Alexander the Great 356-323BC
King of Macedonia

Alexander was born in Pella, the son of Philip II, King of Macedonia, and Olympias. He was educated by eminent Greek teachers including Aristotle, and there are several accounts of his assertiveness and strength of character at an early age. He was only 16 when Philip appointed him regent in his absence on a campaign against Byzantium, and at the battle fought against an alliance of Greek cities at Chaeronea (338BC), Alexander commanded the left wing of the Macedonian army and took a decisive part in the action. Philip, now master of the Greek mainland, was appointed general of the Greeks for an invasion of Achaemenid Persia, but was assassinated at his daughter's wedding in 336. It is possible that Alexander himself was implicated in or privy to the plot.

Alexander, not yet 20, became king, and ruthlessly crushed rebellions in Illyria and on the Greek mainland; Thebes was razed to the ground as a warning to the Greeks (335). He took up Philip's plans for a Greek crusade against Persia, crossed the Hellespont and won a major victory over the Persians at Granicus (334), which opened the way to the Greek cities of Asia Minor. At a pass near Issus, in Cilicia, he met Darius III in battle and completely defeated him (333). The family of Darius, as well as his treasure, fell into Alexander's hands, and were treated by him with great clemency and magnanimity.

Alexander proceeded to occupy Damascus, and took and destroyed Tyre after a long and hard siege (332). He marched on to Palestine, and was welcomed in Egypt as a liberator from the Persians. At this point there occurred a key event in Alexander's life: at the cost of six weeks' loss of progress in his campaign, he marched into the Libyan desert to consult the oracle of Ammon at Siwa. Great mystery surrounds the oracle's reply, and it became the subject of much fantasy in the medieval Alexander Romance; whatever it was, Alexander exploited it as a basis for later divine honours in the Greek and Persian worlds. He founded Alexandria, the first and most famous of his new cities, in 331. He again set out to meet Darius, and at Gaugamela near Arbela he won another decisive victory over an even greater army than at Issus. Darius fled, and was eventually murdered by one of his satraps (330).

The great cities of Babylon, Susa and the Persian capital Persepolis opened their gates to Alexander. During his stay in Persepolis, the royal palace was burned down; according to some accounts, this was the work of Alexander himself in a fit of drunkenness. In 329 he overthrew the Scythians and in 328-327 subdued Sogdiana, where he was married to Princess Roxana. Meanwhile, relations with his followers became increasingly difficult: in 330 he executed Philotas and his father Parmenion, in 328 he murdered his friend Cleitus the Black during a drunken brawl, and in 327 the court historian Callisthenes fell out of favour and may have been executed.

In 326 Alexander proceeded to the conquest of India, and at the Hydaspes (Jhelum) overthrew the local king Porus in a hard-fought and costly battle. At the River Hyphasis (Beas), his army refused to go on any further and he was forced to begin the return march. He sent Nearchus downstream to the Persian Gulf, while he himself marched through Gedrosia (Baluchistan), suffering heavy losses on the way (325). At Susa, he held mass marriages of himself and the Macedonian leaders with women of the Persian aristocracy (324). At Babylon he was planning further ambitious conquests, of Arabia and to the west, when he was taken ill after a banquet, and died 11 days later.

Alexander's body was appropriated by Ptolemy I Soter and entombed in Alexandria. An unclear succession resulted in a long power-struggle for parts of the empire between Alexander's leading generals. Eventually it was divided into several kingdoms, principally the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in Asia and the Antigonids in Macedonia.

In later antiquity, Alexander was viewed variously as a ruthless conqueror and destroyer at one extreme, and as a far-sighted statesman pursuing a civilizing mission for the world at the other. Modern scholarship continues to fluctuate between these opposing views. Two issues that caused great offence in the Greek world are still the subject of much discussion: his adoption of Persian customs, and his wish that he be honoured as a god in his lifetime, for which there was no precedent on this scale outside the oriental kingdoms. Alexander's early death, the lack of unambiguous evidence about his ultimate intentions, and the legends that grew up around him in his lifetime and after his death, preclude any definitive conclusion.

Bibliography: There has been more written about Alexander over many centuries than any other figure in history. Contemporary accounts of his life have not survived, but those by Ptolemy I Soter and Aristobulus (a Greek engineer on the expedition) were used as principal sources by Arrian of Nicomedia, who wrote an account of Alexander's life in the 2nd century AD. The medieval Alexander Romance developed many fantastic and imaginary stories about him, including a visit to China. Alexander is the subject of much modern historical fiction, most notably by Mary Renault (1905-83) in the novels Fire from Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972) and Funeral Games (1981).