How Did Alexander the Great Become One of History’s Greatest Conquerors?
Alexander III was born in 356 BCE in Pella, son of King Philip II and Olympias. Educated by Aristotle and battle-tested by 18 at Chaeronea, he was destined for greatness, but his path to the throne was uncertain. Tensions with his father, fuelled by a new marriage that threatened his claim, led to a brief exile before reconciliation. In 336 BCE, Philip was assassinated under mysterious circumstances, and at just 20 years old Alexander became king, beginning one of history’s most extraordinary rises to power.
“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”
The Persian Campaign: Key Battles and the Fall of an Empire
The Persian Empire was the most powerful force in the known world—vast, wealthy, and seemingly unstoppable. Yet in just a few years, it was brought to its knees through bold strategy, relentless ambition, and a series of decisive victories that changed history forever.
Alexander kicked off his long campaign by first clearing off the threatening Triballian, Illyrian and Thracian tribes away from his borders. The first battle was against the Thracians, where the Macedon's fought at a disadvantageous up hill slope. Fortunately for Alexander and his troops, the battle had been won before the fighting had even started. The loud battle cries rattled the nerves of the Thracian warriors who then disintegrated and ran for their lives; around 1,500 of them were killed in the retreat. The Thracian women, children and any other survivor were also enslaved. Alexanders next step was to find and defeat the Triballian king Syrmus. During the first set of skirmishes, the Triballians retreated back into a woodblock with around 3,000 killed. Alexander moved his forces back to the river Danube. At around this time, warships sent from Bryzantium had made their way to Alexander. The Macedonian general then took these ships against the Getae tribe, who lived on the other side of the river with a force of around 14,000 warriors. The Macedonians tactfully attacked the Getae under the cover of darkness. The shock of surprise alongside the unreadiness allowed Alexanders men to cut down a huge number of their enemy as they fled in panic. Alexander proceeded to take their city and steal any plunder found within. Soon envoys from more and more tribes came to him, including Syrmus, pleading for alliances with the Macedons. However, some chieftains such as Glaucias, King of the Taulantians and Cleitus, the son of Bardylis had joined in on the resistance. Alexander was able to defeat these 2 mens forces by slaughtering a lot of them in their sleep and then killing any trying to escape. Both Glaucias and Cleitus managed to escape the slaughter and seek refuge in lands elsewhere.
With the threat on his northern borders dealt with, his attention now turned towards Thebes. A rebellion against the Macedonian rule had erupted giving Alexander no choice but to intervene. After a long gruelling march, Alexander and his army approached the reckless city of Thebes. At first the young Macedonian king did not want bloodshed and gave the inhabitants numerous opportunities for negotiation, but the Thebans had no appetite for unfavourable negotiations. Soon the inevitable attack happened. It originally came from two of Alexanders officers, Perdiccas and Amyntas who acted on their own accord without orders from their general. Fortunately for them, the attack was a success, they managed to infiltrate the cities gates and unleash a massacre.
Alexander the Great Advances Through Persia: The Capture of Halicarnassus
The siege of Halicarnassus proved to be a difficult one for Alexander and his army. It was heavily fortified with two high walls encircling the city as well as a deep moat dug right in front of its gates. Inside of these walls stood a force of Greek mercenaries lead by Memnon of Rhodes. Memnon had proved himself as a worthy commander and was given leadership over the Persian navy by Darius. The first few attempts at breaching the cities defence were unsuccessful, however with determination and perseverance the Macedonians were able to force Memnon into giving up and fleeing the city. Before he disembarked from the harbour, Memnon sent out orders to burn down as many buildings possible. With no leadership Alexander took the city with ease, putting out the fires and sparing its inhabitants. It took Alexander a couple of months to complete the siege of Halicarnassus, which gave him and his men a gruelling insight of the challenge ahead.
Leaving a force of 3,000 infantry and around 200 cavalry stationed at Halicarnassus, Alexander and the rest of his army moved on through the region of Phrygia venturing deeper into Persian territory. He took numerous cities without any significant force and imposed heavy tax levies on its inhabitants. Alexander received reports around this time of betrayal committed by Alexander the son of Aëropus, one of the companions and commander of the Thessalian cavalry. He had previously sent a letter to Darius offering his services in assassinating Alexander the Great. Sisines, a man from Darius’ inner circle was despatched to meet with the conspirer but Sisines was caught by Parmenion who then discovered the conspiracy. Both men were imprisoned and Alexander continued his campaign unharmed.
Alexander received reports of Memnons movement around Greek territory, he had captured islands such as Chios, Lesbos and now had moved to take the city of Mytilene. During the siege of Mytilene, Memnon died from an illness and the command was passed down to his nephew Pharnabazus who continued his work alongside a man named Authophradates. It wasn't long before the Mytilenaens requested a negotiation for surrender in which both parties accepted terms unfavourable to the defenders. A key factor in this agreement was that the Mytilenaeans would drop the alliance they had with Alexander and become allies of Darius. On entry into the city, Pharnabazus and Authophradates installed a man of their own choice called Diogenes as ruler of the city, as well as extorting money from them. The two men soon left the island with 100 ships to submit the inhabitants of Tendos, whilst a Persian general named Datames was sent to an island called Cyclades with 10 ships. Alexander sent a fleet under the command of Proteas, son of Andronichs, to find Datames. Proteas eventually does find him and succeeded in taking 8/10 ships along with its crews, but Datames managed to flee the scene.
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From Issus to Gaugamela: The Battles, Sieges and Strategy Behind Persia’s Fall
During his fast and aggressive approach of capturing Persian towns and cities, Alexander fell ill with his health falling into a rapid decline. Fortunately for him, a doctor from Acarnania named Philip gave the Macedonian King medicine that seemed to have saved him. At first Permenion did not trust Philip and even warned Alexander of the physician, claiming he had been sent by Darius to kill him. Alexander dismissed this for paranoia. His health soon bettered as he made his way through the Cicilian Gates taking the cities Tarsus, Anchialus and Soli. Whilst at Soli word reached Alexander that his generals Ptolemy and Asander, who had been sent on a mission beforehand, had defeated a force under the Persian officer called Orontobates. It was reported that the Macedonians killed around 750 of Orontobates' men with a further thousand imprisoned. Shortly after receiving this good news, Alexander was informed of Darius' army camped roughly 2 days march from him. He wasted no time before marching his army out to face the Persians. The two forces met face to face on a favourable battle ground to the Macedonians, which was nice and compact for their smaller force of 75,000 compared to Darius' army of around 600,000. On the day of battle, Alexander waited patiently for the gap between both armies to close in before he lead an abrupt charge that smashed into the enemy's left flank. The Persians struck back thanks to their Greek mercenaries who targeted a gap between Alexanders right flank and middle. Many Macedonians died in this ferocious counter attack, one being Alexanders general Ptolemy, son of Seleucus. It didn't take long however for the Macedonian right flank to sort itself out before charging inwards at Darius' Greek mercenaries and slaughtering most of them. Soon hope of victory had begun to slip away from the Persians and Darius decided to flee the battlefield before he could be caught. Overall around 100,000 soldiers from the Persian army were killed, Arsames, Artizyes and Rheomithres were just few of the names of the nobility that were included in this number. On the other hand, the Macedonians dead were said to be just below the 500 mark. Alexander was lucky enough to finish the battle with just a wound to the thigh.
Despite Darius losing the battle of Issus he was still alive with many Persians ready to fight for him and because of this the people of Tyre were unsure on whose side to support. In the end they chose to forbid any Macedonian or Persian into their city. This angered Alexander who then decided to lay siege on the city, which proved to be one of the most challenging sieges the Macedonians had come to face so far. This was mainly due to the city being on an island enclosed with high walls. To tackle these obstacles the attackers built a mole from mainland to the island, but the next problem they had was as Alexanders men moved closer to the island, the inhabitants would unleash arrows and whatever else they could find to throw at the Macedonians. The Tyrians also had ships sailing around the area constantly attacking the structure and its builders. Luckily for Alexander, Enylus the king of Byblus and Gerostratus the king of Aradus had abandoned Autophradates' navy, taking roughly 80 ships to Alexanders aid. Twenty two more ships came from Rhodes, Soli, Mallus and Lycia and lastly another 120 came from Cyprus bringing the overall number to 222 ships. As well as this, Alexander welcomed 4,000 fresh Greek mercenaries who had been brought over by Cleander the son of Polemocrates. The Tyrian fleet was destroyed with the defenders left hopeless. It only took Alexander a further 2 days to infiltrate the cities wall. The number killed on the Tyrian side was around 8,000 and a further 30,000 sold into slavery, whereas Alexander lost roughly 400 men. At some point during the siege Alexander received word from Darius with a proposal to end the war. He offered Alexander 10,000 talents for the release of his family, all the land between the Aegean Sea and river Euphrates as well as his daughter's hand in marriage. Alexander refused this proposal because he had already took Darius’ country and money anyway, so the preposition made no difference to him. One again both men prepared again for battle.
After the siege of Tyre Alexander turned to conquering Gaza, a city of the Achaemenid Empire. This city was governed by a man named Batis who readied his city for a long siege by gathering plenty of food and supplies to outlast the Macedonian attack. Just like the many other cities Alexander had come up against, Gaza too had high walls that circled its city, but their defence was no match for the Macedonian siegecraft. During the building process of these siege engines, the defenders attempted numerous times to set fire to the structures until Alexander himself took a force to fight these attacks off. In the process of this Alexander was hit by a catapult to the shoulder that, fortunately for him, was nothing more than a bad wound and when the towers had been complete, the Macedonians made it over the wall and defeated the Gazaeans.
Shortly after infiltrating the city of Gaza and proceeding to cross the River Tigris, Alexander learned from captured fighters the full scale of Darius' army. The figures reported to him were much higher than the previous battle, with the Persian king said to possess over a million fighters that included 15 elephants. Alexanders confidence in himself and his soldiers capabilities was proven at The Battle of Gaugamela, where the Macedonians battered Darius’ army for a second time. The fighting was fierce with both sides having success of their own at times, but when things went from bad to worse for the Persians, Darius chose to flee the battleground again. Unaware of their kings departure, the Persian cavalry managed to infiltrate the Macedonian left flank. Parmenion was near the left flank at the time and was fighting extremely hard to hold off the enemy cavalrymen who had now poured into his section. He managed to send a messenger to Alexander who instantly despatched the companion cavalry to Parmenions aid and headed himself directly for the Persians right flank. Alexander was successful in fighting the cavalrymen off and fortunately for him, the young general managed to survive a dangerous counter attack the Persians had retaliated with that killed 60 of his own men. Now he had regained control of his left flank, Alexander finished off Darius’ army he had left behind. The estimated deaths for Alexanders force was as little as 100, whereas Darius’ was believed to be as high as 300,000.
Did Alexander the Great Die of Poison? The Leading Theories Explained
The cause of Alexander’s mysterious death has sparked many debates. Historical accounts mention that, the night before he fell ill, a friend dared him to drink an entire krater of wine, raising suspicions of alcohol poisoning. However, other theories suggest alternative causes. Dr. Katherine Hall proposes that Alexander may have suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder. Hall argues that Alexander's subtle breathing, caused by his unconscious state, led physicians to incorrectly pronounce his death. The fact that Alexander’s body didn’t decompose for six days supports this theory. If true, his death would have been agonizing, particularly during the embalming process. At just 32, Alexander died in the ancient city of Babylon, leaving behind a fractured empire. His death sparked revolts across the Macedonian realm, and his generals fought among themselves for control of the throne.