~History~

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Alexander was born to Philip II, King of Macedonia, and his wife Olympias on the 6th day of the Macedonian month Loios, the month of the Lion, (about July 20) in the year 336 B.C. He was born at a time when his father's army had just won a major victory over a united force of powerful tribes, occupying regions roughly equivalent to Albania and Serbia.

The Olympic games had just ended, with King Phillip's entry for the horse-race winning first place. (Philip publicly commemorated his Olympic victory by issuing new silver coins. The head of Zeus is portrayed on the obverse; the reverse pictures a diminutive, nude jockey crowned with the victory wreath and waving a palm-branch, astride a large, spirited horse.) It was also the day when the revered Temple of Artemis was set fire and destroyed at Ephesos (1).

Alexander's early years, as all young children's, were spent under his mother's care. Unfortunately, Queen Olympias was a stormy, jealous, possessive woman prone to screaming rages, casting spells and uncontrollable weeping. She ultimately murdered a number of friends, relatives and family members (2). At the age of 7, Alexander was removed from his mother's care but remained very close to her throughout their lives.

Alexander's childhood friends were Ptolemy (3) and Hephaistion. When the boys were 9, Plato infuriated Aristotle by selecting another man to head the school at Athens. Aristotle left Athens and ultimately came to Macedonia to tutor Alexander and his friends. To the ancient Greeks, the word "philosopher" meant someone who explored many things; the philosopher Aristotle chronicled plants and animals (4).

Alexander was an extraordinary youth. He knew the poet Homer's works by heart and could quote them at length. His taming of Boukephalos, an enormous and spirited stallion, was remarkable and became a favorite story. He had an exceptional voice and excelled at playing the kithara, an instrument with 12 strings and ivory keys, played standing. As a surprise to his father, he once performed for dinner guests. Outraged, King Philip shamed him for singing so well. Plutarch wrote that Alexander was so angry that he never played the kitara again.

During the childhood and early teen years of these boys, Philip II continued his world conquest. At 16, Alexander was entrusted with the command of experienced troops in a situation of critical strategic significance. At 20, his father was assassinated and Alexander found himself King of Macedon. There were those who suspected that he may have conspired with others, including his mother Queen Olympias, to murder his father.

With a brilliance for war and diplomacy alike, Alexander first established his supremacy over all Greece and . then embarked on a world conquest. He conquered the entire Persian Empire and forged into India, reaching the Ganges River, having previously sailed down the Indus River to the Indian Ocean.

As he travelled, Alexander founded cities along the way - from Greece to Persia to India to Egypt (5). He is said to have founded seventy new cities, many sited as trade centers. His cities were founded in easily defensible locations, on reliable trading routes, with clean water supplies (a year-round spring for the public fountain) and arable land around it. Once a city was built, Alexander would people it with veteran soldiers (Macedonian and those he had conquered) and with craftsmen, women and children. Alexander would then dedicate the city to Heracles and Apollo. Before he left a fledgling city, Alexander set forth the laws - laws which the conquered could understand and abide by, laws which were fair and just.

On the Euphrates at Babylon, Alexander built a huge harbor able to accommodate a thousand ships. One of his admirals was sent to survey the seacoast from the Indus to the Persian Gulf, with a view toward establishing more efficient trade routes between East and West. Alexander discovered that the Persians were the heirs to an old and rich civilization and that India was a fabulous country. To the dismay of his soldiers, he began wearing Persian clothes and adopted much of the palace ceremony of an oriental emperor. His second wife was the conquered Persian king's daughter. He left Persian governors in control of conquered provinces and tried to eradicate the old Greek asumption that there were only two sorts of people in the world - Greeks and barbarians. Under King Alexander, a new concept of international relationship, the marriage of East and West, dawned.

When Alexander's lifelong companion Hephaistion died, probably of typhoid, the doctor was hanged for neglect. The King then requested of Zeus Ammon's oracle to grant his friend divine status, which had already been conferred upon him. So there was no doctor available when Alexander was pierced by an arrow, which perforated his lung. On a desert march, he had field surgery without anaesthesia and never completely recovered. He most likely died of pneumonia. Alexander the Great was 32.

When he died in 323 B.C., Alexander had conquered all the then known world. The fruit of the conquest, Greek culture, was firmly entrenched throughout the Near East, in the newly-founded cities and over the continent almost to India. It is widely believed that no other person evoked in his own lifetime, from so many men, so ardent an allegiance as Alexander the Great.

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(1) Many later thought this to be a birth omen, a fire in Asia to symbolize Alexander's conquest of the Asian peoples.

(2) After Alexander's death in 323 B.C., Olympias' ensuing execution was carried out by the relatives of her victims.

(3) Ptolemaios was the illegitimate son of Philip II and a married woman. Ptolemy was raised in Philip II's home as a friend and brother to Alexander. He became one of Alexander’s most trusted officers. After Alexander's death, Ptolemy ruled at Alexandria and became King of Egypt, founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty (including Cleopatra), and wrote an extensive history of the life of Alexander the Great.

(4) Aristotle had a lifelong passion for natural science and medicine. During Alexander the Great's conquest of Asia, he gave Aristotle 800 talents, a vast sum, to accommodate his collection of unusual flora and fauna which he and his nobles found.

(5) And named many of them Alexandria. The most famous of his cities was Alexandria, Egypt, which later housed the famous library and flourished under the Ptolemiac dynasty. Alexandria replaced Athens as the new center of Greek culture and learning.

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