Alexander III

11 Key excerpts on "Alexander III"

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  The Military Legacy of Alexander the Great

  Lessons for the Information Age

  • Michael P. Ferguson, Ian Worthington(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Introduction Why Alexander the Great? Then and Now

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003052951-1

  All dates for Alexander and the ancient world are bc .

  The publisher has allowed British English and American English spellings, for which the authors are grateful.

  Alexander the Great was one of the ancient world’s most skilled military strategists and conquerors; arguably, he was the greatest and a true warrior king. As king of Macedonia from 336 to his death in Babylon in 323, his very name evokes images of hard-fought battles and sieges against superior enemy forces. He traversed thousands of miles, consistently ensuring he had adequate modes of transportation, manpower, and resources, to establish an empire from Greece in the west to what the Greeks called India (present-day Pakistan) in the east – remarkably within a decade from first setting foot on Asian soil in 334.

  Alexander is relevant to today’s leaders and students of the profession of arms far more than typically imagined. This book is not meant to be a biography or a strictly military treatment of Alexander as there are plenty of those already.1 Instead, it is an account of his campaigns as well as a discussion of his background, influences, and personality to understand him in his own time and to see why and how the lessons from his reign, especially his leadership and art of war, inform us today, for better or worse.

  Modern military campaigns are anchored as much in the planning as in the combat. They demand, among other things, that logistics have been worked out in advance; lines of communication established; topography researched; satellite reconnaissance scrutinized; contacts with locals established; maps prepared; troop numbers decided considering enemy forces and locations; and, ideally, clear exit plans made.2

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  The Great Empires of the Ancient World

  • Thomas Harrison(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Thames and Hudson Ltd

    (Publisher)

  THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER AND HIS SUCCESSORS

  338–60 BC

  MICHAEL SOMMER AND THOMAS HARRISON

  When Alexander the Great was born in Pella, the capital of the small kingdom of Macedonia, in 356 BC , it was the dawn of a new era. His father Philip II, the newly invested Macedonian ruler, was about to change permanently the political map of the Aegean world. Within a few years, he reached Thermopylae, the gate to Greece. Little more than a decade later, Macedonia was de facto the hegemonic power in Hellas: Philip forged alliances with some Greek city-states, isolated Athens and subdued the entire south of the Balkan peninsula. Nothing, however, announced the truly world-shaking changes that were imminent when Philip was murdered in 336 BC and Alexander came to power.

  From Philip to Alexander

  No single ruler changed the ancient world to the same extent as Alexander the Great. In the 13 short years of his reign, the tiny kingdom of Macedonia, at the periphery of the vast Persian empire of the Achaemenids, became the greatest power the world had seen so far. A new era had begun which we call ‘Hellenism’; Greek language, culture and customs took off throughout the Near East and Central Asia. When Alexander died in 323 BC , he had led his soldiers across the Hellespont and the Taurus mountains, through the deserts of Libya and the endless plains of Mesopotamia, across the Hindu Kush, into India and through the hostile Gedrosian desert in Iran. Thousands had died or been expelled from their homes, their cities plundered and their possessions confiscated. But after Alexander’s death, his empire fell apart even faster than it had been built. One generation after the great conqueror, the Hellenistic world was divided into three major and a handful of minor kingdoms, all competing for the great prize: Alexander’s legacy, universal power.

  Alexander’s conquests would have been impossible without the preparations laid down by his father Philip II (359–336 BC ). It was he who had won for Macedonia leadership over Greece and the Balkans, and he left to his son not only a stable and enlarged empire, but also a mission. In the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC

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  General Logistics Paradigm: A Study Of The Logistics Of Alexander, Napoleon, And Sherman

  • Captain R. Alan Hardemon USAF(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Tannenberg Publishing

    (Publisher)

  III. DISCUSSION Alexander the Great Alexander the Great is rumored to have wept upon the conclusion of his conquests because there no longer were any nations to conquer. To a large degree it is true that at his height of power, Alexander was the ruler of the known world. His tales of conquest take on a mythical grandeur in which he is located somewhere between a man and a god. “Alexander was in fact, a living myth, and unless we accept him as such we cannot begin to understand his history” (Fuller, 1940:5). Generalism and Military Professionalism. The almost superhuman view of Alexander is not a modern contrivance. In fact, throughout most of his life Alexander was treated with godlike reverence. “Led by a god they [the Macedonian Army] faced all dangers, and it was their faith in him as a supernatural world-hero, as much as his inborn genius for war, which made him not only the greatest of all the Great Captains, but which distinguishes him from all and each one of them” (Fuller, 1940:5). This unparalleled allegiance to Alexander coupled with his genius for integrating logistics concerns into every facet of his military theory, doctrine, strategy, tactics, and administration enabled the support of a world-conquering army. Alexander did not rise through the ranks, but inherited his position from his father Philip. Likewise he inherited a formidable fighting force without equal in the ancient world. Alexander’s professional education was enviable to say the least. He received superior instruction in strategy and tactics from his father and was privately tutored by Aristotle. The negative legacy of Philip and Aristotle’s tutelage was their incredible hatred of the Persians, referred to by both Philip and Aristotle as the barbarians. However, Alexander seemed to rise above the hatred of his father and mentor and developed an attitude towards conquered peoples, even Persians, that was key in ensuring logistical support across the vast conquered nations under his control

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  Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs

  • Howard Vos(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Thomas Nelson

    (Publisher)

  The Influence of Alexander the Great and His Successors

  Great generals stir our admiration and imagination as we read accounts of their exploits. Unfortunately we often think of them only as military men, when usually they were more important off the battlefield than on it. The classic example is Alexander the Great of Macedonia. He launched developments that were to change the whole character of Western civilization. After Alexander, the world—including Judea—could never be the same again.

  Alexander and his successors spread Greek culture across the vast area between the Aegean Sea and India and to North Africa. As they did, various peoples modified it and thus it developed into what we call Hellenistic culture. The Romans fell under the spell of that culture and adopted it as their own. Then in modified form the Hellenistic-Roman way of life was passed on through the Middle Ages and in time became the basis of modern Western civilization.

  For our present purposes we need to note that in Judea, upper-class Jews, forgetting much of their heritage, built Greek theaters and gymnasiums, spoke Greek, adopted Greek dress and names and even thought patterns. Jewish circles in Egypt and Syria and points east felt the same impact. Some description of that development appears in the following pages of this chapter.

  The Land

  When Alexander’s father Philip died in 336 B.C. , he left his son the kingdom of Macedonia and a cause: destruction of the Persian threat to Greece. We cannot describe the exact size of Macedonia because its boundaries varied over the centuries and because the exact boundaries during much of the countryhistory are not known. The kingdom was, however, always located at the northeast corner of the Aegean, with Pella (24 miles northwest of Thessalonica) the capital during much of its history. Under Philip II (359–336 B.C

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  Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar

  Who was the Greatest Commander in the Ancient World?

  • Simon Elliott(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Pen and Sword Military

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2

  Alexander the Great: A Biography

  I n the annals of ancient history the light of Alexander the Great shines brighter than any other, inspiring generations of dynasts and despots. Thus we have Julius Caesar, his rival as a commander in this book, reduced to tears on seeing a statue of the Macedonian king and feeling diminished (Elliott, 2019, 82). Alexander was the embodiment of the Homeric warrior hero. A regent at 16, cavalry commander at 18, king at 20 and conqueror of the biggest Empire the world had ever known at 26. The explorer of mythical India at 30 where he reached the ends of his known earth, but wanted more. The man for whom achievable was never enough, and who later thought himself a God.

  In this chapter I provide a concise biography of Alexander from his accession as Macedonian king in 336 BC through to his dramatic death in Babylon in 323 BC only a month shy of his thirty-third birthday. In the first instance, to provide context and set the scene for the astonishing story that follows, I detail his key opponent Darius III and his Achaemenid Persian Empire. I then chronologically consider each phase of Alexander’s anabasis eastwards, this including an analysis of his Indian opponents as his conquests concluded in the Punjab. Finally, I detail his traumatic journey back to Babylonia where he finally met his fate.

  The Achaemenid Empire of Darius III

  The Empire ruled by Darius III, while not as powerful as that of his predecessors, was still mighty indeed. The early Achaemenid kings had built on the fearsome reputation of their former Median masters whose rule Cyrus the Great had usurped. The Biblical prophet Isaiah paints a grim picture of Median martial prowess when describing their turning on their former Babylonian allies with whom they had earlier defeated the Neo-Assyrian Empire, saying (Holy Bible, Isaiah, 13, 18):

  Behold, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. Their bows will slaughter the young men: they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb: their eyes will not pity children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendour and pride of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. It will never be inhabited or dwelt in for all generations: no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherds will make their flocks lie down there. But wild beasts will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures.

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  The Origins Of War

  From The Stone Age To Alexander The Great, Revised Edition

  • Arther Ferrill(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Six

  Alexander the Great and the Origins of Modern War

  Alexander the Great’s generalship was so outstanding that superlatives seem inadequate to describe it. He became a legend in his own, short lifetime, and over the ages the normal vocabulary of military analysis has often been forsaken in treatments of his career. He is not the western world’s only cult general – Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon and Lee achieved that ethereal status – but as a cult figure Alexander towers above all others. Caesar and Napoleon were swept up in the mystique of Alexander every bit as much as the wide-eyed schoolboys who even today follow Alexander on his trek to the Punjab in India, amazed at his indomitable spirit, his apparent superhuman ability to hurl himself through the hordes of Asia. Neither the horsemen of Persia nor the terrifying elephants of India stayed his majestic dash to greatness and glory.256

  Historians often find such towering figures inviting objects of attack. The ‘real’ Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill were perhaps not quite as noble, in every respect, as the Lincoln or Churchill of popular myth. It is, therefore, not surprising that the superhuman Alexander, at least in his role as king and empire builder, has been cut down to near mortal size by modern historians. Alexander’s generalship has nevertheless remained largely unscathed. To be sure, historians have noted, and some have emphasized, that the army Alexander led into Asia was not of his own making. His father Philip had fashioned it, and Alexander learned much about generalship under Philip’s tutelage. But Alexander was genuinely a rare, inspirational leader of men in battle, and his conception of strategy and tactics was a quantum leap ahead of any of his predecessors in the Graeco-Macedonian world. As a general Alexander is perhaps unique, a hero whom even rationalist historians can admire unabashedly.

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  Backgrounds of Early Christianity

  • Everett Ferguson(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Eerdmans

    (Publisher)

  Third Philippic 31). The Macedonians were extravagant in their joys, fights, drinking, and sorrows. But their monarchs began to introduce Greek culture, and Philip II brought Aristotle to educate his son Alexander.

  Philip II (359–336 B.C. ) made war less amateurish. He fought year-round, winter as well as spring (cf. 2 Sam. 11:1 for the older practice), which was something like using chemical weapons now. He became ruler of all Greece after the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C. He did not change the internal organization of the Greek cities, and his legal position was that of a general at the head of a league to fight the weakened Persian empire. The kind of ruler liable to be assassinated, he suffered that fate in 336 B.C.

  ALEXANDER THE GREAT AS DIVINE HERO

  The conquests of Alexander spread Greek culture throughout the eastern Mediterranean world. (© Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)

  Life of Alexander III (356–323)

  Alexander inherited his father’s monarchy (although the Greek cities were theoretically allies) and his plans to invade Persia. When Thebes revolted, Alexander demolished the city with such fierceness that no other “ally” attempted the same. He crossed the Hellespont in 334 and after the battle of the Granicus he quickly accomplished the “liberation” of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. The next major battle at Issus left the western part of the Persian empire open to him. He proceeded to take Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt—the city of Tyre offering the most stubborn resistance on the way. At the battle of Gaugamela (331) in Mesopotamia Alexander dealt the final blow to Darius III and then proceeded to occupy the Persian capitals and claim their treasures. With the death of Darius III he took the title of “Great King.” Alexander pushed his conquests to the Indus River before his army’s restlessness forced him to turn back. He died of a fever in Babylonia.

  In his conquests Alexander recognized and accepted what he found. He came to preserve and not to destroy, so he retained the governmental systems he found. He had a notable interest in reconciling native worship with the fact of conquest, but he showed his Greek feeling by founding Greek cities. These became centers for the diffusion of Greek culture, even though there was no systematic effort at Hellenization. They were somewhat like the later Roman colonies in being founded for strategic and economic purposes, especially to provide a manpower pool. Alexander determined the temples to be built and the Greek deities to be worshiped along with the native deity.

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  Alexander the Great

  Makers of History

  • Jacob Abbott(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  B.C. 356-336 The briefness of Alexander's career.

  A lexander the Great died when he was quite young. He was but thirty-two years of age when he ended his career, and as he was about twenty when he commenced it, it was only for a period of twelve years that he was actually engaged in performing the work of his life. Napoleon was nearly three times as long on the great field of human action.

  His brilliant exploits.

  Notwithstanding the briefness of Alexander's career, he ran through, during that short period, a very brilliant series of exploits, which were so bold, so romantic, and which led him into such adventures in scenes of the greatest magnificence and splendor, that all the world looked on with astonishment then, and mankind have continued to read the story since, from age to age, with the greatest interest and attention.

  Character of Alexander. Mental and physical qualities.

  The secret of Alexander's success was his character. He possessed a certain combination of mental and personal attractions, which in every age gives to those who exhibit it a mysterious and almost unbounded ascendency over all within their influence. Alexander was characterized by these qualities in a very remarkable degree. He was finely formed in person, and very prepossessing in his manners. He was active, athletic, and full of ardor and enthusiasm in all that he did. At the same time, he was calm, collected, and considerate in emergencies requiring caution, and thoughtful and far-seeing in respect to the bearings and consequences of his acts. He formed strong attachments, was grateful for kindnesses shown to him, considerate in respect to the feelings of all who were connected with him in any way, faithful to his friends, and generous toward his foes. In a word, he had a noble character, though he devoted its energies unfortunately to conquest and war. He lived, in fact, in an age when great personal and mental powers had scarcely any other field for their exercise than this. He entered upon his career with great ardor, and the position in which he was placed gave him the opportunity to act in it with prodigious effect.

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  The Handy Western Philosophy Answer Book

  The Ancient Greek Influence on Modern Understanding

  • Ed D'Angelo(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Visible Ink Press

    (Publisher)

  Several ancient historians record Alexander expressing the same sentiment. Hephaestion served as Alexander’s second in command and commander of the elite Macedonian cavalry, the best in the ancient world. Hephaestion was not only Alexander’s closest friend but throughout his military campaigns also his most trusted advisor and confidante. When, in 327 B.C.E., Alexander married his second wife, Stateira II, the daughter of Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, he arranged for Hephaestion to marry her sister Drypetis, so that they would become brothers-in-law and they and their sons could rule an integrated Persian and Greek Empire. When Hephaestion died in 324 B.C.E., Alexander was inconsolable. He arranged an elaborate funeral for Hephaestion in Babylon, where a year later he himself died. What is the history of Alexander the Great’s military campaigns? At age sixteen, Alexander’s formal education ended and his military career began. His father, Philip II, went abroad to wage war on Byzantium, an ancient Greek colony that later became Constantinople and, later still, Istanbul, leaving Alexander behind to serve as regent of Macedonia. At once, a Thracian tribe revolted. Alexander put down the revolt, colonized the region with Macedonians, and founded a city that he named Alexandropolis. When his father returned, Alexander was dispatched to Thrace to put down other revolts and also successfully defended Macedonia from the Illyrians, who had invaded from the north. In 338 B.C.E., Alexander joined his father on a march south, culminating in the Battle of Chaeronea, where together they defeated an alliance of Greek states led by Athens and Thebes. Alexander is credited with defeating the Sacred Band of Thebes, the most elite unit of Theban warriors, which was composed of 150 pairs of male lovers

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  Alexander the Great and Propaganda

  • John Walsh, Elizabeth Baynham, John Walsh, Elizabeth Baynham(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  That Alexander had an image of himself cannot be denied, and the outlines of that image are clear. He wanted to be seen as a great warrior, invincible, unconquerable, the son of Zeus, and as a god himself on earth. While our lost sources and those that survive have shaped their narratives, these presentations and the later Romance itself followed the path that Alexander himself created. Where Heracles was seen as a great benefactor of the Greek nation for his feats, Alexander had defeated the great nemesis of Persia. Where Achilles had won glory in the siege of but a single city, Alexander had subdued dozens of them and spread Greek culture as far as the Indus River valley. He was in his own mind and in the eyes of his contemporaries a man who transcended his mortality by his achievements: not just beloved of the gods but the proclaimed son of the greatest god of all, Zeus. That he sought the recognition of divinity in his lifetime can hardly be doubted. As Isocrates (5.5) proclaimed in reference to Philip, whoever conquered the Persian Empire, there would be nothing left to do but to become a god. That the Alexander Romance saw his achievements inflate to mythical status was the culmination of the legend begun by the Conqueror himself.

  Notes

  1 See D. Spencer, The Roman Alexander (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002); D. Spencer, ‘Roman Alexanders: Epistemology and Identity’, in Alexander the Great: A New History, ed. Heckel and L. A. Tritle (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 251; and J. Maitland, ‘MHNIN AEIΔE ΘΕΑ: Alexander the Great and the Anger of Achilles’, in East and West in the World Empire of Alexander: Essays in Honour of Brian Bosworth, ed. P. Wheatley and E. Baynham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1–20.

  2 See E. Anson, Alexander the Great: Themes and Issues (London, New Delhi, New York, and Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 134–36.

  3 Arr., Anab. 4.22. 6; 5.19.4; Diod. 17.95.5; and Curt. 9.3.23.

  4 Apollod. 2.4.8–9; Ovid, Her. 9.44; cf. Hom., Odys. 8.601–6; and Eurip., Heracl. 148–49, 339–47; A. B. Bosworth, A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 271 and A. B. Bosworth, Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 283. In the summer of 324, Alexander was still calling Philip his father (Arr., Anab. 7.9.2). There is little evidence to suggest that Alexander ever repudiated Philip as his mortal father (Kraft 1971: 65). At Opis in the summer of 324, the sources present him as extolling the accomplishments ‘of his father Philip’ (Arr., Anab

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  Hannibal

  A Hellenistic Life

  • Eve MacDonald(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  These celebrated generals represented the model of power and ‘heroic leadership’ which Alexander had embodied. As subsequent leaders employed the image of Alexander to claim their legitimacy, the symbolism of power and conquest which he had typified spread across the Mediterranean, from the Successor kings to the city-states of the west. 13 The powerful republics of Carthage and Rome were equally influenced by stories of these magnificent feats of military glory. The tales of the great generals inspired by divine patronage were the stuff of legend. Hannibal would have studied their battles, learned their techniques and been schooled in the strategies of war as befitted the son of one of Carthage’s great generals. 14 The third century was a period of economic growth and increased trade around the Mediterranean. It was also a time of increasing prosperity at Carthage. The city was ideally situated in the middle of the Mediterranean to capitalize on the trade from an ever-widening world. 15 As great wealth and royal rivalries drove the successors of Alexander to further competitive warfare they began what must have been one of the world’s first arms races, as bigger and better warships, catapults, siege engines and weaponry were commissioned. 16 One of the earliest and most celebrated of the Hellenistic kings to explore the potential of advanced weaponry was the Macedonian Demetrius known as Poliorcetes (Besieger of Cities). Plutarch, the first-century CE compiler of great Greek and Roman lives, wrote that ‘Demetrius was skilled in directing catapults and battering rams to crush city walls’. Demetrius’ tortoise-like armoured battering rams were 180 feet long and manned by 1,000 men. His giant catapults hurled 180-pound stone balls a quarter of a mile and his most fearsome device was an enormous wheeled fortified tower called Helepolis (the Taker of Cities)

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