Alexander (Alexandros) 1. Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon, 356–323 BC, son of Philip II and Olympias).
1. Early life. In his youth, Alexander was taught by Aristotle from 342 BC. He showed his intelligence and power of command at an early age; when only 18 he led the Macedonian cavalry with distinction at the battle of Chaeronea (338) which saw the defeat of Thebes and Athens by Macedon. When his father was murdered in 336 he succeeded, after the elimination of his rivals, to the kingdom of Macedon and the leadership of the Greek city-states (see Corinth).
Before his death Philip had been about to lead an army against Persia in punishment for the wrongs inflicted on Greece in the Persian Wars 150 years earlier. Alexander aimed to continue this war, but first secured his position in Greece and stabilized the northern frontiers by defeating the Danubian tribes of that area. It was while he was at Corinth that he is reputed to have met the *Cynic philosopher Diogenes.
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2. 334–332 BC. With his Greek territory secured and left in the control of his general Antipater, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia in 334 to join the remnants of his father’s advance army. He had a force of about 43,000 men and a fleet of the Greek allies with about fifty warships. Like the mythical Greek hero *Protesilaus on his way to Troy, Alexander, who modelled his behaviour on the Homeric heroes, was the first ashore.
He visited Troy and paid sacrifice at the tombs of various heroes. He soon achieved his desire for a pitched battle with the Persians, and at the river Granicus (334) defeated Darius III and a slightly smaller Persian army. The nucleus of the Greek infantry was the 15,000 strong Macedonian phalanx, divided into regional units. Armed with the six-metre *sarisa (a pike, nearly twenty feet long) it was virtually irresistible in pitched battle, when the final blow was usually delivered by a cavalry charge from the right flank. As a result of the battle, from which Darius escaped unscathed, Alexander’s way into Asia Minor had been opened up. He moved fast and took the cities of Sardis, Ephesus, and Miletus. Halicarnassus fell only after a stubborn siege. Democracies were re-established in these cities which, though he came as their liberator, became virtually a part of Alexander’s own empire.
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7.Character and reputation. Alexander is the greatest general of antiquity. This position he owes partly to the splendidly organized Macedonian army and its technically improved siege weapons, partly to his own versatile and intelligent strategy, but much more to qualities that were uniquely his: an unprecedented speed of movement, resolution in tackling the seemingly impossible, personal involvement in the dangers of battle and the rigours of campaigning, and his heroic style.
To these qualities as well as to his generosity Alexander owed his ascendancy over the army. He regarded himself as the ruler of the Persian empire by right of conquest, and his assumption of Persian dress announces this fact, as does his addition of Persian ceremonial and his employment of Persian nobles, even among the Companions (see hetairoi). There is no evidence that he had a policy of mixing Greeks and Persians in pursuit of an ideal. Even in the case of the Susa marriages he may have wished to cut across the family and regional loyalties which had bedevilled Persians and Macedonians alike and to promote able men of either race whose loyalty was to him alone. The famous profile of Alexander with head and hair thrown back which appears repeatedly on coins was derived from the model by the sculptor Lysippus.
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The Oxford
Companion to Classical Literature,M. C. Howatson; Oxford University Press
