Alexander the Great, was born in June, 356 BC, in Pella, the ancient capital of

Macedonia. His
parents were Philip II and Olympia. Some say that Zeus was his father but it is
probably just a
myth. Aristotle taught Alexander in his early teen years. He stimulated his int
erest in science,
medicine, and philosophy. In the summer of 336 BC, Alexander's father was assass
inated, and
Alexander ascended to the Macedonian throne. He found himself surrounded by enem
ies at home
and threatened by civilizations all over. But Alexander disposed of quickly of a
ll his enemies by
ordering their execution. Then he took off to Thessaly, where partisans of indep
endence had
gained ascendancy, and restored Macedonian rule. Before the end of the summer o
f 336 BC as
general of the Greeks in a campaign against the Persians, originally planned by
his father before he
croaked, he carried out a successful campaign against the defecting Thracians, p
enetrating to the
Danube River. On his return he crushed in a single week the threatening Illyrian
s and then again
took of to Thebes, which had revolted. He took the city by storm and razed it, s
paring only the
temples of the gods and the house of the Greed lyric poet Pindar, and selling th
e surviving inhabi
tants, about 8000 in number, into slavery. Alexander's promptness in crushing th
e revolt of The
bes brought the other Greek states into instant submission.
Alexander began his war against Persia in the spring of 334 BC by crossi
ng the Hellespont
(now Dardanelles) with an army of 35,000 Macedonian and Greek troops: his chief
officers, all
Macedonians, included Antigonus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. At the river Granicus, n
ear the ancient
city of Troy, he attacked an army of Persians and Greek soldiers which totaled 4
0,000 men. His
forces slatured the enemy and according to tradition, only lost 110 men! After t
his battle all the
stated of Asia Minor submitted to Alexander. Continuing south, Alexander encount
ered the main
Persian army, commanded by King Darius III, at Issus. The size of Darius's army
was unknown;
but ancient tradition said it contained about 500,000 men but now is considered
a very big exag
geration. The Battle of Issus, in 333 BC, ended in a great victory for Alexander
, who treated them
with the respect due to royalty. Tyre, a strongly guarded seaport, offered obsti
nate resistance, but
Alexander took it to by storm in 332 after a siege of seven months. Alexander ca
ptured Gaza next
and then passed on into Egypt, where he was greeted as a deliverer. By these suc
cesses the Nile
River, the city of Alexandria, which later became the literacy, scientific, and
commercial center of
the Greek world. Cyrene, the capital of the ancient North African kingdom of Cyr
enaica, gave up
to Alexander soon afterward, extending his dominance to Carthaginian territory.
In the spring of 331, Alexander made a trip to the great temple and orac
le of Amon-Ra,
Egyptian god of the sun, whom the Greeks identified as Zeus. The earlier Egyptia
n pharaohs were
believed to be sons of Amon-Ra; and Alexander, the new ruler of Egypt, wanted th
e god to ac
knowledge him as his son. Amon-Ra (Zeus) agreed. I tried doing that the other da
y and Amon-Ra
accepted but I told him that he wasn't good enough for me. So he has cursed me b
y making my
right arm longer then my left are for 7 years. Crossing the Euphrates and the
Tigris rivers, Alex
ander met Darius at the head of an army of unknown size, which, according to the
exaggerated
accounts of antiquity, was said to number a million men! This army he completely
defeated in the
Battle of Guagamela, Oct 1, 331. Daruis fled as he had done at Issus and was lat
er killed by two
of his own generals. Babylon surrendered after Gaugamela did, and the city of S
usa with its
enormous treasures was soon taken over also by Alexander. Then, in midwinter, Al
exander forced
his way to Persepolis, the Persian capital, and plundered in and the royal treas
ures and took the
rich by their butt, and burned the city during a drunken binge and thus complete
d the destruction
of the ancient Persian Empire. His domain now extended along and beyond the sout
hern shores of
the Caspian Sea, including modern Central Asia. It had taken Alexander only 3 ye
ars to master
this vast area.
In June, 323 BC, Alexander contracted a dangerous fever and died. He lef
t his empire, in
his own words, "too the strongest"; this resulted in huge conflicts for half a
century. Alexander
was one of the greatest generals of all time, noted for his brilliance as a tact
ician and troop leader
and for the rapidity with which he could traverse great expanses of territory. H
e was usually brave
and generous, but could be very cruel and ruthless when politics demanded. Is ha
s been said that
he was actually and alcoholic having, for example, killed his friend Clitus in a
drunken fury. He
later regretted this act deeply. He himself, in his life had a few wives and a f
ew children. He was
also reported to have had sexual relations with his close friend Hephaestion, wh
o was a man.
"ick"