Alexander the Great (356-323 BC): Conquests of Macedon's King

Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon) ruled the kingdom of Macedon in northern Greece from 336 to 323 BC. In just over a decade he defeated the Persian Empire, the largest state of its time, and led his army from the Balkans to Egypt and as far as the Indus valley. He died in Babylon at the age of 32, and the kingdoms his generals carved from his empire spread Greek language and culture across the Middle East for centuries.

Early life and education

Alexander was born in Pella, the Macedonian capital, in July 356 BC. His father was King Philip II, who was turning Macedon into the strongest military power in the Greek world. His mother, Olympias, was a princess of Epirus, a kingdom in north-western Greece. Ancient writers say she encouraged Alexander’s belief in his own special destiny and claimed descent from Achilles, the hero of the Iliad.

From about 343 BC Philip engaged the philosopher Aristotle as tutor to his son. Lessons took place at Mieza, a sanctuary of the Nymphs some distance from the court. Alexander studied poetry, politics, ethics, rhetoric and natural science, and Plutarch says he kept a copy of the Iliad annotated by Aristotle with him on campaign.

Plutarch also tells the famous story of the young prince taming the horse Bucephalus, which no one else could ride, by turning its head towards the sun so that it was not frightened by its own shadow. Bucephalus carried Alexander for most of his campaigns and died in India in 326 BC.

At 16, while his father was on campaign, Alexander acted as regent and put down a revolt of the Maedi, a Thracian people. At 18 he commanded the Macedonian left wing at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, where Philip defeated Athens and Thebes.

Becoming king

Relations between father and son became strained when Philip married Cleopatra, a young Macedonian noblewoman, in 337 BC. In 336 BC, while Philip was celebrating a family wedding in the theatre at Aegae, he was stabbed to death by Pausanias, one of his bodyguards. The motive is still debated, and some ancient writers suspected Olympias or even Alexander, although there is no proof.

Alexander, aged 20, was acclaimed king by the army. He quickly removed possible rivals, secured Thessaly and the leadership of the League of Corinth, and campaigned in Thrace and Illyria. When Thebes revolted in 335 BC on a false rumour of his death, he took the city by storm. Thebes was razed, except for the temples and, according to tradition, the house of the poet Pindar; Diodorus says about 6,000 were killed and 30,000 enslaved.

The conquest of Persia

In spring 334 BC Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia with an army of roughly 30,000 to 37,000 infantry and about 5,000 cavalry, joining an advance force already there. At Troy he paid tribute at the tomb of Achilles.

His first battle, at the Granicus river in May 334 BC, broke the army of the Persian governors of Asia Minor. The Greek cities of the coast were taken over, although Miletus and Halicarnassus resisted sieges. At Gordium in Phrygia, according to the famous story, he “solved” the Gordian knot, by cutting it with his sword in one version or by pulling out its pin in another.

In November 333 BC he met the Persian king Darius III himself at Issus, near the north-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, and routed him. Darius fled, leaving his mother, wife and children as captives. Instead of pursuing him, Alexander secured the eastern Mediterranean coast to deny the Persian fleet its bases. Tyre, an island city, held out for seven months in 332 BC; Gaza resisted for about two more.

Egypt surrendered without a fight in late 332 BC. There Alexander founded Alexandria, which became the greatest city of the Hellenistic world, and travelled to the oracle of Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan desert, where he was reportedly greeted as the son of the god.

On 1 October 331 BC he defeated Darius decisively at Gaugamela in northern Mesopotamia. Babylon and Susa opened their gates, and in early 330 BC Alexander forced the Persian Gates pass and entered Persepolis, the ceremonial capital, whose palaces were burned a few months later. In July 330 BC Darius was murdered by his own satrap Bessus while fleeing. Alexander now claimed to be the rightful king of the Achaemenid Empire.

Central Asia and India

The years 330 to 327 BC were spent in a hard war in Bactria and Sogdiana, roughly modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Bessus was captured and executed, but local resistance under leaders such as Spitamenes continued for two years. In 327 BC Alexander married Roxana, the daughter of a Bactrian noble.

These years also saw growing tension with his own officers. The general Philotas was executed for an alleged plot in 330 BC and his father Parmenion was murdered on Alexander’s orders. In 328 BC Alexander killed his friend Cleitus the Black in a drunken quarrel. His attempt to introduce proskynesis, a Persian court gesture of respect, met fierce Macedonian opposition, and the historian Callisthenes, Aristotle’s relative, died in custody after a conspiracy by royal pages.

In 327 BC the army crossed the Hindu Kush into the Indus region. In May 326 BC Alexander defeated the Indian king Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes, then restored him as an ally. At the Hyphasis river (the modern Beas) his exhausted troops refused to march further east, and he turned back.

The return and death

The army sailed down the Indus to the ocean. Alexander was badly wounded by an arrow in the chest while storming a town of the Malli. He then led part of the army through the Gedrosian desert in southern Iran, where many soldiers and camp followers died of thirst and heat, while his admiral Nearchus brought the fleet along the coast.

Back in Persia in 324 BC, Alexander punished officials who had abused their power. At Susa he and about 80 of his officers married Persian and Iranian noblewomen in a mass ceremony; he himself married Stateira, daughter of Darius, and Parysatis, daughter of an earlier king. A mutiny at Opis was ended by reconciliation and a banquet. Later that year his closest friend Hephaestion died at Ecbatana, and Alexander was devastated.

In Babylon, while planning an expedition to Arabia, he fell ill after a banquet. He died on 10 or 11 June 323 BC. Contemporary Babylonian records confirm the date. The cause is still unknown.

Key people

• Philip II (c. 382-336 BC): his father, creator of the Macedonian army.
• Olympias (c. 375-316 BC): his mother, influential at court until her death.
• Aristotle (384-322 BC): philosopher and his tutor in his teens.
• Darius III (ruled 336-330 BC): the last Achaemenid king of Persia.
• Hephaestion (died 324 BC): his closest friend and a senior commander.

Legacy

Alexander left no adult heir. His half-brother Philip III Arrhidaeus and his posthumous son by Roxana, Alexander IV, were proclaimed joint kings, but real power lay with his generals. By about 310 BC both kings had been murdered, and four decades of conflict, the Wars of the Diadochi, divided the empire into rival kingdoms.

Those kingdoms created the Hellenistic world, in which Greek became the shared language of government, trade and learning from Egypt to Afghanistan. Ancient writers credit Alexander with founding many cities, often named Alexandria; the true number is uncertain and probably far fewer than the 70 claimed in some sources, but several, such as Alexandria in Egypt, became major centres.

Alexander’s reputation has always been divided. Admirers have praised his generalship, courage and vision of uniting peoples; critics point to the massacres, the destruction of cities and his growing autocracy. Later rulers from Julius Caesar to Napoleon measured themselves against him, and legends of “Iskandar” spread across Persian, Arabic and medieval European literature.

Myths and facts

Myth: he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. The popular saying distorts an anecdote in Plutarch’s essays, in which Alexander weeps on hearing a philosopher speak of countless worlds, because he has not yet conquered even one. It is a moral tale, not a reliable record.

Myth: Alexander was Greek in the same sense as Athenians. The Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect and their kings took part in the Olympic Games, but many southern Greeks regarded them as outsiders. Historians still debate the ethnic identity of ancient Macedon.

Timeline

• 356 BC, July: Alexander is born at Pella.
• 343 BC: Aristotle becomes his tutor at Mieza.
• 338 BC, August: He commands the left wing at Chaeronea.
• 336 BC: Philip II is assassinated; Alexander becomes king.
• 334 BC, May: Victory at the Granicus river.
• 333 BC, November: Victory over Darius III at Issus.
• 331 BC, 1 October: Decisive victory at Gaugamela.
• 326 BC, May: Victory over Porus at the Hydaspes; the army mutinies at the Hyphasis.
• 323 BC, 10 or 11 June: Alexander dies in Babylon.

Why it matters

Alexander destroyed a two-century-old Persian Empire and replaced it with a Greek-speaking ruling class across much of Asia and North Africa. The Hellenistic age that followed shaped Roman culture, early Christianity and the scientific traditions later inherited by the Islamic world and Europe.