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Essay on How Alexander The Great Effected The Rise Of Christianity
World conquerors do not come much grander than Alexander the Great. Together with Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, the King of Macedon sits at the top table of history's greatest empire-builders. What made--and still makes--him so remarkable is the sheer precocity of his enterprise: the conquest of most of the known world in a furious 12-year whirlwind. He began his military career at 16, and by the age of 26 he had subdued the Persian Empire. Add the fact that he died at just 33, and Alexander inevitably passes into the realms of legend.
Alexander was, as Paul Cartledge notes in his study," a hero, a quasi-holy man, a Christian saint, a new Achilles, a philosopher, a scientist, a prophet and a visionary. But in antiquity he was most famous as a conqueror." (Cartledge 384) Would Aristotle, his tutor, have approved? Quite possibly, thinks Cartledge, because the great philosopher reckoned the Greeks could rule the world if only they had a single political organization.
Five encounters within the space of a few years single Alexander out as an outstanding general: his campaign of 335 BC against Thrace and the Illyrians and his destruction of Thebes; the war at sea a year later; the tumultuous eight-month siege of Tyre in 332 BC in which he displayed brilliant technological acumen; the set-piece Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC in which his army of 47,000 triumphed over Darius III's quarter of a million; and his victory over Porus, the Indian Rajah, at the River Hydaspes in 326 BC.
Judge a man by his actions. All the evidence confirms the verdict of the second-century writer Arrian that "the sheer pleasure of battle, as other pleasures are to other men, was irresistible". In between ruminations on the question of Alexander's sexuality, Cartledge quotes a remark.....
