ALEXANDER THE GREAT
             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. He learned this from his father, who had reformed the Greek phalanx into a powerful fighting machine.
             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.
             Two years later, in 336 BC, Philip was murdered when a young noble in Philip's personal bodyguard pulled a short knife from under his cloak and stabbed the king through the heart, killing him instantly. Alexander's mother, Olympias, probably plotted his death but it could never ...