A diplomat and master strategist, Philip II was most no-
table for his development of the Macedonian army, in
particular its infantry, which he armed with sarissas and
which his son Alexander would employ in his conquest
of the Persian Empire. (The sarissa is a 14-foot pike used
by specifically trained troops known as pikemen.)
Alexander enjoyed all the privileges of a prince. As
a youngster, he was tutored by Aristotle, the great Greek
orator and educator, whom Philip called to Pella. His
father schooled him in the art of war, and by age 16
Alexander was commanding troops in battle. He was
intimately involved in the victory of the Macedonian
armies at Chaeronea (338 b.c.), a triumph that gave
Macedon control over Greece. In 336 b.c., when Al-
exander was 20, Philip—then preparing to invade Ana-
tolia—was murdered by one of his bodyguards at Aegae
during his daughter’s marriage to the son of Alexander
I of Epirus.
Alexander took his father’s place and pushed aside
any opposition to his total and complete rule; this in-
cluded ordering the murder of Philip’s son with his sec-
ond wife, Cleopatra (also known as Eurydice). As soon as
his control was confirmed, Alexander gathered together
his father’s army, made up of some 30,000 well-armed
and well-trained troops, and marched toward Asia Minor
to put into action his father’s scheme to control that por-
tion of the world. In 335 b.c., Alexander marched north
toward the Balkans, vanquishing the tribe known as the
Triballians and crossing the Danube River to destroy the
settlement of Getae. He was then informed that the Il-
lyrians had seized Pelion, an important tactical vantage
point that enabled them to control the northern passes.
Returning at once to his homeland, Alexander defeated
the Illyrians and subsequently put down a revolution in
Thebes, destroying that city.
In 334 b.c., Alexander’s armies crossed into Asia
Minor at Arisbe in what is now modern Turkey. Alexan-
der met the first contingent of the Persian armies under
Darius III on the shores of the Granicus River, where
35,000 Macedonians defeated some 40,000 Persians
and Greek sympathizers under Memnon of Rhodes.
Historian George Bruce writes: “Alexander crossed the
Granicus in the face of the Persian army, leading the way
himself at the head of the heavy cavalry, and having dis-
persed the Persian light horse, he brought up the pha-
lanx, which fell upon and routed the Greek mercenaries.
The Persians lost heavily, while the Macedonians’ loss
was very slight.” Alexander was then free to march onto
the Persian capital, encountering little resistance; there
was fighting at Melitus, but it fell quickly to Alexander’s
forces. Memnon of Rhodes made a last stand at Hali-
carnassus (334 b.c.), but, facing complete disaster, he
and his troops fled the city. Alexander then marched
south to conquer Egypt and Syria before defeating the
Persians at Issus (333 b.c.), and at the battle of Arbela
(331 b.c.) (more properly the battle of Gaugamela).
(Issus and Arbela are both in today’s Turkey.) Backed
by nearly 50,000 troops, he again defeated Darius III
of the Persian Empire. This is considered by historian
Edward Creasy to have been one of the most important
battles in history, as it helped to spread Greek culture to
the Indian subcontinent. During his retreat, Darius was
murdered by Bessus, one of his generals.
Alexander began marching eastward toward what
is now modern-day Iran. He moved farther east into the
Kabul Valley into what is now Afghanistan, and by the
winter of 330–329 b.c., he had moved into the Hindu
Kush, where he remained for more than a year. In spring
328 b.c., his forces crossed the Hindu Kush into Bactria
to fight Bessus, Darius’s murderer and successor. Sev-
eral battles ensued, and Bessus was captured and put to
death. In summer 328, Alexander and his army crossed
the Jaxartes River and moved into the steppes of Asia; a
year later, they crossed back over the Hindu Kush and
into what is now India. There, in November 326 b.c., a
victory at the River Hydaspes (now Jhelum, in modern
Pakistan) over the Indian king Porus (who was captured
but allowed to rule with Alexander’s consent) was fol-
lowed by a mutiny of soldiers who had been away from
home for nearly a decade. The mutiny was suppressed,
and Alexander marched south toward the Indus delta,
reaching that waterway in the summer of 325 b.c. He
assumed, when seeing the Indus, that this river linked
India with the rest of the world.
Acknowledging that he and his men needed to re-
turn home, Alexander began the march back to Mace-
don in 325 b.c. He never reached it. In June 323 b.c.,
while in Babylon, he came down with what historians
believe was a case of malaria; he died on 13 June 323
b.c., at the age of only 33. Because he had considered
himself divine and immortal, Alexander had never estab-
lished a successor or a way for a successor to be chosen.
Following his death, a group of Macedonian generals
began to battle one another for control of his empire.
These men—Antigonus Monophthalmus (ca. 382–301
b.c.), his son Demetrius Poloiorcetes (336–283 b.c.), AlexAnDeR the gReAt