Alexander The Great

Through his conquests, Alexander created one of the largest empires in the history of the world. By doing so, he united Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East into a common culture known as the Hellenistic civilization. The new Hellenistic culture’s effects in such areas as individualism, philosophy, learning, and economics were so significant that after the life of Alexander, the world would never be the same again.

Alexander was born in 356 B.C., the son of King Philip of Macedonia. He played an instrumental role in Philip’s conquest of Greece, leading the cavalry in the Battle of Chaeronia, a decisive victory for Philip. When Philip died in 338 B.C., Alexander quickly ascended to the throne and ambitiously set out to conquer the world. He only had a small army and a small amount of money. However, because of his talented military leadership and the love that his men had for him, he managed to defeat the Persians, whose empire made up most of the known world, as well as the Egyptians. Throughout his campaign he did not lose a single battle. Still he was not satisfied, and he continued to push east. He made it as far east as Pakistan and India before his troops refused to go any farther. In 324 B.C., he returned to Babylon, where he began making plans for his new empire, including future conquests to expand it. However, in 323 B.C. he died of a fever.

Still, although his empire began to collapse shortly after his death, he had left an impact that would change the world. For the Greeks he had quadrupled the size of the known world. The Greeks, many of whom had been to Pakistan and back with Alexander, began to open their minds more to the world around them. As a result, their poleis became significantly less important to them. People began to see themselves not simply as citizens of a polis, but as individuals. Therefore, they became less interested in what they could do to help their polis, and more interested in what they could do to achieve personal wealth or happiness. The search for personal happiness led to the creation of new philosophies such as Stoicism and Epicureanism. 

Another of Alexander’s major cultural accomplishments was that he spread Greek culture across the Middle East, effectively ensuring that it would never be forgotten, and that it would live on to influence people in the distant future. According to Richard Hooker, Alexander was responsible for permanently stamping world culture “with a Greek character.” In the process, he blended Greek culture with the culture of the peoples he had conquered to create a new Hellenistic culture. One way he did this was by ordering mass weddings between Greeks and Persians.  Another way he did this was by ordering the building of new cities. This created a large number of job opportunities for people such as engineers, architects, and laborers and attracted people from across the empire. Some of these cities, once built, contained large libraries that created new opportunities for education and attracted more people. For example, the city of Alexandria in Egypt became the world’s center of science and literature, with a library that contained as many as 700,000 roles. Thus, these cities attracted people of widespread origin and nationality. Inevitably, through contact with each other, these people spread their cultural ideas and picked up ideas from other cultures.