Alexander the Great Conqueror: Overview

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great - 24"x36" Poster 

 No one has made a mark on the world more profoundly than Alexander the Great, the young man who. through war, diplomacy, and arguably Machiavellian means, expanded his empire to include most of the Western world and beyond-all before he died at age thirty-three.  A remarkable individual whose path crossed with some of the most influential people, places, and events of all time, Alexander began his combat training at age seven, studied philosophy with Aristotle at age thirteen, kept a copy of Homer's Iliad under his pillow until his death, and introduced Greek and oriental cultural influenced throughout his vast empire.



In 1980 at a major museum display of Macedonian antiquities, the president of the Hellenic Republic proclaimed, "As for Greece, Alexander has served as no other man has done the dreams of the nation, as a symbol of indissoluble unity and continuity between ancient and modern Hellenism." However, Alexander, king of Macedonians, whose spectacular career of conquest made him arguably the most famous secular leader in history, remained an enduring and controversial figure in European and western Asian history, folklore, and art.  From the Atlantic to India, there is hardly a people who have not incorporated into their public consciousness some aspect-real or imagined, friendly or hostile-of Alexander's exploits.  The diversity of opinion represented by both that ancient Athenian orator and the modern Greek politician continues unabated into our own age.

Alexander ranks among the greatest military commanders of all time.  King at the age of twenty, conqueror of the Persian Empire at twenty-five, explorer of the boundaries of the known world at thirty, and dead before he reached his thirty-third birthday-his was a stunning career and the stuff of legends.  Roman emperors imitated him.  He became a central figure in medieval European romantic literature and in the written and oral traditions of people from the British Isles to southeast Asia.  And in present-day Greece, the Macedonian Alexander, ruler of the ancient Greek cities, has even been resurrected as a national hero, the symbol linking the modern nation to a famous distant past.  There is no one else anywhere quite like him.

In modern times, his legend has evolved as a metaphor for fame.  A New York Times book reviewer once described Albert Einstein as "the Alexander the Great of the life of the mind."  When, in Hamlet, the Shakespeare sought a historical figure to contrast the immortality of fame with the perishable nature of the human body, he chose Alexander.  And when Donald Trump Developed the elaborate suite on the fifty-first floor of his Taj Majal casino-hotel in Atlantic City, he named the most extravagant of his suites after the Macedonian conqueror.

There is no doubt about the continuing extraordinary fame of Alexander of Macedon.  His legend is part of a very long popular tradition, and one that is permanently fixed in the public consciousness.  Yet to serious students of history, this sensational portrait of Alexander is incomplete.  The central problem in understanding Alexander is that there is little evidence surviving directly from his own time.  The earliest narrative account of his life was written nearly three centuries after his death, and our best history postdates the king's career by about five centuries.  Fragments of the original (and now lost) sources are mentioned in the surviving accounts, but some of these passed through several hands before assuming the corrupted form in which we now have them.   Briefly put, we have very poor evidence documenting the life of one of the most famous individuals in history.

The enduring task of scholars is to validate the information that has come down to us.  And yet, while the general outlines of Alexander's march through Asia are clear, we are most often than not left to speculate about nuances: his plans, the details of some battles, the Macedonian logistical and intelligence operations, and his relationships with the members of his own entourage as well as the foreigners he encountered.

Source:  "Alexander the Great," by Philip Freeman
Eugene N. Borza, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, The Pennsylvania State University