Alexander the Great

"Contemporary reports agree that Alexander, with his gray eyes and thick blond hair, was very handsome. Most Macedonian men wore beards, but Alexander, asserting that a beard gave one's enemies a handhold in combat, was clean-shaven" (13). "There seems to have been some divine hand presiding over both [Alexander's] birth and his actions" (13, hmmm maybe, quote by Arrian, 2C Greek historian and Roman general). His mighty horse, Bucephalus, was born a year later than Alexander and lived to age 29. "Diogenes (412-323) coined the term 'cosmopolite,' meaning 'citizen of the world,' and concept that became more meaningful w/Alexander's conquests.

359: Philip II becomes King of Macedonia, a wild mountainous area in N Greece (tAG p55)
343-40: Tutored by Aristotle
340: Becomes regent of Macedon
338: Defeats Thebans, Athenians at Battle of Chaeronea
337: Philip divorces Olympia, she and Alexander leave court
336: Philip assassinated, Alexander becomes king, Darius becomes king of Persia
333: Defeats Darius at Issus
331: Alexandria founded, defeats Darius again at Gaugamela
- gets Persian Empire's 3 main cities: Babylon, Susa, Persepolis
330: Darius assassinated by Persian conspirators
327: Marries Bactrian girl: Roxane
324: Organizes Macedonian/Persian intermarriages, integration
323: dies, aged 33, of malaria, in Babylon

"The Parthenon ... was exactly 100 yrs old when Philip beat the Athenian army in 338 BC" (26). "A most remarkable quality of Alexander's was the concern for his men. No conqueror had so few casualties in battle, [because he] avoided 'the battle of rats' by using his brains not just to win, but to win economically" (28, i.e. finesse v. brute force, quote by N G L Hammond). "Alexander considered that he had come from the gods to be a general governor and reconciler of the world. Using force of arms when he did not bring men together by the light of reason, he harnessed all resources to one ... end, mixing the lives, manners, marriages and customs of men, as it were in a loving-cup" (39, Plutarch). Homer's Iliad was "Alexander's favorite book. He had been taught since childhood that he was descended from both Achilles and Paris, the opposing heroes of the Trojan War" (54). "It was not his design to ransack Asia, like a robber, nor to despoil and ruin it ... as afterward Hannibal pillaged Italy ... but to subdue all under one form of government and to make one nation of mankind" (87, Plutarch). "Alexander almost achieved his ambition of conquering the known world ... His most enduring legacy, however, was not his hard-won empire, but the worldwide spread of Greek civilization that it made possible (102, i.e. Hellenization). After his death, his body was carried 1000 miles back to Alexandria, his final resting place.

In The Future of Israel, John MacArthur Jr.'s commentary on Daniel 9:20-12:13, he discusses the prophesied 4 great Gentile world empires (from earlier in Daniel, ref?): Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome (see also notes on Delhousaye sermon). Scholars believe this prophecy was made c537 BC (1). "And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will" (Dan. 11:3, Alexander topic of 11:3-9). "All Bible commentators agree" (56) that this passage refers to Alexander. "And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken" (11:4a). After Alexander's early death, his kingdom was shattered. "... shall be divided toward the 4 winds of heaven, and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled ..." (11:4b). Alexander's kingdom "was not maintained to the extent that it was when he was ruling. [He] had a half-brother who was mentally retarded, an illegitimate son, and a baby born after he had died. All were murdered to prevent ... [their] claim to the throne ... a great battle ensued for leadership of the empire, which was eventually won by 4 generals: Cassander took Macedonia and Greece, Lysimachus took Thrace and Asia Minor, Ptolemy took Egypt in the south, and Seleucus took Syria to the north of Israel. The latter 2 produced the dynasties that the rest of the chapter focuses on since Israel was caught in between them [kings of N and S] ... 200 yrs of war between Ptolemaic [S] and Seleucid [N] kings ... [resolved, per prophecy, when Antiochus m. Berenice c250 BC]" (57-8).

Philip II, Alexander's father (tAG p55)

Ptolemy (tIoJC p61)

"Archaeologists discovered the royal tombs of Philip and his family at Vergina [SW of Pella]" (tAG p55).

"Physically, Alexander was not prepossessing. Even by Macedonian standards he was very short, though stocky and tough. His beard was scanty, and he stood out against his hirsute Macedonian barons by going clean-shaven. His neck was in some way twisted, so that he appeared to be gazing upward at an angle. His eyes (one blue, one brown) revealed a dewy, feminine quality. He had a high complexion and a harsh voice (p13) ... With symbolic aptness, he kept 2 things under his pillow while he slept: a daggar, and his copy of the Iliad, annotated by Aristotle. If [Alexander's] mother's family claimed descent from Achilles, [his father] Philip and the Argeads included Heracles among their ancestors, and these filiations were taken very seriously indeed. Before he died, Alexander could, and did, claim to have outstripped them both" (The Hellenistic Age, Peter Green, Modern Library (Random House), 2007, 199pp, FHL, p13). Also, Alexander honored Achilles and Patroclus, since he had "Trojan blood in his veins on his mother's side through his mythical ancestor Neoptolemus, Achilles' son ... [and honored] Priam (whom Neoptolemus had killed) and ... Andromache, Hector's widow and Neoptolemus' prize (15) ... His pursuit of Homeric glory was essentially solipsistic: it did not concern itself with the future. Dying, he was asked to whom he left his kingdom. 'To the strongest,' he reportedly said" (16). "Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenid [Persian] empire - the great military victories of the Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela, and the Jhelum; the symbolic cutting of the Gordian knot; the pilgrimage to the desert oracle of Zeus-Ammon, w/its rumors of divinity; the foundation of Alexandria; the seemingly endless eastward march; the frustration of [his] ambitions by a full-scale sit-down mutiny of his own men when faced with the interminable Ganges plain; the death march through the Gedrosian desert; and [his] premature death in Babylon, just short of his 33rd bday, while still planning further conquests - this is a story that has been told well many times" (14). "Augustus was struck by Alexander's lack of interest in administering the lands he had conquered ... The treasuries of Susa, Persepolis, and Ecbatana made him the wealthiest man in the known world ... [yet] with [his] death, all that remained was, in effect, a huge pirates' treasure chest and an even larger mass of spear-won territory" (pp16-7). Green opines that the panhellenism was merely propaganda and that, once Alexander was dead, his feeble attempts at cultural "fusion ... were vigorously repudiated ... on the other hand, his latter-day [delusional] efforts to be treated as a god gave some interesting ideas to the would-be dynasts among his successors ... [e.g] Seleucid monarchs acquired much Babylonian ritual; [and] it was not long before the Ptolemies began to look quite strikingly pharaonic" (17-8).

pics of Philip p33, Olympias p36.

Sources:
- Alexander the Great, Dennis Wepman, Chelsea House, 1986 (FHL).
- tIoJC = The Importance of Julius Caesar, Don Nardo, Lucent, 1998?, FHL.
- tAG = The Ancient Greeks, Rosemary Rees, Heinemann (Reed), 1997, 64pp, FHL.