He was by some measures the greatest military commander in history, and conquered vast amounts of territory before his death at 32.
In this episode, get ready to explore the wonderful story of Alexander The Great.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about Alexander The Great.
[00:00:26] To some, he was a cruel warlord, a tyrant, a megalomaniac, and a man whose power went to his head.
[00:00:34] But to others he was a wise, benevolent ruler, and the greatest military leader of all time.
[00:00:41] So, let’s get right into it and explore the undeniably impressive life of Alexander The Great.
[00:00:49] In early June of the year 323 BC, almost 2,500 years ago, there was a large party in Babylon, an ancient city of Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq.
[00:01:05] The host was Alexander III of Macedon, and he was entertaining his officers.
[00:01:12] Wine and drink flowed freely. These men had been away from home, on a military campaign for 13 years, and these boozy evenings were always a welcome distraction.
[00:01:25] Alexander was not one to abstain from such festivities.
[00:01:30] He had developed quite a reputation as a heavy drinker. It must have been one way to escape his reality, but there was also a more practical reason: he was constantly travelling from place to place, finding fresh safe drinkable water was not always easy. But what he did have in large quantities was wine: safe, tastier than water, and its alcoholic properties helped you forget the events of the day.
[00:02:02] He went to his room, staggering down the corridor one imagines, and collapsed onto his bed.
[00:02:09] When he awoke the following morning, he was probably expecting a bit of a sore head. It would have been nothing out of the ordinary for the 32-year-old general, but it would be nothing that some fresh air, olives, and perhaps even another glass of wine would not get rid of.
[00:02:26] But when he woke up he was struck by a sickening pain.
[00:02:31] This was no ordinary hangover.
[00:02:34] He grew weaker and weaker, eventually losing even the ability to speak.
[00:02:40] It became clear that the young man was dying.
[00:02:44] His subjects came to visit him, to pay their last respects.
[00:02:49] No doubt his thoughts turned to the events of his brief life.
[00:02:54] He was only a month short of his 33rd birthday, but in this time he had managed to conquer huge swathes of the middle east and Asia, encompassing large parts of modern day Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Uzbekistan, India, and more.
[00:03:14] Although this empire would be surpassed by the Roman Empire, and then the Mongol and British empires, when Alexander took his last breath he was the most successful military leader of all time.
[00:03:28] Nobody had managed to achieve what he had achieved.
[00:03:34] On either the 10th or 11th of June, 323 BC, he did take his final breath, dying at the age of 32, leaving behind a vast legacy that spanned borders, cultures and religions.
[00:03:51] So, how did he get there, how did he manage to achieve what he did?
[00:03:57] He was born in 356 BC, the son of King Phillip of Macedonia, or Macedon.
[00:04:04] Now, King Phillip isn’t particularly well-known, as he is overshadowed by his son, but he was a strong leader, and put in place many of the political and military components that would allow his son to succeed.
[00:04:20] Ancient Macedonia was an area of northern Greece. It was considered a bit of a backwater of Greece, less civilised, too far from Athens, a sort of incompetent and uncivilised little brother.
[00:04:36] But King Phillip changed this.
[00:04:39] Through a combination of political alliances, smart marriage matches and the training up of the Macedonian army, in the space of only 25 years he managed to turn the Kingdom of Macedon into the dominant power in Ancient Greece.
[00:04:56] He had big plans too, plans that involved pushing out beyond the borders of Ancient Greece, to fight the mighty Persian Empire.
[00:05:06] But his plan was thwarted, cut short, when he was assassinated by his bodyguard.
[00:05:13] To this day historians have differing interpretations as to why he was killed, with some even suggesting that his son, Alexander, was involved in his father’s murder.
[00:05:26] But the important point for the purposes of today’s story is that it meant that power passed down to his oldest son, the then 20-year-old Alexander.
[00:05:38] Alexander by this point had received the best education and training that a young Greek king in waiting could hope for.
[00:05:46] He was personally tutored by the great philosopher Aristotle, learning about logic, reason, and mathematics.
[00:05:53] He would have received detailed military training, both from a strategic and a practical point of view. Not only did he learn how to command an army, but he would have learned how to fight from an early age.
[00:06:07] He was also, by all accounts, a talented and special boy.
[00:06:13] In one famous account, when Alexander was only 10 years old, a horse trader had brought a large black horse that he intended to sell to King Phillip.
[00:06:23] The horse was magnificent, but it was unrideable.
[00:06:28] Whenever anyone tried to approach, it would kick up its legs in the air, it seemed truly wild, too proud to be tamed by even the most capable of trainers.
[00:06:40] King Phillip was disappointed, but ordered for the horse to be sent away. It was too wild, it could never be controlled.
[00:06:50] But the young Alexander said “wait”, and insisted that he be given the chance to tame the beast.
[00:06:58] He had seen what nobody else had seen. The horse was not wild or untamable; it was afraid of its own shadow.
[00:07:10] Alexander approached the horse, whispered into its ears to calm it down, and turned it towards the sun, so that it couldn’t see its shadow.
[00:07:20] He then jumped onto the back of the horse and rode away to rounds of applause.
[00:07:26] Now, this tale might be apocryphal, made up or exaggerated for effect, but it gives you an idea of the legend of Alexander The Great.
[00:07:37] So, we are in 336 BC, King Phillip has just been assassinated, and his eldest son, the 20-year-old Alexander has just taken over as the King of Macedon, or King of Macedonia.
[00:07:53] After eliminating potential rivals to his power, Alexander wasted no time in taking up where his father had left off, in terms of preparing to head east and invade Persia.
[00:08:05] Now, why Persia, you might be asking yourself?
[00:08:09] The Persians had invaded Greece a hundred years before, and there was a desire to get even, to avenge this attack.
[00:08:19] There was also the simple fact that the Persian empire was the richest in the world, and even though Greece was not exactly cash-strapped, literally all the riches of Persia awaited anyone who was able to topple the Persian ruler.
[00:08:35] And then there is the factor that is perhaps harder to verify, that Alexander had some deep-rooted desire for personal glory and conquest. Clearly, there was some element of this, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone on a more than decade-long military campaign, but historians are divided over the extent to which this was some grand masterplan from the outset or whether it was more a case of “I’ve started, so I’ll go on”.
[00:09:06] In any case, he started, and he did go on, for 13 years, to be precise.
[00:09:14] The Persian ruler at this time was Darius III, an impressive ruler who commanded a huge army.
[00:09:22] The two armies first met at the Battle of Issus, in November of 333 BC. The Persian forces greatly outnumbered The Macedonians.
[00:09:33] Some ancient sources have the Persian army numbering as many as 600,000 to Alexander’s just under 40,000, although most modern estimates have the Persian forces at 60,000 or so.
[00:09:48] In any case, the odds were not in Alexander’s favour from a headcount perspective.
[00:09:54] But Alexander had several other advantages.
[00:09:59] Firstly, he had inherited his father’s excellently trained army. The Macedonians were fierce warriors, skilled and practised in the business of warfare.
[00:10:11] They also had highly sophisticated weapons: the army included foot soldiers with huge spears 6 metres long, who formed large impenetrable squares, because of these long sharp spears that pointed out.
[00:10:26] If you imagine a sort of square porcupine with deadly sharp metal spikes, that gives you some idea.
[00:10:34] There were also heavily armoured cavalry, soldiers on horses, who could charge at an enemy and inflict serious damage, as well as skilled archers, people firing arrows high into the sky.
[00:10:47] Alexander had been given leadership roles in battles while his father was still alive, so he had learned the most effective strategies and techniques of using these different types of soldiers and weapons against his enemies, and how to best position them on the battlefield.
[00:11:06] What’s more his soldiers were incredibly well drilled and disciplined, they were professionals.
[00:11:14] And Alexander knew the importance of keeping morale high, of making his soldiers believe in him and in themselves.
[00:11:23] He did this through rousing speeches, but perhaps the most obvious and important way in which he achieved this was through fighting on the frontlines himself.
[00:11:35] He was not the sort of person to stand on his horse on a high piece of ground far away from the action; he was there fighting side by side with his men, slaying Persians left right and centre and coming inches from death on multiple occasions.
[00:11:52] And at Issus, the first major battle against the full might of the Persian army, this all came together and the Macedonians emerged victorious.
[00:12:04] Darius was not killed nor was his army crushed, but enough of a defeat was inflicted that he tried to strike a bargain with Alexander, a peace deal.
[00:12:16] He would give Alexander half of the Persian empire in exchange for peace.
[00:12:24] This was only two years into Alexander's campaign, and to think, he had already achieved an offer of receiving half of the richest and most powerful empire in the world at that time.
[00:12:37] His generals urged him to accept it, but Alexander would not listen. He rejected the offer, effectively declaring to the Persian king that he would stop at nothing; he would pursue him to take the entirety of his kingdom.
[00:12:53] It would take a couple of years, but after conquering Egypt, Alexander turned his attention back eastwards.
[00:13:01] On October 1st, 331 BC, his forces met those of the Persian Empire at Gaugamela, in modern-day northern Iraq.
[00:13:13] After the defeat a couple of years prior, Darius III had wasted no time in building up his army in preparation for the inevitable.
[00:13:23] His forces were formidable, war elephants, chariots with scythes, sharp knives, coming out of their wheels, an estimated 10,000 highly-skilled Greek mercenaries and a similar number of Persian “immortals”, elite foot soldiers.
[00:13:42] All in all, the Persian army is thought to have numbered around 100,000, although some ancient sources have put it as high as one million.
[00:13:53] Alexander’s forces, on the other hand, were a mere 47,000.
[00:13:59] They had been fighting almost non-stop for 5 years by this point. This would surely have made them tired, fatigued by five years of war.
[00:14:09] But it also made them incredibly well-drilled, effective, and acutely aware that if they were defeated, death or slavery awaited them.
[00:14:20] Against all the odds, they proved victorious, crushing the Persian army and forcing Darius to flee. This time he did not escape, and was killed by one of his own governors.
[00:14:35] Alexander was not best pleased that his rival had been murdered, because this was an unfair and dishonourable end for someone who was, at the end of the day, a great king, but this did mean that Alexander was now de facto ruler of the whole of Persia.
[00:14:53] He was only 25 years old at the time, and he had become without question the most powerful man in the world.
[00:15:02] Still, he continued eastwards, marching through large parts of modern day Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and even ending up in India.
[00:15:13] And as all this was going on, he was still in charge of his kingdom back in Macedonia, as well as maintaining law and order in the regions that he had conquered, and were therefore under his control.
[00:15:26] To state the obvious, he was juggling a lot of balls; military conquests, governing acquired lands, keeping peace back at home, diplomacy with allies and enemies.
[00:15:39] By all accounts, and given that there was never a major rebellion against him during the thirteen years of the campaign, he was rather good at it, but this is not to say that everyone was happy with his leadership.
[00:15:53] As the years went by, and after he conquered Persia, he became increasingly Persian in his habits, and was criticised for abandoning the customs of his Greek homeland.
[00:16:05] He took three wives, which was unusual for Greeks, who were normally monogamous.
[00:16:12] And all three of his wives were not just not Greek; they were Persian.
[00:16:18] He also adopted the Persian custom of forcing his subjects to lie prostrate on the ground, bowing down before him, which was a decidedly un-Greek thing to do. Greece was a democracy at the time, without a monarch or emperor, so a Greek ruler forcing people to bow down before him was a sign to some that he had forgotten where he came from.
[00:16:44] Historians do write about people being unhappy with some of these tendencies, but not sufficiently to do anything drastic about it.
[00:16:54] There is one account of one of Alexander’s senior officers, a man called Cleitus the Black, who had been fighting by Alexander’s side right from the start and was close to him.
[00:17:06] Alexander and his officers were having a boozy celebration, and after many glasses of wine, Cleitus told Alexander that he thought he was becoming too Persian, and that he should remember his roots.
[00:17:20] Alexander didn’t say “you know what Cleitus, you’re probably right, thanks for the advice, old pal”.
[00:17:26] He picked up a spear and threw it at him, killing his old friend instantly.
[00:17:33] Eventually, in 326 BC, after reaching the Beas river in modern day Punjab, in India, Alexander did turn back.
[00:17:43] His kingdom had got too large, too wieldy, and he was aware that pushing any further east would take him further away from the centre of power, and potentially cause him problems with his increasingly homesick troops.
[00:17:58] His route back to Greece though was not direct, far from it. He took the opportunity to consolidate various parts of his territory, and was seemingly in no rush to return to Europe.
[00:18:11] He stopped off in Babylon, and then, in June of 323 BC, the unthinkable happened. He died, as you heard at the start of the episode.
[00:18:23] As to the cause of his death, there are multiple different views. Some say it was malaria, others it was typhoid or pneumonia. Others suggest that he was poisoned by an unhappy rival.
[00:18:38] Other people have suggested that he was simply weak, injured and exhausted from his more than decade long military campaign.
[00:18:48] He may only have been 32 years old, but he had been seriously injured multiple times. His lung had been punctured by an arrow, he had a serious neck and head injury after being hit by a stone fired from a crossbow, remember, he was fighting on the frontlines in serious battles almost non-stop for 13 years.
[00:19:11] What’s more, he was a big drinker, most probably an alcoholic by modern standards.
[00:19:18] In many ways, he was very lucky to have survived this long, and despite his young age, his body just gave up.
[00:19:27] But what certainly did survive is his legacy.
[00:19:32] One of his wives was pregnant when he died, but he left no surviving living heirs.
[00:19:38] And according to one popular legend, as he lay dying he was asked to whom he would leave his empire. He responded “to the strongest”, implying that he expected some kind of power struggle to ensue after his death.
[00:19:55] And, he was right. After his death his kingdoms were fought over and divided by his generals, but none would come anywhere near achieving the success that Alexander had.
[00:20:08] He had spread Greek culture and the Greek language across Asia, and for a short while, united tens of millions of people from Athens to Samarkand under one ruler.
[00:20:21] It is most definitely not without justification that he has come to be called “Alexander The Great”.
[00:20:28] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Alexander The Great.
[00:20:32] I’m sure that you knew a bit about his life before this, but I hope that the past 20 minutes or so have shed a bit more light onto this fascinating character and his 4th century exploits.
[00:20:43] Of course, it goes without saying that there is a huge amount of his life that we didn’t have the chance to cover today, from siege battles to mass weddings to speculation over his sexuality.
[00:20:54] It is a bit of a rabbit hole, but one that I would certainly encourage you to go down, as it is absolutely fascinating.
[00:21:01] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:06] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about Alexander The Great.
[00:00:26] To some, he was a cruel warlord, a tyrant, a megalomaniac, and a man whose power went to his head.
[00:00:34] But to others he was a wise, benevolent ruler, and the greatest military leader of all time.
[00:00:41] So, let’s get right into it and explore the undeniably impressive life of Alexander The Great.
[00:00:49] In early June of the year 323 BC, almost 2,500 years ago, there was a large party in Babylon, an ancient city of Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq.
[00:01:05] The host was Alexander III of Macedon, and he was entertaining his officers.
[00:01:12] Wine and drink flowed freely. These men had been away from home, on a military campaign for 13 years, and these boozy evenings were always a welcome distraction.
[00:01:25] Alexander was not one to abstain from such festivities.
[00:01:30] He had developed quite a reputation as a heavy drinker. It must have been one way to escape his reality, but there was also a more practical reason: he was constantly travelling from place to place, finding fresh safe drinkable water was not always easy. But what he did have in large quantities was wine: safe, tastier than water, and its alcoholic properties helped you forget the events of the day.
[00:02:02] He went to his room, staggering down the corridor one imagines, and collapsed onto his bed.
[00:02:09] When he awoke the following morning, he was probably expecting a bit of a sore head. It would have been nothing out of the ordinary for the 32-year-old general, but it would be nothing that some fresh air, olives, and perhaps even another glass of wine would not get rid of.
[00:02:26] But when he woke up he was struck by a sickening pain.
[00:02:31] This was no ordinary hangover.
[00:02:34] He grew weaker and weaker, eventually losing even the ability to speak.
[00:02:40] It became clear that the young man was dying.
[00:02:44] His subjects came to visit him, to pay their last respects.
[00:02:49] No doubt his thoughts turned to the events of his brief life.
[00:02:54] He was only a month short of his 33rd birthday, but in this time he had managed to conquer huge swathes of the middle east and Asia, encompassing large parts of modern day Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Uzbekistan, India, and more.
[00:03:14] Although this empire would be surpassed by the Roman Empire, and then the Mongol and British empires, when Alexander took his last breath he was the most successful military leader of all time.
[00:03:28] Nobody had managed to achieve what he had achieved.
[00:03:34] On either the 10th or 11th of June, 323 BC, he did take his final breath, dying at the age of 32, leaving behind a vast legacy that spanned borders, cultures and religions.
[00:03:51] So, how did he get there, how did he manage to achieve what he did?
[00:03:57] He was born in 356 BC, the son of King Phillip of Macedonia, or Macedon.
[00:04:04] Now, King Phillip isn’t particularly well-known, as he is overshadowed by his son, but he was a strong leader, and put in place many of the political and military components that would allow his son to succeed.
[00:04:20] Ancient Macedonia was an area of northern Greece. It was considered a bit of a backwater of Greece, less civilised, too far from Athens, a sort of incompetent and uncivilised little brother.
[00:04:36] But King Phillip changed this.
[00:04:39] Through a combination of political alliances, smart marriage matches and the training up of the Macedonian army, in the space of only 25 years he managed to turn the Kingdom of Macedon into the dominant power in Ancient Greece.
[00:04:56] He had big plans too, plans that involved pushing out beyond the borders of Ancient Greece, to fight the mighty Persian Empire.
[00:05:06] But his plan was thwarted, cut short, when he was assassinated by his bodyguard.
[00:05:13] To this day historians have differing interpretations as to why he was killed, with some even suggesting that his son, Alexander, was involved in his father’s murder.
[00:05:26] But the important point for the purposes of today’s story is that it meant that power passed down to his oldest son, the then 20-year-old Alexander.
[00:05:38] Alexander by this point had received the best education and training that a young Greek king in waiting could hope for.
[00:05:46] He was personally tutored by the great philosopher Aristotle, learning about logic, reason, and mathematics.
[00:05:53] He would have received detailed military training, both from a strategic and a practical point of view. Not only did he learn how to command an army, but he would have learned how to fight from an early age.
[00:06:07] He was also, by all accounts, a talented and special boy.
[00:06:13] In one famous account, when Alexander was only 10 years old, a horse trader had brought a large black horse that he intended to sell to King Phillip.
[00:06:23] The horse was magnificent, but it was unrideable.
[00:06:28] Whenever anyone tried to approach, it would kick up its legs in the air, it seemed truly wild, too proud to be tamed by even the most capable of trainers.
[00:06:40] King Phillip was disappointed, but ordered for the horse to be sent away. It was too wild, it could never be controlled.
[00:06:50] But the young Alexander said “wait”, and insisted that he be given the chance to tame the beast.
[00:06:58] He had seen what nobody else had seen. The horse was not wild or untamable; it was afraid of its own shadow.
[00:07:10] Alexander approached the horse, whispered into its ears to calm it down, and turned it towards the sun, so that it couldn’t see its shadow.
[00:07:20] He then jumped onto the back of the horse and rode away to rounds of applause.
[00:07:26] Now, this tale might be apocryphal, made up or exaggerated for effect, but it gives you an idea of the legend of Alexander The Great.
[00:07:37] So, we are in 336 BC, King Phillip has just been assassinated, and his eldest son, the 20-year-old Alexander has just taken over as the King of Macedon, or King of Macedonia.
[00:07:53] After eliminating potential rivals to his power, Alexander wasted no time in taking up where his father had left off, in terms of preparing to head east and invade Persia.
[00:08:05] Now, why Persia, you might be asking yourself?
[00:08:09] The Persians had invaded Greece a hundred years before, and there was a desire to get even, to avenge this attack.
[00:08:19] There was also the simple fact that the Persian empire was the richest in the world, and even though Greece was not exactly cash-strapped, literally all the riches of Persia awaited anyone who was able to topple the Persian ruler.
[00:08:35] And then there is the factor that is perhaps harder to verify, that Alexander had some deep-rooted desire for personal glory and conquest. Clearly, there was some element of this, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone on a more than decade-long military campaign, but historians are divided over the extent to which this was some grand masterplan from the outset or whether it was more a case of “I’ve started, so I’ll go on”.
[00:09:06] In any case, he started, and he did go on, for 13 years, to be precise.
[00:09:14] The Persian ruler at this time was Darius III, an impressive ruler who commanded a huge army.
[00:09:22] The two armies first met at the Battle of Issus, in November of 333 BC. The Persian forces greatly outnumbered The Macedonians.
[00:09:33] Some ancient sources have the Persian army numbering as many as 600,000 to Alexander’s just under 40,000, although most modern estimates have the Persian forces at 60,000 or so.
[00:09:48] In any case, the odds were not in Alexander’s favour from a headcount perspective.
[00:09:54] But Alexander had several other advantages.
[00:09:59] Firstly, he had inherited his father’s excellently trained army. The Macedonians were fierce warriors, skilled and practised in the business of warfare.
[00:10:11] They also had highly sophisticated weapons: the army included foot soldiers with huge spears 6 metres long, who formed large impenetrable squares, because of these long sharp spears that pointed out.
[00:10:26] If you imagine a sort of square porcupine with deadly sharp metal spikes, that gives you some idea.
[00:10:34] There were also heavily armoured cavalry, soldiers on horses, who could charge at an enemy and inflict serious damage, as well as skilled archers, people firing arrows high into the sky.
[00:10:47] Alexander had been given leadership roles in battles while his father was still alive, so he had learned the most effective strategies and techniques of using these different types of soldiers and weapons against his enemies, and how to best position them on the battlefield.
[00:11:06] What’s more his soldiers were incredibly well drilled and disciplined, they were professionals.
[00:11:14] And Alexander knew the importance of keeping morale high, of making his soldiers believe in him and in themselves.
[00:11:23] He did this through rousing speeches, but perhaps the most obvious and important way in which he achieved this was through fighting on the frontlines himself.
[00:11:35] He was not the sort of person to stand on his horse on a high piece of ground far away from the action; he was there fighting side by side with his men, slaying Persians left right and centre and coming inches from death on multiple occasions.
[00:11:52] And at Issus, the first major battle against the full might of the Persian army, this all came together and the Macedonians emerged victorious.
[00:12:04] Darius was not killed nor was his army crushed, but enough of a defeat was inflicted that he tried to strike a bargain with Alexander, a peace deal.
[00:12:16] He would give Alexander half of the Persian empire in exchange for peace.
[00:12:24] This was only two years into Alexander's campaign, and to think, he had already achieved an offer of receiving half of the richest and most powerful empire in the world at that time.
[00:12:37] His generals urged him to accept it, but Alexander would not listen. He rejected the offer, effectively declaring to the Persian king that he would stop at nothing; he would pursue him to take the entirety of his kingdom.
[00:12:53] It would take a couple of years, but after conquering Egypt, Alexander turned his attention back eastwards.
[00:13:01] On October 1st, 331 BC, his forces met those of the Persian Empire at Gaugamela, in modern-day northern Iraq.
[00:13:13] After the defeat a couple of years prior, Darius III had wasted no time in building up his army in preparation for the inevitable.
[00:13:23] His forces were formidable, war elephants, chariots with scythes, sharp knives, coming out of their wheels, an estimated 10,000 highly-skilled Greek mercenaries and a similar number of Persian “immortals”, elite foot soldiers.
[00:13:42] All in all, the Persian army is thought to have numbered around 100,000, although some ancient sources have put it as high as one million.
[00:13:53] Alexander’s forces, on the other hand, were a mere 47,000.
[00:13:59] They had been fighting almost non-stop for 5 years by this point. This would surely have made them tired, fatigued by five years of war.
[00:14:09] But it also made them incredibly well-drilled, effective, and acutely aware that if they were defeated, death or slavery awaited them.
[00:14:20] Against all the odds, they proved victorious, crushing the Persian army and forcing Darius to flee. This time he did not escape, and was killed by one of his own governors.
[00:14:35] Alexander was not best pleased that his rival had been murdered, because this was an unfair and dishonourable end for someone who was, at the end of the day, a great king, but this did mean that Alexander was now de facto ruler of the whole of Persia.
[00:14:53] He was only 25 years old at the time, and he had become without question the most powerful man in the world.
[00:15:02] Still, he continued eastwards, marching through large parts of modern day Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and even ending up in India.
[00:15:13] And as all this was going on, he was still in charge of his kingdom back in Macedonia, as well as maintaining law and order in the regions that he had conquered, and were therefore under his control.
[00:15:26] To state the obvious, he was juggling a lot of balls; military conquests, governing acquired lands, keeping peace back at home, diplomacy with allies and enemies.
[00:15:39] By all accounts, and given that there was never a major rebellion against him during the thirteen years of the campaign, he was rather good at it, but this is not to say that everyone was happy with his leadership.
[00:15:53] As the years went by, and after he conquered Persia, he became increasingly Persian in his habits, and was criticised for abandoning the customs of his Greek homeland.
[00:16:05] He took three wives, which was unusual for Greeks, who were normally monogamous.
[00:16:12] And all three of his wives were not just not Greek; they were Persian.
[00:16:18] He also adopted the Persian custom of forcing his subjects to lie prostrate on the ground, bowing down before him, which was a decidedly un-Greek thing to do. Greece was a democracy at the time, without a monarch or emperor, so a Greek ruler forcing people to bow down before him was a sign to some that he had forgotten where he came from.
[00:16:44] Historians do write about people being unhappy with some of these tendencies, but not sufficiently to do anything drastic about it.
[00:16:54] There is one account of one of Alexander’s senior officers, a man called Cleitus the Black, who had been fighting by Alexander’s side right from the start and was close to him.
[00:17:06] Alexander and his officers were having a boozy celebration, and after many glasses of wine, Cleitus told Alexander that he thought he was becoming too Persian, and that he should remember his roots.
[00:17:20] Alexander didn’t say “you know what Cleitus, you’re probably right, thanks for the advice, old pal”.
[00:17:26] He picked up a spear and threw it at him, killing his old friend instantly.
[00:17:33] Eventually, in 326 BC, after reaching the Beas river in modern day Punjab, in India, Alexander did turn back.
[00:17:43] His kingdom had got too large, too wieldy, and he was aware that pushing any further east would take him further away from the centre of power, and potentially cause him problems with his increasingly homesick troops.
[00:17:58] His route back to Greece though was not direct, far from it. He took the opportunity to consolidate various parts of his territory, and was seemingly in no rush to return to Europe.
[00:18:11] He stopped off in Babylon, and then, in June of 323 BC, the unthinkable happened. He died, as you heard at the start of the episode.
[00:18:23] As to the cause of his death, there are multiple different views. Some say it was malaria, others it was typhoid or pneumonia. Others suggest that he was poisoned by an unhappy rival.
[00:18:38] Other people have suggested that he was simply weak, injured and exhausted from his more than decade long military campaign.
[00:18:48] He may only have been 32 years old, but he had been seriously injured multiple times. His lung had been punctured by an arrow, he had a serious neck and head injury after being hit by a stone fired from a crossbow, remember, he was fighting on the frontlines in serious battles almost non-stop for 13 years.
[00:19:11] What’s more, he was a big drinker, most probably an alcoholic by modern standards.
[00:19:18] In many ways, he was very lucky to have survived this long, and despite his young age, his body just gave up.
[00:19:27] But what certainly did survive is his legacy.
[00:19:32] One of his wives was pregnant when he died, but he left no surviving living heirs.
[00:19:38] And according to one popular legend, as he lay dying he was asked to whom he would leave his empire. He responded “to the strongest”, implying that he expected some kind of power struggle to ensue after his death.
[00:19:55] And, he was right. After his death his kingdoms were fought over and divided by his generals, but none would come anywhere near achieving the success that Alexander had.
[00:20:08] He had spread Greek culture and the Greek language across Asia, and for a short while, united tens of millions of people from Athens to Samarkand under one ruler.
[00:20:21] It is most definitely not without justification that he has come to be called “Alexander The Great”.
[00:20:28] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Alexander The Great.
[00:20:32] I’m sure that you knew a bit about his life before this, but I hope that the past 20 minutes or so have shed a bit more light onto this fascinating character and his 4th century exploits.
[00:20:43] Of course, it goes without saying that there is a huge amount of his life that we didn’t have the chance to cover today, from siege battles to mass weddings to speculation over his sexuality.
[00:20:54] It is a bit of a rabbit hole, but one that I would certainly encourage you to go down, as it is absolutely fascinating.
[00:21:01] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:06] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about Alexander The Great.
[00:00:26] To some, he was a cruel warlord, a tyrant, a megalomaniac, and a man whose power went to his head.
[00:00:34] But to others he was a wise, benevolent ruler, and the greatest military leader of all time.
[00:00:41] So, let’s get right into it and explore the undeniably impressive life of Alexander The Great.
[00:00:49] In early June of the year 323 BC, almost 2,500 years ago, there was a large party in Babylon, an ancient city of Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq.
[00:01:05] The host was Alexander III of Macedon, and he was entertaining his officers.
[00:01:12] Wine and drink flowed freely. These men had been away from home, on a military campaign for 13 years, and these boozy evenings were always a welcome distraction.
[00:01:25] Alexander was not one to abstain from such festivities.
[00:01:30] He had developed quite a reputation as a heavy drinker. It must have been one way to escape his reality, but there was also a more practical reason: he was constantly travelling from place to place, finding fresh safe drinkable water was not always easy. But what he did have in large quantities was wine: safe, tastier than water, and its alcoholic properties helped you forget the events of the day.
[00:02:02] He went to his room, staggering down the corridor one imagines, and collapsed onto his bed.
[00:02:09] When he awoke the following morning, he was probably expecting a bit of a sore head. It would have been nothing out of the ordinary for the 32-year-old general, but it would be nothing that some fresh air, olives, and perhaps even another glass of wine would not get rid of.
[00:02:26] But when he woke up he was struck by a sickening pain.
[00:02:31] This was no ordinary hangover.
[00:02:34] He grew weaker and weaker, eventually losing even the ability to speak.
[00:02:40] It became clear that the young man was dying.
[00:02:44] His subjects came to visit him, to pay their last respects.
[00:02:49] No doubt his thoughts turned to the events of his brief life.
[00:02:54] He was only a month short of his 33rd birthday, but in this time he had managed to conquer huge swathes of the middle east and Asia, encompassing large parts of modern day Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Uzbekistan, India, and more.
[00:03:14] Although this empire would be surpassed by the Roman Empire, and then the Mongol and British empires, when Alexander took his last breath he was the most successful military leader of all time.
[00:03:28] Nobody had managed to achieve what he had achieved.
[00:03:34] On either the 10th or 11th of June, 323 BC, he did take his final breath, dying at the age of 32, leaving behind a vast legacy that spanned borders, cultures and religions.
[00:03:51] So, how did he get there, how did he manage to achieve what he did?
[00:03:57] He was born in 356 BC, the son of King Phillip of Macedonia, or Macedon.
[00:04:04] Now, King Phillip isn’t particularly well-known, as he is overshadowed by his son, but he was a strong leader, and put in place many of the political and military components that would allow his son to succeed.
[00:04:20] Ancient Macedonia was an area of northern Greece. It was considered a bit of a backwater of Greece, less civilised, too far from Athens, a sort of incompetent and uncivilised little brother.
[00:04:36] But King Phillip changed this.
[00:04:39] Through a combination of political alliances, smart marriage matches and the training up of the Macedonian army, in the space of only 25 years he managed to turn the Kingdom of Macedon into the dominant power in Ancient Greece.
[00:04:56] He had big plans too, plans that involved pushing out beyond the borders of Ancient Greece, to fight the mighty Persian Empire.
[00:05:06] But his plan was thwarted, cut short, when he was assassinated by his bodyguard.
[00:05:13] To this day historians have differing interpretations as to why he was killed, with some even suggesting that his son, Alexander, was involved in his father’s murder.
[00:05:26] But the important point for the purposes of today’s story is that it meant that power passed down to his oldest son, the then 20-year-old Alexander.
[00:05:38] Alexander by this point had received the best education and training that a young Greek king in waiting could hope for.
[00:05:46] He was personally tutored by the great philosopher Aristotle, learning about logic, reason, and mathematics.
[00:05:53] He would have received detailed military training, both from a strategic and a practical point of view. Not only did he learn how to command an army, but he would have learned how to fight from an early age.
[00:06:07] He was also, by all accounts, a talented and special boy.
[00:06:13] In one famous account, when Alexander was only 10 years old, a horse trader had brought a large black horse that he intended to sell to King Phillip.
[00:06:23] The horse was magnificent, but it was unrideable.
[00:06:28] Whenever anyone tried to approach, it would kick up its legs in the air, it seemed truly wild, too proud to be tamed by even the most capable of trainers.
[00:06:40] King Phillip was disappointed, but ordered for the horse to be sent away. It was too wild, it could never be controlled.
[00:06:50] But the young Alexander said “wait”, and insisted that he be given the chance to tame the beast.
[00:06:58] He had seen what nobody else had seen. The horse was not wild or untamable; it was afraid of its own shadow.
[00:07:10] Alexander approached the horse, whispered into its ears to calm it down, and turned it towards the sun, so that it couldn’t see its shadow.
[00:07:20] He then jumped onto the back of the horse and rode away to rounds of applause.
[00:07:26] Now, this tale might be apocryphal, made up or exaggerated for effect, but it gives you an idea of the legend of Alexander The Great.
[00:07:37] So, we are in 336 BC, King Phillip has just been assassinated, and his eldest son, the 20-year-old Alexander has just taken over as the King of Macedon, or King of Macedonia.
[00:07:53] After eliminating potential rivals to his power, Alexander wasted no time in taking up where his father had left off, in terms of preparing to head east and invade Persia.
[00:08:05] Now, why Persia, you might be asking yourself?
[00:08:09] The Persians had invaded Greece a hundred years before, and there was a desire to get even, to avenge this attack.
[00:08:19] There was also the simple fact that the Persian empire was the richest in the world, and even though Greece was not exactly cash-strapped, literally all the riches of Persia awaited anyone who was able to topple the Persian ruler.
[00:08:35] And then there is the factor that is perhaps harder to verify, that Alexander had some deep-rooted desire for personal glory and conquest. Clearly, there was some element of this, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone on a more than decade-long military campaign, but historians are divided over the extent to which this was some grand masterplan from the outset or whether it was more a case of “I’ve started, so I’ll go on”.
[00:09:06] In any case, he started, and he did go on, for 13 years, to be precise.
[00:09:14] The Persian ruler at this time was Darius III, an impressive ruler who commanded a huge army.
[00:09:22] The two armies first met at the Battle of Issus, in November of 333 BC. The Persian forces greatly outnumbered The Macedonians.
[00:09:33] Some ancient sources have the Persian army numbering as many as 600,000 to Alexander’s just under 40,000, although most modern estimates have the Persian forces at 60,000 or so.
[00:09:48] In any case, the odds were not in Alexander’s favour from a headcount perspective.
[00:09:54] But Alexander had several other advantages.
[00:09:59] Firstly, he had inherited his father’s excellently trained army. The Macedonians were fierce warriors, skilled and practised in the business of warfare.
[00:10:11] They also had highly sophisticated weapons: the army included foot soldiers with huge spears 6 metres long, who formed large impenetrable squares, because of these long sharp spears that pointed out.
[00:10:26] If you imagine a sort of square porcupine with deadly sharp metal spikes, that gives you some idea.
[00:10:34] There were also heavily armoured cavalry, soldiers on horses, who could charge at an enemy and inflict serious damage, as well as skilled archers, people firing arrows high into the sky.
[00:10:47] Alexander had been given leadership roles in battles while his father was still alive, so he had learned the most effective strategies and techniques of using these different types of soldiers and weapons against his enemies, and how to best position them on the battlefield.
[00:11:06] What’s more his soldiers were incredibly well drilled and disciplined, they were professionals.
[00:11:14] And Alexander knew the importance of keeping morale high, of making his soldiers believe in him and in themselves.
[00:11:23] He did this through rousing speeches, but perhaps the most obvious and important way in which he achieved this was through fighting on the frontlines himself.
[00:11:35] He was not the sort of person to stand on his horse on a high piece of ground far away from the action; he was there fighting side by side with his men, slaying Persians left right and centre and coming inches from death on multiple occasions.
[00:11:52] And at Issus, the first major battle against the full might of the Persian army, this all came together and the Macedonians emerged victorious.
[00:12:04] Darius was not killed nor was his army crushed, but enough of a defeat was inflicted that he tried to strike a bargain with Alexander, a peace deal.
[00:12:16] He would give Alexander half of the Persian empire in exchange for peace.
[00:12:24] This was only two years into Alexander's campaign, and to think, he had already achieved an offer of receiving half of the richest and most powerful empire in the world at that time.
[00:12:37] His generals urged him to accept it, but Alexander would not listen. He rejected the offer, effectively declaring to the Persian king that he would stop at nothing; he would pursue him to take the entirety of his kingdom.
[00:12:53] It would take a couple of years, but after conquering Egypt, Alexander turned his attention back eastwards.
[00:13:01] On October 1st, 331 BC, his forces met those of the Persian Empire at Gaugamela, in modern-day northern Iraq.
[00:13:13] After the defeat a couple of years prior, Darius III had wasted no time in building up his army in preparation for the inevitable.
[00:13:23] His forces were formidable, war elephants, chariots with scythes, sharp knives, coming out of their wheels, an estimated 10,000 highly-skilled Greek mercenaries and a similar number of Persian “immortals”, elite foot soldiers.
[00:13:42] All in all, the Persian army is thought to have numbered around 100,000, although some ancient sources have put it as high as one million.
[00:13:53] Alexander’s forces, on the other hand, were a mere 47,000.
[00:13:59] They had been fighting almost non-stop for 5 years by this point. This would surely have made them tired, fatigued by five years of war.
[00:14:09] But it also made them incredibly well-drilled, effective, and acutely aware that if they were defeated, death or slavery awaited them.
[00:14:20] Against all the odds, they proved victorious, crushing the Persian army and forcing Darius to flee. This time he did not escape, and was killed by one of his own governors.
[00:14:35] Alexander was not best pleased that his rival had been murdered, because this was an unfair and dishonourable end for someone who was, at the end of the day, a great king, but this did mean that Alexander was now de facto ruler of the whole of Persia.
[00:14:53] He was only 25 years old at the time, and he had become without question the most powerful man in the world.
[00:15:02] Still, he continued eastwards, marching through large parts of modern day Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and even ending up in India.
[00:15:13] And as all this was going on, he was still in charge of his kingdom back in Macedonia, as well as maintaining law and order in the regions that he had conquered, and were therefore under his control.
[00:15:26] To state the obvious, he was juggling a lot of balls; military conquests, governing acquired lands, keeping peace back at home, diplomacy with allies and enemies.
[00:15:39] By all accounts, and given that there was never a major rebellion against him during the thirteen years of the campaign, he was rather good at it, but this is not to say that everyone was happy with his leadership.
[00:15:53] As the years went by, and after he conquered Persia, he became increasingly Persian in his habits, and was criticised for abandoning the customs of his Greek homeland.
[00:16:05] He took three wives, which was unusual for Greeks, who were normally monogamous.
[00:16:12] And all three of his wives were not just not Greek; they were Persian.
[00:16:18] He also adopted the Persian custom of forcing his subjects to lie prostrate on the ground, bowing down before him, which was a decidedly un-Greek thing to do. Greece was a democracy at the time, without a monarch or emperor, so a Greek ruler forcing people to bow down before him was a sign to some that he had forgotten where he came from.
[00:16:44] Historians do write about people being unhappy with some of these tendencies, but not sufficiently to do anything drastic about it.
[00:16:54] There is one account of one of Alexander’s senior officers, a man called Cleitus the Black, who had been fighting by Alexander’s side right from the start and was close to him.
[00:17:06] Alexander and his officers were having a boozy celebration, and after many glasses of wine, Cleitus told Alexander that he thought he was becoming too Persian, and that he should remember his roots.
[00:17:20] Alexander didn’t say “you know what Cleitus, you’re probably right, thanks for the advice, old pal”.
[00:17:26] He picked up a spear and threw it at him, killing his old friend instantly.
[00:17:33] Eventually, in 326 BC, after reaching the Beas river in modern day Punjab, in India, Alexander did turn back.
[00:17:43] His kingdom had got too large, too wieldy, and he was aware that pushing any further east would take him further away from the centre of power, and potentially cause him problems with his increasingly homesick troops.
[00:17:58] His route back to Greece though was not direct, far from it. He took the opportunity to consolidate various parts of his territory, and was seemingly in no rush to return to Europe.
[00:18:11] He stopped off in Babylon, and then, in June of 323 BC, the unthinkable happened. He died, as you heard at the start of the episode.
[00:18:23] As to the cause of his death, there are multiple different views. Some say it was malaria, others it was typhoid or pneumonia. Others suggest that he was poisoned by an unhappy rival.
[00:18:38] Other people have suggested that he was simply weak, injured and exhausted from his more than decade long military campaign.
[00:18:48] He may only have been 32 years old, but he had been seriously injured multiple times. His lung had been punctured by an arrow, he had a serious neck and head injury after being hit by a stone fired from a crossbow, remember, he was fighting on the frontlines in serious battles almost non-stop for 13 years.
[00:19:11] What’s more, he was a big drinker, most probably an alcoholic by modern standards.
[00:19:18] In many ways, he was very lucky to have survived this long, and despite his young age, his body just gave up.
[00:19:27] But what certainly did survive is his legacy.
[00:19:32] One of his wives was pregnant when he died, but he left no surviving living heirs.
[00:19:38] And according to one popular legend, as he lay dying he was asked to whom he would leave his empire. He responded “to the strongest”, implying that he expected some kind of power struggle to ensue after his death.
[00:19:55] And, he was right. After his death his kingdoms were fought over and divided by his generals, but none would come anywhere near achieving the success that Alexander had.
[00:20:08] He had spread Greek culture and the Greek language across Asia, and for a short while, united tens of millions of people from Athens to Samarkand under one ruler.
[00:20:21] It is most definitely not without justification that he has come to be called “Alexander The Great”.
[00:20:28] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Alexander The Great.
[00:20:32] I’m sure that you knew a bit about his life before this, but I hope that the past 20 minutes or so have shed a bit more light onto this fascinating character and his 4th century exploits.
[00:20:43] Of course, it goes without saying that there is a huge amount of his life that we didn’t have the chance to cover today, from siege battles to mass weddings to speculation over his sexuality.
[00:20:54] It is a bit of a rabbit hole, but one that I would certainly encourage you to go down, as it is absolutely fascinating.
[00:21:01] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:06] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
