Wikipedia: Alexander the Great

Showing revision 11

Alexander the Great (356 BC - 323 BC) was born Alexander III, son of Philip?, King of Macedonia. Macedonia was a country to the north and east of classical Greece, regarded as semi-barbarian (and therefore foreign) by most Greeks, but the Macedonians felt as Greeks, as a matter of honor. Alexander's mother was from Epirus?, another semi-Greek state to the north and west of the Greek peninsula.

Alexander was a high-spirited youth, a wild horseman, and a favorite captain of his father's army. He studied with Aristotle, who was his private teacher.

In 336, he succeeded his father on the throne. Having established his political power in Greece, he set off on his famous conquest of Persia in 334. Within two years, he had conquered the eastern Mediterranean coast, and in 332-331, he conquered Egypt. Returning to Persia proper, he occupied Babylon within the same year. He proceeded to Media?, Scythia?, catpuring places such as Herat and on to India. Having adopted Persian dress and customs (e.g., at audiences, his subjects had to cast themselves on their faces when approaching him), he lost a lot of sympathies amongst his Greek countrymen. Many of his soldiers died when he drove his army further and further east, through deserts and other hostile territories. Having won battles in India, he returned west through Makran in an attempt to consolidate his empire, but died of a sudden fever before he returned.

He left a huge empire of Persio-Greek culture (which then broke up into three parts), and an odd assemblage of towns: Alexandrias, Alexandropolises and other Alexvilles all over Greece, Persia, Egypt, and all the way to India.

Oddly, he seems to be cursed to this day in Iran for having burned Persepolis, which is supposed to have been quite pretty before Alexander arrived. This ill reputation is not really deserved, for in life Alexander was a strong supporter of equality between Greeks and Persians. Even so, modern critics have found much blame in his other actions, and modern opinion is strongly divided as to whether he was a heroic general or an ancient Hitler.

The death of Alexander the Great and hence the beginning of the successor kingdoms is used as the division between Hellenic civilization and Hellenistic civilization. Alexander's conquests and the administrative needs of his Greek-speaking successors promoted the spread of the use of the Greek language and Greek culture across the eastern Mediterranean and into Mesopotamia.