(356-323 B.C.)
[Illustration: Alexander.]
Alexander the Great, son of Philip of Macedon and Olympias, daughter
of Neoptolemus of Epirus, was born at Pella, 356 B.C. His mind was
formed chiefly by Aristotle, who instructed him in every branch of
human learning, especially in the art of government. Alexander was
sixteen years of age when his father marched against Byzantium, and
left the government in his hands during his absence. Two years
afterward, he displayed singular courage at the battle of Chaeronea
(338 B.C.), where he overthrew the Sacred Band of the Thebans. "My
son," said Philip, as he embraced him after the conflict, "seek for
thyself another kingdom, for that which I leave is too small for
thee." The father and son quarrelled, however, when the former
divorced Olympias. Alexander took part with his mother, and fled to
Epirus, to escape his father's vengeance; but receiving his pardon
soon afterward, he returned, and accompanied him in an expedition
against the Triballi, when he saved his life on the field. Philip,
being appointed generalissimo of the Greeks, was preparing for a war
with Persia, when he was assassinated (336 B.C.), and Alexander, not
yet twenty years of age, ascended the throne.
After punishing his father's murderers, he marched on Corinth, and in
a general assembly of the Greeks he caused himself to be appointed to
the command of the forces against Persia. On his return to Macedon, he
found the Illyrians and Triballi up in arms, whereupon he forced his
way through Thrace, and was everywhere victorious. But now the Thebans
had been induced, by a report of his death, to take up arms, and the
Athenians, stimulated by the eloquence of Demosthenes, were preparing
to join them. To prevent this coalition, Alexander rapidly marched
against Thebes, which, refusing to surrender, was conquered and razed
to the ground. Six thousand of the inhabitants were slain, and 30,000
sold into slavery; the house and descendants of the poet Pindar alone
being spared. This severity struck terror into all Greece. The
Athenians were treated with more leniency.
Alexander, having appointed Antipater his deputy in Europe, now
prepared to prosecute the war with Persia. He crossed the Hellespont
in the spring of 334 B.C. with 30,000 foot and 5,000 horse, attacked
the Persian satraps at the River Granicus, and gained a complete
victory, overthrowing the son-in-law of their king Darius with his own
lance. As a result of the battle, most of the cities of Asia Minor at
once opened their gates to the conqueror.
Alexander restored democracy in all the Greek cities; and as he passed
through Gordium, cut the Gordian-knot, which none should loose but the
ruler of Asia. During a dangerous illness at Tarsus, brought on by
bathing in the Cydnus, he received a letter insinuating that Philip,
his physician, had been bribed by Darius to poison him. Alexander
handed the letter to Philip, and at the same time swallowed the
draught which the latter had prepared. As soon as he recovered, he
advanced toward the defiles of Cilicia, in which Darius had stationed
himself with an army of 600,000 men.
He arrived in November, 333 B.C., in the neighborhood of Issus, where,
on the narrow plain between the mountains and the sea, the unwieldy
masses of the Persians were thrown into confusion by the charge of the
Macedonians, and fled in terror. On the left wing, 30,000 Greek
mercenaries held out longer, but they, too, were at length compelled
to yield. All the treasures as well as the family of Darius fell into
the hands of the conqueror, who treated them with the greatest
magnanimity. Overtures for peace, made by Darius on the basis of
surrendering to Alexander all Asia west of the Euphrates, were
rejected.
Alexander now turned toward Syria and Phoenicia. He occupied Damascus,
where he found princely treasures, and secured to himself all the
cities along the shores of the Mediterranean. Tyre, confident in its
strong position, resisted him, but was conquered and destroyed, after
seven months of incredible exertion (332 B.C.) Thence he marched
victoriously through Palestine, where all the cities submitted to him
except Gaza; it shared the same fate as Tyre. Egypt, weary of the
Persian yoke, welcomed him as a deliverer; and in order to strengthen
his dominion here, he restored all the old customs and religious
institutions of the country, and founded Alexandria in the beginning
of 331 B.C. Thence he marched through the Libyan Desert, in order to
consult the oracle of Ammon, whose priest saluted him as a son of
Zeus; and he returned with the conviction that he was indeed a god.
He then again set out to meet Darius; in October, 331 B.C., a great
battle was fought on the plain stretching eastward to Arbela.
Notwithstanding the immense superiority of his adversary, who had
collected a new army of more than a million men, Alexander was not for
a moment doubtful of victory. Heading the cavalry himself, he rushed
on the Persians, and put them to flight; then hastened to the
assistance of his left wing, which, in the meanwhile, had been sorely
pressed. He was anxious to make Darius a prisoner, but Darius escaped
on horseback, leaving his baggage and all his treasures a prey to the
conqueror. Babylon and Susa, the treasure-houses of the East, opened
their gates to Alexander, who next marched toward Persepolis, the
capital of Persia, which he entered in triumph.
The marvellous successes of Alexander now began to dazzle his judgment
and to inflame his passions. He became a slave to debauchery, and his
caprices were as cruel as they were ungrateful. In a fit of
drunkenness, and at the instigation of Thais, an Athenian courtesan,
he set fire to Persepolis, the wonder of the world, and reduced it to
a heap of ashes; then, ashamed of the deed, he set out with his
cavalry in pursuit of Darius. Learning that Bessus, the Bactrian
satrap, held him a prisoner, he hastened his march, in the hope of
saving him, but he found him mortally wounded (330 B.C.). He mourned
over his fallen enemy, and caused him to be buried with all the
customary honors, while he hunted down Bessus, who himself aspired to
the throne, chasing him over the Oxus to Sogdiana (Bokhara).
Having discovered a conspiracy in which the son of Parmenio was
implicated, he put both father and son to death, though Parmenio
himself was innocent of any knowledge of the affair. This cruel
injustice excited universal displeasure. In 329 he penetrated to the
farthest known limits of Northern Asia, and overthrew the Scythians on
the banks of the Jaxartes. In the following year he subdued the whole
of Sogdiana, and married Roxana, whom he had taken prisoner. She was
the daughter of Oxyartes, one of the enemy's captains, and was said to
be the fairest of all the virgins of Asia. The murder of his
foster-brother, Clitus, in a drunken brawl, was followed, in 327 B.C.,
by the discovery of a fresh conspiracy, in which Callisthenes, a
nephew of Aristotle, was falsely implicated. For challenging
Alexander's divinity, he was cruelly tortured and hanged.
In 327 B.C., proceeding to the conquest of India, hitherto known only
by name, Alexander crossed the Indus near to the modern Attock, and
pursued his way under the guidance of a native prince to the Hydaspes
(Jhelum). He there was opposed by Porus, another native prince, whom
he overthrew after a bloody contest, and there he lost his charger
Bucephalus; thence he marched as lord of the country, through the
Punjab, establishing Greek colonies. He then wished to advance to the
Ganges, but the general murmuring of his troops obliged him, at the
Hyphasis (modern Sutlej), to commence his retreat. On regaining the
Hydaspes, he built a fleet, and sent one division of his army in it
down the river, while the other followed along the banks, fighting its
way through successive Indian armies. At length, having reached the
ocean, he ordered Nearchus, the commander of the fleet, to sail thence
to the Persian Gulf, while he himself struck inland with one division
of his army, in order to return home through Gedrosia (Beluchistan).
During this march his forces suffered fearfully from want of food and
water. Of all the troops which had set out with Alexander, little more
than a fourth part arrived with him in Persia (325 B.C.).
[Illustration: Alexander discovering the Body of Darius.]
At Susa he married Stateira, the daughter of Darius, and he bestowed
presents on those Macedonians (some ten thousand in number) who had
married Persian women, his design being to unite the two nations. He
also distributed liberal rewards among his soldiers. Soon afterward he
was deprived, by death, of his favorite Hephestion. His grief was
unbounded, and he interred the dead man with kingly honors. As he was
returning from Ecbatana to Babylon, it is said that the Magi
foretold that the latter city would prove fatal to him; but he
despised their warnings. On the way, he was met by ambassadors from
all parts of the world--Libya, Italy, Carthage, Greece, the Scythians,
Celts, and Iberians.
At Babylon he was busy with gigantic plans for the future, both of
conquest and civilization, when he was suddenly taken ill after a
banquet, and died eleven days later, 323 B.C., in the thirty-second
year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign. His body was
deposited in a golden coffin at Alexandria, by Ptolemaeus, and divine
honors were paid to him, not only in Egypt, but in other countries. He
had appointed no heir to his immense dominions; but to the question of
his friends, "Who should inherit them?" he replied, "The most worthy."
After many disturbances, his generals recognized as Kings the
weak-minded Aridaeus--a son of Philip by Philinna, the dancer--and
Alexander's posthumous son by Roxana, Alexander AEgus, while they
shared the provinces among themselves, assuming the title of satraps.
Perdiccas, to whom Alexander had, on his death-bed, delivered his
ring, became guardian of the kings during their minority. The empire
of Alexander soon broke up, and his dominions were divided among his
generals.
Alexander was more than a conqueror. He diffused the language and
civilization of Greece wherever victory led him, and planted Greek
kingdoms in Asia, which continued to exist for some centuries. At the
very time of his death, he was engaged in devising plans for the
drainage of the unhealthy marshes around Babylon, and a better
irrigation of the extensive plains. It is even supposed that the fever
which he caught there, rather than his famous drinking-bout, was the
real cause of his death. To Alexander, the ancient world owed a vast
increase of its knowledge in geography, natural history, etc. He
taught Europeans the road to India, and gave them the first glimpses
of that magnificence and splendor which has dazzled and captivated
their imagination for more than two thousand years. See Freeman's
"Historical Essays" (2d series, 1873), and Mahaffy's "Alexander's
Empire" (1887).
The wonderful element in the campaigns of Alexander, and his tragical
death at the height of his power, threw a rare romantic interest
around his figure. It is ever the fate of a great name to be enshrined
in fable, and Alexander soon became the hero of romantic story,
scarcely more wonderful than the actual, but growing from age to age
with the mythopoeic spirit which can work as freely in fact as
fiction. The earliest form of the story which we know is the great
romance connected with the name of Callisthenes, which, under the
influence of the living popular tradition, arose in Egypt about 200
A.D., and was carried through Latin translations to the West, through
Armenian and Syriac versions to the East. It became widely popular
during the middle ages, and was worked into poetic form by many
writers in French and German. Alberich of Besancon wrote in Middle
High German an epic on the subject in the first half of the twelfth
century, which was the basis of the German "Pfaffe" Lamprecht's
"Alexanderbuch," also of the twelfth century. The French poets Lambert
li Court and Alexandre de Bernay composed, between 1180 and 1190, a
romance of Alexander, the twelve-syllable metre of which gave rise to
the name _Alexandrines_. The German poem of Rudolf of Ems was based on
the Latin epic of Walter of Chatillon, about 1200, which became
henceforward the prevailing form of the story. In contrast with it is
the thirteenth century Old English epic of Alexander (in vol. i. of
Weber's "Metrical Romances," 1810), based on the Callisthenes version.
The story appears also in the East, worked up in conjunction with
myths of other nationalities, especially the Persian. It appears in
Firdusi, and among later writers, in Nizami. From the Persians both
the substance of the story and its form in poetical treatment have
extended to Turks and other Mohammedans, who have interpreted
Alexander as the _Dsulkarnein_ ('two horned') of the Koran, and to the
Hindus, which last had preserved no independent traditions of
Alexander.