-
On July 356 B.C., Alexander the Great was born in Pella, Greece. His father was King Philip the II of Macedonia and his mother Olympias.
-
On the year 336 B.C., Alexander the great's father was assassinated. After his father's death, Alexander inherited the kingdom of Macedonia. His ruling in Macedonia lead to his conquest of expanding his empire.
-
After King Philip died, the people in Greece, specifically the Thebes, rebelled against Alexander. They thought he wouldn't be a good as a ruler as his father was. So what Alexander did was he reasserted his power on the Greece by destroying the city of Thebes. This showed an example on what he would do if the other cities rebelled.
-
On the year 334 B.C., Alexander brought out his army across Hellespoints. Alexander's army movement towards the Asia Minor area didn't bring any attention to the Persian leader, Darius the II. Darius set off many distractions and parts of his armies to try and stop Alexander's army from coming up, but with the strong armies of Alexander, he was able to pull through and make it towards the territory. They then battled in area of the Granicus River. There, Alexander defeated the army and conquered
-
Alexander went on to expand his empire by conquering Egypt. In the year 332 B.C., he was able to captured Gaza and led his forces towards Pelusium, the eastern gateway to Egypt. There he met up with the Persian governor. The governor then surrendered to Alexander thus giving Egypt to him without any fight.
-
After conquering Egypt, Alexander moved on to the city of Gaugamela. There him and his army met up the the armies of the Persian Empire. During the Battle of Gaugamela, Alexander used his military strategies to defeat the great armies of the Persian empire. In the intense battle, King Darius fled. The Persians were then defeated. After the war, King Darius was killed, and Alexander was able to control the Persian Empire.
-
Alexander then continued on his journey to expanding his empire by going towards Central Asia. He set foot on the Indus River and wanted to continue expanding it from there. His armies refused to continue because they were tired and wanted to go back and see their family.
-
After his armies refused to go deeper into India, Alexander finally ended his journey in the Indus River. He turned back and stayed in India for a few years.
-
He left India to go back home on 325 BC, be he never made it to Greece because he got sick on 323 BC in the city of Babylon. He died after a few days of his sickness at age 33. His body was taken to Egypt and buried in a golden coffin.
-
After Alexander the Great died, his spread of the Greek cultures made a development called the Hellenistic period. Alexander the Great wanted to spread Greek culture all over his empire. He built many Greek like structures in cities and shared its culture such as language and clothing. This lasted for a long time; it happened from Alexander's death to when the Romans were even ruling.
-
Alexander's empire was the largest empire in the world. Since he wanted to influence the Greek culture, he founded Greek cities in the places he conquered and encouraged Greek settlers to stay there. Even though he supported the spread of Greek culture, he still encouraged people to keep their own culture. By doing this, elements of Persian, Egyptian, Syrian, and other cultures with Greek ideas formed a new Hellenistic culture. It was called Hellenistic because it was Greek-like.
