You know that reassuring list which goes around the internet from time to time saying things like, Oprah was already 28 by the time she even moved to Chicago, and, Jesus didn’t have a single disciple until his 30s?
Well, by the time Alexander the Great turned 26, he’d already established the biggest empire the world had ever seen.
So maybe get a move on.
Other Alexander things:
One of His Best Friends Was a Horse
Legend holds that when Alexander was ten, he met a horse which appeared impossible to tame. Alexander managed to tame it, though, noticing it feared its own shadow. Not sure how exactly he used that, but we’ve got a lot to get to. Productive guy. Thank goodness he died at 32. This blog post would be way longer if he’d survived into old age.
The horse became his, and he’s said to have ridden it all the way to India later in his life. Its name was Bucephalus, and after it died, he named a city after it in what’s now Pakistan. Somewhere near Jalalpur. The city is gone now. This all happened more than two thousand years ago.
His Tutor Had a Weird Salary
As part of Aristotle’s benefits package for teaching Alexander, Alexander’s dad agreed to rebuild Aristotle’s hometown and repopulate it with its former citizens, who were slaves and exiles after Alexander’s dad had destroyed the city. Maybe a good place to anchor your next negotiation with HR?
He Turned Pro at 16
Alexander’s dad was off fighting a war when Alexander was 16, leaving Alexander in charge. While he was in charge, some relatives of the people his dad were fighting started a revolt against Macedonia, Alexander and his dad’s kingdom. Alexander beat them, counterattacked, and took over their territory, founding a city named Alexandropolis within it.
After this, Alexander and his dad continued to work together and apart, taking over most of modern-day Greece and allying it into one Greek warmaking entity under Macedonian leadership. They got pretty much everybody besides Sparta to join in (Sparta would later hop on board after Alexander’s dad died).
He Got in a Big Fight With His Dad
When Alexander was 17 or 18, his dad married a Macedonian woman who was the niece of one of his generals. This was an issue for Alexander because his mom (who was a badass, she’ll get a separate post one day) was from Molossia, a non-Macedonian region of Greece, making him only half-Macedonian and therefore potentially not the heir if his dad and this Macedonian lady had a kid. At the wedding, this started a scene which Alexander may have only survived because his dad and the general were both pretty drunk. Allegedly. No breathalyzers were administered.
Alexander fled Macedonia for a few months after the fight, but it turned out his dad wasn’t that mad at him, and the pair reconciled. This was kind of a theme in Alexander’s adolescence: He thought his dad wanted him gone, and his dad evidently thought, No, you were able to tame that horse, you are going to kick the Persians’ ass. He was not wrong.
A Lot of People Used to Die When Power Changed Hands
This doesn’t sound like it was all that unusual? Either way, when Alexander ascended to the throne thanks to his dad’s assassination, I’m counting eight royals or figures of power who got murdered, including his dad. To be clear: Alexander wasn’t down with his dad’s murder. Weird to have to clarify that, but again: A lot of people used to die when power changed hands. John Adams, still a trailblazer.
Adding to the bloodshed, news of the death of Alexander’s dad (this guy’s name was Philip, by the way) led multiple Greek states to revolt. Alexander defeated them all, passing the de facto test to see if he’d get to be king (or Hegemon or whatever they were calling it).
Alexander Had a To-Do List
My to-do list is mostly the timing of various medicines for my dog. Alexander’s was crushing any potential revolts before he went to do his main task of taking over the world. This was a little like whack-a-mole. He went north and crushed those revolts, Thebes and Athens started revolting again in the south. It worked out—he beat Thebes so bad that Athens stood down—but man, these people loved to revolt. Funny that Athens is now so insistent on claiming Alexander as a Greek. Forced the country of Macedonia to change its whole name over it! You got lucky you weren’t Thebes, Athens.
Alexander Kicked Ass
The short version of Alexander’s core career is that he took over what’s now Turkey, took over the Levant (modern-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine), took over Egypt (Egypt loved Alexander, possibly because he decided he was also the son of one of their gods in addition to being the son of Zeus; unclear if he considered Philip his dad too), took over what’s now Iraq (Babylon was in there, that was a big one), took over what’s now Iran, and here we’ll pause because we’ve got a funny story.
From Wikipedia (Bessus, for context, was a guy who imprisoned and murdered Darius, the last Persian King, while Darius was fleeing Alexander):
Alexander viewed Bessus as a usurper and set out to defeat him. This campaign, initially against Bessus, turned into a grand tour of central Asia. Alexander founded a series of new cities, all called Alexandria, including modern Kandahar in Afghanistan, and Alexandria Eschate (“The Furthest”) in modern Tajikistan. The campaign took Alexander through Media, Parthia, Aria (West Afghanistan), Drangiana, Arachosia (South and Central Afghanistan), Bactria (North and Central Afghanistan), and Scythia.
Who among us has not started a military campaign against a usurper and accidentally ended up touring central Asia and naming a bunch of cities after ourselves. Also, remember when he was going with Alexandropolis? Alexandria rolls off the tongue way better. This guy learned on the job.
Oh, also, sometime in here he turned 25.
Now, back to the story: After he took over the entire Persian Empire (which included at least parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in addition to the whole western parts we already listed), he set his sights on what’s now India. Things were going well there, but after a while, his soldiers got too homesick and the threat of mutiny became too big to keep conquering the world. My impression is that there was some bad blood between the Greeks and the Persians, but that the Indians were new opponents and maybe the Greeks were a little less willing to wipe out all their cities? We’ll have to look into the Greeks and the Persians sometime. Also: Who was Hannibal? He rode the elephants, right? Adding that one to the list too.
He Was Going to Kick More Ass, But Then He Died
Alexander went back to Persia when the India-conquering stopped, and that must have been close enough to home that his army was ready to kick ass again. That, or this happened because he’d started merging Persians and Greeks in the army and the Persians were ready for their turn to kick ass. I’m not sure I’m following this perfectly. Either way, they were getting ready to go invade the Arabian peninsula (that’s Saudi Arabia and all its suburbs) when Alexander died. Got sick, spent almost two weeks suffering, died. Might have been poisoned, people aren’t too sure.
He Really Tore Down the Cities He Conquered
Maybe you have to do this if you’re going to take over the world, but damn, the Alexandrian conquest was rough. Lot of razing cities. Lot of selling women and children into slavery. Lot of killing all the men. I feel like this part of Alexander’s story doesn’t get as much attention as it does with Genghis Khan, but maybe Genghis Khan was worse.
Alexander Might Have Been Gay
A decent number of historians evidently think Alexander the Great was in a homosexual relationship with his friend Hephaestion. There are arguments about it on either side.
Most of Alexander’s Work Fell Apart
Alexander did spread Greek culture and language throughout Asia and down into Africa, and he did kickstart the Hellenistic period (in which Greece was kind of the decentralized dominant force), but his death also left a power vacuum which led to forty years of civil wars within his kingdom. He put a big kingdom together, but he didn’t take over the world like he said he would and he didn’t successfully leave it to anybody, so it only existed for a few years before splintering off into little smaller kingdoms again.
So, don’t feel too bad about not accomplishing as much in your 20s as Alexander did. You still might have created something more lasting.
