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There is nothing impossible to he who will try

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In one of the fastest and most daring military expansions in history, Alexander the Great, the young king of Macedon in the Balkans, blazed a trail of conquest across most of the known world of his day, and set in motion a process of Hellenization—the spread of Greek culture and its fusion with non-Greek, Eastern traditions—which endured for centuries.

Alexander’s father, Philip II, had transformed this peripheral state into a formidable military power, and had waged campaigns against his neighbors that culminated in Macedon’s domination over all of Greece. When he was assassinated in 336 bce, Philip had been planning an expedition to West Asia, to free the former Greek city-states now ruled by the world’s superpower, the Persian Empire. After securing the Macedonian throne by destroying his rivals, Alexander set about pursuing his father’s quest, while satisfying his own thirst for glory.

King of the world

After forcing the other Greek city-states to accept his authority, in 334 bce Alexander marched into Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) at the head of an army of 43,000 foot soldiers and 5,500 cavalry. At its heart lay the Macedonian phalanx, a well-drilled, tight-knit corps of 15,000 men armed with the sarissa, a pike that was up to 23ft (7m) long. When combined with the shocking cavalry charge provided by the king’s personal bodyguard, the Companions, the formation proved irresistible.

After an initial victory over the Persians at the River Granicus in the northwest, Alexander pressed on across Asia Minor. He stopped at Gordium in the central kingdom of Phrygia, where tradition held that he who could untie a complex knot made by the city’s founder, would conquer the entire continent. Alexander, in a typically forthright move, cut the knot with his sword. He went on to twice defeat the far superior forces gathered by Darius III, the Persian emperor—at Issus (on the southern coast of Asia Minor) in 333 bce and Gaugamela (in modern Iraq) in 331 bce, subduing Egypt in the interval.

Having forced the Persians into submission, Alexander drove his troops eastward, across mountains, deserts, and rivers into Afghanistan and Central Asia, and on to the Indian Punjab, ruthlessly crushing all resistance. He would have pushed further into India, but in 325 bce his exhausted men refused to go on.

The Hellenistic legacy

Alexander was now the king of a vast and ethnically diverse empire that included 70 newly founded cities, united by a common Greek culture, customs, and language, and linked by traderoutes; although the process of Hellenization was already underway in the western half of Persia before his expedition, Alexander had accelerated its spread throughout the Middle East.

In 323 bce, Alexander died—most likely from disease but perhaps by poisoning—without naming a successor. His empire was carved up by his leading generals, but some of the Hellenistic dynasties they founded, notably Selucid Syria and Babylon and Ptolomeic Egypt, survived until Roman times.


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