Alexander the Great
356–323 BC 4 entries
Biography
Alexander III of Macedon, known as Alexander the Great, was a king of ancient Macedonia who created one of the largest empires of the ancient world. Born in Pella in 356 BC, the son of King Philip II and Olympias, he was taught as a boy by the philosopher Aristotle. He became king at twenty, after his father was murdered in 336 BC, and two years later set out against the Persian Empire.
In just over ten years, without losing a single major battle, he conquered Asia Minor, Egypt, where he founded Alexandria, Persia and lands as far as the Indus, until his exhausted army refused to go further. He spread the Greek language and culture across the East and opened the age known as the Hellenistic. He died in Babylon in 323 BC, at thirty-two, of a fever or, as some suspected, of poison, and his generals soon divided his empire among themselves. He has been a figure of legend ever since, from Plutarch’s Lives to the medieval Alexander Romance.
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