37. Alexander the Great - Why He is Immortal and Relevant Today
Why Alexander is So Great ?
Circa 368 BC.
Once upon a time in Royal Army Training Grounds of Pella Region in Macedonia.....
A Royal Horse Trainer and Tamer brought a wild horse recently caught in forest and presented to the King.
He Said, " Your Highness, this is a wonderful breed of horse with maximum sustaining power and runs very fast... "
King said " Has it been trained and groomed for riding ".
Trainer said, " we are trying for last a few days, but its becoming difficult to ride it ....."
Then King announced, " Whoever trains and harnesses this horse, make it ridabe, I will give him a pot of gold ....."
A few of the Best Trainers came one after the other, trying their best to control and harness and ride, putting their best efforts,..None could succeed after several hours and Days ....."
It was around 10:30 am, a 12 year old boy came, a young prince and son of the King, asked his father " Your Highness, can I try...."
King laughed loudly " what ? you want to harness and ride this horse, where, these master trainers could not do anything...but, you want...hmmm....!!
" Its a wild horse, it will stamp you down"....but, this 12 year boy
insisted and requested his father again.....!!
This time, his father agreed, though he did not like it.....
But, that boy started gauging the body and eye coordination of this wild horse for some time, trying to approach the Horse Tack and Breast Plate... the horse suddenly threw away the boy....
Everybody there started laughing ...,
In a few minutes..... He some how managed to take the horse in different direction of the sunlight....slowly the horse started responding to his moves....in a another few minutes, he claimed the horse.....started riding that wild horse....
Everybody started shouting in thundering voice, "Great!!", "Wonderful!!" "Bravo!!"
From that point onwards, that boy never looked back in his life....so as the world never stopped looking into his life year after year, country after country , whole world forever....The Legend goes on and on, there after forever...
That 12 year Boy, ascended to the throne of a Kingdom at age of 20 years and started the conquest of the country after country, continent after continent, crossing all the rivers and seas on the way and conquered almost entire known world at time in the short span of 13 years, giving a very doubt to human mind , whether he is human or god.
He changed the Civilisation of mankind and course of history, shaped the world one way or other , in which we live in.
All Military Academies and Governments alike started studying his life, his administrative abilities, his battlefied strategies and tactics continuously forever. His life study had became almost an encyclopedia.
He had became the epitome of the Emperor and sysnomomous with Leadership and World never seen One like him even after in long 2,350 Years.
So Legends like him are rarest of rare and World will only get to experience Humans like him only once , an Infinitely Exlusive Club.
I. Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon (20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great was a king (basileus) of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty.
He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20. He spent most of his ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign through Asia and northeast Africa, and by the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to northwestern India ( now , Pakistan ) . He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of history's most successful military commanders.
During his youth, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until age 16. After Philip's assassination in 336 BC, he succeeded his father to the throne and inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. Alexander was awarded the generalship of Greece and used this authority to launch his father's pan-Hellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia.
Upon his father's death, Alexander moved quickly to consolidate power. He gained the support of the Macedonian army and intimidated the Greek city states that Philip had conquered into accepting his rule. After campaigns in the Balkans and Thrace, Alexander moved against Thebes, a city in Greece that had risen up in rebellion, conquering it in 335 B.C., and had it destroyed.
In 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire) and began a series of campaigns that lasted 10 years. Following the conquest of Anatolia, Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, most notably the battles of Issus and Gaugamela.
He subsequently overthrew Persian King Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety. At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Beas River.
Alexander endeavoured to reach the "ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea" and invaded India in 326 BC, winning an important victory over the Pauravas at the Battle of the Hydaspes. He eventually turned back at the demand of his homesick troops, dying in Babylon in 323 BC, the city that he planned to establish as his capital, without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in the establishment of several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexander's surviving generals and heirs.
Alexander's legacy includes the cultural diffusion and syncretism which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism. He founded some twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander's settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture in the east resulted in a new Hellenistic civilization, aspects of which were still evident in the traditions of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-15th century AD and the presence of Greek speakers in central and far eastern Anatolia until the Greek genocide of the 1920s. Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mould of Achilles, and he features prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures.
He was undefeated in battle and became the measure against which military leaders compared themselves. Military academies throughout the world still teach his tactics. He is often ranked Numero Uno among the most influential people in history.
II. Some of his Notable Conquests
1. Into Egypt
Alexander moved south along the eastern Mediterranean, a strategy designed, again, to deprive the Persians of their naval bases. Many cities surrendered while some, such as Tyre, which was on an island, put up a fight and forced Alexander to lay siege.
In 332 B.C., after Gaza was taken by siege, Alexander entered Egypt, a country that had experienced on-and-off periods of Persian rule for two centuries. On its northern coast, he founded Alexandria, the most successful city he ever built.
He also travelled to Libya to see the oracle of Ammon. Traveling through unmarked desert, his party made his way to the temple .
2. Final battle with Darius III
With the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt secured, the Persians were deprived of naval bases, and Alexander was free to move inland to conquer the eastern half of the Persian Empire.
At the Battle of Gaugamela, fought in 331 B.C. in northern Iraq near present-day Erbil,
Alexander is said by ancient sources to have faced may be around 200,000 or more against Alexander troops around 45,000). Darius III brought soldiers from all over, and even beyond, his empire. Scythian horsemen from his northern borders faced Alexander, as did "Indian" troops (as the ancient writers called them) who were probably from modern-day Pakistan.
Again, in a bid to stymie Darius III's superior numbers, Alexander moved his troops toward unlevel ground. Darius sent his cavalry after them and Alexander countered with his. His horsemen, while taking heavy losses, held their own. Darius responded by sending his chariots against Alexander's phalanx infantry, a bad move, as they were cut to pieces by javelins.
The battle soon became a war of nerves. "For a brief period the fighting was hand to hand, but when Alexander and his horseman pressed the enemy hard, shoving the Persians and striking their faces with spears, and the Macedonian phalanx, tightly arrayed and bristling with pikes, was already upon them, Darius, who had long been in a state of dread, now saw terrors all around him; he wheeled about — the first to do so — and fled," wrote Arrian. From that point on the Persian army started to collapse and the Persian king fled with Alexander in hot pursuit.
Darius III would flee into the eastern part of his empire, hoping to rally enough soldiers for another battle. Betrayed by one his satraps named Bessus (who claimed kingship over what was left of Persia), Darius was captured by his own troops and killed.
Alexander was saddened when he found his dead body. He respected Darius as the head of the mighty Persian Empire, though Alexander regarded himself as a higher authority because he believed his power came from the gods, according to Abernethy. He sent Darius's body back to Persepolis and ordered that he be given a royal burial.
Alexander's days in central Asia were not all unhappy. After his troops had captured a fortress at a place called Sogdian Rock in 327 B.C. he met Roxana, the daughter of a local ruler. The two married and, at the time of Alexander's death, they had an unborn son.
3. Return to Persia
Alexander returned to Persia, this time as the ruler of a kingdom that stretched from the Balkans to Egypt to modern day Pakistan. In 324 B.C., he arrived in Susa, where a number of his innermost advisers got married.
Alexander took two additional wives in addition to Roxana, whom he had married in central Asia. One was Barsine, daughter of Darius III, and another a Persian woman who Arrian identified as Parysatis. Roxana likely did not take kindly to her two new co-wives and, after Alexander's death, she may have had them both killed.
In 323 B.C., Alexander was in Babylon, his next