why do people say Alexander the great conquered the known world?

women_are_my_fancy

2013-12-29 13:37:19 UTC

Obviously Alexander did not conquer even the world known to the Greeks:

1) He never went west so he didn't conquer anything in Italy, nor bother the Gauls or Germans or Iberians. All were known to and traded with by all of the "Greek" world.

2) He took Egypt but not any of the nations that routinely plagued the Egyptians from the south. All were known to and traded with by the Greeks at least as far as Ethiopia.

3) He didn't take India. If you want to argue it was not known to the Greeks, it was only its detail that was not known to them, not its existence and what they traded for that originated there. They were also fully aware of the trade along Persia's coastline into India (Alexander returned from India via this route and it was planned, not opportunistic) and the monsoon trade routes.

4) He knew dimly of China as there was already a full trade chain linking them to Europe though it was in its early stages (trading place to place along the way, not caravans travelling the whole distance, nor the full-fledged monsoon trade through India that bankrupted and brought down the Roman Empire).

He failed in India NOT because his army revolted. His army revolted because India was an entirely different prospect than Persia. Persia was a huge feudal empire with an emperor nominally in control but really more of a cat herder. If they would (not could, would) have ever brought their full force to bear on Alexander, they'd've crushed him. Of course, they couldn't and he knew that. When he beat them a couple times, those opposed to seeing him as overlord were largely dead. Many of the rest didn't see any particular reason to acknowledge him either.

Which is why he never conquered a large portion of the Persian Empire. Only those places he took an army too or whose forces had fallen against him and so had no armed defense against small garrison detachments. But a large part never gave in, but rather were happy to have no overlord at all. Alexander could have pacified the empire, much like William the Conqueror in England, but it would have taken a lifetime and every time he turned his back... This was not for him. Too... mundane... apparently. He seemed awesome, but really it was a matter of getting a surrender before the governing means was shattered completely.

Had that happened first, Persia would then have been like India. Lots of piddling little cities and power centers, none of which would have been tough to take on its own, but sooooo many of them all needing taken one by one by one. No lovely "all fall down" effect like he got.

So. India. Not "India" in that there were no overarching empires at that time. Just a million (OK, perhaps 1-2,000+) little polities and that just in the north where the most wealth was at that time. Alexander would have had to take it city by city and before long would have had an army of Indians, not Greeks, just due to wastage of his men. After five lifetimes, he might've churned his way through northern India. The amount of work was just too massive for the size army he had.

And his attention span. You buy that you are a god amongst men and it's hard to slog about taking one city of 3,000 people a week. Grunt work. Not for him at all.

And he never could have even reached China, not likely even as a single man visiting. He certainly had no way to take an army there.

So people go on as people do. "Conquered the known world" and such. We all do that, we all like that. Shows how idiotic we are setting up a falsehood and then defending it with our intellectual lives. Moronic as American blacks going on about Egyptians being black in the same manner. We all need to be proud of what we all actually do have as achievements in our pasts. They are all impressive enough. We don't need to make up false ones and then lose sight of the real ones defending the undefendable.

I, for instance, do not need America to have been perfect in every modern way, decent in every modern way, and blameless in all things past, present, and future, wonderful in all ways. (That still doesn't mean the idiot Canadians who say THEY somehow won the War of 1812 get a tolerant smile and nod.) But I do take pride in the things, magnificent and small, that we actually HAVE accomplished, and will. All should do the same.

Alexander won a few big battles, won a lot of small ones, failed to do much after Persia, and I can honor him for what he did accomplish without claiming he was more than he was.

Venpast

2013-12-31 09:08:51 UTC

Alexander is said to have conquered most of the known world at the time, and is almost always exaggerated to 'the entirety' of the known world. Although this may not be the case exactly, their lies some truth in the statement.

Despite the fact Alexander did not direct his armies into other known areas Europe such as Italy and Germany, he was still considered the ruler of Europe for a reason. During his reign, and his father's, Phillip II, Greece had been the strongest power in the area, seeing as that Rome had not yet risen [not for another two or three hundred years, where it reached it's height under the rule of Julius Caesar and later his successor Octavian]. Greece was, if not the only, the strongest empire standing. That's why Macedonian kings such as Philip sought to tame Athens and Thebes-- and both Alexander and his father did eventually, effectively sating and controlling the powerhouse of the West.

When it came to Asia, it was a slightly different story. Around one hundred years prior to the Grecian invasion of Persia, there was a Persian invasion of Greece, which had devastated much of the country's lands, cities, and most importantly their temples. This was seen as blasphemy, and ever since, the strong revenge factor played its part. Phillip had wanted to invade, not only to expand Macedonia, but to utterly devastate Persian lands, as a form of pay back.

The reason I've decided to put that long introduction out there was to prove a point: Alexander had merely inherited that goal from his late father, and that in itself played a huge role in his conquest of Asia. When he'd faced Darius and won, not once but almost thrice, that, to him, was the Persian empire. At that point, he did control only most of it, as previously mentioned-- not because of the size of the land's he had control over, but because of the instability of the Persian Empire and most of the revolting cities. It was not the golden age for Persia and the inexperienced Darius had lost much of its lands, making the empire seem incomplete. To Alexander however, he did not care much to once again regain hold over these areas. To him, he had become the Master of Persia. Not only that, but he'd practically walked into Egypt with zero opposition and was branded a god in the temple of Zeus Ammon. This was when the once noble king's greed had gotten the best of him.

After victories such as the Battle of Granicus and Issus, left Alexander much more confident to take on a much larger challenge than the already failing empire Darius had left falling apart: and that was India. Contrary to the popular belief, Alexander did invade parts of India when he'd beaten Porus [The Indian King]. Feeling honorable, and respecting the King for his bravery, Alexander let him keep control of the area.

Alexander believed he could take the Indians one step at a time, because of the internal disputes that tore India apart internally, however he did not take into consideration the fact that the Indians had seen through his plan and decided to unite against him with an army of 300,000 men to Alexander's 40-60,000. At this point, not even his phalanx could save the day. Feeling hopeless and craving home, that was why his men decided to bail on their king, as well as the fact Alexander had lost a large portion of his army in his battle with Porus. Despite that, Alexander still had parts of India loyal to him, making his campaign not an entire failure.

This left Alexander with the Egyptian Empire, Persia, Greece + Macedon and chunks of India, all under his control before he'd even breached the age of thirty. This on its own is unimaginable. Although he didn't control the entirety of land the Grecians believed existed, he controlled most of what mattered, and conquered the greatest empires in history in the course of ten years. The size of his empire, and the time it took him to build is possibly the greatest reason historians call his empire the 'greatest of its time', and him Alexander 'The Great'. He controlled the entire known world, without having to own every square mile of Europe and Asia. He was Master of the 'known-world'. An accomplishment no general nor king had ever dreamt of.

In this case, I'm sure one must forgive the use of hyperbole.

?

2016-09-18 02:43:10 UTC

Interesting question!

Mukund

2013-12-31 10:38:36 UTC

alexander the great never came close to the great mongol genghis khan or the mighty british empire or the great great grandson of genghis khan emperor tamerlane

good luck

?

2013-12-29 11:35:19 UTC

You'll have to excuse some people for the use of hyperbole.