- Did you know that Alexander the Great
had a habit of renaming
cities after himself,
and in one case, he even named a city
after his beloved horse.
Stick around to learn all
about Alexander the Great
in honor of his birthday.
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Hello, and welcome to "World
History Encyclopedia."
My name is Kelly, and
in honor of the birth
of Alexander the Great on either the 20th
or 21st of July, 356 BCE,
we're going to be answering the questions,
who is Alexander the Great?
Why is he so famous and
was he ever defeated?
Happy birthday, Alexander.
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Alexander the Great, also
known as Alexander III
of Macedon became king of
Macedon after the death
of his father, King Philip II, in 336 BCE.
Alexander is known for
both his military might
and his diplomatic skills,
which aided in his expansion
of the Macedonian Kingdom
to an empire of a size
his father had not even dreamed of.
Alexander is recognized as
a key figure in the spread
of Greek culture and language
throughout the ancient world.
And his death sparked
the beginning of the Hellenistic period,
which spanned from 323 to 31 BCE.
After his death, his
campaigns became legendary,
and later Greek and Roman generals learned
from his successes and failures
and were influenced by his tactics.
When Alexander was young,
he was taught to fight
and ride by Leonidas of
Epirus and how to read, write,
and play the lyre by
Lysimachus of Acarnania.
When he was 13 or 14, he was tutored
by the Greek philosopher,
Aristotle until he was 16/
Perhaps due to Aristotle's teachings
which encouraged tolerance,
Alexander never forced
the Greek culture on those he conquered,
but simply introduced it to them.
Despite his father, Philip
II laying the groundwork
for Alexander to be successful,
Alexander claimed all
the credit for himself
and chose to call himself a son of Zeus,
claiming to be a demigod,
modeling his behavior
after his two favorite
heroes, Hercules and Achilles.
This claim was in part due to Olympias,
Alexander's mother claiming
that his was a virgin birth
and that she was miraculously
impregnated by Zeus.
Alexander's childhood friends,
Hephaestion, Cassander
and Ptolemy would all
become lifelong companions
and generals in his army.
And Aristotle's great
nephew, Callisthenes,
who was also a friend, would
become the court historian
and follow Alexander on campaign.
At 18 years old in 338 BCE
at the Battle of Chaeronea
fought between the Macedonian Empire
and the Greek allied city states,
Alexander's military skill
was first noted when he turned
the tide of the battle
for a Macedonian victory,
and afterwards the Greek city states
were brought under Macedonian rule.
In 336 BCE, just two years
after the battle of Chaeronea,
Philip II died and
Alexander assumed the throne
as King of Macedon.
Alexander wasted no time in
embarking on the extensive
campaign that his father
had been planning,
the conquest of the Persian empire.
(gentle plucky music continues)
As King, Alexander the
Great moved into Asia Minor,
modern day Turkey in 334,
BCE, with 32,000 infantry
and 5,100 cavalry.
And in May of 334, he
fought the Persian satraps
or governors at the Battle of
Granicus and was victorious.
According to Alexander, he
then liberated the cities
of Sardis and Ephesus from Persian rule.
Although, his word liberated
has been understood
as the conquest of these cities.
In 333 BCE, Alexander fought
the Persian King Darius III
at the Battle of Isis, a battle famous
for its depiction on the Alexander Mosaic.
Alexander defeated Darius's larger force
and he then sacked the Phoenician cities
of Baalbek and Sidon and
in 332, he laid siege
to the island city of Tyre.
The siege of Tyre is a famous
example of his commitment
to victory and his ruthfulness.
In order to bring his siege
engines within striking distance
of Tyre's walls, he had his
army build a land bridge
out to the island, which
is how the island city
became linked to the land
as the site still is today.
And in response to the
stubbornness of the inhabitants
of the city refusing to surrender,
he slaughtered most of them
and then sold the survivors as slaves.
In 331, he moved to Egypt and conquered it
and founded the city of Alexandria there,
named after himself, of course.
Alexander had a habit of naming cities
after himself and even
his horse Bucephalus,
but we'll get to that later.
Alexander marched his army
across the desert to the oasis
of Siwa so that he could
visit the Oracle of Zeus Ammon
that presided there.
Alexander knew of the infallible
reputation of the oracle
who had been consulted by the
hero's Heracles and Perseus.
Alexander asked the
oracle whether his father
was truly Philip II, and the
Oracle declared his true father
to be Zeus Ammon.
There was no military
value to marching to Siwa
and losing some men to the desert.
It was either to satisfy his megalomania
or a cleverly calculated
PR stunt to spread the myth
of him being a demigod or both.
We will never know.
The next phase of Alexander's conquests
is known as the Persian campaigns.
In 331, Alexander met Darius
III in battle, once again.
This time at the battle of Gaugamela,
which is also known as
the battle of Arbela.
Alexander was victorious again.
Darius fled the battle,
and then Alexander took the
cities of Babylon and Susa,
which both surrendered to him.
It's safe to say that
Alexander was on a roll.
In the winter of 330,
Alexander and his army
marched to Persepolis and
defeated the Persian hero,
Ariobarzanes and his
sister Youtab Ariobarzane
at the battle of the Persian Gates,
and after Alexander was victorious,
he set Persepolis on fire,
probably in a drunken folly.
In the summer of the same
year, Darius was assassinated
by his cousin and General Bessus,
which Alexander thought was deplorable.
After the death of Darius,
Alexander crowned himself
the King of Asia, gave Darius the burial
of a Persian emperor and
then marched his army
into Bactria what is now
modern day Afghanistan.
If you haven't noticed by
now, this man does not stop.
Between the years 330 and
327, Alexander campaigned
in Bactria and Sogdiana
and won every engagement.
And in 329, he destroyed
the city of Cyropolis,
defeated the Scythians and
founded another city named
after himself, Alexandria
Eschate on the Jaxartes River.
It was around this point that Alexander
began to portray himself
not just as a liberator
of cities, but as a God.
He adopted the title that the rulers
of the first Persian
empire used shahansha,
which means king of kings.
And the Persian custom of proskynesis,
which meant that those who
addressed him had to kneel
and kiss his hand.
To say that his Macedonian
troops were unhappy about this,
is an understatement.
His troops became increasingly
unhappy with his adoption
of Persian customs and were growing more
and more uncomfortable.
So much so that assassination
plans were formed.
Of course, the conspirators
and those who committed treason
or questioned his authority
were found out and executed,
including his close friends, Cleitus,
who was killed with the javelin
and Callisthenes who was
imprisoned and died in confinement.
In 327, Alexander married
the Batrian woman, Roxana,
and then set his sights on India.
The Indian king Ambhi of
Taxila surrendered quickly,
but the Aspasioi and
Assakenoi tribes resisted.
By 326, Alexander had subdued the tribes,
then fought King Porus of Paurava
and his war elephants at the
battle of Hydaspes River.
In true Alexander
fashion, he won the battle
and then made Porus
ruler of a larger region
than he'd previously held.
because of how bravely he
and his troops had fought.
During this battle, his
horse Bucephalus was killed,
and so of course, he named
the city Bucephala after him.
By now, Alexander's troops were exhausted
and they didn't wanna go any further,
and it took some convincing.
But finally, Alexander
decided to head back to Susa.
Half his troops were sent by sea,
and half he marched through
the Gedrosian Desert
where many died of thirst and starvation.
Why he chose to do this,
we don't really know.
When he finally arrived back
in Susa, he found that many
of the satraps he left in
charge had abused their power,
so he executed them, as well as those
who vandalized Cyrus the Great's tomb.
Alexander wanted to merge
the cultures of Macedonia
and Persia more, so in 324, he
held a mass marriage service
in Susa, where he married
Persian noble women
to senior members of his staff
and to connect himself to Persian royalty,
he married one of Darius III's daughters.
His men rejected this cultural merging
and his adoption of Persian dress,
and they really didn't like
how he merged the Macedonian
and Persian army units
and promoted Persians
to high positions, even though it seems
this was an effective policy
in furthering his goal
of uniting the two cultures.
So after looking at all these battles,
which Alexander the Great took part in
during his short life,
was Alexander the Great ever defeated?
No, no, he was not.
(gentle plucky music continues)
In the year 324, his closest
companion, Hephaestion died
of a fever and Alexander's
grief was inconsolable.
Arian wrote that Alexander
killed Hephaestion's doctor
because he failed to heal him.
Alexander declared a period of mourning
and gave him the funeral rights
usually reserved for a king.
A year after the death of his
closest friend and companion,
Alexander the Great suffered
10 days of a high fever
before he died on June 10 or
11 in 323 at the age of 32.
There are a few competing
hypotheses regarding the death
of Alexander the Great,
ranging from poisoning
or assassination, typhoid or malaria,
and new hypotheses
continue to be suggested.
More recent suggestions for
the cause of Alexander's death
are the West Nile Virus or
Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Ancient sources say that Alexander's body
didn't begin decomposing until six days
after he was proclaimed dead,
and GBS could be the reason why.
Alexander may have been
experiencing paralysis,
which meant his body would not
have needed as much oxygen,
so it may have looked as
if he wasn't breathing.
Ancient doctors didn't use the pulse
to determine if someone was alive,
but rather if they were breathing or not.
So when Alexander was confirmed dead,
he may have not actually been
dead for another six days.
He left no will and named no successor,
resulting in the wars then
waged by his generals,
which tore apart the
empire he had created.
Out of these two so-called
successor states,
two became powerful
states in their own right.
Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid, Persia.
Do you believe Alexander
the Great really was great?
Let us know why or why not,
down in the comments below.
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