Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great is one of the Personalities in their Times options in Section III (25 marks). You answer one question on your personality, with two or three parts, at least one worth 10–15 marks. The syllabus asks you to study:

• Historical context: the geography of Macedon, Greece and the Persian empire; Macedonian kingship; Philip II's achievements.
• Background and rise to prominence: his family and education; his early career; the death of Philip and his accession.
• Career: the conquest of the Persian empire; campaigns in Central Asia and India; his methods of rule; his relationships with the Macedonians, Greeks and Persians; his divine claims; his death.
• Evaluation: his impact and legacy; ancient and modern images and interpretations.

All dates are BC. Alexander lived from 356 to 323.

• Macedon was a kingdom north of Greece, rich in timber and horses, ruled by the Argead kings, who claimed descent from Heracles. The king was war leader and depended on the support of the nobles, the Companions.
• Philip II (359–336) transformed it: a professional army with the sarissa phalanx and Companion cavalry, siege engineers, gold mines, and control of Thessaly and Thrace. His victory at Chaeronea (338) over Athens and Thebes led to the League of Corinth, which made him leader of a Greek war against Persia.
• The Persian empire under Darius III (from 336) stretched from Egypt and Asia Minor to Central Asia. It was rich, with a large army and fleet, but relied heavily on levies and on the loyalty of its satraps.

• Born 356 at Pella, son of Philip II and Olympias, a princess of Epirus (claimed descent from Achilles).
• Education: taught by Aristotle at Mieza from 343; loved the Iliad. His horse was Bucephalus.
• Early experience: regent in 340; traditionally said to have led the cavalry on the left at Chaeronea (338).
• 337: Philip married Cleopatra, niece of the noble Attalus; at the wedding Attalus insulted Alexander, who went into brief exile with Olympias.
• 336: Philip was murdered at Aegae by a bodyguard, Pausanias. Alexander was acclaimed king and removed rivals, including Attalus.
• 335: campaigns in the Balkans; Thebes revolted and was destroyed, a warning to the Greeks.

Strategy: after Issus he took the coast to remove the bases of the Persian fleet before marching inland. The treasuries of Susa and Persepolis paid his army.

• Bactria and Sogdiana (329–327): Bessus captured and executed; long guerrilla war against Spitamenes; capture of mountain strongholds.
• 328: Alexander killed Cleitus the Black at a drunken banquet at Maracanda.
• 327: marriage to Roxane; the attempt to introduce proskynesis, resisted by Callisthenes; the Pages' conspiracy, after which Callisthenes died.
• 326: victory over Porus at the Hydaspes; Porus kept his kingdom as an ally. At the Hyphasis the army refused to go on.
• 325: down the Indus; Alexander badly wounded attacking a town of the Malli; the disastrous march through the Gedrosian desert.

• Persian satraps appointed (for example Mazaeus at Babylon in 331, Phrataphernes in Parthia, Atropates in Media), usually with Macedonians holding troops and treasuries. In 324 he executed several satraps and officials for misrule.
• Court: elements of Persian royal dress and ceremony.
• Marriages: Roxane (327); at Susa (324) he married daughters of Darius III and Artaxerxes III, and about eighty to ninety companions (the sources differ) married Iranian noblewomen. Roxane was Bactrian, not Persian.
• Army: 30,000 young Persians, the Epigonoi, trained in Macedonian style; Persians in the cavalry.
• 324: the Opis mutiny, when veterans objected to Persians in Macedonian roles; a reconciliation banquet with a prayer for concord. The Exiles Decree ordered Greek cities to take back exiles.
• Cities: many foundations named Alexandria, often military settlements; Alexandria in Egypt became a great city.

The priest at Siwa greeted him as son of Ammon (Zeus), and he increasingly presented himself as the god's son. In 324 Greek cities debated granting him divine honours. Historians debate whether he believed in his own divinity or used it politically.

Hephaestion, his closest friend, died in 324. Alexander died at Babylon in June 323, aged 32, after a fever; stories of poisoning circulated but are unproven. He left no adult heir: Roxane's son was born after his death. His generals (the Successors) fought for decades and divided the empire into the Hellenistic kingdoms.

All the contemporary accounts (Callisthenes, Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Cleitarchus) are lost.

Modern views: W. W. Tarn (1948) saw an idealist who dreamed of the ‘unity of mankind’; Ernst Badian (whose 1958 article is the standard refutation of Tarn) and A. B. Bosworth (Conquest and Empire, 1988) stressed violence, paranoia and autocracy; Peter Green (1974) a brilliant but ruthless general; Robin Lane Fox (1973) a romantic hero; Paul Cartledge (2004) a balanced view, neither hero nor villain. Most historians now reject Tarn's view.

You do not have to name historians to reach the top band, but using an interpretation accurately to support your argument is credited.

• Achievements: never lost a major battle; conquered the Persian empire; founded cities; practical policies for a multi-ethnic empire.
• Costs: destruction of Thebes, Tyre and Persepolis; massacres; the deaths of companions; the Gedrosian march; claims to divinity.
• Legacy: the Hellenistic kingdoms and the spread of Greek culture; a model for later conquerors; a legend in many cultures — but no stable succession.

A model paragraph

Here is how one paragraph might use evidence and evaluation (on the Susa weddings, not one of our bank questions):

‘The Susa weddings of 324 BC show Alexander's attempt to bind the Persian nobility to his rule, but also its limits. By marrying daughters of two Persian kings and having about eighty to ninety Companions take Iranian brides, he linked his court to the old royal house. Yet later sources suggest that almost all of these marriages were abandoned after his death — Seleucus' marriage to Apame is the famous exception — and the mutiny at Opis later that year shows how strongly many Macedonians resented his Persian policies. The policy was imaginative, but it rested on Alexander himself.’

• Confusing the battles: Granicus (satraps), Issus and Gaugamela (Darius), Hydaspes (Porus).
• Confusing the Hydaspes (battle) with the Hyphasis (mutiny).
• Calling any surviving source contemporary. All surviving narratives are centuries later.
• Accepting Tarn's ‘unity of mankind’ without question.
• Writing only about battles when the question asks about his rule, relationships or legacy.

• 10-mark parts often ask you to explain one aspect: his background, military success, Persian policies, his relations with the Macedonians, or his divine claims.
• 15-mark parts usually ask you to assess or evaluate his achievements, methods or legacy.
• Name the source tradition: Arrian's ‘official’ sources versus the sensational ‘vulgate’.
• Useful terms: phalanx, sarissa, Companions, satrap, proskynesis, Epigonoi, Hellenistic, Successors, vulgate.

• Persian society at the time of Darius and Xerxes: the empire Alexander conquered.
• Xerxes: Greek views of Persian kings shaped how Alexander's war was presented as revenge.
• Julius Caesar: Suetonius says Caesar sighed before a statue of Alexander at Gades (Plutarch says he wept while reading about him), having achieved nothing memorable at the age Alexander had conquered the world.