Megas Alexandros

[Greece4Ever]

Alexander was born in 356 BCE. he was born into royalty. His mother Olympias was a princess from the Molossian kingdom of Epirus in northwest Greece. Just three years earlier his father Philip had became king of Macedonia. On his father's death Alexander quickly took the thrown and was declared King of Macedonia.

By the time of Phillips assassination, Alexander had already led marvelous life. He remarkable in his cavalry training, and he was tutored by one of the worlds greatest philosophers Aristotle, who father, Nicomachus, had served as court physician to Phillip's father Amyntas the III, to teach his thirteen year old son. For about three years Alexander studied political science, ethics, science, and literature under Aristotle, and he gained an appreciation of Homer. It is said that Alexander always slept with the Iliad and a knife under his pillow. Alexander also gained a strong sense of his own connections with his mythological ancestors, Achilles and Heracles, actually Alexander's mother was a member of the royal house of Epirus, which claimed Achilles as an ancestor, Alexander's father was a member of the royal Greek Macedonian family, which claimed descent from Heracles. These legendary heroes one, the preeminent Greek warrior against Troy, and the other, the explorer and tamer of wild lands beyond the Greek horizon. It had a profound impact on Alexander's conceptualization of himself , his Greek ancestry and his place in history.

At the age of 10, Phillips trainers were unable to tame a fierce black stallion. Alexander asked to try. To everyone's astonishment, the horse allowed Alexander to approach and mount him. Since then Bucephalus the name of the horse, became Alexander's personal horse and Bucephalus carried him into every major battle until the horses death in 326 B.C. Alexander erected an enormous tomb and founded a city Bucephala, in his honor. In 340 B.C., at the age of 16, Alexander became Macedonian Regent while Phillip was besieging Byzantion, and he began commanding a wing of cavalry. He was victorious against a Thracian rebellion.

Alexander became King of Macedonia in 336 B.C. following Phillips death. Alexander's decisive movements in the first year of his rule both secured his place as King of Macedonia and foreshadowed his characteristically aggressive approach to problem solving. Quickly, Alexander gained the support of Phillip's chief general, Antipater, who presented him to the army for acclamation as King. With the allegiance of the army, Alexander had the allegiance of Macedonia. He executed the conspirators and returned to Athens and Thebes before an uprising could be mobilized. He replaced Phillip as hegemon of the League of Corinth, archon of Thessaly, and commander of the war against Persia. He then departed to secure the Macedonian Greek borders, campaigning northward to the Danube against the Triballi, and , decisive, defeating the Illyrians in the southwest. By then however there were problems throughout the rest of Greece.

Some thought that Alexander had been killed during the war with the Illyrians, Thebes rebelled. But when Alexander who had been informed by these events, suddenly arrived at Thebes with his army. Just as Phillip had once made an example of Olynthus, Alexander now made one of Thebes. When the Thebas refused to surrender, Alexander captured and razed the entire the city, except for the temples and the home and descendants of the poet Pindar, to the ground. Although Greeks have always been fighting amongst themselves, the destruction of Thebes was a wake up call. In the wake of such an event, Alexander could afford to be lenient to the rest of the Greek states.

Alexander departed for Persia in 334 B.C. with a combined Greek force of about 32,000 soldiers and 5,100 cavalry, and a train of siege equipment. He would need it all, and more, during the next 11 years. With a dramatic flourish, Alexander first visited Troy to pay homage to his ancestor Achilles and to request that Priam, the ancient king of Troy, pardon him for invading Asia. Then , having defeated a small Persian army at the Granicus River, he took Persian-controlled cities one by one. He maintained administrative control over them, and he made their tribute, formerly paid to Persian overlord, payable to him. In the Greek cities, although he eventually supported the democratic governments and abolished Persian taxes, he required contributions towards his military campaign. In 333 B.C. when he took Gordium and solved Gordian Knot, it was clear to everyone that Alexander intended to do much more than liberate the Greeks. Yet, the resistance in Greece was stifled by the mobilization of a Persian army , under King Darius III, which was nearly twice the size of Alexander's army.

The two armies finally met in Isus. Although the Persian army supposedly had the upper hand, Darius fled when Alexander and his cavalry charged his position. The remainder of the Persian army was defeated, and those soldiers who weren't slaughtered followed their king. Alexander captured the camp at Issus, in which Darius's wife and family were awaiting his return, and he took the royal family as hostages. Shortly thereafter, he captured the royal treasury at Damascus, which ended his financial concerns, and he rejected the humiliated king's offers of alliance in exchange of his family. Instead of pursuing Darius, Alexander moved down the Mediterranean seaboard, cutting off resistance and depriving the Persian fleet of its land bases. Most of the Syrian and Phoenician cities submitted , but Tyre, a previously impregnable city, became a major obstacle. The Tyrians rejected Alexander's request to enter the city, and they threw his ambassadors over the walls. Alexander was not amused.

After a brutal and protracted siege, which lasted eight months, Alexander took Tyre in part, by constructing a huge mole about 200 feet wide and 20 feet high, to connect the mainland with the island fortress. This engineering feat was a mark of the determination and innovation that characterized Alexander's conquests. However it was the arrival of about 120 warships from Cyprus that ultimately secured Alexander's victory. For resisting, the Tyrians suffered the same fate as the Thebans. Quite consistently, Alexander made sure that his adversaries could count upon two things, brutal treatment if they resisted and more lenient treatment if they capitulated.

Egypt, which was more than happy to be free of Persian rule, fell to Alexander with out a fight. Alexander was crowned Pharaoh in 332 B.C. He appointed local Egyptian governors to rule the country under Greek Macedonian financial and military control, which gave him enormous financial resources. While Alexander was in Egypt, he founded the city of Alexandria on the Nile delta. From Egypt, Alexander embarked on a campaign for the rest of Persia. In 331 B.C., the main battle took place at Guagamela. Darius's enormous army included a strong cavalry, a weak infantry, scythe enhanced chariots, and war elephants. Alexander's, whose combined Greek forces was greatly outnumbered, relied on a disciplined army and strategy reminiscent of Issus. Although the fighting was fierce and the Greek Phalanx was struggling, Alexander's cavalry charge once again sent the king fleeing. This time, Darius left central Persia and fled with his kinsmen, Bessus, into the mountains toward Ecbatana. Alexander's army declared him King of Asia, and , soon, the western capitals of Persia-Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis all fell, or were handed over , to Alexander.

Alexander with his army furiously pursued Darius. But before they could reach the King, Darius was assassinated by satraps sympathetic to Bessus in 330 B.C. Alexander's advance forces caught up with the King he was barely alive. Bessus escaped with his men east. Alexander was furious that Darius was killed that way. To Alexander no king should suffer this fate so he gave a Darius a proper burial and he avenged his death by catching Bessus and killing them. From 330 B.C. to 327 B.C., Alexander struggled to capture eastern Iran and the central Asian steppe. Bactria (Afghanistan) and Sogdiana ( Uzbekistan and Tajikastan) were areas with long history of fiercely independent tribal fighters, shifting alliances, and notoriously difficult to terrain. Alexander's lack of familiarity with the politics, peoples and alliances of the region sparked a brutal rebellion, led by the guerilla commander Sogdian noble, Spitamenes, which lasted for nearly three years. During this Alexander's army suffered some of their most serious military defeats.

Meanwhile his Greek kinsmen who had trudged, starved, and fought their way to an exhausted desire for home, were watching their royal companion transform into something different. Although more than once, Alexander kept them going this time his troops now had a long list of complaints. First Alexander married a foreign queen Roxanne, and he was recruiting Persian nobles as companions and officers, which all Greeks considered them barbarians non Greeks. Second Alexander was adopting Persian customs and granting former enemies their previously held positions and status. Plots and mutinies some real and some not broke out. Alexander executed some of his personal inner guard including the general Parmenio and his son Philotas and closes associates including the historian Callisthenes. Alexander personally executed Cleitus the Black, a man who had saved his life during at the Granicus River.

The land of the Indus River (modern Pakistan) was known as India to the Greeks and the Persian alike, and it was there that Alexander's campaign passed into a near mystical realm. Even legendary Greek heroes, like Heracles, had failed to conquer this fabled land of monsters, magic, and terrible tribes. And , in fact, the army had dropped out of the clouds into a subcontinent of vast kingdoms, strange animals, terrible diseases, and the worst weather they had ever seen. Struggling against the monsoon, Alexander's last , and possibly greatest, victory came against Poris who had 200 war elephants, at the flooded Hyphasis. The men had spent eight and a half years marching over 10,000 miles, and they were going on to the Ganges. After pleading, threatening, and promising glory all failed, Alexander spent three day sulking in his tent. Finally Alexander reluctantly turned west and south and made his way, through heavy resistance and fierce battles, to the Indian Ocean. Along the way , while besieging Malli, Alexander's siege ladder collapsed behind him and he was trapped inside the enemy city. After being hit in the lung by an arrow and bravely rescued, he nearly died.

In 325 B.C, while his fleet sailed along the coast, Alexander, his army, their families, and camp followers staggered through the arid wastelands of Gedrosia, ostensibly to found port cities beside the oceans. It was a disaster. Thousands died, including most of the soldier's families who were caught in a flash flood, before they could reach Carmania. His closest friend Hephaestion who he loved as a brother died from a fever in 324 B.C., which sent Alexander into a frenzy. He executed Hephaestion's physician, ordered an extravagant burial monument for his friend, and returned to Babylon to plan a naval campaign to Arabia and the Caspian Sea. Bucephalus had died swell in 326 B.C. On the tenth of June 323 B.C. Alexander became terribly ill and died 10 days after in Babylon at the age of 33. When asked who should inherit his kingdom , Alexander said "the strongest".

Although it took nearly a year for Alexander's funeral procession to make its way from Babylon to Alexandria, where he was buried supposedly, the dust never really settled on Alexander's world. In the years to come, Alexander's son heir was murdered thankfully and his empire would be broken apart by the generals who served under him. Yet before the age of 33 Alexander had conquered and ruled most of the civilized world. And for better or worst he had changed the course of history for mankind forever. Alexander the Great will always be remembered as the greatest ruler, and conqueror off all Greeks.

Hellenic Life

[Hephaestion]

One of the greatest Hellenes ever, Alexander the Great.

[Prokomenos]

Absolutely Greeks like Alexader, Kolokotronis and more are people that all Greeks should always remember.

[Frapegliko]

kserate oti to alogo tou mega alexandrou emeine elliniko?
lol
den ixeran na apofasioun pws tha to onomasoun
boukefalov H boukefalski

[Δωριεύς]

Originally Posted by frapegliko

kserate oti to alogo tou mega alexandrou emeine elliniko?
lol
den ixeran na apofasioun pws tha to onomasoun
boukefalov H boukefalski

[Prokomenos]

Originally Posted by frapegliko

kserate oti to alogo tou mega alexandrou emeine elliniko?
lol
den ixeran na apofasioun pws tha to onomasoun
boukefalov H boukefalski

Δώστους λίγο καιρό κάτι θα βρούνε και μετά θα τα γράφουνε παντού στο internet.

[O Tizimis]

Thats true they are swarming the internet with their propaganda all over the place. By the way I heard many of the FYROM sites got hacked by some Greeks!

[Psaltis]

Na pane na pidixtoune ta mounia. They can write all their lies everybody knows that Macedonian were and are Greek.

[pankration]

Sites like macedoniaontheweb.com dedicate themselves to the Macedonian question. If you need to pursue this cause there is a ton of info there.

[AgriosEllinas]

Originally Posted by O Tizimis

Thats true they are swarming the internet with their propaganda all over the place. By the way I heard many of the FYROM sites got hacked by some Greeks!

What kind of propaganda do you mean? I have never heard of Fyrom are they some kind of an organization?