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Alexander the Great
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Alexander III of Macedon (356 BC - 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, succeeded his father Philip II to the Macedonian throne at the age of 20 and ruled Macedonia until his death at age 32.

Alexander III spent most of his ruling years carrying out a military campaign through Asia and northeastern Africa, creating one of the largest empires of the ancient world. When he was 30 years old, his lands stretched from Greece in the West to northwestern India in the East.

Alexander's conquests generated a great cultural diffusion and syncretism, promoting the development of things such as Greco-Buddhism. Also, his habit of creating Greek colonies helped spread Greek culture in the east, sometimes with long-lasting impacts. As late as the 1920s, there were communities of Greek speakers in far eastern Anatolia.

In the years following his death, Alexander's empire was broken up by a series of civil wars.

Childhood and youth

Alexander was the son of King Philip II of Macedon and his wife, an Empirote princess named Olympias.

Growing up, Alexander had the renowned philosopher Aristotle as his teacher in science and the political arts, while the great Macedonian generals Antipater and Permenion thought him military tactics and strategy.

While still a young boy, he received the ambassadors of Persia in his fathers absence.

At the age of 18, he led the Macedonian cavalry in a charge that won the Battle of Chaeronia.

When Alexander was just 20 years old, his father was assassinated, and Alexander became King Alexander III of Macedonia.

Alexander becomes king and Thebes revolts

When King Philip II was murdered, he was just about to lead an army of Macedonians and Greeks across the Hellespont to fight the Persians who had subjugated the Greek states in Asia Minor. The Greeks were allies of Macedonia, but now - when King Phillip II was dead - many Greek leaders were hoping that they might be able to renegotiate with the new young king and get more favorable conditions. In 335 BC, a revolt against Macedonia broke out in Thebes.

It quickly became clear that the new young king weren't interested in renegotiating, and that he had no patience with rebels. Instead of using soft diplomacy, he rapidly moved his army to Thebes, where the Macedonians breached the walls and overpowered the population. To discourage the other Greek states from rebelling, Alexander let his army wreck enormous havoc on Thebes, though he spared the temples.

When the other Greek states saw this, they decided to back the new king rather than go against him, and when Alexander announced that he was planning to attack the Persians in Asia Minor, the Greeks got ships and men ready to follow him.

Attacking the Persians in Asia Minor

Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring of 334 BC. At the Granicus River, the Macedonian-Greek Army, also known as the Hellenic League, defeated a strong Persian force, making it possible to march on southward along the coast, freeing both Aeolis and Ionia - two large Greek cities - from the Persians.

In 335 BC, Alexander moved the Hellenic League eastward across Phrygia to Gordius. According to legend, this is where he "untied" the Gordian Knot by destroying it with his sword. An oracle had foretold that the person who untied the knot would become the ruler of Asia.

The Persians failed to keep Alexander's army from passing through the Cilician Gates, a pass through the Taurus Mountains connecting the low plains of Cilicia to the Anatolian Plateau, by way of the narrow gorge of the Gökoluk River. With his army, Alexander crossed the Taurus Mountains and reached northern Syria, where a large Persian force led by King Darius III of the Achaemenid Empire was waiting for them. On 5 November, 333 BC, the large Battle of Issus took place near the mouth of the Pinarus River. The Hellenic League was victorious, and Darius himself fled before the battle was over.

Founding the city Alexandria in Egypt

In 332-331 BC, Alexander founded a city along the Nile in Egypt and named it after himself.

Continuing conquest

King Darius wanted to make peace with Alexander, offering him to keep the conquered lands, get 10,000 talents in cash and marry Darius daughter. Alexander refused, and continued his advance into Asia instead.

The Hellenistic League moved through Syria, reached the Euphrates & Tigris area, and entered Assyria where Darius tried once again to resist them. Just as before, the Hellenistic League won and Darius fled.

Alexander did not meet with much resistance as he entered Babylonia, and in 330 BC he conquered Persia's capital Persepolis. In the spring of that year, the Hellenistic League marched north to take on Darius again - this time at Ecbatane. As Darius fled to Bactria, a Persian province located north of the Hindu Kush mountains, he was assassinated by his own officers.

Alexander was now King of Persia.

Reaching India

Becoming King of Persia was not enough for Alexander. Initially, he focused on securing his position by conquering the remaining Persian provinces located east of the Indus River, but soon he set his eyes on new goals. With great success, he campaigned across what we today know as Afghanistan and Turkestan, and eventually the Hellenistic League marched into India. From there, the army refused to continue eastward, so Alexander and his men returned to Babylon in 325 BC.

Maintaining the empire

Conquering lands is one thing; ruling them is another. Alexander the Great was now the emperor of a wast region inhabited by people of various ethnicities, religions, languages and lifestyles. Also, the way people saw Alexander and treated him varied greatly from one place to another. To the Hellenistic League, he was a commander-in-chief. In Egypt, he was worshiped as a kind of divinity. In former Persia, he was an absolute monarch and his subjects would bow to the ground to show him their utmost respect. The fact that Alexander tolerated and even seemed to approve of this behavior angered the Greek and the Macedonians, who were disgusted by anyone who tried to "make himself a god". Still, Alexander - who had picked up many Persian customs and habits - seemed to enjoy the Persian way of doing things and wanted to model his whole government after the Persian absolute monarch system.

Illness and death

On either 10 or 11 June 323 BC, Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon.

According to Plutarch, Alexander had been partying pretty hard roughly two weeks before his death; first entertaining the admiral Nearchus and then spending the night and following day getting drunk with Medius of Larissa. Alexander developed a fever, and instead of recovering he got progressively worse, until he wasn't even able to speak. Soon thereafter, he died.

Diodorus has left an account where he claims that Alexander was struck with pain after drinking a large bowl of unmixed wine in honor of Heracles. According to this version of the story, Alexander did not develop a fever, but was nevertheless ill for eleven days before dying.

Naturally, Alexander dying before even turning 33 gave rise to suspicions of foul play, and plenty of rumors of him being poisoned. Throughout the millennia, various slow-acting poisons have been suggested as a possible cause, along a rather large row of diseases that may have killed him.

At his death, his empire reached from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Indus River, and included parts of three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia.

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Empire of Alexander the Great - Expansion into Asia and Central Asia

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Alexander III of Macedon (356 BC - 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, succeeded his father Philip II to the Macedonian throne at the age of 20 and ruled Macedonia until his death at age 32.

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Marco Polo
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Kids learn about the explorer Marco Polo. His journeys to China to meet emperor Kublai Khan.

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Ibn Battuta
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Ibn Battuta - The Great Traveler - Extra History - #1

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Attila The Hun
Read the above article about Attila the Hun. Answer the following questions:
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1. His upbringing was privileged.

Far from the stereotype of the unwashed, uneducated barbarian, Attila was born (probably at the beginning of the fifth century A.D.) into the most powerful family north of the Danube River. His uncles, Octar and Rugila (also Ruga or Rua), jointly ruled the Hun Empire in the late 420s and early 430s. Attila and his elder brother, Bleda, received instruction in archery, sword fighting and how to ride and care for horses. They also spoke-and perhaps read-both Gothic and Latin, and learned military and diplomatic tactics; the two brothers were likely present when their uncles received Roman ambassadors.

2. Once Attila rose to power, the first thing he did was negotiate a (short-lived) peace with the Romans.

With the deaths of their uncles in 434, Bleda and Attila inherited joint control over the Hun Empire. Their first step was to negotiate a treaty with the Eastern Roman Empire, in which Emperor Theodosius II agreed to pay some 700 pounds of gold annually as a promise of peace between the Huns and Romans. But just a few years later, Attila claimed the Romans had violated the treaty and led a devastating series of attacks through Eastern Roman cities in 441. With Hun forces looming just 20 miles of Constantinople, Theodosius was forced to make terms, and agreed to pay Attila the staggering sum of 2,100 pounds of gold per year.

3. He killed his own brother to grab absolute power for himself.

After that peace treaty was concluded in 443, the Huns returned to the Great Hungarian Plain. Roman sources are hazy about what happened there over the next several years, but it seems clear that at some point Attila decided to challenge Bleda for sole power over the empire. The Roman writer Priscus, who provided what was considered the most reliable Roman account of the Huns, claimed that in 445 "Bleda, king of the Huns, was assassinated as a result of the plots of his brother Attila." Two years later, Attila led another, even more ambitious assault on the Eastern Roman Empire. The Huns stormed through the Balkans and into Greece, and the Romans finally managed to stop them at Thermopylae, after which the Huns and Romans negotiated another complicated treaty with even harsher terms for the Romans.

4. He invaded Gaul to win himself a wife.

In the spring of 450, Honoria, the ambitious sister of Valentian III, emperor of Western Rome, sent Attila a ring and asked him to help her get out of the impending marriage to a Roman aristocrat her brother was forcing on her. Attila, who already had several wives (the exact number is unknown), took Honoria's overture as a proposal. He claimed her as his newest bride, and half the Western Empire as her dowry. Honoria claimed to have intended no such thing, but her brother, furious at his sister's scheming, was ready to send her across the Danube to placate Attila. He eventually relented, allowing her to marry the boring Roman aristocrat after all. Attila wouldn't give up so easily, however, and would wage his next two military campaigns in Honoria's name.

5. Attila suffered his first and only defeat at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.

In 451, some 200,000 of Attila's Hun forces invaded Gaul. As they moved through the countryside, leaving slaughter and devastation in their wake, the Romans (commanded by General Flavius Aetius, previously on good terms with Attila) formed an alliance with King Theodoric I of the Visigoths. The combined Roman-Goth army confronted Attila in the decisive Battle of Catalaunian Plains, finally defeating the great Hun leader in one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Theodoric was killed in the clash, while Attila withdrew his forces and subsequently retired from Gaul. Never one to be easily discouraged, he would invade Italy the following year.

6. Despite his legendary lust for gold, Attila himself lived modestly and humbly.

According to Priscus, who visited Attila's headquarters on the Great Hungarian Plain along with visiting Roman ambassadors in 449, the Hun leader threw a banquet at which he served the guests a luxurious meal on silver plates. Attila himself, Priscus observed, was served separately. He "ate nothing but meat on a wooden trencher...His cup was of wood, while his guests were given goblets of gold and silver." Unlike his subordinates, who arrogantly displayed their gold and gems on their horse's bridle or weaponry, Attila's "dress, too, was quite simple, affecting only to be clean."

7. He died horribly (and mysteriously) on his wedding night.

Though gruesome, Attila's death was not the fate you might have predicted for a great warrior and military leader. Even while pursuing his claim on Honoria, he decided to take yet another wife, a beautiful young woman named Ildico. They married in 453, just as Attila was preparing another attack on the Eastern Roman Empire and its new emperor, Marcian. During the wedding at Attila's palace, the groom feasted and drank late into the night. The next morning, after the king failed to appear, his guards broke down the door of the bridal chamber and found Attila dead, with a weeping, hysterical Ildico at his bedside. No wound could be found, and it appeared that Attila had suffered a bad nosebleed while lying in a stupor and choked to death on his own blood. Some suggested that Ildico played a part in his death, or that he fell victim to a conspiracy engineered by Marcian; others dismissed it as a freak accident, or a cautionary tale about the dangers of binge drinking.

8. No one knows where he's buried.

According to Priscus, Attila's army grieved their lost leader by smearing their faces with blood and riding their horses in circles around the tent holding his body. That night, his body was encased in three coffins-one gold, one silver, one iron-and buried in a tomb filled with the weapons of his defeated enemies, along with jewels and other treasures. As legend has it, a river was diverted so that Attila could be buried in its bed, and the waters were then released to flow over the grave. The servants who buried Attila were subsequently killed to prevent them from revealing his final resting place. The location of the burial site, believed to be somewhere in Hungary, remains unknown to this day.

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8 Things You Might Not Know About Attila the Hun

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Far from the stereotype of the unwashed, uneducated barbarian, Attila was born (probably at the beginning of the fifth century A.D.) into the most powerful family north of the Danube River. His uncles, Octar and Rugila (also Ruga or Rua), jointly ruled the Hun Empire in the late 420s and early 430s.