Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, was one of the greatest military leaders known. He succeeded his father, Philip, at the age of 20 in 336 BCE, inheriting plans to conquer the Achaemenid empire, whose armies had previously unsuccessfully invaded Greece. In 334 BCE, Alexander crossed the Hellespont (Dardanelles, the strait separating Europe and Asiatic Turkey). After a series of stunning victories, he toppled the Achaemenid Empire and thus took control of its provinces or satrapies. To the east these extended as far as the Indus River. Seven years later, he marched east, with an army of 80,000, crossed the Hindu Kush Mountains, and descended onto the plains of the Indus and its tributaries. He first crossed the Indus, accepting Indian client kings on his way. He then moved farther east, crossing the Jhelum River, which the Greeks named the Hydaspes, then the Chenab, the Ravi, and finally the Beas River (the Hyphasis). The Greeks had little knowledge of the geography of India, since their sources were little more reliable than the Indikos of Ktesias of Knidos, written in 396 BCE (Dell, 101-105).

At this point Alexander wished to proceed to conquer the known world, but his troops mutinied, and he returned to the Jhelum River, where a fleet of ships was under construction. With these, he sailed down the Indus River. His journey to the sea met stout resistance from the local tribe known as the Agalassoi, who mustered, it is said, more than 40,000 men. But Alexander defeated them and, on reaching the coast, divided his forces, one group traveling with the fleet and the other by land to the west. The two parties met again at modern Hormuz, in Iran, after one of the most extraordinary military campaigns.

Alexander, the son of the Macedonian king Philip II, was born in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia (Macedon). His early years were spent under the tutelage of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. In 336 BCE Philip was assassinated, and Alexander, then 20 years old, assumed the throne. After consolidating his rule over the Greek states, he undertook, in 334, a military campaign against the Persian Empire to the east (Green, 67-71).

Alexander's army, about 35,000 strong (although some sources say 65,000), crossed the Hellespont (the Dardanelles) from Greece into what is now Turkey and defeated a Persian force under Darius III at the Granicus River. He proceeded along the east shore of the Mediterranean Sea, then inland into Asia Minor, conquering all the territory as far as present-day Ankara, Turkey. Alexander and his army continued southward into present-day Lebanon where he captured the Phoenician city of Tyre. Then, in 332, he headed west along the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula into Egypt, which he conquered with little resistance. That same year, he established Alexandria on Egypt's northern Mediterranean shore (Fuller, 43-48).

In 331, Alexander's army crossed into Syria and soon reached the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. At the battle of Gaugamela in what is now northern Iraq, he decisively defeated the ...