A period of European history from 330 BC to 30 BC is called the "Hellenistic Era" by Western historians. During this period, the ancient Greek civilization was most widely spread and extremely prosperous.
As a result, the economies and cultures of the East and the West began to carry out unprecedented close exchanges. If we talk about the opening of the "Hellenistic era", we must also owe it to a famous military and politician in the ancient history of the world, who is Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great, as the first of the four major military commanders in Western history, he was not only a young and promising ruler, but also an outstanding general.
Alexander spent almost his entire life on expeditions and sieges, and with the expansion of territory, Greek culture began to export to various places and integrate with local cultures, not only the social productivity increased, but agriculture, handicrafts and commerce all developed to a certain extent.
Despite his untimely death, when one looks back on the magnificent life of Alexander the Great, his significant impact on the progress of human society and culture can still make him one of the most influential figures in human history.
Young Hero Alexander
Alexander was the son of King Philip II of Macedon and a veritable prince. There is also a mythical legend about Alexander's life, that is, his mother Olympias dreamed that she was struck by a bolt of lightning on her wedding night.
After this, she was born with her first son, Alexander. According to Greek mythology, thunder and lightning were the weapons of Zeus, the king of the gods, so Alexander was also called the son of Zeus, which also reflected his extraordinary origins.
Alexander was valued by his father from birth, and Philip II hired the Greek philosopher Aristotle as his mentor for his son's education. In addition, Alexander was also fond of the poetry of the poet Homer, and was influenced by many heroes and legendary figures in his poetry.
At the age of sixteen, Philip II went to War in Byzantium, where he ruled Macedonia on behalf of his father, and at the age of eighteen he showed extraordinary military talent as commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces in annihilating the enemy. However, even if he was Alexander like the "Chosen Son", he could not escape the competition for the throne in the court.
Due to the discord between his parents, Alexander's father abandoned his mother to marry her and gave birth to a child, and poor Alexander and his mother Olympias were expelled. However, Alexander did not relinquish the right to inherit the throne, and he firmly believed that he was the most qualified successor.
Sure enough, soon after Alexander was taken back, there was a palace coup, King Philip II was assassinated, and Alexander was elected as the new king, called Alexander III. After ascending the throne, he quickly quelled the internal turmoil in the court and defeated various opposition forces, and that year he was twenty years old.
After unifying the whole of Greece, Alexander drew up a series of elaborate plans and decided to lead an army to invade the east. At first, Alexander suspected that his father had been assassinated at the behest of the Persian king Darius III.
He wanted to use this as an excuse to attack Persia, but after quelling the Greek rebellion, he did not attack Persia immediately, but believed that he should first sweep the north and west, clear the roadblocks, and avoid the consequences.
Therefore, Alexander first personally led an army to northern Macedonia to stabilize the northern defense line for the crusade, and then swept through Asia Minor, the Middle East, and the Iranian plateau. Alexander fought with Persia many times, and finally won and successfully annexed the Persian Empire, and occupied all of Egypt without spending a single soldier.
After conquering Persia, Alexander was not satisfied and wanted to continue to occupy India. However, due to the inability to adapt to the Indian climate, the plague began to spread among the exhausted army after a long battle, and the soldiers suffered heavy casualties, so Alexander had no choice but to evacuate home with his team.
At this point, the nearly ten years of Alexander's expedition is over. After a massive military expedition, Alexander built an empire of unprecedented size on vast lands, conquering about five million square kilometers of territory.
Macedonia also became the largest country in the world at that time. Just when Alexander was recuperating and preparing to go on the expedition again, he suddenly fell ill with fever and died soon after, at the age of three Chinese New Year's Eve.
Conquest of Persia
However, although Alexander died, his story has survived, especially his feud with Persia. In other words, the hostility between Greece and Persia began in the 6th century BC, when the free city-state of Greece in Asia Minor fell to the westward expansion of the Persian kingdom.
After Alexander became the overlord of Greece, he held a greek alliance conference in Corinth, where he was appointed commander of the alliance against Corinth, where he led the war of revenge against Persia.
On the southern bank of the Marmara River, on the Granicus River, Alexander engaged in his first head-on confrontation with Persia, leading his army across the river to engage the Persian cavalry, which eventually defeated the Persian army.
In fact, Alexander's army at that time was not in a favorable position, and it was even outnumbered. However, Alexander discarded all the disadvantages and won the initial battle.
In each battle, he personally took command, and whenever he needed to take the initiative to attack, Alexander would take the lead and take the lead in rushing up to kill the enemy. Although he was repeatedly wounded, the soldiers were naturally encouraged to see Alexander, as a general, risking death to kill the enemy and vowing to live and die with them.
As a result, morale is more victorious and the enemy is more courageous, which shows Alexander's heroic spirit and outstanding leadership. In a series of subsequent engagements with Persia, Alexander and his army defeated the Persian army again and again with sophisticated deployment, changeable tactics, and rapid momentum.
The persian army collapsed, King Darius III fled, and his mother and wife and daughter were all taken prisoner. Alexander then smoothly entered the Persian hinterland and occupied Egypt, Babylon and other places without any effort.
After capturing a large number of Persian nobles and rebel leaders, Alexander chose to take prisoners of war, because he knew that he could not rule the vast territory by the military power of his own country and Greece alone.
He must strengthen his ties with the localities, such as establishing kinship with local rulers. Thus, in order to expand the social basis of imperial rule, Alexander pursued a policy of promoting the integration of Macedonians and Orientals.
He took the lead in marrying the eldest daughter of the Persian king Darius III, and ordered more than eighty Macedonian generals to follow his example in marrying the captured Persian noblewomen. It is said that as many as 10,000 people were married on the same day.
Moreover, in order to promote the policy of marriage, Alexander personally gave the newlyweds a considerable gift to encourage. Although this policy was essentially one of Alexander's political means, it is undeniable that it can also be called a more humane policy.
At the time, captives were mostly killed or served as slaves, while women were even more miserable, and it was highly likely that they would be used as military prostitutes. Therefore, rather than being killed and insulted, marrying a Macedonian general was a good home for the Persian noblewomen who were captured at that time.
Alexander's original intention was to consolidate his rule by alleviating ethnic hatred through marriage, so he treated the widows of Persian kings and nobles well as one of his humane policies, and his subordinates naturally responded to the call of their superiors.
In addition to marriage, Alexander's approach to The Persian king Darius III was also as "humane" as possible. After Darius III escaped, Alexander sent someone to track him down and found him fleeing to partia and Bactria.
There, Darius III was killed by his relative Bessus, who himself proclaimed himself king of Persia, and was captured by Alexander. Alexander accused him of killing his own monarch and sentenced Besus to capital punishment in Persian custom.
Later, he buried the body of Darius III in the tomb of the Persian royal family according to the king's etiquette. Although the two had always been political enemies of each other, and Alexander had conquered Persia by force, he had preserved Darius III's last decency and treated his wife and daughter well.
This approach also well resolved the contradictions between Greece and Persia, as well as the national hatred over the years. Undoubtedly, Alexander had natural military ability and leadership ability, and his great achievements made many famous commanders and generals in later generations have a very high evaluation of him.
Flawed historical creator
Some people say that Alexander was an aggressor, but in the long run, Alexander's conquests led greece and the Middle East to begin to interact closely with each other, greatly enriching the cultures of these two peoples.
The British classicist Paul Katlić wrote in his book: "In terms of culture, he is one of the most capable of sowing seeds in history", directly affirming Alexander's contribution to accelerating the spread of Greek culture.
However, is alexander, the "born general", really a flawless person who has no flaws at all? The answer, of course, is no. Alexander was a successful emperor, but as a ruler, he inevitably made the mistake of excessive dictatorship and despotism in the late period.
In his later reign, Alexander gradually became an autocratic monarch, and he adopted the luxurious and generous etiquette of the East, forcing the common people to worship him as a god, and even requiring his subjects to prostrate themselves to him.
Alexander's practices once aroused the strong resentment of many Macedonian generals and soldiers, and on the other hand, Alexander was considered a short-sighted person. He did not have a successor before his death, which became the main reason for the rapid collapse of the empire after his death.
At the same time, Alexander's rule, despite its vast territory, did not have a unified economic base, nor did it have the political institutions and organizational systems that could sustain its long-term rule. In other words, this empire, based only on pure military conquest, is only temporary.
Once its powerful leader dies, the contradictions within the empire will be triggered in an instant, and its disintegration will be inevitable. All in all, Alexander's achievements are more remarkable, which is the so-called "flaws are not hidden".
Despite his shortcomings in other areas, as a historical figure, he had a certain influence on the development of human society. As the Chinese scholar Li Chunyuan put it:
Alexander was not a "superman" and should not be idealized, because all historical figures are in certain historical limitations, and people should look at him objectively and dialectically. What do you think about that?