Alexander
known as the Great, son of Philip II., king of Macedon, was born at Pella, B.C. 356. He was educated by Aristotle, who acquired a great influence over his mind and character. He first distinguished himself at the battle of Chaeronea (338), where the victory was mainly owing to his impetuosity and courage. On the murder of Philip (336), he ascended the throne, at the age of twenty, to find himself surrounded by enemies on every side. He first put down rebellion in his own kingdom, and then rapidly marched into Greece. His unexpected activity overawed all opposition; Thebes, which had been most active against him, submitted when he appeared at its gates; and the assembled Greeks at the Isthmus of Corinth elected him to the command against Persia. He now directed his arms against the barbarians of the North, and crossed the Danube (335). A report of his death having reached Greece, the Thebans once more took up arms; but a terrible punishment awaited them. Alexander took Thebes by assault, destroyed all the buildings, with the exception of the house of Pindar, killed most of the inhabitants, and sold the rest as slaves. He now prepared for his great expedition against Persia. In the spring of 334 he crossed the Hellespont with some 35,000 men. Of these 30,000 were foot and 5000 horse, and of the former only 12,000 were Macedonians. Alexander's first engagement with the Persians was on the river Granicus in Mysia (May, 334), where they were entirely defeated by him. In the following year (333) he collected his army at Gordium (q.v.) in Phrygia, where he cut or untied the celebrated Gordian knot, which, it was said, was to be loosened only by the conqueror of Asia. From thence he marched to Issus, on the confines of Syria, where he gained a great victory over Darius, the Persian king. Darius himself escaped, but his mother, wife, and children fell into the hands of Alexander, who treated them with the utmost delicacy and respect. Alexander now directed his arms against the cities of Phoenicia, most of which [figure in text: Coin representing Alexander the Great as Zeus Ammon.] submitted; but Tyre was not taken till the middle of 332, after an obstinate defence of seven months. He next marched into Egypt, which unresistingly yielded to him. At the beginning of 331 he founded near the mouth of the Nile the city of Alexandria, and about the same time visited the temple of Zeus Ammon, in the desert of Libya, where he was saluted by the priests as the son of Zeus. In the spring of the same year (331) he set out against Darius, who had collected another army. He crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris, and at length met with the immense hosts of Darius, said to have amounted to more than a million of men, in the plains of Gaugamela. The battle was fought in the month of October, 331, and ended in the complete defeat of the Persians. Alexander was now the conqueror of Asia, and began to adopt Persian habits and customs, by which he conciliated the affections of his new subjects. From Arbela he marched to Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, all of which surrendered to him. He is said to have set fire to the palace of Persepolis, and, according to some accounts, in the revelry of a banquet, at the instigation of Thas, an Athenian courtesan. At the beginning of 330, Alexander marched from Persepolis into Media, in pursuit of Darius, whom he followed into Parthia, where the unfortunate king was murdered by Bessus (q.v.), satrap of Bactria. In 329 Alexander crossed the mountains of the Paropamisus (the Hindu Kush), [p. 55]
and marched into Bactria against Bessus, who was betrayed to him and put to death. During the next two years he was chiefly engaged in the conquest of Sogdiana. He also crossed the Iaxartes (the Sir), and defeated several Scythian tribes north of that river. By the conquest of a mountain fortress he obtained possession of Roxana, the daughter of the Bactrian chief Oxyartes, whom he made his wife. It was about this time that he killed his friend Clitus in a drunken brawl. He had previously put to death his faithful servant Parmenion, on the charge of treason. In 327 he invaded India, and crossed the Indus, probably near the modern Attock. He met with no resistance till he reached the Hydaspes, where he was opposed by Porus, an Indian king, whom he defeated after a gallant resistance, and took prisoner, subsequently restoring to him his kingdom, and treating him with distinguished honour. He founded a town on the Hydaspes, called Bucephala, in honour of his horse Bucephalus, who died here, after carrying him through many victories. From thence he penetrated as far as the Hyphasis (Garra). This was the farthest point which he reached, for the Macedonians, worn out by long service, and tired [figure in text: Statue of Alexander the Great. (Naples.)] of the war, refused to advance farther; and Alexander, notwithstanding his entreaties and prayers, was obliged to lead them back. He returned to the Hydaspes, and then sailed down the river with a portion of his troops, while the remainder marched along the banks in two divisions. He finally reached the Indian Ocean about the middle of 326. Nearchus was sent with the fleet to sail along the coast to the Persian Gulf (see Nearchus); and Alexander marched with the rest of his forces through Gedrosia, in which country his army suffered greatly from want of water and provisions. He reached Susa at the beginning of 325. Here he allowed himself and his troops some rest from their labours; and anxious to form his European and Asiatic subjects into one people, he assigned Asiatic wives to about eighty of his generals. He himself took a second wife, Barsin, the eldest daughter of Darius. Towards the close of the year 325 he went to Ecbatana, where he lost his great favourite, Hephaestion. From Ecbatana he marched to Babylon, which he intended to make the capital of his empire, as the best point of communication between his eastern and western dominions. His schemes were numerous and gigantic, but he was cut off in the midst of them, being attacked by a fever, which was probably aggravated by the quantity of wine he had drunk at a banquet given to his principal officers, so that he died, after an illness of eleven days, in the month of May or June, B.C. 323, at the age of thirty-two, after a reign of twelve years and eight months. He appointed no one as his successor, but just before his death gave his ring to Perdiccas. Roxana was with child at the time of his death, and afterwards bore a son who is known by the name of Alexander Aegus (q.v.).
The body of Alexander was interred by Ptolemy in Alexandria, in a golden coffin, and divine honours were paid to him, not only in Egypt, but also in other countries. The sarcophagus in which the coffin was enclosed has been in the British Museum since 1802.
No character in history has afforded matter for more discussion than that of Alexander; and the exact quality of his ambition is to this day a subject of dispute. By some he is regarded as little more than an heroic madman, actuated by the mere desire of personal glory; others give him the honour of vast and enlightened views of policy, embracing the consolidation and establishment of an empire, in which commerce, learning, and the arts should flourish in common with energy and enterprise of every description. Each class of reasoners find facts to countenance their opinion of the mixed character and actions of Alexander. The former quote the wildness of his personal daring, the barren nature of much of his transient mastery, and his remorseless and unnecessary cruelty to the vanquished on some occasions, and capricious magnanimity and lenity on others. The latter advert to facts like the foundation of Alexandria, and other acts indicative of large and prospective views of true policy; and regard his expeditions rather as schemes of discovery and exploration than mere enterprises for fruitless conquest. The truth appears to embrace a portion of both these opinions. Alexander was too much smitten with military glory, and the common selfengrossment of the mere conqueror, to be a great and consistent statesman; while such was the strength of his intellect, and the light opened to him by success, that a glimpse of the genuine sources of lasting greatness could not but break in upon him. The history of Napoleon shows the nature of this mixture of lofty intellect and personal ambition, which has seldom effected much permanent good for mankind in any age.
In person this extraordinary individual was of the middle size, with a neck somewhat awry, but possessed of a fierce and majestic countenance. See Plut. Alexander; Arrian, Exped. Alex.; Droysen, Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (1877); Freeman's Historical Essays, 2d series (1873); and Mabaffy, Alexander's Empire (1887).
After many dissensions and bloody wars among themselves, the generals of Alexander laid the foundations of several great empires in the three quarters of the globe. Ptolemy seized Egypt, where he firmly established himself, and where his successors were called Ptolemies, in honour of the founder of their kingdom, which subsisted till the time of Augustus. Seleucus and his posterity reigned in Babylon and Syria. Antigonus at first established himself in Asia Minor, and Antipater [p. 56] [figure in text: Coin of Alexander the Great.]
in Macedonia. The descendants of Antipater were conquered by the successors of Antigonus, who reigned in Macedonia till it was reduced by the Romans in the time of King Perseus. Lysimachus made himself master of Thrace; and Leonatus, who had taken possession of Phrygia, meditated for a while to drive Antipater from Macedonia. Eumenes established himself in Cappadocia, but was soon overpowered by his rival Antigonus, and starved to death. During his lifetime, Eumenes appeared so formidable to the successors of Alexander that none of them dared to assume the title of king.
The element of the wonderful in the campaigns of Alexander, and his tragic death at the height of his power, threw an intensely romantic interest around his figure, so that Alexander soon became the hero of romantic story, scarcely more wonderful than the actual, but growing from age to age with the myth-making spirit which can work as freely in fact as in fiction. The earliest form of the story which we know is the great romance connected with the name of Callisthenes (q.v.), which, under the influence of the popular tradition, arose in Egypt about A.D. 200, and was carried through Latin translations to the West, and 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 Besanon 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 Lamprecht's Alexanderbuch (ed. by Hinzel, Halle, 1884), 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 Chtillon, 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 version of Callisthenes. 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 Korn, and to the Hindus, which last had preserved no independent traditions of Alexander. See Spiegel, Die Alexandersage bei den Orientalen (Leip. 1851), and Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand dans la Littrature Franaise au Moyen-ge (2 vols. 1886).