Interesting Facts About Alexander the Great

 

1. After his best friend Hephaestion died of illness in 324 BCE, Alexander the Great’s descent into alcoholism grew rapidly. In a fit of rage, he had Hephaestion’s doctor Glaucias crucified.
2. One of Alexander’s closest companions was his horse, Bucephalus (meaning ox-head). After Bucephalus’ death shortly after the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BCE, Alexander founded a city called Bucephala (located in modern-day Pakistan) in honor of his beloved horse.
3. Alexander was not guaranteed the throne. Macedonian customs dictated that the favored heir would be someone of complete Macedonian descent, while Alexander’s mother was an Epirot Princess.
4. When his father married a Macedonian noblewomen named Cleopatra, Alexander dropped his mother at Epirus and fled to Illyria, intending to stay there while he watched as events within Macedonia unfolded. He later returned to witness the wedding between his uncle Alexander of Epirus and his step-sister Cleopatra — where his father, Philip, would be assassinated by his bodyguard. He immediately consolidated his position by removing his rivals.
5. Alexander was obsessed with glory. His conquests were done so he could be remembered in the way that his idols, Achilles and Heracles, were. He had an infatuation with being remembered as a hero, and slept every night with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow. He even had several poets accompany him.
6. Speaking of his poets, Alexander the Great didn’t hold them in very high regard. He said of one of his court-poets, Choerilus of Iasus, that he would rather be the Thersites of Homer than the Achilles of Choerilus.
7. He was offered peace by Persia. After the Battle of Issus, Darius III offered all of Anatolia, the hand of his daughter, and an alliance in agreement for peace. After the battle of Gaugamela, Darius was forced to flee after his troops abandoned him. Both Persepolis and Babylon were seized by the Greeks, and in a desperate attempt to try to pacify them, he offered his entire Empire west of the Euphrates - including the incredibly wealthy regions of Asia Minor, the Levant, and Egypt in exchange for peace. Alexander refused both offers against the advice of his generals. In a somewhat famous encounter, his commander-in-chief Parmenion tried to get him to accept Darius’ terms and said, "If I were Alexander, I would accept the terms,” to which the young ruler replied, “So would I, if I were Parmenion. “
8. Alexander was also obsessed with his supposed destiny of glory. At the time of his death, he was planning conquests of the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, and possibly even the Italian Peninsula.
9. He had severe problems with his family. His father, Philip, was a man who literally lived for war and spent whatever free time he had drinking. Philip had an unstable relationship with his wife Olympias, whom he had married solely for political purposes; there was no love lost between them. He suspected Olympias of being a snakecharmer and a witch, while Alexander (raised mainly by his mother) was often chastised by his father for his inability to grow a beard and his high-pitched voice which Philip considered a sign of effeminacy. This would manifest in his later insatiable desire for glory and to become a hero in the style of Achilles.
10. It was Alexander who completed the Gordian Knot. Phrygian tradition stated that whoever undid the knot would become the Lord of Asia. While campaigning in Asia Minor, Alexander arrived at the city of Gordium to complete the knot. After attempting to untie it, he grew frustrated and struck it with his blade and cut through it.
11. He grew increasingly deranged towards the end of his life. As Alexander began to lead more and more military campaigns, he also chose to abandon a political strategy in favor of senseless conquest. He came to spend whatever time that wasn’t in battle drinking, eventually becoming an alcoholic and engaging in heavy drinking episodes wherein he would lose his rationality. By the time he died, he was an alcoholic: he lived for battle and the glory that came with it and would follow the conquest of a city with an elaborate and drunken party. As he continued to drink, both his mental and physical state began to deteriorate. At the encouragement of a prostitute, he sacked the religious capital of the Persian Empire (Persepolis) and slaughtered Zoroastrian priests and burned numerous libraries. He killed his friend Cleitus in a drunken brawl two years later (in spite of the fact that Cleitus had saved his life personally at the Granicus). After he married Roxana in 327 BCE, he came to disregard her and treated her the way that Philip had treated Olympias - with callousness and disrespect. His addiction grew so much that in 323 BCE, following a heavy drinking bout, he died at the age of just 33.
12. He was severely narcissistic, especially towards the end of his life. He came to regard himself as the son of Zeus, occupied himself with dreams of unlimited conquest, felt himself invincible, disregarded most of his own generals as toys (i.e. the execution of Parmenion, killing of Cleitus), came to lack empathy, and was incredibly arrogant.
13. He wasn’t the great hero of Western mythology. Not even close. He was emotionally unstable, and a warlord through-and-through. He was brutal, vain, immoral, and a cold-blooded murderer. The man literally wept at the fact that he didn’t have anything more to conquer!
14. He enjoyed a very close relationship with the mother of Darius III, Sisygambis. At the Battle of Issus, Darius’ army was decisively defeated and the Shahenshah forced to flee for his life. In the turn of events, he abandoned his family including his daughters, his mother, and his wife. Alexander came to enjoy a close relationship with Darius’ mother Sisygambis; he referred to her as mother and she came to refer to him as son. Compared to Olympias, Sisygambis was a far better maternal figure while Alexander was much more talented and charismatic than Sisygambis’ own child, Darius, whom she never forgave for abandoning her at Issus. At the Battle of Gaugamela, when the Scythian cavalry broke through Alexander’s forces, she refused to celebrate what at first appeared to be an Achaemenid victory. After receiving news Darius’ death in 330 BCE, she was called to mourn but only said, “I have only one son [Alexander] and he is king of all Persia.” She cared so much for Alexander that upon hearing of his death in 323 BCE, she sealed herself in her quarters and refused to eat - dying four days later of grief and starvation.
15. His army was devoted to him and regarded him as a God-King. Alexander’s army loved him as their leader and as a man. Unlike most ancient kings, who would often maintain their own camps and stay separate from their soldiers, Alexander lived the way his soldiers lived — he shared their rations, ate their food, and led his battles from the front. He was injured on multiple occasions, earning the love of his army. Because of this, they would accompany him on various campaigns for over a decade.
16. Alexander was showing his military competence before he invaded Persia. Philip of Macedon, through a mixture of force and diplomacy, had set out on destroying the power of the old Greek-city states upon his ascension to the throne. In 338 BCE, his campaigns arrived at their culmination when the Athenians and Thebans - in a last ditch effort to try to protect their independence - sent a force numbering 35,000 soldiers to battle the Macedonians at Chaeronea. The left wing of the Macedonian army was commanded by the 18-year-old Alexander, whose brazenness and desire to please his father caused to him to lead a charge into the Allied line. He inflicted heavy losses on the alliance, while Philip followed with a second attack that caused from the Allied forces to be routed.
17. He would be regarded as the exemplar of military genius for centuries. Since Alexander’s death, he was immortalized as the epitome of the great conqueror. After the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, the leaders of both sides - Scipio and Hannibal - had a conversation where both agreed that Alexander was the greatest general of all time. It was said that Caesar wept around 67 BC when comparing his achievements to those of Alexander, while Trajan would lament in 117 that he was too old to go further east like Alexander. Over a millennium later, the Turkish Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror would grow his dreams of conquering Constantinople by reading stories about Alexander the Great’s conquests. Napoleon would admire him several centuries after that because of his enormous conquests at such a young age (although he would comment Alexander started out with the heart of Trajan and “ended up with the heart of Nero”).