On June 13, 323 BC. in Babylon, under mysterious circumstances, one of the greatest military leaders in world history died - Alexander III of Macedonia, son of Philip II.
In about 10 years, Alexander managed to conquer the lands from the Balkans to India, destroy the Persian Empire, lay hands on Egypt and Mesopotamia and start a whole new period in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean - Hellenism.
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Alexander was born in 356. His mother, Olympias of Epirus, claimed that his real father was not Philip, but Zeus, and thus created a divine halo around her son.
He succeeded to the throne in 336 BC when Philip was killed during the marriage of his daughter Cleopatra to an Epirus chieftain. After quickly securing control of Greece, Alexander marched on Persia. At the head of 40,000 soldiers in 334, he crossed the Hellespont (now Dardanelles), defeated the Persians at the Granicus River and established control over the Greek cities of Asia Minor.
In 333, he again defeated the Persians at Isa, then went to Egypt. In 331, the Persian Empire was finally defeated after the Battle of Gaugamela, and Alexander laid his hand on Assyria and Mesopotamia.
In the next few years, Alexander's armies continued their march into Bactria, now Central Asia, and reached India. There, however, his troops revolted and the conqueror was forced to retreat. Shortly after his return to Babylon, which he had declared the capital of his empire, Alexander died.
The huge state that emerged as a result of the conquests stretched from the western coast of the Balkan Peninsula to India, including Petrechye. In the north it partially approached the Danube and bordered the Black Sea, in the south it reached the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula — in Asia, and included Egypt, Libya and Cyrenaica — in Africa. In its size, it exceeded the Persian state. Its population was multi-tribal and multi-lingual and was at different stages of economic development. Along with the highly developed countries, such as Greece, Syria and Phenicia, Babylonia and Egypt, the state of Alexander the Great included huge territories whose population was just beginning to experience the collapse of the primitive communal system. The economic and cultural ties between the individual regions were fragile. The entire monarchy was held in subjection only by force of arms.
Alexander did not change the local forms of government customary for the population. He also left the Persian administrative division of satrapies, but usually limited the satraps, depriving them of the right to command the troops and manage the finances.
Alexander's real support was the army, whose social and ethnic composition changed significantly during the eastern campaigns — there were few Macedonian warriors in it, but the number of mercenaries increased — Greeks and from the local Asian population. Alexander organized a special detachment of thirty thousand Persian youths to train them in the Macedonian military art.
Alexander took special measures to bring his Macedonian and Greek soldiers closer to the local population. A sumptuous marriage feast was organized in Susa, during which 10,000 weddings were made of Macedonian warriors with Persian women and women of other local nationalities. He himself also married two Persian princesses at once — for the daughter of Darius III and for the daughter of his predecessor Artaxerxes III Ochs. The marriage to the daughters of the two previous Persian kings was to further strengthen Alexander's right as their successor. The Bactrian Roxana also continued to remain queen — wife of Alexander, who thus officially had three wives.
He ordered his nobles and generals to marry noble Persian, Bactrian and Sogdian women. They did 80 weddings in one day. With such naive measures, Alexander tried to unite the conquerors and the conquered. It must not be forgotten that for many of the Greeks and Macedonians, including his famous teacher Aristotle, all the peoples conquered by Alexander were “barbarians", slaves by nature, etc. It must be admitted that Alexander , a graduate of Aristotle, after facing the practical problem of strengthening his vast and multi-tribal state, managed to overcome this ideological limitation.
On the trade and strategic routes, Alexander founded new cities and fortresses with a mixed Greek-Macedonian local population. He gave the inhabitants of these cities certain privileges. These were the strongholds of his power in the conquered territories. There are known cases where Alexander gave the cities land with a local peasant population for the citizens to exploit. The highest positions in his state were occupied by representatives of both the Macedonian and the local aristocracy. More or less privileged citizens lived in the newly created cities. Alexander's monarchy was supported by priests of various religions, to whom the king treated very favorably. At his court, services were performed to both the Greek and the numerous local gods. Alexander himself, declared at the time by the Egyptian priests to be the son of Ammon, seeking to strengthen his state, increasingly emphasized that he was a deity, and communicated this to the Greeks through the council of the Hellenic League at Corinth, desiring them also to formally recognize him recognized as god. The Greek police carried out his order. In Athens, Demosthenes, who had returned to the city at that time, expressed the impotent protest against this act in an ironic form, recommending to the national assembly that Alexander be considered, “if he wishes, to be the son of Zeus or also of Poseidon".
In the vast expanses of Alexander's empire, a spectacular redistribution of property took place and continues to take place. A large part of the Persian treasury, which was previously in the form of treasures or used for military and administrative needs, was put into commercial and economic circulation. Trade relations have strengthened, civil life has become more lively. Alexander centralized the release of gold and silver coins and minted them in huge quantities, establishing the Athenian coinage system as a basis. In Alexander's state, the Eastern and Greek-Macedonian experiences were combined. But Greece and Macedonia constituted an insignificant part of his monarchy. Instead of the "transfer of happiness from Asia to Greece", which Isocrates called for in the past, the conquest of the East by the Macedonians and Greeks led to an increase in the emigration of the native Greek population to the conquered territories. Greece and Macedonia faced the danger of becoming the periphery of the new eastern monarchy.
Against Alexander's policy, opposition also grew among the ranks of the Macedonian part of his army. In the small town of Opis, which was located east of the Tigris River, an uprising broke out. When Alexander arrived in Opis in 324 BC to announce to the army stationed there that he was sending to Macedonia with rich gifts the aged and sick veterans and in general all those who wished to return, the warriors staged a mutiny. They said that they would all go to Macedonia, and let the king fight alone with the help of “his father" Amon. Alexander put to death several of the most active of the rebel warriors. As a result of the subsequent negotiations, he was forced to send about 10,000 soldiers to his homeland and to an even greater extent use the services of the Persians.
In 323 BC, Alexander arrived in Babylon, located roughly in the center of his state, at the crossroads of trade and strategic routes. He made this the largest ancient eastern city his capital. Here, in the summer of 323 BC, during a feast, Alexander fell ill and after several days of illness, probably malignant fever and possibly poisoning, died at about the age of 33.