Introduction

Abstract

Formation and Diffusion of the Alexander Legend richard stonemanAlexander III (the Great) was born in the Macedonian city of Pella in the north of the Greek peninsula in 356 BC. Following the assassination of his father, Philip II of Macedon, in 336, he took up the cause of an attack on the Persian Empire, which his father was planning, and in spring 334 crossed the Hellespont into Persian territory with an army of at least 30,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. In the course of the next eleven years he took control of all parts of the Persian Empire, from Egypt eastwards; when the reigning Great King, Darius III, was assassinated by two of his nobles in summer 330, Alexander succeeded him as 'King of Asia'. Not content with this defeat of his rival, Alexander continued his march into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, first to suppress Persian pretenders and then to reclaim the provinces of Bactria and Sind which had been part of the empire of Darius I but had since slipped from Persian control. A confrontation with an Indian local ruler, Porus, on the river Hyphasis (Jhelum) in spring 326 led to the reinstatement of the latter as a vassal ruler. But soon after this the army expressed discontent with the never-ending march to the end of the world, as the monsoon season made camp and fighting conditions insupportable. In November 326 Alexander announced a retreat, and his fleet sailed down the river Indus to the outer Ocean, arriving at Patala (Hyderabad) some six months later in mid-325. A challenging march through the desert of Gedrosia (Baluchistan) to return to Susa and thence Babylon killed a large portion of his army, but eventually the remnant were reunited with the fleet under Nearchus at Carmania (Kerman). Alexander's closest friend, Hephaestion, died at Ecbatana (Hamadan) in autumn 324; in spring 323 Alexander entered Babylon, which was to be the capital of his empire. But he was taken ill and died suddenly on 10 June 323. Rumours of poison were rife, but the cause was probably cholera, typhus or a related marsh-borne disease, exacerbated in a constitution weakened by wounds and grief. 1