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Who Is Alexander The Great Dbq

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Alexander the so-called ‘Great’ was a legendary conqueror who in his short lifetime was able to overthrow the Persian Empire, the most powerful kingdom at that time. He was born in 356 BCE to King Philip and Queen Olympia of Macedonia. Alexander’s warring career jumpstarted at the age of 20 in the year 336 BCE, due to the assassination of his father in which he inherited his father’s kingdom. Over the span of 11 years, Alexander and his small fleet of men of about 40,000 took over and ruthlessly conquered the Persian Empire. Sadly, this conquest was short-lived by Alexander’s sudden death in the year 323 BCE, in which his unstable kingdom with a lack of a structured governmental system quickly broke apart in the period of 10 years. Therefore, because of the cruel and the disorganized nature of the way Alexander the ‘Great’ conquered and maintained the Persian Empire, he does not deserve to be referred as ‘Great’. To start, the idea of cruelty can be defined as losing one’s humanity by ruthlessly performing …show more content…

This definition perfectly depicts the battle strategies that Alexander the ‘Great’ used in war. Peter Green’s research out of UCLA is useful in illustrating Alexander’s homicidal tendencies (Document C). Green’s work describes the terrible effect Alexander had on the citizens of Tyre, mercilessly taking the lives of 7,000 people through the burning of their buildings, selling 30,000 citizens into slavery, and crucifying 2,000 men. This terrible act even alarmed the Sidonians, who were allies to Alexander and enemies to the citizens of Tyre. Also, according to the records of the philosopher and historian Lucius Flavius Arrianus written in the year 130, Alexander used the strategy of confusing the elephants of a prince named Porus to win his last major battle, however, though Porus’s army was trampled and killed by the elephants, the same fate was bestowed upon Alexander’s men.

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