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Many, many rulers throughout history have bestowed upon themselves the title of "Great", but there is one name above all else which commands such a looming presence over the course of human history: Alexander. Alexander is one of the most successful and obscenely powerful monarchs ever to scorch his way across this planet Earth. I'd argue that only Genghis Khan was a greater conqueror than him, as all great emperors after Alexander conquered to be like the King of Macedon, and Genghis needed no such inspiration to surpass his Western counterpart. That's a story for another day, though. Today's subject is Alexander, and his life is so filled to the brim with so many battles, characters, and legends that I can't possibly cover it all here. I truly believe that if we didn't have mountains of archaeological evidence proving his existence, we may scoff at his exploits as the fantasy of some Greek nutcase like we do with the stories of King Arthur. Alexander's influence on world history from Europe to India deserves more than what I can summarize in my little art blogs, but I'll do my best to do his biography justice. Strap in for another long one y'all.

Alexander III of Macedon was born in Pella in 356 BCE to Philip II, a renowned military mastermind who was on his way to turning all of Greece into his personal client state, and his fourth wife, Olympias. There's plenty of legends about Alexander's early life, most of which were made up by Alexander's fanboys, one even stating that Olympias was actually impregnated by a lightning bolt. This is an obvious allusion to later propaganda we'll get into in a bit. At ten years old, Alexander was able to calm and ride the untamable horse Bucephalus, which would become his favorite steed all throughout his career. From the age of 13 to 16, Philip hired the famed philosopher Aristotle himself to serve as Alexander's personal tutor, which would be the root of Alexander's total fanboy crush on all things Trojan War. We've all been there. Alexander's tutelage was cut short when he got his first taste of kingship in 340 BCE, as he was placed in charge of defending Macedon from the Thracians while his father was campaigning in Byzantium. The acclaim he won with the army served him well when Philip was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 336 BCE. Alexander's throne was secured by his loyal soldiers, and once he secured Macedon's holdings in Greece and the Balkans, he took up the torch his father left behind: the conquest of Iran.

Philip had already laid down the plan to reclaim the culturally Greek city-states in Ionia from Achaemenid rule, but Alexander would not be satisfied with that. He crossed the Hellespont in 334 BCE with the intention of becoming king of all Asia. He faced the Immortals first at Granicus, then Miletus and Halicarnassus, and by 333 BCE he had pushed into the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordion, in the heart of Asia Minor. Here, he was presented with the Gordian Knot, a legendary local artifact which was supposedly a knot so complicated that only the prophesied king of Asia could undo it. Alexander, in what I think has to be my favorite nugget of extremely dumb wisdom in history, undid the knot either by pulling the lynch pin or, more hilariously, just drawing his sword and cutting it open. Because hey no one said how it had to be undone. It was at this point that the Achaemenid king Darius III finally thought hmm this Alexander kid may actually be a threat to my borders, I should probably go take care of that. The two titans met at Issus, today on the border between Turkey and Syria, and when Alexander came barreling down on Darius's "immortal" army and butchered them, Darius noped the hell out of there, hid away in some palace corner, and wrote up a treaty saying hey man I didn't mean it, let's be friends, I'll give you everything you already took from me and you give me back my family that I literally abandoned on the battlefield. Alexander tartly proclaimed that as he was the new king of Asia, only he would be setting the terms now.

While Darius was away writing sternly worded letters, Alexander advanced south and took Tyre and the Levant in 332 BCE. The Talmud claims he also stopped in the Holy City, where he amicably met the High Priest Simeon the Just. Alexander ordered a statue of himself built in the Temple, but Simeon convinced him to forgo this demand in exchange for all the priests naming their next-born sons Alexander. Apparently satisfied he had fairly swapped one ego trip for another, Alexander proceeded southwards and took control of Egypt at the Battle of Gaza. After stopping to found a new city quite literally in his own name, Alexander was crowned Pharaoh, reincarnation of the Egyptian gods on Earth. If that wasn't enough, Alexander then detoured into the Siwa Oasis to consult the famed Oracle of Amun. She proclaimed him to be the son of Zeus, and now you see where the fertile lightning strike we mentioned earlier comes in. By this point, Alexander was well and truly convinced that he was a god on Earth, and who was going to challenge him on that? That loser Darius? Ha! Eh? Oh… yes actually.

Darius redoubled his forces and faced Alexander at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE, to prove once and for all who the true King of Asia was! For the glory and righteous cause of the Persian Em- aaaand Darius ran away with his tail between his legs. Bro, grow some balls. I get it, the other guy has pointy sticks and might like murder you and stuff, but that's what a battle is, you do realize that right? Apparently this is what was going through the minds of his satraps too, because in 330 BCE they became fed up with retreating, tied Darius to an ox-cart, and just kinda left him to die exposed to the elements. Sucks to suck, man, but evidently, when Alexander came across the body of his most respected foe, he became infuriated that such a noble man's body should be mistreated like this, and hunted down the satraps that did the deed. After his victory at Gaugamela, Alexander was able to waltz in the front gates of Babylon completely unopposed. Apparently, despite his respect for Darius, he had no respect for his stuff, as Alexander proceeded to scorch the royal palaces at Persepolis to the ground, claiming it was revenge for the Achaemenid burning of Athens in 480 BCE. Nonetheless, Alexander was now King of Kings, and it truly went to his head. He came to idolize the Iranian conqueror Cyrus the Great, and took a liking to Persian garb and customs to the point where his advisors complained he was going too native. But I mean, again, who the hell is going to tell Alexander the Great what he can and can't do? There were a few attempts on his life, but when he had one of his officers executed for not informing him of the discovered plot straight away, I think that kinda sent the message.

Clearly on a roll, Alexander decided he may as well get to work on conquering the mysterious eastern lands he chased Darius's murderer, Bessus, through. In 326 BCE, he crossed the Hindu Kush and made war against the Indian king who resisted him, Porus. The forces met at the Battle of the Hydaspes, and while Alexander lost his beloved horse Bucephalus against a horde of war elephants, he still emerged the victor and made a vassal out of Porus. As the universe's dice were clearly just weighted towards Alexander's side, he wanted to keep going as far east as was possible. The only thing that stopped him from doing so was his army itself. They were tired of marching through unknown lands full of unfavorable climates and hostile peoples speaking tongues that no Macedonian even knew existed. For the first time in his life, Alexander was told "no", and though he gave a rousing speech to smack them on the ass, they still refused to continue. The king was at last forced to concede and return to Babylon, and Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. But that wasn't the worst turn of his luck. In 324 BCE, while Alexander was away dealing with rebellion after rebellion across his Empire, his best and oldest friend (and maybe lover, sources differ) Hephaestion, died of illness, and Alexander absolutely broke. The king was inconsolable, and while he tried to fill the void with blood and battle, nothing could ever make him feel the same again.

In June 323 BCE, Alexander died shortly after a lavish banquet. There's way too many theories to delve into here. Some say he just got food poisoning, some say it was his mental health making his body vulnerable to desert diseases, and others suspect it was an elaborate assassination plot devised by any number of his many, many enemies. We just don't know, and probably never will. Alexander's body was placed in a tomb which is lost to this day. It would be in Alexandria, Egypt, if it still exists, but centuries of flooding and reconstruction have likely destroyed whatever was left of the tomb and the body within. Alexander's legacy was frankly impossible to follow. He had a son, Alexander IV, but he died young, and the empire fractured into three pieces as his top generals squabbled for authority. One legend has it that the three generals were leaning over Alexander in his sick bed, begging him to proclaim his successor before he died. The final, fragile breaths of the living god who conquered the world responded that his Empire would go "to the strongest", and then he died. It truly illustrates the enormous shoes Alexander left for the rest of history to fill. Many men would rise and fall, many empires would ascend and crumble, but despite their best efforts, none could ever match the grandeur and authority of Alexander the Great, Heir of Macedon, Pharaoh of Egypt, King of the World.

Design notes, obviously most of Alexander's outfit here is ripped straight from the famous Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii. It looks sleek and if it ain't broke don't fix it. Though… technically the mosaic is broken but shhh. I supplemented the design with a few details from the 1767 painting "Alexander Cuts the Gordian Knot" by French artist Jean-Simon Berthélemey, whose name sounds like a French parody of itself, but I digress. I just thought they looked neat and made the composition look fuller. His helmet was tricky, because at first I thought the lion head thing was something they invented for the 2004 movie and thus I didn't want to copy that detail. Apparently though, it stems from a handful of ancient statues, most prominently from the famous Alexander Sarcophagus, which no sadly isn't Alexander's sarcophagus but rather a sarcophagus with pictures of Alexander on it. I couldn't find any references to this lion headed detail in the literature on Alexander, though, so I can only assume this was just an artistic motif to promote Alexander as the equal of Heracles, who is always depicted wearing the pelt of the Nemean Lion. That's just my hunch though. Speaking of tombs, I based his sword and shield primarily off of finds from Macedon's Vergina tombs, though Alexander of course wasn't buried here. Members of his family were, though, so I figured he'd have similar stuff in life and it was a nice nod to archaeology in the field anyways. His face I primarily based off of a Roman copy of a bronze bust created by Alexander's personal sculptor, Lypissus. This statue may or may not actually represent Alexander, but it's the one I prefer the most out of all the other busts I've come across. It's got much more rugged and realistic-looking features compared to the more idealized baby-faced marble god kings you'll see elsewhere. Maybe it's just me, but I like to see the years of experience and hard choices on a man like Alexander. To me, it really helps solidify in reality a man which seemed to defy it his entire life.

Description
Many, many rulers throughout history have bestowed upon themselves the title of "Great", but there is one name above all else which commands such a looming presence over the course of human history: Alexander. Alexander is one of the most successful and obscenely powerful monarchs ever to scorch his way across this planet Earth. I'd argue that only Genghis Khan was a greater conqueror than him, as all great emperors after Alexander conquered to be like the King of Macedon, and Genghis needed no such inspiration to surpass his Western counterpart. That's a story for another day, though. Today's subject is Alexander, and his life is so filled to the brim with so many battles, characters, and legends that I can't possibly cover it all here. I truly believe that if we didn't have mountains of archaeological evidence proving his existence, we may scoff at his exploits as the fantasy of some Greek nutcase like we do with the stories of King Arthur. Alexander's influence on world history from Europe to India deserves more than what I can summarize in my little art blogs, but I'll do my best to do his biography justice. Strap in for another long one y'all.

Alexander III of Macedon was born in Pella in 356 BCE to Philip II, a renowned military mastermind who was on his way to turning all of Greece into his personal client state, and his fourth wife, Olympias. There's plenty of legends about Alexander's early life, most of which were made up by Alexander's fanboys, one even stating that Olympias was actually impregnated by a lightning bolt. This is an obvious allusion to later propaganda we'll get into in a bit. At ten years old, Alexander was able to calm and ride the untamable horse Bucephalus, which would become his favorite steed all throughout his career. From the age of 13 to 16, Philip hired the famed philosopher Aristotle himself to serve as Alexander's personal tutor, which would be the root of Alexander's total fanboy crush on all things Trojan War. We've all been there. Alexander's tutelage was cut short when he got his first taste of kingship in 340 BCE, as he was placed in charge of defending Macedon from the Thracians while his father was campaigning in Byzantium. The acclaim he won with the army served him well when Philip was assassinated under mysterious circumstances in 336 BCE. Alexander's throne was secured by his loyal soldiers, and once he secured Macedon's holdings in Greece and the Balkans, he took up the torch his father left behind: the conquest of Iran.

Philip had already laid down the plan to reclaim the culturally Greek city-states in Ionia from Achaemenid rule, but Alexander would not be satisfied with that. He crossed the Hellespont in 334 BCE with the intention of becoming king of all Asia. He faced the Immortals first at Granicus, then Miletus and Halicarnassus, and by 333 BCE he had pushed into the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordion, in the heart of Asia Minor. Here, he was presented with the Gordian Knot, a legendary local artifact which was supposedly a knot so complicated that only the prophesied king of Asia could undo it. Alexander, in what I think has to be my favorite nugget of extremely dumb wisdom in history, undid the knot either by pulling the lynch pin or, more hilariously, just drawing his sword and cutting it open. Because hey no one said how it had to be undone. It was at this point that the Achaemenid king Darius III finally thought hmm this Alexander kid may actually be a threat to my borders, I should probably go take care of that. The two titans met at Issus, today on the border between Turkey and Syria, and when Alexander came barreling down on Darius's "immortal" army and butchered them, Darius noped the hell out of there, hid away in some palace corner, and wrote up a treaty saying hey man I didn't mean it, let's be friends, I'll give you everything you already took from me and you give me back my family that I literally abandoned on the battlefield. Alexander tartly proclaimed that as he was the new king of Asia, only he would be setting the terms now.

While Darius was away writing sternly worded letters, Alexander advanced south and took Tyre and the Levant in 332 BCE. The Talmud claims he also stopped in the Holy City, where he amicably met the High Priest Simeon the Just. Alexander ordered a statue of himself built in the Temple, but Simeon convinced him to forgo this demand in exchange for all the priests naming their next-born sons Alexander. Apparently satisfied he had fairly swapped one ego trip for another, Alexander proceeded southwards and took control of Egypt at the Battle of Gaza. After stopping to found a new city quite literally in his own name, Alexander was crowned Pharaoh, reincarnation of the Egyptian gods on Earth. If that wasn't enough, Alexander then detoured into the Siwa Oasis to consult the famed Oracle of Amun. She proclaimed him to be the son of Zeus, and now you see where the fertile lightning strike we mentioned earlier comes in. By this point, Alexander was well and truly convinced that he was a god on Earth, and who was going to challenge him on that? That loser Darius? Ha! Eh? Oh… yes actually.

Darius redoubled his forces and faced Alexander at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE, to prove once and for all who the true King of Asia was! For the glory and righteous cause of the Persian Em- aaaand Darius ran away with his tail between his legs. Bro, grow some balls. I get it, the other guy has pointy sticks and might like murder you and stuff, but that's what a battle is, you do realize that right? Apparently this is what was going through the minds of his satraps too, because in 330 BCE they became fed up with retreating, tied Darius to an ox-cart, and just kinda left him to die exposed to the elements. Sucks to suck, man, but evidently, when Alexander came across the body of his most respected foe, he became infuriated that such a noble man's body should be mistreated like this, and hunted down the satraps that did the deed. After his victory at Gaugamela, Alexander was able to waltz in the front gates of Babylon completely unopposed. Apparently, despite his respect for Darius, he had no respect for his stuff, as Alexander proceeded to scorch the royal palaces at Persepolis to the ground, claiming it was revenge for the Achaemenid burning of Athens in 480 BCE. Nonetheless, Alexander was now King of Kings, and it truly went to his head. He came to idolize the Iranian conqueror Cyrus the Great, and took a liking to Persian garb and customs to the point where his advisors complained he was going too native. But I mean, again, who the hell is going to tell Alexander the Great what he can and can't do? There were a few attempts on his life, but when he had one of his officers executed for not informing him of the discovered plot straight away, I think that kinda sent the message.

Clearly on a roll, Alexander decided he may as well get to work on conquering the mysterious eastern lands he chased Darius's murderer, Bessus, through. In 326 BCE, he crossed the Hindu Kush and made war against the Indian king who resisted him, Porus. The forces met at the Battle of the Hydaspes, and while Alexander lost his beloved horse Bucephalus against a horde of war elephants, he still emerged the victor and made a vassal out of Porus. As the universe's dice were clearly just weighted towards Alexander's side, he wanted to keep going as far east as was possible. The only thing that stopped him from doing so was his army itself. They were tired of marching through unknown lands full of unfavorable climates and hostile peoples speaking tongues that no Macedonian even knew existed. For the first time in his life, Alexander was told "no", and though he gave a rousing speech to smack them on the ass, they still refused to continue. The king was at last forced to concede and return to Babylon, and Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. But that wasn't the worst turn of his luck. In 324 BCE, while Alexander was away dealing with rebellion after rebellion across his Empire, his best and oldest friend (and maybe lover, sources differ) Hephaestion, died of illness, and Alexander absolutely broke. The king was inconsolable, and while he tried to fill the void with blood and battle, nothing could ever make him feel the same again.

In June 323 BCE, Alexander died shortly after a lavish banquet. There's way too many theories to delve into here. Some say he just got food poisoning, some say it was his mental health making his body vulnerable to desert diseases, and others suspect it was an elaborate assassination plot devised by any number of his many, many enemies. We just don't know, and probably never will. Alexander's body was placed in a tomb which is lost to this day. It would be in Alexandria, Egypt, if it still exists, but centuries of flooding and reconstruction have likely destroyed whatever was left of the tomb and the body within. Alexander's legacy was frankly impossible to follow. He had a son, Alexander IV, but he died young, and the empire fractured into three pieces as his top generals squabbled for authority. One legend has it that the three generals were leaning over Alexander in his sick bed, begging him to proclaim his successor before he died. The final, fragile breaths of the living god who conquered the world responded that his Empire would go "to the strongest", and then he died. It truly illustrates the enormous shoes Alexander left for the rest of history to fill. Many men would rise and fall, many empires would ascend and crumble, but despite their best efforts, none could ever match the grandeur and authority of Alexander the Great, Heir of Macedon, Pharaoh of Egypt, King of the World.

Design notes, obviously most of Alexander's outfit here is ripped straight from the famous Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii. It looks sleek and if it ain't broke don't fix it. Though… technically the mosaic is broken but shhh. I supplemented the design with a few details from the 1767 painting "Alexander Cuts the Gordian Knot" by French artist Jean-Simon Berthélemey, whose name sounds like a French parody of itself, but I digress. I just thought they looked neat and made the composition look fuller. His helmet was tricky, because at first I thought the lion head thing was something they invented for the 2004 movie and thus I didn't want to copy that detail. Apparently though, it stems from a handful of ancient statues, most prominently from the famous Alexander Sarcophagus, which no sadly isn't Alexander's sarcophagus but rather a sarcophagus with pictures of Alexander on it. I couldn't find any references to this lion headed detail in the literature on Alexander, though, so I can only assume this was just an artistic motif to promote Alexander as the equal of Heracles, who is always depicted wearing the pelt of the Nemean Lion. That's just my hunch though. Speaking of tombs, I based his sword and shield primarily off of finds from Macedon's Vergina tombs, though Alexander of course wasn't buried here. Members of his family were, though, so I figured he'd have similar stuff in life and it was a nice nod to archaeology in the field anyways. His face I primarily based off of a Roman copy of a bronze bust created by Alexander's personal sculptor, Lypissus. This statue may or may not actually represent Alexander, but it's the one I prefer the most out of all the other busts I've come across. It's got much more rugged and realistic-looking features compared to the more idealized baby-faced marble god kings you'll see elsewhere. Maybe it's just me, but I like to see the years of experience and hard choices on a man like Alexander. To me, it really helps solidify in reality a man which seemed to defy it his entire life.