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Ancient Greece Alexander the Great Name _____________________________________ READING INTRODUCTION Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia who conquered the Persian empire and expanded the ancient empire of Greece, is considered one of the greatest military geniuses of all times. He is the first king in Europe to be called "the Great." Alexander, was the son of Philip II, who was the king of Macedonia. His mother was Olympia, a princess of Epirus (in the western part of Greece). Philip and Olympia wanted nothing less than the best for their son, so when he was 13, his parents hired Aristotle to be his personal tutor. Aristotle was one of the best known and famous teachers of the time. Alexander was trained together with other children of the nobility (upper class) at Aristotle’s school, called Nyphaeon [nif-ay-on]. Aristotle gave Alexander a thorough training in speech, writing, and literature and stimulated his interest in science, medicine, and philosophy, all of which became very important for Alexander in his later life. Coin showing Alexander GREEK RESISTANCE Alexander became king of Macedonia at the age of 20 when his father, King Philip II, was suddenly assassinated. Upon hearing of the king’s death, riots and unruliness broke out in parts of the kingdom of Macedonia. Immediately, Alexander took a group of soldiers and restored order. This quickly helped take care of many critics in Macedonia who said Alexander was too young or too weak to take over for his slain father and rule the empire. Still the Greek cities, like Athens and Thebes, which had pledged allegiance to King Philip, were unsure if they wished to do the same for a twentyyear-old boy. After the news of the death of King Phillip, there were rumors in these cities that Alexander too had been killed and that the time was right for them to separate themselves from Macedonia. Shortly after, a revolt broke out in Thebes with the support of leading Athenian soldiers and politicians. Alexander and his army marched south to stop the uprising covering 240 miles in just two weeks. Alexander marched up to the gates of Thebes and let them know that it was not too late for them to change their minds. The Thebians responded by sending out a small group of soldiers to fight. Alexander quickly repelled them with archers and light infantrymen. The next day, Alexander's general, Perdiccas [pur-di-kas], attacked the gates of Thebes. Perdiccas broke through and into the city. The Macedonians then stormed the city, killing almost everyone in sight, women and children included. They plundered (robbed), sacked, burned, and razed (destroyed) Thebes, as an example to the rest of Greece. Only the temples were spared from destruction because they belonged to the Greek gods, the same gods that Alexander and the Macedonians worshiped. After hearing of the strength of Alexander and his men, the city of Athens then quickly rethought its decision to abandon Alexander and the rest of Greece remained under Macedonian control. This was the birth of the great empire of Ancient Greece. CONQUERING PERSIA Alexander went on to expand his empire by conquering many other lands. He started by fighting a war against Greece’s most hated rival, Persia. Greece hated Persia because Persia had attacked Greece in the past, even before the rule of King Philip II (Alexander’s father). They had destroyed Greek cities and killed many people. Alexander asked all of the city-states of Greece for men, money, and supplies for the campaign and promised them revenge on their enemy, the Persians. Alexander began his war against Persia in the spring of 334 BC by crossing the Hellespont River with an army of 35,000 Macedonians and 7,600 other Greeks. While his boat was approaching the shore, he threw his spear from his ship to the coast and it stuck in the ground. As he stepped onto the shore, he pulled his weapon from the soil, and declared that “the whole of Asia will be won by the spear.” The Macedonian army soon encountered the Persian army under the command of the Persian king, King Darius III, at the crossing of the river Granicus, near the ancient city of Troy. Alexander attacked the army of Persians. Alexander's forces defeated the enemy totaling about 40,000 men and, according to legend, lost only 110 men of his own, but Darius, the king of Persia, abandoned his soldiers, ran away, and escaped. Continuing to advance southward, in November of 333 BC, Alexander met King Darius III in battle for the second time at a mountain pass called Issus [is-yous], in northeastern Syria. The exact size of Darius's army is unknown, but although the Persian army greatly outnumbered the Macedonians, the narrow field of battle between the mountains allowed Alexander to defeat the Persians. The Battle of Issus ended in a great victory for Alexander. Cut off from his army, King Darius again ran away, this time abandoning his mother, wife, and children to be captured by Alexander, who treated them with respect because they were royalty. They later continued to serve Alexander as their king. Alexander entered Egypt in 331 BC. When he arrived, he chased out and defeated the Persians there and he was welcomed by the Egyptians for freeing them from Persian rule. Alexander ordered a city to be designed after Greek cities and built in his name at the mouth of the Nile River. The city of Alexandria, as it was named, would become one of the major Greek cultural centers in the Mediterranean world in the following centuries. After arriving, Alexander was voluntarily made pharaoh (ruler) by the Egyptians, who had despised (hated) living under Persian rule. Alexander exchanged letters with Persian King Darius III while he was in Egypt, and Darius offered a truce with Alexander with a gift of several western provinces (lands) of the Persian Empire. Alexander refused to make peace unless he could have the whole empire. In the middle of 331 BC, Alexander marched back to into Persia to find King Darius and conquer the whole Persian empire. Alexander reorganized his forces and headed for Babylon, in present day Iraq, with an army of 40,000 infantry (foot-soldiers) and 7000 cavalry (soldiers on horses). He conquered the lands between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and found the Persian army which, according to the exaggerated accounts, was said to number a million men. The two armies met on the battlefield the next morning in the Battle of Gaugamela and the Macedonian forces swept through the Persian army and slaughtered them. Again, King Darius fled as he had done in the past, this time to his mountain palace in Ecbatana called the Palace of Persepolis, in present-day Iran. At the end of the battle the remainder of Darius’ soldiers surrendered and Alexander was proclaimed King of Persia. To win the continued support of the Persian aristocracy (rulers) he appointed mainly Persians who became loyal to him as governors in the conquered lands. After four months, the Macedonians made their way to King Darius’ palace in Ecbatana, but didn’t find him there. They burned the royal palace at Ecbatana to the ground putting an end to the ancient Persian Empire. Alexander continued his pursuit of King Darius for hundreds of miles. When he finally caught up to him, he found the Persian king dead in his coach, assassinated by his own men who turned on him. Alexander had the assassins executed for treason and gave King Darius a royal funeral, because it was the way royalty was to be treated. ALEXANDER IN INDIA In the spring of 327 BC, Alexander and his army marched into India invading the ancient country of Punjab. This led to one of the greatest of Alexander's battles in India against King Porus, one of the most powerful Indian leaders, at the river Hydaspes [hi-das-pees]. In July of 326 BC, Alexander's army crossed the heavily defended river in dramatic fashion during a violent thunderstorm to meet King 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 many of the other local rulers he had defeated, Alexander made him swear loyalty to Greece and allowed him to continue to govern his territory. Alexander's next goal was to travel south down the Indus River so that they might reach the ocean on the southern edge of the known world. The army rode down the rivers on rafts and stopped to along the way to attack and subdue villages when necessary. During this trip, Alexander also searched for the Indian philosophers, called 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 (which he had learned from Aristotle) and a fearless conqueror and leader. 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 (armor) and his ribcage. The Macedonian officers rescued him in a narrow escape from the village. After this near-death experience, when Alexander and his army reached the mouth of the Indus River in July 325 BC, they turned westward and headed for home, back to Macedonia. Alexander had enough. He wanted to return to his homeland of Greece and rule his kingdom. ALEXANDER'S DEATH Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king and the great conqueror, died unexpectedly at the age of 33, on June 10, 323 BC. It is believed that he died from the disease we now know as Malaria which he contracted from a mosquito bite while in the damp, swampy, monsoons of India. When Alexander died, he had no son of his own, so he died without choosing an heir or a successor to rule the empire he had fought so hard to create. This led to chaos in the Greek Empire. Alexander’s top generals began to greedily split up the territories of the empire between themselves. General Seleucus [sell-yu-kus] took control of Persia, General Antigonas took control of Macedonia, and General Ptolemy took control of Egypt. This was the beginning of the end of the Greek civilization. By 146 BC, Greece and Macedonia to the north had both been conquered by the Romans. The Romans stole many statues and works of art from the Greek temples, and by 30 BC the Romans had also conquered Persia and Egypt and taken it away from the Greeks. However, the Romans admired many things about the Greek way of life and they copied many of the ideas to use in Rome, which helped the Greek ways and the Greek culture to continue on even until today.