At just 20 years old, Alexander the Great became the king of Macedonia after the assassination of his father Philip II of Macedon. Many believed the young king would lose control of the kingdom.
They were wrong.
In this episode, we explore how Alexander crushed rebellions across Greece and began the journey that would eventually lead him to challenge the mighty Achaemenid Empire ruled by Darius III.
This is the story of how a young prince transformed into one of the greatest military commanders in history.
Watch the full series to see how Alexander built an empire stretching from Greece to Egypt and beyond.
#alexanderthegreat #ancienthistory #historydocumentary #ancientwarfare #macedonia #persianempire #militaryhistory #ancientbattles #worldhistory #historicaldocumentary #ancientgreece #battlehistory #greatgenerals #historychannel #educationalhistory
They were wrong.
In this episode, we explore how Alexander crushed rebellions across Greece and began the journey that would eventually lead him to challenge the mighty Achaemenid Empire ruled by Darius III.
This is the story of how a young prince transformed into one of the greatest military commanders in history.
Watch the full series to see how Alexander built an empire stretching from Greece to Egypt and beyond.
#alexanderthegreat #ancienthistory #historydocumentary #ancientwarfare #macedonia #persianempire #militaryhistory #ancientbattles #worldhistory #historicaldocumentary #ancientgreece #battlehistory #greatgenerals #historychannel #educationalhistory
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00:00In the long history of mankind, countless kings have ruled the world,
00:04great armies have marched across continents, and mighty empires have risen, only to fall
00:09into dust. But among them all, one name stands above the rest. A man who conquered nearly the
00:17entire known world. Before the age of 30, a commander who never lost a single battle,
00:23a king who turned a small kingdom into the greatest empire the ancient world had ever
00:28seen. His name was Alexander the Great. From the mountains of Macedonia, to the deserts
00:35of Egypt, from the magnificent capitals of the Persian Empire, to the distant borders
00:40of India, Alexander and his army marched farther than any army before them. But how did a young
00:47prince become the greatest general in history? How did one man change the fate of the ancient
00:52world forever? This is the story of Alexander the Great.
00:59In the year 356 BC, in a city called Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedon,
01:05a child was born who would go on to change the course of human history more dramatically,
01:10more completely, and more permanently than almost any other individual who has ever drawn
01:14breath on this earth. The world into which he was born was a world of city-states and kingdoms,
01:19of rival powers and ancient grudges, of gods worshipped on mountain peaks and oracles consulted
01:25in smoky temples. It was a world that believed in destiny, in divine favor, in the idea that
01:31certain men were marked from birth for something beyond the ordinary, and if that belief was ever
01:35justified. If that ancient intuition about greatness written into certain souls before
01:40they even take their first breath was ever proven correct. It was proven correct on the night that
01:45Alexander entered the world. His mother Olympias, a fierce and deeply spiritual woman from the kingdom
01:50of Epirus, believed with absolute conviction that her son was no ordinary child. She had dreamed of
01:55lightning striking her womb before his birth. She told the boy, from the time he was old enough
02:00to understand words, that his true father was not the king of Macedon, but Zeus himself, the lord of
02:07the gods, the ruler of the heavens. Whether Alexander believed this literally or understood, it is the
02:13kind of mythological framing that the ancient world used to describe extraordinary people.
02:17It shaped him, it gave him a sense of mission that went beyond political ambition,
02:21beyond the ordinary hunger for power that drives most rulers. He did not merely want to win.
02:27He wanted to be remembered forever. He wanted to stand alongside the heroes of the
02:32stories he loved, the great warriors and demigods whose names had echoed through centuries.
02:37He wanted eternity. And in the end, with a breathtaking completeness that even he might not have fully
02:43imagined in his most ambitious dreams, he got it. His father, Philip II of Macedon, was himself a
02:50remarkable man, and it would be a serious mistake to understand Alexander without first understanding
02:55Philip. The Macedon that Philip inherited was not the Macedon he built. When Philip came to power,
03:02Macedon was a relatively minor kingdom on the northern edges of the Greek world, looked down upon by the
03:07sophisticated city-states of Athens and Thebes and Corinth as a semi-barbaric backwater, a land of rough
03:13mountain, people who spoke a dialect of Greek that Southerners could barely understand. Philip changed
03:18everything. He was a military genius, a diplomatic mastermind, and a relentless builder of institutions.
03:24He reorganized the Macedonian army from top to bottom, creating what became one of the most lethal and
03:30innovative military machines the ancient world had ever seen. The centerpiece of his military
03:36reform was the Macedonian phalanx, a formation of infantry soldiers armed with an enormously long
03:42spear called the sarissa, which could be up to 21 feet in length. When a Macedonian phalanx locked into
03:48formation, the soldiers in the front ranks held their sarissas horizontally, pointing forward, while the
03:53soldiers in the ranks behind angled their weapons upward at progressively steeper angles, creating a
03:59bristling wall of overlapping spear points that was nearly impossible for enemy infantry to break
04:03through from the front. But Philip did not stop with the infantry. He built a superb cavalry arm, an elite
04:09force of horsemen called the Companion Cavalry, and he developed sophisticated siege warfare techniques
04:14that allowed him to take fortified cities that would have stopped earlier Macedonian armies cold.
04:19He also understood something that many military leaders forget, that the best army in the world is
04:24worthless without the economic base to sustain it and the diplomatic skill to isolate enemies
04:29before destroying them. Philip was as gifted a diplomat as he was a soldier. He bribed, he married
04:36strategically, he made alliances and then discarded them when they were no longer useful, he divided his
04:41enemies and picked them off one by one. By the time Alexander was born, Philip had already transformed
04:46Macedon from a marginal kingdom into the dominant power in the Greek world. He was building something
04:52extraordinary, and he knew that the son who would inherit what he was building, needed to be
04:56extraordinary too. Alexander did not disappoint. From his earliest years the boy showed qualities that set
05:03him apart in ways that were obvious even to those who had reason to underestimate him. He was physically
05:08remarkable, compact, and powerful, with a slightly tilted neck that became one of his most recognizable
05:14features. One eye reportedly dark, and one lighter. A face that ancient accounts describe as strikingly
05:21beautiful, with an almost luminous quality. But his physical presence was secondary to what burned
05:26inside him. He was possessed by an ambition that was not the ordinary ambition of a boy who
05:32wants to be important or respected or wealthy. It was something closer to a religious conviction,
05:37a certainty that he was meant for something beyond what any ordinary framework of achievement could
05:42contain. He was not interested in being a successful king of a successful kingdom.
05:46He was interested in being Alexander. And being Alexander meant doing something that had never
05:51been done before. The story of the horse Bucephalus, which ancient sources tell with obvious delight
05:58captures something essential about who Alexander was even as a child. The horse had been brought to
06:03Philip's court as a potential acquisition. A magnificent animal, large and powerful and clearly of
06:08exceptional quality. But when Philip's men tried to handle it, the horse went wild. No one could
06:14control it. No. One could even get close to it without the animal becoming dangerously agitated.
06:21Philip watched the attempts with growing frustration and finally declared the horse useless and ordered
06:26it taken away. It was at this moment that the twelve-year-old Alexander spoke up. He had been watching
06:32the horse carefully while the adults struggled with it, and he had noticed something they had all missed.
06:36The horse was terrified of its own shadow. Every time someone approached it, and it began to move,
06:42its shadow moved. With it. And the sight of this dark shape shifting beneath its feet sent the animal
06:47into panic. Alexander asked his father for permission to try. Philip, according to the ancient accounts,
06:53laughed and made a bet with his son. If Alexander could tame the horse, he could keep it. If he
06:58could
06:58not, he would pay the price of the animal himself. Alexander walked up to the horse, took it by the
07:03bridle,
07:03and turned it to face directly into the sun. With the horse facing the light, the shadow fell behind
07:08it where it could not see it. The animal calmed. Alexander stroked it, spoke to it, and then mounted
07:14it and rode it across the field. When he returned, the court erupted, and Philip reportedly wept.
07:23Not from sadness, but from a mixture of pride and something that bordered on awe. He said to his son,
07:29and these words have echoed across 24 centuries, My son, seek a kingdom equal to yourself.
07:36Macedonia is too small for you. Philip understood in that moment that what he had fathered was
07:41something that would outgrow every container anyone tried to put around it. When Alexander was 13 years
07:47old, Philip made a decision about his son's education that reveals just how seriously he
07:52took the boy's potential. He hired Aristotle. Not some local tutor, not a competent but
07:58undistinguished teacher, but the man who was already recognized as one of the greatest minds in the
08:03Greek world, a student of Plato, who would go on to shape the intellectual foundations of Western
08:08civilization in fields ranging from logic and ethics to biology and politics. Philip offered
08:13Aristotle exceptional terms including the rebuilding of Aristotle's home city of Stagira, which had been
08:18destroyed by Macedonian military action. And Aristotle accepted. For the next three years,
08:24Alexander studied under Aristotle, at a place called Miesa, a kind of outdoor school set and gardens.
08:29What they discussed, what they argued about, how Aristotle shaped the mind of the boy who would
08:34become the conqueror of the known world. These are questions that historians have debated for
08:39centuries. We know that Alexander received a comprehensive education. He studied philosophy,
08:45the systematic examination of how the world works, and how human beings should live in it.
08:49He studied science. And Aristotle's encyclopedic curiosity about the natural world clearly left a
08:54mark on Alexander, who throughout his military campaigns showed an unusual interest in the flora and
08:59fauna and geological features of the places. He passed through, sending specimens and observations back to
09:05his teacher. He studied medicine at a level that was remarkably practical. Ancient accounts say Alexander
09:10was not only capable of diagnosing illnesses but actively participated in treating wounded soldiers,
09:15not just issuing orders but getting his hands involved in the actual work of healing.
09:20He studied literature with a passion that never left him. And above all the other texts, above all the stories
09:26and poems and philosophical dialogues that Aristotle placed before him, Alexander loved the Iliad.
09:31The Iliad was not merely a poem to Alexander. It was a template, a mirror, a statement of what
09:38human existence was for. The story of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Trojan War, a man who had
09:46been given the choice between a long, quiet life and a short life of blazing glory, and who had chosen
09:51glory without hesitation, spoke to something at the absolute core of Alexander's identity. He identified with
09:58Achilles the way that later conquerors and leaders would identify with Alexander himself. He carried a
10:04personally, annotated copy of the Iliad everywhere he went, reportedly keeping it with a dagger under
10:09his pillow at night. When he first set foot on Asian soil at the very beginning of his great campaign,
10:15one of his first acts was to visit the ancient site believed to be Troy, where he honored the tomb
10:20of
10:20Achilles, ran races around it, anointed the gravestone with oil, and declared Achilles lucky for having a
10:26friend like Patroclus to mourn him, and a poet like Homer to celebrate his deeds. It was not a casual
10:31gesture, it was a statement of purpose. Alexander was telling himself and the world that he understood
10:36the stakes, that he intended to live at the level of the great heroes, that his story would be worthy
10:41of a Homer. Philip's extraordinary work in building Macedon reached its culmination, in 338 BC at the
10:48Battle of Charinia, where the Macedonian army faced a coalition of Greek city-states including Athens
10:53and Thebes. The Theban contribution to this coalition was particularly formidable. The Sacred Band of Thebes,
10:59an elite fighting force of 150 pairs of male lovers, based on the belief that men would fight more
11:05bravely and die rather than show cowardice in front of their beloved partners. The Sacred Band had
11:11never been defeated. At Charinia the 18-year-old Alexander commanded the companion cavalry on the
11:16left wing of the Macedonian army. When the moment came, when the gap in the enemy line appeared that
11:21Philip had maneuvered to create through feigned retreat, Alexander drove the companion cavalry through
11:26that gap, with the kind of explosive decisive violence that would become, his military signature.
11:31The Sacred Band was encircled and destroyed almost to the last man, they died where they stood,
11:37refusing to surrender, and Philip reportedly wept when he walked through their dead and understood
11:42what manner of men he had defeated. Charinia broke Greek resistance. Philip was now the undisputed
11:48master of the Greek world. He formed the League of Corinth, a political structure that united the
11:54Greek city-states under Macedonian leadership, and began planning the campaign he had dreamed of for
11:58years. An invasion of the Persian Empire, the dominant superpower of the ancient world. But Philip
12:05would never lead that invasion. In 336 BC, at the wedding of his daughter, Philip II of Macedon was
12:11assassinated. He was stabbed by one of his own bodyguards. The reasons behind the assassination have
12:17been debated ever since. Some ancient sources hint at a conspiracy involving Olympias, Alexander's mother.
12:23Others suggest purely personal grievances. What is certain is that the assassination changed everything.
12:30The throne of Macedon passed to the 20-year-old Alexander. The transition was not smooth. Kingdoms
12:36rarely survived the sudden death of a powerful king, especially when the heir was young and unproven in
12:41the eyes of the wider world. The Greek city-states that Philip had forced into submission saw their
12:48opportunity and began to move toward revolt. Rival claimants to the Macedonian throne emerged.
12:54Barbarian tribes on the northern borders stirred. The world was watching to see if this young man had
13:00what it took to hold together what his father had built. Alexander's response was one of the most
13:04impressive demonstrations of decisive action in the entire history of military leadership.
13:09He moved with a speed that left his enemies no time to coordinate. Potential rivals within Macedonia
13:14were eliminated. Then barely giving anyone time to catch their breath, he launched a campaign north
13:19against the Thracian and Illyrian tribes that threatened the Macedonian borders, crushing them
13:24in rapid succession, with exactly the combination of aggressive, cavalry action and tactical flexibility
13:29that would characterize all his greatest battles. And then when word reached him that the city of
13:34Thebes had revolted and that Athens was debating whether to join the rebellion, Alexander turned south
13:39and covered the distance to Thebes in what ancient sources describe as a matter of days.
13:43A march of such speed that the Thebans simply could not believe the army they saw outside their walls
13:48was actually Macedonian until it was too late. Thebes was taken. And then, in a decision that was as
13:55politically calculated as it was brutal, Alexander ordered the city destroyed. The houses were torn down,
14:01the population sold into slavery. The great city that had once been the dominant military power in
14:06Greece, reduced to rubble. He spared only the temples and the house of the ancient poet Pindar,
14:11whose work he revered. The message to the rest of Greece was unmistakable and perfectly clear.
14:17This was not Philip's son playing at being king. This was something different. This was Alexander.
14:23With Greece secured, with the northern borders pacified, with the domestic, threats eliminated,
14:29Alexander turned his attention to the purpose that had animated him since childhood, the Persian Empire.
14:34The empire that stretched from the Aegean coast of Asia Minor all the way east to the borders of India,
14:39from the plains of Egypt in the south to the steppes north of the Black Sea. An empire of perhaps
14:4450
14:45million people, governed from great palace cities at Susa and Persepolis in Babylon. Persia was the
14:51superpower of the ancient world. It was also, in the Greek cultural imagination, the eternal enemy.
14:57The Persians had invaded Greece twice in living memory, had burned the Acropolis of Athens during the
15:03Second Invasion, had left scars on the Greek psyche that had never fully healed. The campaign of revenge
15:09and conquest that Philip had planned, that Alexander now inherited, was framed by Alexander not merely as
15:15military expansion, but as the fulfillment of a sacred obligation, a pan-Hellenic mission of
15:21retribution and liberation. In the spring of 334 BC, Alexander crossed the Hellespont, the narrow
15:29strait of water that separates Europe from Asia, with an army of roughly 37,000 men. The crossing was
15:35itself a carefully staged piece of theatre. Alexander personally steered the lead ship across.
15:40Midway across he sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and poured a libation from a golden cup into the sea,
15:46claiming the waters as his domain. When his ship's prow touched the Asian shore he flung his
15:51spear into the earth, claiming Asia as spear-won territory. Claimed by right of conquest, he was
15:56the first off the ship. He stood on Asian soil in full armor, and declared it his. Then, he went
16:03to
16:03Troy. The visit to Troy was not a detour or a distraction. It was essential to everything that
16:09followed. Alexander understood the power of myth and symbol in a way that very few conquerors have
16:14ever matched. He understood that what people believed about who you were mattered as much as what you
16:20actually did, sometimes more. By visiting Troy, by honoring Achilles, by placing himself explicitly
16:25in the lineage of the Homeric heroes, he was telling a story about himself that would travel
16:30ahead of his army, that would reach the ears of people who had never seen a Macedonian
16:34soldier, and would shape how they understood what was coming. He was not an ordinary conqueror
16:39coming to take their lands and their wealth. He was something out of legend, a hero-king, a man whose
16:45story was already part of the great tapestry of myth that the entire Mediterranean world shared.
16:51The first major test of the invasion came quickly. The Persian satraps, the regional governors who
16:57administered Asia Minor on behalf of the Persian king, had assembled an army at the Granicus river
17:01to block Alexander's advance. The Granicus was not a trivial obstacle. It was a river with steep banks
17:08and the Persian forces were positioned on the far bank in a strong defensive position. Many of
17:13Alexander's senior commanders, including his second-in-command Parmenion, urged caution.
17:18Attack in the morning, they said. The conditions are not right, Alexander refused. He saw that the
17:24enemy expected him to hesitate. That hesitation would give them time to reinforce and would cost
17:29him the psychological advantage that came with moving immediately and aggressively.
17:33He led the companion cavalry directly into the Yar river, into the water and up the steep bank,
17:38into the concentrated fire of the Persian defenders. It was almost suicidal.
17:42Ancient accounts describe the attack as chaotic and desperate in its early moments,
17:47with Macedonian horsemen struggling up the bank and being cut down, with Alexander himself surrounded
17:52and nearly killed. Two Persian commanders struck at him, simultaneously with their cavalry lances.
17:58One blow broke his lance, another struck his helmet hard enough to cut through it and wound his scalp.
18:04A third Persian was raising his sword to finish Alexander when one of his officers killed the attacker.
18:09From behind, it was that close. But the attack succeeded. The Macedonian cavalry got up the bank
18:16in sufficient numbers and began to push the Persian cavalry back. The phalanx crossed behind them.
18:21The Persian line collapsed. In the aftermath, Alexander visited. Every wounded Macedonian soldier
18:27personally listened to their accounts of what they had experienced and made sure they knew that he had
18:32seen their courage. He shipped the captured Persian armor back to Athens as a gift, with an inscription that
18:37read, Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks accept the Lacedaemonians from the barbarians in Asia.
18:43It was propaganda of brilliant precision. It positioned the victory as a collective Greek
18:49achievement. It reminded every...
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