Phoenicia,
Judea,
Gaza,
Egypt,
Bactria and
Mesopotamia and extend the boundaries of his own
empire as far as the
Punjab. Alexander integrated foreigners into his army and administration, leading some scholars to credit him with a "policy of fusion." He encouraged marriage between his army and foreigners, and practised it himself. After twelve years of constant military campaigning, Alexander died, possibly of
malaria, typhoid, or viral encephalitis. His conquests ushered in centuries of Greek settlement and rule over distant areas, a period known as the
Hellenistic Age. Alexander himself lived on in the history and myth of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. Already during his lifetime, and especially after his death, his exploits inspired a literary tradition in which he appears as a legendary hero in the tradition of
Achilles.
One of the
Moon's
craters, Alexander, was named in his honor.
Early life
Alexander the Great was the son of King
Philip II of Macedon and of his fourth wife, Epirote princess Olympias. According to
Plutarch , Olympias was impregnated not by Philip, who was afraid of her, and her affinity for sleeping in the company of snakes, but by
Zeus Ammon.
Plutarch relates that both Philip and Olympias dreamt of their son's future birth. Olympias dreamed of a loud burst of thunder and of lightning striking her womb. In Philip's dream, he sealed her womb with the seal of the
lion. Alarmed by this, he consulted the seer Aristander of Telmessus, who determined that his wife was pregnant and that the child would have the character of a lion.
Aristotle was Alexander's tutor and he gave Alexander a thorough training in
rhetoric and
literature and stimulated his interest in
science,
medicine, and
philosophy. After his visit to the Oracle of
Ammon at
Siwa, according to five historians of antiquity , rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be
Zeus, rather than Philip. According to Plutarch, his father descended from
Heracles through Caranus and his mother descended from Aeacus through
Neoptolemus and
Achilles. Aristotle gave him a copy of the
Iliad is, together with the
Odyssey [i], one of two ancient Greek [i] epic [i]...
which he always kept with him and read frequently.
Ascent of Macedon
When Philip led an attack on Byzantium in 340 BC, Alexander, aged 16, was left as regent of Macedonia. In 339 BC, Philip took a fifth wife, the Macedonian Cleopatra. As Alexander's mother, Olympias, was from Epirus , and Cleopatra was a true Macedonian, this led to a dispute over Alexander's legitimacy as heir to the throne. Attalus, the uncle of the bride, supposedly gave a toast during the wedding feast giving his wish for the wedding to result in a legitimate heir to the throne of Macedon; Alexander hurled his goblet at Attalus shouting "What am I, a then?" Alexander's father apparently had drawn his sword and moved towards Alexander, but then had fallen in a drunken stupor. Alexander remarked "Here is the man planning on conquering from Greece to Asia, and he cannot even move from one table to another." Alexander, his mother, and sister then left Macedon in anger.
Eventually Philip reconciled with his son, and Alexander returned home; Olympias and Alexander's sister remained in Epirus. In 338 BC Alexander assisted his father at the decisive Battle of Chaeronea against the Greek city-states of Athens and
Thebes, in which the cavalry wing led by Alexander annihilated the
Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite corps regarded as invincible. After the battle, Phillip led a wild celebration, from which Alexander was notably absent . Philip was content to deprive Thebes of its dominion over
Boeotia and leave a Macedonian garrison in the citadel. A few months later, to strengthen Macedon's control over the Greek city-states, the League of Corinth was formed.
In 336 BC, Philip was assassinated at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra of Macedonia to King Alexander of Epirus. The
assassin was supposedly a former lover of the king, the disgruntled young nobleman Pausanias, who held a grudge against Philip because the king had ignored a complaint he had expressed. Philip's murder was once thought to have been planned with the knowledge and involvement of Alexander or Olympias. Another possible instigator could have been
Darius III, the recently crowned King of Persia. After Philip's death, the army proclaimed Alexander, then aged 20, as the new king of Macedon. Greek cities like Athens and Thebes, which had been forced to pledge allegiance to Philip, saw in the new king an opportunity to retake their full independence. Alexander moved swiftly and Thebes, which had been most active against him, submitted when he appeared at its gates. The assembled Greeks at the
Isthmus of Corinth, with the exception of the
Spartans, elected him to the command against Persia, which had previously been bestowed upon his father.
The next year, , Alexander felt free to engage the
Thracians and the
Illyrians in order to secure the
Danube as the northern boundary of the Macedonian kingdom. While he was triumphantly campaigning north, the Thebans and Athenians rebelled once again. Alexander reacted immediately and while the other cities once again hesitated, Thebes decided this time to resist with the utmost vigor. The resistance was useless; in the end, the city was conquered with great bloodshed. The Thebans encountered an ever harsher fate when their city was razed to the ground and its territory divided between the other Boeotian cities. Moreover, all of the city's citizens were sold into slavery, sparing only the priests, the leaders of the pro-Macedonian party and the descendants of Pindar, whose house was the only one left untouched. The end of Thebes cowed Athens into submission and it readily accepted Alexander's demand for the exile of all the leaders of the anti-Macedonian party,
Demosthenes first of all.
Period of conquests
Fall of the Persian Empire
Alexander's army had crossed the Hellespont with about 42,000 soldiers - primarily Macedonians and Greeks, more southern city-states of Greece, but also including some Thracians, Paionians and Illyrians. After an initial victory against Persian forces at the
Battle of Granicus, Alexander accepted the surrender of the Persian provincial capital and treasury of
Sardis and proceeded down the
Ionian coast. At
Halicarnassus, Alexander successfully waged the first of many
sieges, eventually forcing his opponents, the mercenary captain Memnon of Rhodes and the Persian satrap of
Caria, Orontobates, to withdraw by sea. Alexander left Caria in the hands of Ada, who was ruler of Caria before being deposed by her brother Pixodarus. From Halicarnassus, Alexander proceeded into mountainous
Lycia and the
Pamphylian plain, asserting control over all coastal cities and denying them to his enemy. From Pamphylia onward, the coast held no major ports and so Alexander moved inland. At
Termessus, Alexander humbled but did not storm the
Pisidian city. At the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordium, Alexander "undid" the tangled
Gordian Knot, a feat said to await the future "king of
Asia." According to the most vivid story, Alexander proclaimed that it did not matter how the knot was undone, and he hacked it apart with his sword. Another version claims that he did not use the sword, but actually figured out how to undo the knot.
Alexander's army crossed the Cilician Gates, met and defeated the main Persian army under the command of Darius III at the
Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Darius fled this battle in such a panic for his life that he left behind his wife, his two daughters, his mother Sisygambis, and much of his personal treasure. Proceeding down the
Mediterranean coast, he took
Tyre and
Gaza after famous sieges . Alexander passed through
Judea near
Jerusalem but probably did not visit the city.
In 332 BC - 331 BC, Alexander was welcomed as a liberator in
Egypt and was pronounced the son of Zeus by Egyptian priests of the god Ammon at the Oracle of the god at the
Siwa Oasis in the
Libyan desert. Henceforth, Alexander referred to the god Zeus-Ammon as his true father, and subsequent currency featuring his head with ram horns was proof of this widespread belief. He founded
Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the prosperous capital of the
Ptolemaic dynasty after his death. Leaving Egypt, Alexander marched eastward into
Assyria and defeated Darius and a third Persian army at the
Battle of Gaugamela. Darius was forced to flee the field after his charioteer was killed, and Alexander chased him as far as Arbela. While Darius fled over the mountains to
Ecbatana , Alexander marched to
Babylon.
From Babylon, Alexander went to
Susa, one of the
Achaemenid capitals, and captured its treasury. Sending the bulk of his army to
Persepolis, the Persian capital, by the
Royal Road, Alexander stormed and captured the Persian Gates , then sprinted for
Persepolis before its treasury could be looted. After several months Alexander allowed the troops to loot Persepolis. A fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes and spread to the rest of the city. It was not known if it was a drunken accident or a deliberate act of revenge for the burning of the
Athenian Acropolis during the
Second Persian War. The
Book of Arda Wiraz, a Zoroastrian work composed in the 3rd or 4th century AD, also speaks of archives containing "all the
Avesta and Zand, written upon prepared cow-skins, and with gold ink" that were destroyed; but it must be said that this statement is often treated by scholars with a certain measure of skepticism, because it is generally thought that for many centuries the Avesta was transmitted mainly orally by the
Magians.
He then set off in pursuit of Darius, who was kidnapped, and then murdered by followers of Bessus, his
Bactrian satrap and kinsman. Bessus then declared himself Darius' successor as Artaxerxes V and retreated into
Central Asia to launch a
guerrilla campaign against Alexander. With the death of Darius, Alexander declared the war of vengeance over, and released his Greek and other allies from service in the League campaign .
His three-year campaign against first Bessus and then the satrap of
Sogdiana, Spitamenes, took him through
Media,
Parthia, Aria, Drangiana,
Arachosia,
Bactria, and
Scythia. In the process, he captured and refounded
Herat and
Maracanda. Moreover, he founded a series of new cities, all called Alexandria, including modern
Kandahar in
Afghanistan, and
Alexandria Eschate in modern
Tajikistan. In the end, both were betrayed by their men, Bessus in 329 BC and Spitamenes the year after.
Hostility toward Alexander
During this time, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian dress and customs at his court, notably the custom of
proskynesis, a symbolic kissing of the hand that Persians paid to their social superiors, but a practice of which the Greeks disapproved. The Greeks regarded the gesture as the preserve of deities and believed that Alexander meant to deify himself by requiring it. This cost him much in the sympathies of many of his countrymen. Here, too, a plot against his life was revealed, and one of his officers, Philotas, was executed for treason for failing to bring the plot to his attention. Parmenion, Philotas' father, who had been charged with guarding the treasury at
Ecbatana, was assassinated by command of Alexander, who feared that Parmenion might attempt to avenge his son. Several other trials for treason followed, and many Macedonians were executed. Later on, in a drunken quarrel at
Maracanda, he also killed the man who had saved his life at Granicus, Clitus the Black. Later in the Central Asian campaign, a second plot against his life, this one by his own pages, was revealed, and his official historian, Callisthenes of Olynthus , was implicated on what many historians regard as trumped-up charges. However, the evidence is strong that Callisthenes, the teacher of the pages, must have been the one who persuaded them to assassinate the king.
Invasion of India
After the death of Spitamenes and his marriage to Roxana to cement his relations with his new Central Asian satrapies, in 326 BC Alexander was finally free to turn his attention to
India. Alexander invited all the
chieftains of the former satrapy of
Gandhara, in the north of present-day
Pakistan, to come to him and submit to his authority. Ambhi, ruler of
Taxila, whose kingdom extended from the
Indus to the Hydaspes , complied. But the chieftains of some hilly clans including the
Aspasios and
Assakenois sections of the
Kambojas , known in Indian texts as
Ashvayanas and
Ashvakayanas , refused to submit.
Alexander personally took command of the shield-bearing guards, foot-companions, archers, Agrianians and horse-javelin-men and led them against the
Kamboja clans -- the
Aspasios of Kunar/Alishang
valleys, the Guraeans of the Guraeus valley, and the Assakenois of the
Swat and Buner valleys. Writes one modern historian: "They were brave people and it was hard work for Alexander to take their strongholds, of which Massaga and Aornus need special mention." A fierce contest ensued with the Aspasios in which Alexander himself was wounded in the shoulder by a dart but eventually the Aspasios lost the fight; 40,000 of them were enslaved. The Assakenois faced Alexander with an army of 30,000 cavalry, 38,000 infantry and 30 elephants. They had fought bravely and offered stubborn resistance to the invader in many of their strongholds like cities of Ora, Bazira and Massaga. The fort of Massaga could only be reduced after several days of bloody fighting in which Alexander himself was wounded seriously in the ankle. When the
Chieftain of Massaga fell in the battle, the supreme command of the army went to his old mother
Cleophis who also stood determined to defend her motherland to the last extremity. The example of Cleophis assuming the supreme command of the military also brought the entire women of the locality into the fighting. orical accounts describing Alexander's love for Hephaestion and Bagoas as sexual are strongly contested on the grounds that they were written centuries afterwards and may be mistaken. On the other hand, as will be seen below, almost all of our detailed information regarding Alexander comes from much later sources. Such debates, however, are generally considered anachronistic by scholars of the period, who point out that the concept of homosexuality as understood today did not exist in Greco-Roman
antiquity. Sexual attraction between males was seen as a normal and universal part of human nature, since it was believed that men were attracted to
beauty, an attribute of the young, regardless of gender. If Alexander's love life was transgressive, it was not for his love of beautiful youths but for his persistent love of a man his own age. The ancient Greeks saw sex as an activity, not an identifier, a viewpoint shared by contemporary cultures at the time.
Death
On the afternoon of June 10 - 11, 323 BC, Alexander died of a mysterious illness in the palace of
Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon. He was just one month shy of attaining 33 years of age. Various theories have been proposed for the cause of his death which include poisoning by the sons of Antipater or others, sickness that followed a drinking party, or a relapse of the
malaria he had contracted in 336 BC.
It is known that on May 29, Alexander participated in a banquet organized by his friend Medius of Larissa. After some heavy drinking, immediately before or after a bath, he was forced into bed due to severe illness. The rumors of his illness circulated with the troops causing them to be more and more anxious. On June 9, the generals decided to let the soldiers see their king alive one last time. They were admitted to his presence one at a time. While the king was too ill to speak, confined himself to move his hand. The day after, Alexander was dead.
The poisoning theory derives from the story held in antiquity by Justin and Curtius. The original story stated that
Cassander, son of Antipater, viceroy of Greece, brought the poison to Alexander in Babylon in a mule's hoof, and that Alexander's royal cupbearer, Iollas, brother of Cassander, administered it. Many had powerful motivations for seeing Alexander gone, and were none the worse for it after his death. Deadly agents that could have killed Alexander in one or more doses include hellebore and
strychnine. In R. Lane Fox's opinion, the strongest argument against the poison theory is the fact that twelve days had passed between the start of his illness and his death and in the ancient world, such long-acting poisons were probably not available.
However, the warrior culture of Macedon favoured the sword over strychnine, and many ancient historians, like Plutarch and
Arrian, maintained that Alexander was not poisoned, but died of natural causes. Instead, it is likely that Alexander died of malaria or typhoid fever, which were rampant in ancient Babylon. Other illnesses could have also been the culprit, including acute pancreatitis or the
West Nile virus. Recently, theories have been advanced stating that Alexander may have died from the treatment not the disease.
Hellebore, believed to have been widely used as a medicine at the time but deadly in large doses, may have been overused by the impatient king to speed his recovery, with deadly results. Disease-related theories often cite the fact that Alexander's health had fallen to dangerously low levels after years of heavy drinking and suffering several appalling wounds , and that it was only a matter of time before one sickness or another finally killed him.
No story is conclusive. Alexander's death has been reinterpreted many times over the centuries, and each generation offers a new take on it. What is certain is that Alexander died of a high fever on June 10 or 11 of 323 BC.
On his death bed, his marshals asked him to whom he bequeathed his kingdom. Since Alexander had no heir , it was a question of vital importance. There is some debate to what Alexander replied. Some believe that Alexander said, "To the strongest!". It should be taken into note however that he might have said, "To
Craterus". This is possible because the Greek pronunciation of "the strongest" and "Craterus" is different only by accent. The phrase and name are in fact, separated by only one letter in the ancient Greek language. Most scholar's believe that if Alexander did intend to choose one of his generals, his obvious choice would've been Craterus because he was the commander of the largest part of the army , because he had proven himself to be an excellent strategist, and because he displayed traits of the "ideal" Macedonian. Regardless of his reply, Craterus was eventually assassinated before he could organize a coup with the infantry and Alexander's empire was split into 4 kingdoms.
Alexander's death has been surrounded by as much controversy as many of the events of his life. Before long, accusations of foul play were being thrown about by his generals at one another, making it incredibly hard for a modern historian to sort out the propaganda and the half-truths from the actual events. No contemporary source can be fully trusted because of the incredible level of self-serving recording, and as a result what truly happened to Alexander the Great may never be known.
Alexander's body was placed in a gold anthropid
sarcophagus, which was in turn placed in a second gold casket and covered with a purple robe. Alexander's coffin was placed, together with his armour, in a gold carriage which had a vaulted roof supported by an Ionic peristyle. The decoration of the carriage was very rich and is described in great detail by Diodoros.
According to legend, Alexander was preserved in a clay vessel full of
honey 
