Wars of Alexander the Great
| Wars of Alexander the Great | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Alexander, depicted with his horse Bucephalus, fighting Persian king Darius III, from the Alexander Mosaic of Pompeii (Naples National Archaeological Museum, Italy) | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| More than 1 million | |||||||||
The wars of Alexander the Great were a series of conquests and military campaigns carried out by Alexander III of Macedon from 336 to 323 BC. They began with his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire, which was ruled by Darius III. After a series of victories over the Persians and the defeat of Darius, he began a campaign against local chieftains and warlords that stretched from Greece to as far as the Indus Valley. At the time of his death, Alexander ruled over most regions of Greece and the conquered Achaemenid Empire, including much of Achaemenid Egypt.
Despite his military accomplishments, Alexander did not establish a stable empire, and his untimely death threw the vast territories he conquered into a series of civil wars known as the Wars of the Diadochi.
Alexander ascended to the throne of Macedon following the assassination of his father, Philip II (r. 359–336 BC). During his two decade reign, Philip II had unified the poleis or Greek city-states of mainland Greece under the Macedonian led League of Corinth. Alexander proceeded to solidify Macedonian rule by quashing a rebellion by the Greek city-states in the south and staged a short but bloody excursion against the city-states to the north. He then proceeded east to carry out his plans to conquer the Achaemenid Empire. His campaign of conquests which began in Greece spanned across Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greater Iran, Afghanistan, and India. The borders of his Macedonian Empire extended as far east as the city of Taxila in modern-day Pakistan.
Prior to his death, Alexander had also made plans for a Macedonian military and mercantile expedition into the Arabian Peninsula, after which he planned to turn west to Carthage. However, with Alexander's death, his generals, the Diadochi abandoned these plans and within a few years, began fighting against each other dividing the territories of the Macedonian Empire among themselves, these wars lasted for 40 years and took place during the Hellenistic period.