Alexander the Great was born on or around July 20, 356 B. C. E. The exact date was probably changed to match the date of the burning of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. He was thought to have been fair skinned and blonde. He liked wine a lot, which caused some of his outbursts of rage. Alexander liked drama, especially the flute, the lyre, and poetry. He learned very quickly and was said to have matured at an early age. When he was younger, his tutors were Leonidas and Lysimachus. In his teen years, Aristotle was his tutor and Alexander favored him the most.
Alexander�s horse Bucephalas was a magnificent black stallion that had a white blaze on his forehead and was given as a gift to Alexander. Originally, Phillip II, Alexander�s father, was going to purchase the horse for himself, but thought Bucephalas was too unmanageable. Alexander made a deal with his father that he could tame and ride the horse for he had noticed Bucephalas was afraid of his own shadow. After turning the horse into the sun and away from his shadow, Alexander quickly got up on its back and proceeded to ride the horse. From that day on, Bucephalas was Alexander the Great�s horse that would carry Alexander into most of his battles over the ensuing years. When Bucephalas finally died in 326 B. C., Alexander had a state funeral for him and built a city in India where he died, naming it Bucephala.
At age 16, Phillip made him regent of Macedonia. Instead of staying at home, Alexander decided to go on a mission to protect the borders of his country. This is because some border tribes were capturing Macedonian sailors and slaves and selling them. A few weeks later, his first city called Alexandropolis was in place. After a short time of being regent, Alexander went to battle along side Phillip and they were successful. The one famous ordeal that occurred after the battle was when Alexander saved the unconscious Phillip from an angry mob.
Alexander never got along that well with his father, even though Phillip was proud of Alexander for taming Bucephalas and founding the city. Alexander had always been closer to his mother Olympias. Phillip and Olympias also never got along that well either. Their family pretty much split apart when Phillip married a woman named Cleopatra. At the wedding banquet, Cleopatra's father made a remark about Alexander not being of pure Macedonian descent since Olympias was not a pure Macedonian. Alexander took exception and threw his cup at the man, and some people say Alexander killed him. Angry, Philip stood up and charged at Alexander, only to trip and fall on his face because he was drunk.. Alexander, rather upset at the scene, is said to have shouted:
"Here is the man who was making ready to cross from Europe to Asia, and who cannot even cross from one table to another without losing his balance." Alexander then moved Olympias back to Epirus, and he went to Illyria. He only returned when Demaratus of Corinth, a close friend of Philip, asked how Philip could care so much for his troops that were out of the country and so little for his family at home. From then until the assassination of Philip, they remained a family in name only. Some think that Olympias had something to do with the assassination.
When Alexander took over, he had the finest army that Asia or Greece had ever seen. This is because, when Phillip was king, he started paying his troops like it was a full time job with full year training. Phillip also introduced the sarissa, a wooden pike with a metal tip that was used by the phalanx. It was a rather brutal weapon. Alexander also took charge of light auxiliaries, archers, a siege train, and cavalry.
As new king, there was trouble immediately. Greek cities, like Athens and Thebes, had pledged allegiance to Phillip, and they were unsure that they would like to do the same for a twenty-year-old boy. Likewise, northern barbarian tribes that Phillip had restrained were going to breakaway from Macedonia and cause chaos in the north. Alexander quickly decided to march north and stop the rebellions. He dealt with Thebes by attacking and killing everyone in sight, and razing all of Thebes. This act made Athens change their minds about breaking away from Macedonia. While visiting Athens to seal the treaty, Alexander visited the Oracle at Delphi, who screamed, �My son, you are invincible!� That was all he wanted to hear, so he departed in the spring of 334 B. C. E. for Asia.
Alexander had several specific goals in Asia. Officially, he was leading a Pan Hellenic invasion of the Persian Empire to rid the world of tyranny and oppression, and he also wanted revenge on the Persians for their invasion of Greece in 490 B.C.E. Alexander also conquered lands outside of the Persian Empire because he had a personal longing to see the ocean that was believed to surround Europe and Asia at the edge of the Earth.
The Macedonian army soon encountered the Persian army under King Darius at the crossing of the river Granicus, near the Aegean coast. Alexander courageously forced his cavalry into the swiftly flowing river and fought his way up the steep riverbank to meet the Persians, who were defeated in fierce hand-to-hand combat.
Alexander proceeded to march south through Ionia and free the Greek colonies there from Persian rule, and thus, he confirmed his status as the great liberator of civilized men. Then he turned northward to Gordian, home of the famous Gordian Knot. The legend behind the ancient knot was that the man who could untie it was destined to rule the entire world. Alexander simply slashed the knot with his sword and unraveled it.
In November of 333 B.C.E., Alexander met Darius in battle for the second time at a mountain pass at Issus. Although the Persian army greatly outnumbered the Macedonians, the narrow field of battle allowed Alexander to defeat the Persians, even though Darius escaped. Following the battle, Alexander entered Damascus and captured Darius' war chest and his family. In the next year, he marched down the Phoenician coast and received the surrenders of all of the major cities there except for Tyre. A seven-month siege of the city followed, and the Tyrians eventually surrendered to Alexander. Then he continued south into Egypt after he had secured the entire Aegean coast.
Alexander left Egypt in 331 B.C.E. in pursuit of Darius. He conquered the lands between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and found the Persian army at the plains of Gaugamela. The Macedonians spotted the lights from Persian campfires one night, and they encouraged Alexander to lead his attack under cover of darkness. He refused to take advantage of their situation because he wanted to defeat Darius in an equally matched battle so that the Persian king would never again dare to raise an army against the Macedonians. The two armies met on the battlefield the next morning, and the Macedonian forces swept through the Persian army and slaughtered them. Alexander nearly captured Darius, but Parmenio, the Macedonian general on the right wing, prevented him from doing so by an unprofessional act. After this decisive victory, Alexander was named King of Asia, and he sent letters to all of the Greek cities proclaiming that he had rid Asia of tyranny.
Then Alexander turned south and gained the surrenders of Babylon and Susa and acquired vast riches from those cities. He then he fought his way into Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Empire, and stayed there for several months to rest his army. After four months, the Macedonians burned the royal palace to the ground. Some historians say that this was done to avenge the Persian invasion of Greece in 490 B.C.E., but others hold that the fire was set at the suggestion of an Athenian woman, Thais, at one of Alexander's drinking parties.
In 330 B.C.E., a series of accusations was brought against some of Alexander's officers concerning a plot to murder him. Alexander tortured and executed his friend, Philotas, the person who was thought to have been leader of the conspiracy, and several other high-ranking officials in order to eliminate the possibility of an attempt on his life. This incident contributed greatly to the paranoia that grew in Alexander throughout his career. Later in the same year, after a long evening of feasting and heavy drinking, a fierce argument arose between Alexander and his life-long friend and companion, Cleitus. After unchecked taunting by Cleitus, Alexander ran him through with a spear. Although he mourned his friend excessively and nearly committed suicide when he realized what he had done, all of Alexander's associates thereafter feared his paranoia and dangerous temper.
Alexander continued his pursuit of Darius for hundreds of miles from Persepolis. When he finally caught up to him, he found the Persian king dead in his coach, assassinated by his own men. Alexander had the assassins executed and gave Darius a royal funeral.
As the Macedonians marched into Parthia, the happiness of the journey changed. Alexander had adopted the Persian style of dress, rather than his traditional Macedonian clothing, and his troops were angry with him. They gradually became more reluctant to follow him, but his magnetic personality persuaded them not to abandon him. The change in Alexander's attire was but one part of his great effort to merge Greek and Persian culture. He established training programs to teach Persians about Greek and Macedonian culture, and he even married a Persian dancer named Roxanne.
In the spring of 327 B.C.E., Alexander and his army marched into India. The greatest of Alexander's battles in India was against Porus, one of the most powerful Indian leaders, at the river Hydaspes in July 326 B.C.E. Alexander's army crossed the heavily defended river in dramatic fashion during a violent thunderstorm to meet Porus' forces. The Indians were defeated in a fierce battle, even though they fought with elephants, which the Macedonians had never before seen. Alexander captured Porus and, like the other local rulers he had defeated, allowed him to continue to govern his territory. Alexander even restrained an independent province and granted it to Porus as a gift. One tragic note about this battle is that Alexander's horse, Bucephalas, was wounded and died. Alexander had ridden Bucephalas into every one of his battles in Greece and Asia, so when it died, he was grief-stricken and founded a city in his horse's name.
Alexander's next goal was to reach the Ganges River, which was actually 250 miles away, because he thought that it flowed into the outer ocean. His troops, however, had heard tales of the powerful Indian tribes that lived on the Ganges and remembered the difficulty of the battle with Porus, so they refused to go any farther east. Alexander was extremely disappointed, but he accepted their decision and persuaded them to travel south down the rivers Hydaspes and Indus so that they might reach the ocean on the southern edge of the world. The army rode down the rivers on the rivers on rafts and stopped to attack and capture villages along the way. During this trip, Alexander sought out the Indian philosophers, the Brahmins, who were famous for their wisdom, and debated them on philosophical issues. He became legendary for centuries in India for being both a wise philosopher and a fearless conqueror.
One of the villages in which the army stopped belonged to the Malli, who were said to be one of the most warlike of the Indian tribes. Alexander was wounded several times in this attack, most seriously when an arrow pierced his breastplate and his ribcage. The Macedonian officers rescued him in a narrow escape from the village.
In the summer of 325 B.C.E., Alexander and his army had sailed to the mouth of the Indus River, and they began to march west across the dangerous Gedrosian Desert. Nearchus was put in command of a fleet that would take the sea route west rather than marching through the desert. Alexander, on land, lost nearly three quarters of his army to starvation and the harsh conditions of the desert. When the survivors reached the region called Carmania, their fortune changed dramatically as they were welcomed into the prosperous land. Alexander and his men celebrated the end of their ordeal in the desert and traveled in luxury to Harmezeia, where they rejoined Nearchus and his soldiers. Then the whole army marched inland to Persia to rest.
In 324 B.C.E., Alexander furthered his mission to combine Macedonian and Persian cultures when he arranged thousands of marriages between the Greek soldiers and Persian women in Susa. Alexander himself took a second wife, Stateira, one of Darius' daughters.
In the spring of the same year while Alexander's army was stationed in Ecbatana, his best friend, Hephaestion, died of a fever. He was overcome with grief, and he consoled himself by leading a campaign against a tribe of brigands called the Cossaeans.
The next year, Alexander traveled with his men to Babylon despite numerous threatening omens. The omens were so frequent and ominous that Alexander feared that he had fallen out of favor with the gods. He died of a fever on June 10, 323 B.C.E.
The death of Alexander the Great is still covered in mystery to this day. It seems hard to believe that a 33-year-old man could die of natural causes that spring up out of the blue, and consequently, modern historians have made many attempts to explain exactly what happened. According to Plutarch, the events leading up to his death are as follows:
Alexander proceeded to Babylon, even after receiving word of several bad omens, such as ravens fighting each other over the city wall with some falling dead right in front of him, a man with a deformed liver being sacrificed in the king's honor, and his best lion was kicked to death by an donkey. The god Serapis told a man to put on the king's robes and sit upon the throne. These all served as warnings to Alexander about what may lie in store for him, but they did not deter him.
Once in Babylon, he drank heavily at several banquets. His friend, Medius, hosted one such banquet. In the Armenian version of the story, Psuedo-Callisthenes wrote that this banquet was a conspiracy involving Iollas, Cassander, and others who were unhappy with Alexander. They gave him poisoned wine, and immediately after drinking it, Alexander felt as if he had "been hit in the liver with an arrow." When he tried to throw it back up, he was given a poisoned feather, which ensured that the poison would reach his blood stream. He proceeded to get very sick and his condition deteriorated until his death. Plutarch did not believe this version, saying the sudden pain Alexander felt after drinking was a detail "with which certain historians felt obliged to embellish the occasion, and thus invent a tragic and moving finale to a great action. Aristobulus tells us that he was seized with a raging fever, that when he became thirsty he drank wine which made him delirious."
We will probably never know the truth, even though new theories are still coming out. We do know that on the 7th of June 323 BC, the Macedonians were allowed to file past their leader for the last time and finally, three days later he gave in to the illness. In conclusion, on June 10, 323 BC, Alexander the Great died at the age of 33.