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Alexander III of Macedon, son of Philip II of Macedon and Olympia of Epirus, had been groomed since childhood for the political and military duties of a Macedonian prince. Furthermore, his mother had instilled in him the sense of being destined for great deeds – a conviction that would later become a crucial factor in Alexander’s motivation to create the largest empire the world had ever seen. In his youth he accompanied Philip II into battle and later proved himself to be an able leader when he efficiently quelled rebellions in the absence of his father who was away fighting the people of Byzantion. The opportunity to set everything in motion to achieve his destiny arose when Philip was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards, Pausanias, who may have acted because of an old grievance or due to being manipulated by Olympia or even Alexander himself. It comes as little surprise that Alexander, almost immediately following his proclamation as King of Macedon, rallied his troops to conquer the Persian Empire. Before he embarked on his historical conquest however, he set out to pacify greater Greece in order to secure the borders of his kingdom and leave a stable kingdom behind.

The Alexander Mosaic, from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, c. 150–100 BCE.

Mosaic, 582 × 313 cm.

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.

In 334 BCE, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor, which required a large fleet of triremes and several crossings. His initial push into the Persian Empire was met with hardly any opposition as Darius III seemed to have thought of Alexander as little more than a nuisance. The first major engagement between the Greeks and Persians was fought at the banks of the Granicus River and led to a Persian defeat. This victory and Darius’ inaction subsequently led to many of Persia’s satrapies to surrender to the Macedonian king as soon as he was in sight of a city or township. Alexander continued his conquest of the Persian Empire and was, largely due to his own strategic abilities but also because of his enemies’ miscalculations and bad decisions, successful, defeating the Persians under Darius’ direct command in the Battles of Issus and Gaugamela and at the Persian Gates where the army made its last stand. After Darius’ death at the hands of his trusted eunuchs, Alexander declared himself the emperor of Persia and married one of the daughters of the deceased king. Alexander was at that time the monarch of three lands, as Egypt had earlier welcomed him with open arms and declared him the incarnation of their major deities.

Since it always had been Alexander’s declared intent to conquer the “known world” – which ended somewhere east of India during his age—, he then set his sights on the Indian subcontinent. Initially he was able to sway one of the Indian rulers to put himself under Alexander’s rule and decimate those tribes that refused to join him, but soon after his march into India slowed. The Greek was still able to beat the Punjabi ruler Porus in the famous Battle of Hydaspes, but due to the mutiny of his army, who refused to engage the large armies of the Nanda Empire after having fought hard in the last battle, he had to give up on his plan and returned to Persia. Alexander was still planning to continue his campaigns when he returned, but was never able to implement any of those plans as he died in Babylon, either because of an illness or possibly after being poisoned. After a short period of stability, his empire erupted in a succession war that lasted forty years and ended Alexander’s dream of the largest empire of the known world.

Alexander the Great Crossing the Granicus, 17th century.

Oil on canvas.

Private collection.