It is no wonder that Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) was often mistaken for a god; he modeled his life on nothing less. Instilled in him from an early age was the belief that he was the product of a union between his mother, Olympias, and the lord of the Olympian gods, Zeus almighty himself. He never doubted it and made much of his divinity during his campaigns in the East, where it held the most sway.
Yet he was much more than just a god. An iconic hero of mythic proportions, Alexander is considered the greatest military general in Western history; his military expeditions are praised for advancing science and geography by shifting the major concentration of “civilization” eastward. Moreover, when Hellenistic culture expanded from Macedonia to the Indian subcontinent, similar language and currency links were formed, opening up new commerce routes and cross-cultural interaction. In this way, many believe that Alexander’s achievements contributed to the Roman Empire’s rise in power and the eventual spread of Christianity across most of the known world.
Increasingly, however, historians are reassessing his contributions. Viewed from another perspective, the dissemination of Greek culture throughout the East came at the expense of Eastern civilizations while leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in its wake. The Great Conqueror who never knew defeat was responsible for killing hundreds of thousands—by some estimates up to a million—of those who crossed his barbarous path.
This paper focuses on Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire and his unwavering determination to subjugate every known country in the East. We’ll examine Alexander’s times while reviewing some of the factors driving this young king’s apparent obsession to wage war to the exclusion of nearly everything else in his brief life.
When listing Alexander’s accomplishments, the major achievements of his father, Philip II of Macedon (382 BCE-336 BCE), are frequently overlooked. Not only did Philip build Macedonia as a dominant power, which most Greek city-states feared, but it was Philip’s army that Alexander exploited in his legendary victories. Philip invented the sarissa, an 18-23-foot-long spear that gave Macedonian infantry a substantial advantage over their opponents, whose spears were significantly shorter. He also formed the Companion cavalry, an elite heavy cavalry unit comprised of Macedonian aristocracy. The phalanx with sarissas surrounding the adversary and the companion cavalry attacking from the flanks proved to be a fatal combination for adversaries.
Moreover, because Philip made the military a full-time occupation with rigorous training and routine drills, his troops not only became skilled fighting machines but also military engineers, capable of building roads, bridges, and the infrastructure required for battlefield success. If it weren’t for his father’s improvements and military innovations, we may now be asking, “Alexander, who?”
Nevertheless, because of the supposed encounter between Olympias and the all-powerful Zeus, Philip’s paternity was often in some contention. According to the ancients, Olympias would regularly remind Alexander that he was divinely conceived, contributing greatly to Alexander’s hubris and Philip’s chagrin. Being the progeny of Zeus, however, was not enough; Alexander also had two of the most powerful heroes in his mortal family tree. Plutarch reports that Philip was the direct descendent of the demi-god Heracles, and Olympias’ line reached back to Neoptolemus, son of the demi-god Achilles himself, the hero of the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad. Of all heroes, Achilles was the war hero with whom Alexander most identified. With a bloodline that included the lord of the gods and two of the strongest and bravest of heroes, who could blame Alexander for being singular in his divine mission?
In that regard, Philip ensured that Alexander had the best education available. Because Macedonia was on the northern periphery of the Greek world, the hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble Macedonians were viewed by the Greeks as uncivilized, barbarian, and even non-Greek. Determined to out-Greek them, Philip established an academy for his son and recruited the most accomplished teacher in the Greek world: Aristotle.
Under his tutelage, the renowned philosopher would cultivate a passion for everything classical in his charge. In addition to promoting philosophy and Greek tragedy, he also inculcated a strong affection for Homer; Alexander would learn the Iliad by heart and take an annotated, Aristotle-signed copy of the work with him on his military expeditions, utilizing it as a war primer.
Although Alexander was ostensibly Philip’s heir apparent owing to the practice of polygamy in Macedonia, Alexander’s place in line was not secured. Throughout his life, Philip had seven wives and an equal number of children, frequently using marriage as a diplomatic ploy to forge alliances with nations he had conquered; Alexander would later adopt this strategy. A former princess of the Molossians of Epirus, a rugged and mountainous region three hundred miles northwest of Macedonia, Olympias was wife number four.
From the start, the relationship between Philip and Olympias was contentious. A strong-willed and ambitious woman, the ancients are often unkind to Olympias, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. They say her boast that Alexander’s father was Zeus may have influenced Philip to question Alexander’s paternity. This, coupled with a preternaturally close relationship between Alexander and his mother, may have contributed to Philip feeling like an outsider in his own family.
A rivalry between the two males emerged when, at a mere sixteen years of age, Alexander achieved his first taste of military success, defeating insurgents in a campaign against a bordering Thracian tribe. Imitating his father’s custom, he created a city in his name—the first of several to bear the name Alexander. Philip felt slighted that Alexander named the city after himself rather than on his behalf as king.
The rivalry between father and son intensified following a resounding victory over the united troops of Athens and Thebes, which established Macedonian hegemony throughout the Greek world. In the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, Philip led an army of over 30,000 soldiers against a force of similar strength. His innovative military strategy won the day. But he didn’t win without the support of his son. The Macedonian Companion Cavalry, headed by Alexander, just eighteen years of age, cut the Greek left flank and shattered the line. With almost 1,000 Athenians routed and many more taken as prisoners, the Greek forces were decisively crushed. Even Thebes’ renowned Sacred Band met its end there.
The ever-arrogant Alexander, encouraged by his mother, believed he had won the war for which his father claimed credit. Factions formed between the father and son, with Philip gaining the upper hand. When Philip’s misogynistic and xenophobic Macedonian counselors questioned the faithfulness of the domineering Olympias, a whispering campaign began, underscoring the possibility that Alexander was not Philip’s son. Furthermore, they expounded on how the foreign Olympias was not Macedonian, so her haughty son was at best only half Macedonian.
Coming out on top, Philip married his seventh and final wife, Cleopatra-Eurydice. A Macedonian through and through, not only was Cleopatra-Eurydice of noble lineage, but she was of childbearing age—fully twenty years younger than her husband. The marriage was a clear threat not only to Olympias’ status but also to Alexander’s. The long-favored son suddenly could not be certain of inheriting the kingship. After Philip’s seventh marriage in 337 BCE, the father-son relationship deteriorated to such an extent that both Alexander and his mother fled Macedon.
Before Philip’s unexpected death, however, the father and son reached an uneasy reconciliation. The reality was that Philip could not afford to have his battle-ready son, who was eager for power, establish an exile government that would jeopardize Philip’s intentions to undertake a Persian expedition. Indeed, the father’s pursuit would become the son’s.
As he entered the gates of an amphitheater for his daughter’s lavish wedding ceremony in October 336 BCE, Philip was mortally stabbed in the ribs by Pausanias, one of his personal bodyguards. When the assassin tried to flee, he stumbled over a tree root and was killed by the guards who chased him. Was Philip slain solely for personal reasons, or were Olympias and possibly Alexander involved? This question has dogged historians throughout the ages. Mother and son, after all, stood to benefit the most from Philip’s death. The fact that Philip’s assassin was slain by guards rather than apprehended and questioned has long raised suspicions, especially because the guards were Alexander’s friends. Plutarch reports that “it was believed that she (Olympias) encouraged the young man and incited him to take revenge,” adding that “a certain amount of accusation attaches itself to Alexander also.” Certainly, if Olympias were involved in Phlip’s murder, Alexander would have—at the very least—known about it.
Whether Alexander and Olympias were involved in Philip’s death or not, they were undoubtedly responsible for the bloodletting campaign that would commence immediately, ending the lives of possible rivals. Olympias would herself bring to a close Philip’s final wife and their children. According to one account, Olympias plunged both infants face first into a charcoal fire and offered. Cleopatra-Eurydice the dreadful option of dying by poison or the noose. The unfortunate woman chose the latter.
After declaring himself king, at the age of twenty, Alexander faced widespread insurrection across Greece. As hegemon, Alexander did what he knew best and marched his soldiers across Greece, subduing insurgent city-states. Thebes resisted most fiercely, vilifying Alexander as the “tyrant of Greece.” The ancient chronicler Diodorus Siculus writes, “The insult stung Alexander.” Alexander’s army descended mercilessly on Thebes, slaughtering 6,000 and enslaving 30,000 people. However, murdering and enslaving its population was not sufficient. Alexander, along with the League of Corinth—which Philip had founded and was now under Alexander’s control—agreed to destroy the city, leaving no stone unturned. After Thebes was razed, Athens capitulated with barely a whimper. The wholesale destruction of Thebes would serve as a striking reminder to other Greek city-states of the consequences for those who dared to defy the mighty will of Alexander, whose journey of destruction and dominance had begun.
The Persian Empire, a vast two-hundred-year-old empire spanning from Central Asia to Ethiopia and from the Indus to the Aegean, was the greatest superpower of the classical world with a long history of invading and occupying Greek city-states, especially in the Ionian region of Asia Minor. Because of this, Greeks set their sights on the Persian Empire, hoping to liberate Greek cities from Persian authority while also exacting revenge for previous invasions.
Alexander launched an offensive against the Persians in 334 BCE, amid a period of instability within the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The Persians were anticipated to triumph over the Greeks with a ratio of two to one in battle. Not only were the Persians in greater numbers than the Greeks, but the Greek mercenaries fighting on behalf of the Persian Empire also exceeded those fighting for the Greeks. All the same, when the two kings engaged in direct combat at the town of Issus in southern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), Alexander prevailed handily, forcing Darius to flee and abandon his family. Throughout the battle, Alexander’s army slaughtered nearly 100,000 Persian soldiers. Darius, humbled by his defeat, attempted to buy Alexander off by proposing to transfer all of Asia Minor in exchange for 30,000 talents and one of Darius’ daughters as a royal wife. “I’d accept if I were Alexander,” the venerable Macedonian General Parmenio advised the young king. “So would I if I were Parmenio,” Alexander responded. Alexander, however, was just getting into his stride; in response to Darius, he wrote, “Call me Great King now: live as my viceroy or stand and fight, but be assured that I will pursue you wherever you go.” For Alexander “the Great Conqueror,” the battle had just begun.
Alexander’s forces continued to attack and plunder nations (or satrapies), killing thousands. In the enormous Persian Empire, some states willingly submitted to Greek authority, while others resisted fiercely. Under challenging Persian control for a decade, Egypt not only surrendered hailing the Greeks as liberators but also looked upon Alexander as a god, conforming to his high opinion of himself. While recounting countless military engagements is beyond the scope of this article, the following two battles were among those renowned for their brutality.
The siege of Tyre (in modern-day Lebanon) in 332 BCE began innocently enough. Initially, the Tyrians declared neutrality, and while they supplied the Macedonians with provisions, they requested that the army remain outside of the city. A pious Alexander accepted their gifts but demanded that he sacrifice to Heracles within Tyre. A battle of wills ensued, with Alexander becoming enraged when the Tyrians continued to refuse the Macedonians entry into their city, resulting in a seven-month-long siege that reduced Tyre to rubble. Thousands were slaughtered, and 30,000 women and children were sold into slavery.
A vital Persian fortress, Gaza was in the unenviable position of being the final city en route to Egypt. Their governor and military leader, Batis, refused to surrender, and the Gazans resisted, resulting in a three-month-long siege. After Alexander and his troops killed 10,000 men and enslaved all the women and children, Batis continued to spurn Alexander as king; characteristically, Alexander flew into a rage. Emulating his alter ego, Achilles, in his treatment of Hector in the Iliad, Alexander ordered Batis’ ankles punctured and straps fastened to them, then had Batis tied behind his chariot and dragged around the walls of Gaza until his bruised and battered body tortuously expired. Although the method was similar to Achilles’ treatment of Hector, Achilles subjected Hector’s corpse to that indignity, whereas Alexander exacted his divine wrath on a living Batis.
The Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE (in modern-day Iraq) was the second and final battle between the two kings and regarded as the Achaemenid Empire’s fatal blow. Always a hands-on commander, Alexander led the Companion cavalry through an opening in the Persian formation, charging directly at Darius and threatening to cut him off from his royal guard. Long before the matter of victory or defeat was resolved, however, the Persian monarch fled and abandoned his army—the largest army the ancient world had ever seen.
Despite winning the most essential battle, Alexander was not done pillaging. His next stop was Persepolis. Persepolis, founded by Darius the Great in 518 BCE, was the ceremonial capital and crown jewel of the Persian empire. Its grand palaces and audience halls held festivals, celebrations, and extravagant banquets. Termed the “richest city under the sun” by Diodorus Sicilus, Persepolis boasted a treasury of over 2500 tons of gold and silver bullion. Upon entering the city, Alexander granted his forces complete freedom to slay adult males and plunder the city’s glittering resources, while leaving the palaces for him alone. The soldiers immediately obliged, massacring men while taking their riches.
After killing males and pillaging the Persian Empire’s greatest monument, Alexander’s work was not complete. As a final act he set Persepolis ablaze. The tremendous fire destroyed not just the grand structures of the city but also hundreds of years’ worth of religious writings and artwork. It is believed to have begun in the palace complex, notably in the dwelling rooms of Xerxes I, eventually spreading throughout the city. Whether the fire was a calculated act of retaliation in response to the Persians’ (under Xerxes I) torching of Athens in 480 BCE or an incident borne of drunken revelry is under debate to this day. Notorious for harboring grudges, most believe Alexander deliberately incinerated the crown jewel.
A few months after Persepolis ignited, Darius was assassinated by one of his satraps (governors). The destruction of Persepolis is widely regarded as the symbolic end of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, while Darius’ death marks its official end and the start of Alexander’s reign over Persia. In 330 BCE, upon entering Babylon amid much pomp and circumstance, Alexander declared himself king of Asia and the Persian Empire. He was approximately 26 years of age. When he sat on the Great King’s sumptuous throne, however, the act had a comedic effect. Darlius was far taller than average and Alexander far shorter; Alexander’s small feet dangled above the royal footstool for all to see. To avoid enraging the irascible newly appointed Great King, a quick-thinking page swapped a side table for the royal footstool posthaste.
Driving his men farther east, Alexander commenced his so-called Indian campaign (modern Afghanistan and Pakistan) in 327 BCE. To solidify his dominance in the region, Alexander captured then married Roxana, the daughter of Oxycartes, a Bactrian (modern Afghanistan) lord who accompanied him on his Eastern campaign. Their son, Alexander IV was born after Alexander died leaving him without a legal heir.
One of his most significant military successes came in 326 BCE when he defeated King Porus of the Paurava Kingdom at the Battle of Hydaspes (modern Northwestern Pakistan). The difficult conditions and overwhelming opposition (war elephants were deployed) make this battle historically noteworthy. All the same, Alexander’s crusade came to an abrupt end at Hydaspes, marking it the easternmost point of his conquests.
If it were not for the mutiny of his rank and file that summer, he would have driven his men deeper and broader into the Indian subcontinent and farther eastward into the absolute limit of the known world. After twelve years and two million square miles (mainly on foot), his men had had enough. Incensed, but outnumbered—even his Companions were war-weary—the Great Conqueror was compelled to call a halt to his lengthy string of conquests and retreat..
Defying the will of a god is often unwise. Most historians think that in revenge for their impertinence, Alexander purposefully led his men from India to Iran across the scorching hot desert of Gedrosia (modern Makran— west of the Indus River in Pakistan).
But he may have had another reason for doing so; being hyper competitive, he was following in the footsteps of other heroes, attempting to outcompete Heracles, Cyrus the Great, and the legendary Semiramis, all of whom had attempted but failed to cross the harsh heat and challenging terrain of the Gedrosian desert.
Tens of thousands of his soldiers were killed in the arid desert terrain; they were victims of dehydration, starvation, disease, and poisonous snake bites—”greater than anything they (the soldiers) had to endure in Asia,” according to the ancient chronicler Arrian. Soldiers were not the only ones who died; women, animals, and merchants who accompanied the expedition also died in uncounted numbers. In fact, more men died on the 60-mile Gedrosian march than throughout all of his military campaigns combined. Only 15,000 of the original 70,000 troops survived.
Although major military campaigns came to an end, an increasingly paranoid Alexander was not done killing. When he returned to Persia, he conducted a sweeping purge of his imperial household. Many of Alexander’s closest commanders were accused of corruption or treason; some were imprisoned, while others were brutally killed—he even ordered the assassination of his trusted advisor, General Permenio. Nonetheless, his purging campaign was not the only source of the Macedonians’ discontent. Deeply unpopular was Alexander’s Persianization program, in which he elevated Persians to fill the vacancies left by Macedonians while adopting more Persian norms in court etiquette, such as requiring others to bow before him. All this, as well as repeatedly referring to himself as god and requiring others to do the same, added to the disgruntlement of the Macedonians.
He took two more wives, the daughters of past Persian monarchs, and instructed his Companions to do the same. His generals were bitterly opposed to these Persian marriages. Although the unions were calculated to bring the two civilizations together, they may have had a more sinister purpose: the Persian wives, devoted to their new Great King, were ideal spies in Alexander’s purifying campaign.
Alexander died in 323 BCE, a year and a half after the disastrous Gedrosian expedition and three months before his thirty-third birthday. The East was not alone in breathing a collective sigh of relief. Notorious for his heavy drinking, alcoholic poisoning has frequently been blamed for his death; however, there are other types of poisoning. Given his deep unpopularity among the Macedonian elite toward the end of his life, murder cannot be ruled out. His tight circle had both the means and the motive; any of them could have pulled it off.
More warrior than king, Alexander lived his life like the gods he resembled, utilizing conquest and subjugation to achieve divine power. Setting out to conquer the world, he had little regard for human life; he massacred, enslaved, looted, and annihilated rich and vibrant cultures on a scale never seen before in ancient history. In his desire to establish the world’s largest empire, he drove his army further and further east, aiming to have the entire known world within his domain. If he had lived longer, he might have even prevailed. Following in the footsteps of the gods, he aspired for nothing short of immortality, and in a sense he achieved it. His grim legacy, however, endures to this day. Many believe that present-day tensions between the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim East date back two thousand three hundred years, when Alexander ravaged the East and forced it to accept the West as its master.
