Alexander the Great
All I Do is Win
In Alexander’s time, the Persian empire was the dominant player in the Mediterranean. Its territory stretched along the shores of the sea from today’s Bulgaria, across Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia into India and China on the Asian continent. Against its foes, it could field an army of 100,000.
But before Alexander could take on the Persians, who he had studied since childhood, he first had to consolidate his hold over the Greek peninsula. In Macedon, he eliminated his political rivals and had his father’s most recent wife and daughter burned alive. He even had one of his father’s generals murdered to ensure the army would be led by his friends, with whom he studied under Aristotle.
After a few key wins over the armies in Thessaly, the rest of the Greek kingdoms bent the knee and promised fealty. The other option being the complete destruction of their cities and their women and children being sold into slavery, which was common practice at the time.
With the Greek peninsula under his control, and his army bolstered with conscripts, Alexander set out to conquer an empire.
According to thehistoryofmacedonia.com: the army consisted of 25,000 Macedonians, 7,600 Greeks, and 7,000 Thracians and Illyrians, but the chief officers were all Macedonians, and Macedonians also commanded the foreign troops. The army soon encountered the forces of King Darius III. There were 40,000 Persians and 20,000 Greeks waiting for them at the crossing of the river Granicus, near the ancient city of Troy.
The Macedonians defeated the Persians, although the Greeks held their ground and fiercely fought. Almost the entire Greek force was annihilated. 18,000 Greeks perished on the banks of Granicus and the 2,000 survivors were sent to forced labor in Macedonia.
After the battle, Alexander visited Gordium. Gordium was the home of the famous Gordian Knot. Alexander knew the legend said that the man who could untie the ancient knot was destined to rule the entire world. To that date, nobody had succeeded in raveling the knot. But the young Macedonian king simply slashed it with his sword and unraveled its ends. Pointing out it was never said how the knot could be unraveled.
In the autumn of 333 BC, the Macedonian armies encountered the Persian forces under the command of King Darius III himself at a mountain pass at Issus in northwestern Syria. The battle again ended with victory for Alexander and tens of thousands of Persians, Greeks, and Asiatic soldiers were killed. King Darius fled the field abandoning his mother, wife, and children who were in camp.
After that significant win, Alexander entered Egypt in 331 BC, where the Persian governor surrendered without a fight. After two hundred years of Persian rule, the Egyptians viewed the Macedonians as heroes. Here Alexander ordered that a city be designed and founded in his name at the mouth of the Nile river, as a trading and military Macedonian outpost. He never lived to see it built, but Alexandria would become a major economic and cultural center in the Mediterranean world not only during the Macedonian rule in Egypt but for centuries after.
Alexander then took his army back Eastward to pursue Darius and end his reign in battle or murder. By the time he caught up to him, he found the Persian king dead in his coach, assassinated by his own bodyguards.
Alexander then marched triumphantly into the Persian capital of Persopolis to assume his place as ruler of the largest empire in the world. But conquest is a thirst that cannot be quenched, and in a matter of years, he set out to invade India and topple its King Porus. In 326 BC, Alexander’s army met at the heavily defended river Hydaspes during a raging thunderstorm. It was here that the Macedonians first encountered war elephants, yet the outcome was still the same, a resounding victory for Alexander.
But the scale of fortune must be balanced with the weight of misfortune. And it was this battle that saw the death of Alexander’s beloved horse, Bucephalus.
Extended supply lines and the prospect of larger armies and a greater number of war elephants convinced Alexander to head back toward Persopolis. He was also dealing with a near mutiny from his men who had seen more than 8 years and 11,000 miles of fighting, marching, and death. Unfortunately for his men, the way home led through the infamous Makran desert.
According to Norman Cantor in Alexander the Great: It took sixty days to traverse the Makran desert, and after getting lost in a blinding sandstorm, the gaunt skeletons that had been Alexander’s army emerged. The disastrous march through the desert has been compared to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812. The losses were staggering. Perhaps 85,000 people started into the desert; only about 25,000 survives. Alexander’s horses, equipment, and supplies were all lost, as were the majority of the noncombatants in the army.
When he arrived in Babylon in June of 323 BC he threw an extravagant feast in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II that would last more than two weeks.
Cantor details: The last ten days of Alexander’s life are somewhat shadowy in content. The rumors that he was poisoned arose because his death occurred so quickly, and no one could die that quickly unless he was poisoned--or at least that was the wisdom of the day. More likely, he developed a fever from malaria or typhoid, but he continued to attend banquets where drinking was heavy.
He took his usual bath each morning, made his customary offerings to the gods, and continued to drink each night. The fever intensified over the ten days, and eventually, he lapsed into a coma. He died on June 10, 323 BC, without leaving any clear-cut directions on his succession. He was thirty-three years old.
Alexander's body was laid in a gold anthropoid sarcophagus that was filled with honey, which was in turn placed in a gold casket
For all practical purposes, Alexander’s empire died with Alexander. His only brother was feeble-minded, and his only heir was a baby. Neither was in any position to assert authority.
So why was Alexander so great? History.com posits: Many conquered lands retained the Greek influence Alexander introduced, and several cities he founded remain important cultural centers even today. From his death to 31 B.C., when his empire finally folded, the period of history would come to be known as the Hellenistic period.
In addition, his armies were never defeated on the battlefield. And although his empire would not last, he is considered one of the most influential, powerful, and brilliant leaders the ancient world has ever produced.
