ALEXANDROS PHILIPPOU MAKEDONON (356-323 BC). More than any other world conqueror, Alexander III of Macedon, or ancient Macedonia, deserves to be called the Great. Although he died before the age of 33, he conquered almost all the then known world and gave a new direction to history.

Alexander was born in 356 BC at Pella, the capital of Macedon, a kingdom north of Hellas (Greece). Under his father, Philip II, Macedon had become strong and united, the first real nation in European history. Greece was reaching the end of its Golden Age. Art, literature, and philosophy were still flourishing, but the small city-states had refused to unite and were exhausted by wars. Philip admired Greek culture. The Greeks despised the Macedonians as barbarians.

Alexander was handsome and had the physique of an athlete. He excelled in hunting and loved riding his horse Bucephalus. When Alexander was 13 years old, the leading Greek thinker and philosopher Aristotle came to Macedon to tutor him. Alexander learned to love Homer's 'Iliad'. He also learned something of ethics and politics and the new sciences of botany, zoology, geography, and medicine. His chief interest was military strategy

Alexander's army and a huge force led by Darius III of Persia met at Issus in October 333 BC. Alexander charged with his cavalry against Darius, who fled. Alexander then marched southward along the coast of Phoenicia to cut off the large Persian navy from all its harbors. Tyre, on an island, held out for seven months until Alexander built a causeway to it and battered down its stone walls.

Philip was bent on the conquest of Persia. First, however, he had to subdue Greece. The decisive battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC brought all the Greek city-states except Sparta under Philip's leadership. Young Alexander commanded the Macedonian left wing at Chaeronea and annihilated the famous Sacred Band of the Thebans.

Some historians believe Alexander the Great to have been a bloodthirsty tyrant whose depredations only ended when his army rebelled; others consider him to have been an apostle of peace, driven by dreams of universal brotherhood. Even today, more than 2,300 years after his death, the memory of Alexander the Great, one of the most brilliant leaders of all time, lives on.

The richest, most powerful, and longest lasting of these kingdoms was that of the Ptolemies. It reached its height of material and cultural splendor under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled from 285 to 246. After his death, the kingdom entered a long period of war and internal strife that ended when Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC.

The three centuries after the death of Alexander are called the Hellenistic Age, from the Greek word hellenizein, meaning "to act like a Greek." A civilization produced during the chaotic period from the death and the subsequent dissolution of Alexander the Great's empire to the victory of the Romans over the Greeks at the battle of Actium (31 B.C.). During this period, Greek language and culture spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean world. Hellenism was unique in that it stood for a set of ideals as well as an historical culture. Among its components were a rational approach to life, use of reason rather than authority, appreciation for a humanistic view of life, the search for the ideal in every field, and a communal-minded expressed as an ideal harmony of individual and state. Hellenism was spread throughout the Mediterranean as a result of Alexander the Great's conquests from 334-325 B.C.

The Antigonid Kingdom of Macedonia lasted only until 168 BC. Continually involved in wars with other kingdoms and struggles with the Greek city-states, it was finally overtaken by the military might of Rome.

In the spring of 334 BC, Alexander crossed the Hellespont (now Dardanelles), the narrow strait between Europe and Asia Minor. He had with him a Greek and Macedonian force of about 30,000 foot soldiers and 5,000 cavalry. The infantry wore armor like the Greek hoplites but carried a Macedonian weapon, the long pike. Alexander himself led the companions, the elite of the cavalry. With the army went geographers, botanists, and other men of science who collected information and specimens for Aristotle. A historian kept records of the march, and surveyors made maps that served as the basis for the geography of Asia for centuries.

Alexander's men had now marched 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers). Soon they refused to go farther, and Alexander reluctantly tu

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