Page 48 - All About History - Issue 09-14

Alexander

the Great

At the head of the world’s most feared fighting force, Alexander

the Great took for himself a vast empire through the sword,
and has been called a hero, tyrant and a god

Written by James Hoare

he king died quickly, his white robes to the overlord of the fractious Greek kingdoms horse riding and playing the lyre, and an expert
soaked red. The laughter and rejoicing and city-states. Bringing his rival monarchs in in ethics, philosophy and the skills of debate. He
of a royal marriage – the wedding of line through war, military alliance and marriage, trained daily in pankration, an Ancient Greek
his daughter – had quickly turned Philip II had reformed the Macedonian army martial art, which focused on savage grapples,
Tto screams and wails of lament as into one of the most feared fighting forces in the punches, kicks and choke holds. A Renaissance
Pausanias, a member of the king’s personal guard, ancient world, with a view to bloodying their most man before the Renaissance, he was schooled in
turned on his master, driving a dagger between his hated foes, the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, the skills to conquer and the knowledge to rule.
ribs. Tripping on a vine as he fled the scene for his which had humbled and humiliated the Greeks At 16 he had governed Macedon as regent while
getaway horse, the assassin was brutally stabbed in the Greco-Persian Wars a century earlier. Aged his father warred far from home, the young heir
to death by the furious spears of pursuing guards. just 20, Alexander III of Macedon – soon to be putting down rebellious tribes in Thrace and
Philip II died as he had lived: awash with blood remembered as Alexander the Great – took the founding a whole new city, Alexandropolis – the
and surrounded by intrigue. His legacy would throne as the head of a military machine on the first of many that would bear his name.
leave bloody footprints across the whole of Central brink of war and legendary status, and gleefully Like so many civilisations before and after
Asia and the Middle East. drove it full throttle over the edge. them, the Ancient Greeks loved to gossip. Philip’s
Over a 23-year reign from 359 to 336 BCE, Alexander had been groomed for greatness from death, they said, was an act of revenge from his
the king of Macedon – a mountainous land birth, but he was no pampered prince. Tutored scorned lover Pausanias, but two other people
overlapping modern northern Greece, Albania, by the austere Leonidas, who forbade all luxury, immediately benefited: Olympias, mother of
Bulgaria and Macedonia – had gone from ruler the general Lysimachus and the philosopher Alexander and once-favoured wife of Philip, had
of a barbarous backwater of tribal highlanders Aristotle, Alexander was proficient with weapons, been in danger of losing her status to a younger
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